See you on the other side!

1. For each class of the supported vocabularies a method rdfa_{namespace}_{lowercase class name}
2. For each property two methods :
   1. rdfa_{namespace}_{lowercase property name}
   2. rdfa_link_to_{namespace}_{lowercase property name}

So basically you already have most of the things you need to represent your data in RDFa. But what if you want to use a specific vocabulary that we don’t support? well just do the same as we do:

1. Register the namespace of your vocabulary using
   Rdfa.register_namespace(name, namespace)
2. Register the classes you wish to use using
   Rdfa.register_rdfa_classes(namespace short name, list of classes)
3. Register the properties you wish to use using
   Rdfa.register_rdfa_properties(namespaceshort name , list of properties)

Simple enough? That’s what we use to support the vocabularies, as in this example for some of the foaf vocabulary:

Rdfa.register_rdfa_namespace :foaf , 'http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/'
Rdfa.register_rdfa_classes :foaf, ['Person','Project']
Rdfa.register_rdfa_properties :foaf, ["mbox","name","knows"]


Next things to be done, complete and refine the documentation, improve the rdfa-typo theme, add unit testing.

<% rdfa_tag tag_uri do %>
<%= link_to term, tag_uri%>
<%end%>


will now produce a “scot:Tag” class, we are also provided with a new property, “hasTag” which we use in the <%= rdfa_link_to_tag term, tag_uri %> partial…

RDFa on Rails goes version 0.0.4

sudo gem install rdfa

You can find the API documentation and the project website for more info. Basically it is a library which provides some abstractions to developers by means of helper methods to publish RDFa data.

The package comes with a theme for typo, the blogging system built on top of rails. To install it just go in the themes folder or your typo installation and type:

rdfa-typo

Then activate the theme and that’s it, your blog articles are published embedding RDFa.

In your rails apps try the following, for instance to publish a resource :

<% rdfa_resource url_for(resource) do %>

   <h3><%= rdfa_label resource.name %></h3>

   <%= rdfa_description resource.text %>

   <h4>Created by : <%= rdfa_creator url_for(resource.author)%></h4>

<% end %>

There is still much work do be done, help and comment is welcome.

dPolls.com is a website dedicated to providing the best online polling experience available. Make your opinion heard by voting to any poll you’d like.Let other people know what you think, and find out if people think the same as you.

Then, I thought, well let’s try it and create a poll… Here it is, you have 6 months to answer it…:

ahah, doesn’t work, the HTML code you have to copy/paste (as any other widget, like google ads, del.icio.us or youtube videos…) is just horrible, they could definitely make it better by embedding the whole thing in a javascript script for instance… it seems wordpress doesn’t like it at all as it uses an iframe it removes it from the post, stupid restrictions… here is my last try, otherwise you can always go to the poll by following this link :

Too bad it doesn’t work, the idea is good…

First thing, mount your old computer using firewire or through the network (I use both firewire for the first big thing, then the wireless Lan). Then copy some libraries from the Library folder of your old user, I moved there the Mail folder, Journler, Firefox, well shortly support for the applications I use the most. Then move also your preferences (Library/preferences) again for the apps you use the most. Move the iTunes folder to your music and the applciations you want to keep (Textmate, Journler, omnigraffle, mplayer, vlc…). We are done with what the Migration assistant would have done.

Then for open source software I use macport, which is a package manager. It first needs you to install the developer tools (needs the gcc compiler and header files) so you do install this (I downloaded it from the web, but you also have it on your osx cds). Then download and install macport. So what do we want to install with this? Use the terminal to type the following commands. oh and don’t forget to add “/opt/local/bin” to your path in /etc/profile.

Latex:

sudo port install tetex

Versionning systems:

sudo port install subversion

sudo port install bazaar-ng

Ruby and Rubygems:

sudo port install ruby

sudo port install rb-rubygems

I don’t like mysql for development I simply use sqlite:

sudo port install sqlite3

Then the gems install for rails:

sudo gem install -y rails

sudo gem install -y sqlite3-ruby

Everything is set, I tested rails, svn and latex compiling with pdflatex… all works fine. Now I need to re-organize my data and that’s another story…

Connecting and Sharing Memories and Cultural Experiences

Two days ago, we submitted an EU project proposal for a project named “Mnemosyne”, I though I would not speak of it before the feedback, but as thomas, our project coordinator, already blogged about it, I thought I could do it as well.

You can find the abstract on thomas’ blog, so I won’t copy paste it here… So what’s the idea? well here is Mnemosyne recipe:

1. Take the web2.0 ideas of simplicity, interoperability and social amplitude
2. Add some semantic web/computing power
3. Choose the best possible case study, Cultural Heritage
4. Connect the right people together
5. Shake it
6. Shake it again

Here it is you’ve got the idea. So some resources now:

1. the post here about the talk I gave last year in Peter Samis’ class which kind of originated all this.
2. The steve.museum project, which I blogged about too. Steve experiments with social tagging in the context of museums.
3. Then the people, our university of lugano, its faculty of informatics, the tec-lab, the usability lab of KTH, the semantic web researchers of DFKI, the PRC group.
4. The museums involved, Centre Georges Pompidou, Istituto Beni Culturali per la Regione Emilia Romagna, the thessaloniki Museum of photography.

Anyway, this is not what interest me here. Tim presented the process, the scientific process that web science followed and follows. And what a great coincidence, it is graphically so similar to the process we have been developing in Nepomuk and described already in this blog that I can’t resist to look at both here. So here they are:

So here they are, tim’s cycle on the left, cédric’s cycle on the right. Similarities, well they both are cycles (there is always something more to do…next iteration) then they don’t describe exactly the same thing, one interesting thing are the terms “complexity/creativity” which maps in the other diagram to bubbles “usages/abstractions”(well now it’s abstract architecture as the diagram is more engineering oriented, but if you dig in earlier posts, you’ll find “abstractions” emerging from “creation”), so although we use different terminology, these are similar. Difference, well the main one is tim’s cycle goes only one way (forward engineering/inductive methodology) when the other one spins both ways(inductive/deductive , forward engineering/reverse engineering). Anyway, there could be much more said about this, both are great, we are going somewhere.

web3.0 = web2.0 + semantic web

Well this brings me to thinking again at what’s web2.0 about. And why did we need a new name for it, it is still the web isn’t it?

I believe there is no new technology with web2.0, it is the concept we have of the web which changed. With web1.0 we understood the web as the set of http documents and links between them. Then we realised that the web includes also the people authoring these documents or browsing them, the very idea of the web changed and we needed to change the name to distinguish between the two concepts leading to this two definitions:

web = set of interconnected documents

web2.0 = web + humans

Then following these definitions what would be the web3.0, I believe the next change of concept will be when we will understand that there is no difference between the web and the world, both being a set of interconnected thoughts, leading to the definition:

web3.0 = a set of interconnected thoughts + humans

Where is the semantic web in all that? I don’t know.

Here is the ruby code I wrote to do this:
I am sure one can do this with wikipedia

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'

text = ARGV[0]
sentences = text.split('.')
linked_sentences = sentences.collect do |sentence|
  propositions = sentence.split(',')
  linked_propositions = propositions.collect do |proposition|
    words = proposition.split(' ')
    linked_words=words.collect do |word|
      ref = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(
             'http://del.icio.us/recent?random&min=10'))['location']
      "<a href=\"#{ref}\">#{word}</a>"
    end
    linked_words.join(" ")
  end
  linked_propositions.join(", ")
end
puts linked_text = linked_sentences.join(". ")