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.

Categories
Media

Netflix sees Starz

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

In a game altering play, Netflix has contracted with Starz to add the entertainment channel’s movies to the Watch Now instant watching options AND to provide a live stream of Starz to the Netflix web site.

This means that highly rated first run movies such as Ratatouille and No Country for Old Men, in addition to older classics, TV shows, and other material, are now filling out the Watch Now queue. I spent a happy 20 minutes this morning filling up my queue with shows, and I’ve not even scratched the surface of what’s available.

What makes this deal particularly intelligent on the part of Netflix is that it doesn’t have to try to strike deals with every movie studio— it can just strike a deal with channel providers, instead. In addition, in an interesting move, Netflix also provides a live Starz stream you can subscribe to directly— allowing you to bypass the DVD queue, completely. This moves us closer to the Netflix dream of streaming content, only.

The hottest little digital device on the market has just become the inexpensive Roku box, with its ease of use and setup, and inexpensive price tag; especially when you consider that you can get a Roku box for about the same amount you’d pay for a month of cable service.

The Starz deal follows other breaking stories recently about Netflix making a deal with CBS and Disney, Roku providing an open SDK for others to build channels, in addition to Netflix releasing its API today. With the API, we’ll now be able to integrate Netflix queues with other applications.

Of course, today’s also the day that Comcast starts its bandwidth capping. How soon before this capping comes up against the new internet video capabilities is a toss up—but with Christmas looming, and Netflix streaming available in an attractively priced Roku box, in addition to being included in new blu-ray and game players, I expect a bandwidth show-down beginning next year.

In the meantime, I feel quite smug for having made my Roku purchase, before the rush.

Categories
Political

Are some Christians stupid?

Washington Post article about ministers violating tax laws by urging their flocks to vote for McCain:

Asked why he felt the need to discuss the candidates by name and to be explicit in rejecting Obama and his pro-choice views, Johnson said he must connect the dots because he is not sure that all members of his congregation can do so on their own.

Categories
Writing

OpenOffice for Aqua

Last week I made the switch from NeoOffice to OpenOffice for Aqua on the Mac.

I’m impressed with the overall appearance of the application, and the functionality. Most importantly, I was able to process Word documents with templates without problems and without loss of functionality.

The application is very fast and responsive on my PowerPC laptops, and from what I’ve read elsewhere, it’s actually better on the Intel-based machines. It doesn’t have the lag that I’ve found with newer versions of NeoOffice when clicking on a menu item and the menu contents displaying. Nor does it seem to absorb as much of the machine’s resources.

I can open and work on several different types of documents, at the same time, and not have performance or stability problems. Overall, it’s quite efficient, as well as including all the features most, if not all, of us need from an office toolset.

OpenOffice includes the following tools:

  • A fully featured text document editor, including support for both macros and templates, as well as all features necessary for sophisticated document creation and management. You can also track and show changes, as well as autocorrect and format, embed tables and images, add a media player, and incorporate a bibliography database.
  • A spreadsheet tool that provides any number of formatting capabilities, simple to use chart creators, all the spreadsheet functions you need and want, and some interesting Scenario and Solver tools I haven’t had a chance to explore.
  • A presentation tool with templates that can incorporate any number of graphics and themes, providing slideshows, the ability to package the presentation— the usual presentation software suspects.
  • A database creation tool that also uses ODBC and JDBC to connect to an existing database, either remotely or locally.
  • A drawing tool that provides a good deal of functionality in order to create nice looking illustrations.

The application is still in candidate release status, so you may want to wait until the finished release. However, if you’re a Mac user, with either a PowerPC or Intel-based machine, give the application serious consideration.

Did I happen to mention it’s open source?