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Interop and Unified Content

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

The Java Specification Request 170 [1], which defines a uniform application programming interface (API) for access to content repositories, might be a way to go for Open Source Content Management interoperability [2]?

Some analysts say that “June 2003 will see a reshuffling in the content management industry with final adoption of the Java Specification Request 170 (JSR 170) standard” because it addresses the main problem of CMS:

” Web applications such as Web sites, portals, shops or catalogues interact with content. These are held in content repositories, which are generally part of a content management system. The e-business sector has been faced with major challenges, because each CMS manufacturer uses its own repository API. It is not easy to exchange applications (for example, a database conforming to SQL), so integrators are forced to master various APIs, work with different application developers such as portal manufacturers, and adapt their products to a very wide range of APIs. This situation is not satisfactory for customers either – once you’ve decided on a content management system, it’s not easy to change your mind.” [3]

[1] http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=170&showPrint
[2] http://blog.bitflux.ch/p625.html
[3] http://www.serverworldmagazine.com/monthly/2003/01/java.shtml

Books: "AI Application Programming", "Working Knowledge"

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

During my stay in NYC I bought two books which are next on my list of must-reads:

“AI Application Programming” by M. Tim Jones: Seems like a very worth read to dive deeper into artificial intelligence programming. The paperback says “Covers cutting edge AI concepts such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, intelligent agents, rules-based systems, ant algorithms, fuzzy logic, unsupervised learning algorithms, and more”. The code examples are easy to follow. Met by chance Bruce Lokeinsky (whom I have not known before) while waiting in the queue to pay. He looked at my book, we started chatting about the real benefit of AI technologies. We are both skeptical, but I am confident that the KISS paradigm (keep it small, simple) of the open source community might break down those mainly scientific concepts to what can be done and is useful in the Semantic Web.

“Working Knowledge. How Organizations Manage What They Know” by Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak: Florian Stahl from University of St. Gallen pointed me to this book – thanks Florian! Obviously a classic that I haven’t come across before. It’s a shame, there’s so much I should have read already. The problem is that I often forget what I have read. Oh not, it’s not gone, it’s there for intuitive thinking. I go with Einstein, who said that it’s not necessary to know everything, but to know where it is written… So, let’s read how organizations manage this problem 🙂

Hacking and Refactoring

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Eric S. Raymond on the correlations between open source and agile software development:

“Ever since, though, I’ve been sensing a growing convergence between agile programming and the open-source movement. I’ve seen agile concepts and terminology being adopted rapidly and enthusiastically by my colleagues in open-source-land – especially ideas like refactoring, unit testing, and design from stories and personas. From the other side, key agile-movement figures like Kent Beck and Martin Fowler have expressed strong interest in open source both in published works and to me personally. Fowler has gone so far as to include open source on his list of agile-movement schools.”

“I’ve already given an example of what the agile movement has to teach the hackers, in pointing out that repeated redesign by refactoring is a precise description of hacking. Another thing we can stand to learn from agile-movement folks is how to behave so that we can actually develop requirements and deliver on them when the customer isn’t, ultimately, ourselves.”

[1] http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/[…]

OSCOM 3: CMS Users Panel

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

David Weinberger’s notes [1] on the CMS users panel at OSCOM 3:

“Then Dave Winer sparked controversy – shocking, I tell you! – by saying that it’s like the early days of word processing when everything was hard and expensive. It shouldn’t be as technical as it is. It really should be a $200 solution, he said, that does the 80% of what actually needs to be done.

Hmm. I don’t think the users on the panel could get what they need in that 80%. They’re not looking for a desktop application like word processing. To them, CMS is a system, and it does something complex that will only get more complex.”

[1] http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/001568.html

Weblogs and Discourse

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Weblogs and Discourse. Weblogs as a transformational technology for higher education and academic research, Blogtalk Conference Paper, Vienna, May 23rd-24th 2003, by Oliver Wrede:

“This paper discusses different questions of weblogs in context of higher education. It is focussing on three loosely coupled questions:
1. How can the weblog format improve discourse?
2. How it can weblogs support teaching at universities?
3. What are the insitutional benefits of weblogs in universities?
It seems obvious that these questions relate to each other and therefore probably should be discussed in context. The document grew out of a wild collection of speculative thoughts and notes. It is also based on some daily experience with weblogs in an educational setting.” [1]

[1] http://weblogs.design.fh-aachen.de/owrede/publikationen/weblogs_and_discourse

Thesis 3: Build virtual neighborhoods of knowledge!

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

The metaphor of a desktop does not suffice the needs created in knowledge environments. What we need is a “natural” look and feel. Just like the Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project [1] and Jo Walsh’s collaborative mapping project [2] suggest: we need to build neighborhoods of knowledge. Very appealing are maps of our minds and thoughts which are at best closely related to the “real” world we live in, because there we could relate information to geographical locations we know very well. The location itself serves as the two or maybe three dimensional context that the information is related to or derives its meaning from.

Why is geographical mapping of knowledge so appealing? Because the development of an indivduals knowledge has very much been influenced by its culture and its physical surroundings. Thus, virtual neighbourhoods of knowledge resemble this evolution and conform to our everyday experience of geographic environments, but also decouple communication from the physical location of the human being sharing his knowledge.

[1] http://rdfweb.org/foaf/
[2] http://space.frot.org/