Year: 2008

Categories
Internet

AppleTV update

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Now that’s the ticket…Apple has released its anticipated AppleTV update. I’m installing now, as I write this.

Among the changes are support for HD TV shows, of course, but also Genius playlists, as well as being able to put the machine into Standby mode using Settings, rather than having to hold and press the Play button. This is comparable with being able to put an iPod into Standby via a menu option rather than esoteric button/time combination.

Apple also added support for music videos. I have a couple, which I’ll have to move over to the machine, see how they do.

Other than that, no, Steve Jobs did not have a heart attack. I can’t believe how gullible the online world is, to accept the word of some anonymous commenter in a CNN any-hack-can-post site. Is “fact check” old fashioned? CNN’s any-hack-can-post site states with pride that the material is Unedited. Unfilterd. News. I guess two our three is good enough for CNN.

Interesting, though, how tightly Apple shares are tied into Jobs. He needs to take a lesson from Bill Gates and work to ensure that the company does survive his death. Well, unless Jobs wants Apple to be like the Viking Queen and immolate itself on his funeral pyre.

Categories
Political

Something in St. Louis

Welcome to St. Louis tonight. I hope you have your toasted Ravioli and catfish sandwich handy. The weather is lovely, cool and with low humidity. While you’re in town, do be sure to spend at least a little time listening to the Blues, gazing out at the Sip.

I won’t be joining you, though. I plan on catching the highlights, or lowlights, of the debate tomorrow—via hundreds, perhaps even thousands of weblog posts.

Tonight, I’m going to watch Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams in HD from iTunes, and do everything humanly possible to forget this election. At least, for a day.

Categories
Semantics

Where are the Semantic Web applications

There’s been an increase of interest about the semantic web lately.

One particular question and answer in Danny’s interview has to do with the seeming cultural divisions associated with the semantic web.

Some say: “Europeans have developed the Semantic Web and Americans are going to capitalise it.” What is your opinion?

Danny Ayers: Six months ago I attended the SemTech conference in San José. There were quite a few European folks with solid projects approaching venture capitalists and vice versa. The impression I got was that of a significant culture clash, with the Europeans generally caught on the wrong-foot.

I have also attended most of the Italian SemWeb conferences (SWAP) and there have seen many demos of potentially lucrative applications, which got forgotten once the presenter gained their doctorate.

At the same time, as far as the (Semantic) Web is concerned, national barriers count for nothing. I live in an 8-cat town in Tuscany and work for a UK company, the US-based company OpenLink has an expert in Outer Siberia.

Internationalization of communication aside, I’ve also noticed what seems to be a shift of semantic web research to Europe, while the States focus on, well, Twitter. Google. Facebook. Cloud Computing. I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense—the States seem to be focusing on business based on known, possibly even exhausted technology and knowledge, while Europe is focusing on research for its own sake.

It may not seem like a big deal, but research without an endgame is nothing more than ego wrapped up in white papers. At the same time, a business that is focused purely on the moment isn’t going to take the web in new directions. Instead, we’ll be like the dog chasing its tail—all excited movement that doesn’t really go anywhere.

However, I haven’t been following the semantic web community as closely as I once did, and my view may be skewed because of it. The fact that this question was asked, though, shows I’m not the only one seeing a decidedly cultural bias in focus and interest.

Categories
Diversity Semantics

Correlation

noticed a correlation between my last two posts on the lack of women at Ajax Experience and the seeming lack of RDF or semantic web applications. Both are based on perennial questions: Where are the women in technology? Where are the semantic web applications?

Next time I’m asked either, I think I’ll answer that the women in technology are off building RDF-based semantic web applications. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

The women in technology are off building RDF-based semantic web applications. It works better than answering yes, there are women in technology but we’re still not as visible as we should be, and yes there are semantic web and RDF-based applications, but they’re still not as visible as they could be—both of which evidently don’t play well in the dominant technical culture, because the same damn questions keep getting asked, again and again.

Categories
JavaScript

The Ajax experience

The Expert Panel session at the Ajax Experience conference should be an interesting experience for one and all. I wonder if there will be an automated device that senses the blood pressure of the participants, and automatically sprays safety foam between them, if need be?

I did want to reassure one and all that though the Ajax Experience conference is almost exclusively male, we women do work with Ajax technologies and even publish libraries and tutorials for others to use. Of course, we’re typically ignored when we do provide code, libraries, or tutorials, but still—no matter how many walls the guys put up, we seep through.