RSS news aggregator 10X10

A pictorial RSS news aggregator – fascinating

“10x10™ ('ten by ten') is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time”.

“Each hour is presented as a picture postcard window, composed of 100 different frames, each of which holds the image of a single moment in time. Clicking on a single frame allows us to peer a bit deeper into the story that lies behind the image.”

It works by “process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories” from “scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources”

Moving away from ‘what we think we need’ attitude

Government announced that hundreds of ‘unnecessary’ websites are to be axed. It has taken world economic crisis and a rise of unemployment at home together with series of companies going bankrupt for us to wake up to think and reassess what technology is actually doing for us rather than what we think it is doing for us.

Video - Introduction to Linked Data

 

The presentation given by Sandro Hawke, June 8, 2010 - MIT Cambridge, MA World Wide Web Consortium w3.org, who gave a talk about ‘Linked data’.

The introduction:-

“Although the first Semantic Web standards are more than ten years old, only recently have we begun to actually see machines sharing data on the Web. The key turning point was the acceptance of the core Linked Data principle, that object identifiers should also work with Web protocols to access useful information. This talk will cover the basic concepts and techniques of publishing and using Linked Data, assuming some familiarity with programming and the Web. No prior knowledge of Semantic Web technologies is required”.

A good overview, intro, issues of URI and positioning of where we are.

An Introduction to Linked Data - by Sandro Hawke from Marco Neumann on Vimeo.

Finding simplicity in complexity

I watched How to live a simple life on BBC. Living a simple life connotes living in a countryside and possibly growing vegetables and flowers in the garden without too many modern gadgets to play with. Simple life also meant, for me anyway, living in a small community at a slow pace. But I now wonder if my understanding and perception of simple life as an opposing concept of a complex life is valid one.

I beginning to think that we can and need to find simplicity in complexity. Living a simple and meaning life is not about growing vegetables and removing oneself from the world and building a wooden house in a forest.

I feel it is to do with a mindset that dares to live in the interconnected world, fiercely making connections and building relationships by surrendering self to the world but yet to be able to explain that! Something I certainly need to carry on thinking about....

Where is I?

Change is inevitable. Consistency is the fragmentation of inconsistency. All that matters is how we shape the progression. Our changing  perception about a division between private and public is no longer a surprise. The services offered by social networking sites confirm our willingness to redesign the boundary between private and public. Having read ‘Networks blur the private and public divide’ on the BBC news, discussing and highlighting some of the potential issues that could occur with the location-dependent tools and services.

I used to think that the boundary was becoming blurred. However, I now perceive the emerging phenomenon as ‘redesigning’ the boundary between private and public. ‘Blurring’, to some extent connotes the existence of phenomenon outside of our situated actions. We all know what it means to use Twitter and announce our whereabouts. We seem to choose to make such announcements in exchange with various personal preferences. I am certainly concerned about the number of assumptions the service providers are making in provision of their services and tools e.g. Google’s Buzz. However, is it not the case that we choose to reveal our own details of our lives online and in posting work related information with an intention to share with others? If I decide to use a location-dependent tool, should I not know the implications of it? In the same way we know the implications for having a credit card pin number with the card in the wallet? We know all the implications of the connections.

I would like to think that we are all capable of rejecting something that does not meet our needs. If someone revealed confidential information on a social networking site, it was because the decision made by that person. It wasn’t forced upon the person to use the medium that allows such information to be available to all. However, we tend to think that it is the service providers who need to be pressured and restrained. Perhaps we are looking for a cause in a wrong place. Where is I in all this?

Appreciating complexity in a seemingly simple timer

It is a photo of an analogue timer on my combi boiler. I have spent easily an hour to try to understand how to set the boiler timer. I went through an usual self doubt process of questioning my inability to understand what appears to be so simple. Luckily I got it to work but not because I understood how this simple looking timer works. After testing it a few times, I realised that after setting the time, I only need to consider the outer numbers as time. The only trick is that it is anti-clock even though the numbers represent clock times. I am completely baffled by it. I even thought at one point I understood the rational behind this, But no, now I do not. I am still staring at it, appreciating the design complexity. 

Simplicity no more. It became a symbol of complexity that exists within a seemingly simple artefact (for me anyway). There are many questions remain unanswered. Why is it anti-clock? Did it have to be anti-clock? Was there a trade off between cost and quality of this technology at the expenses of producing an intuitive design? Is there such a thing as simple? Isn’t it just because we perceive it to be simple? Let’s say, with some miracle that I get to understand the operating mechanism and design rational of this timer, just because I get to understand it, does that make it simple’? When we explain something that we understand well, we tend to say the phrase, ‘it’s simple’. Probably someone who understands this timer will be explaining it to me with such an opener as; ‘it’s simple, it works like…’

Google and Privacy

The recent Google’s poor judgement about the user’s privacy in social networking environment has caused a quite a stir. I have also blogged my experience of it. I watch with a total amazement for the complete failure to understand the importance of privacy.

Ironically, Google executives in Italy were convicted for ‘showing’ (providing a platform) the inappropriate user created content on YouTube. I do expect Google to take a responsibility for responding and assisting in preventing and protecting individuals and communities in cyberspace from people and organizations who exploit and abuse it.

However, I do not expect Google to take legal responsibility for the content created by users. Why should they? The most worrying aspect here is the fact that content providers are considered to be responsible for the content and treating cyberspace as an established institution.

This is my unhappy ‘Buzz’

Google’s social networking tool, ‘Buzz’ caught most of our attention in the last few days. I only got around to click ‘Buzz’ yesterday. Driven by a curiosity (for research mostly), with one single click, ‘Buzz’ was embedded in my Google email account. That is all what I can remember. I found two followers, among these two, there was a friend who was very unlikely person to sign up for any social networking site, never mind following me! In speaking with him, it was confirmed that nothing was intentional and did not even realise what had happened. It seemed that by clicking ‘Buzz’, it automatically created a network of friends (as reported by BBC news today) and sent off follower messages to people in our email address list.

The next thing I did was to stop ‘Buzz’ and signed off. Personally, I am very disappointed by ‘Buzz’ for assuming who should be in my network of friends and then would initiate creating 'my network' by sending out follower messages to people. The concerning aspect of the workings of ‘Buzz’ is in its underlying assumption that our data belongs to them. Google appears to be claiming the ownership of my data. In doing so, it is challenging the boundary of private and public sphere.

We witness the changes in the notion and perception of privacy with the emergence of various social networking tools. However, it should be noted that the decision to publish what has been previously considered to be private in a public sphere is being made by us, the users. The social networking tools are certainly providing tools and the mechanism to facilitate a change to the concept of privacy. However, it is users who should have power to act as their own gatekeeper for online social network to become buzzing.

Tag cloud and the contextual link

For some time now I've been interested and admired much of the thinking behind folksonomy and tag cloud approaches ever since I first saw them in Flickr.

For me; these micro-word instances are (or should be) continually tied to its context through the use of linkages and web connections. These tightly coupled links, the tag clouds are part of the practical accomplishments of the people in situated action.

These clouds produced by Channel 4 News remain faithful to this coupling concept, by clicking on the word we find out not only how many times the cloud word was used, but it also connects us directly with the context via YouTube video for example. The link takes you to the actual transcript of the speech together with the video.

http://www.channel4.com/news/media/2009/12/day09/pbr2009_snowcloud/wordCloud.swf?embed=false

Snowcloud: Pre-budget report (Updated on 09 December 2009) By Channel 4 News

Why do I like them, or rather, why do I think I like folksonomic approaches? It makes us think about the use of categories. Categorisation schema, impose an invisible moral order, whereas folksonomies are just that, ‘ordinary’. This follows Schutz term of ‘self-typification’, the individual making intersubjective constructs and thus repositions the relationship we have to imposed structures.

Potentiality is the Key Characteristic of Social Networking

For the last few days, I have been made to think more about social networking. I watched ‘BBC’s Virtual Revolution’ over the weekend and read ‘A world of connections’ a special report on social networking in January 30th issue of The Economist and to top it up, I picked up the iTNOW BCS magazine, featuring ‘Social networking: Why businesses need to embrace the latest web 2.0 applications’ from Howard. After watching the programme and reading the articles, I asked myself, ‘what is it about social networking that needs to be taken so seriously?’

About three years ago, Howard and I began discussing and thinking about Web 2.0 and specifically the usage and social and business implications of podcasting. We wrote a paper (not published in an academic journal) titled, “Examining disruptive socio-technological characteristics of podcasting” and concluded that “The integration of podcasting into both main stream technologies as well as other Web 2.0 technologies could lead to‘fusion of disruptive technologies’ (Rao et al. 2006). The potential impact of integration of multiple disruptive technologies can result in a new discontinuous innovation, creating new forms of market value (Rao et al. 2006). The developmental history of podcasting, started as a medium for individual expression with the possible marriage to other technologies will increasingly reflect that of the butterfly effect.”

We recognized that for such technology, the key is not, what it is and what it does now, but what it could be i.e. its potentiality. Why does social networking excite us all? It is not just about the changes it brings about in business models, disrupting the value chains and the changes in human relationships but it offers us the unlimited potentiality for the creative mind to flourish.

Considering 'Networking Reconsidered'

I read a blog by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown, ‘Networking Reconsidered’. I agree with their argument that the importance is being active, in knowing ‘how to participate in knowledge flows’. The premises starts from that this is a changing world and consequently there is a need to change the way we interact with each other. (Although, not as often as I would like, but when I can), writing for this site is also my attempt to participate in the knowledge flows. The blog then went on to discuss the importance of accessing tacit knowledge and argued that the route of accessing tacit knowledge is through adopting a learning disposition, contrasting this with the classical networking approach.

The classical networking approach, which they describe as ‘Push’, is the process by which one ‘identifies the people who could be helpful to you and find ways to introduce yourself to those people’. We usually find this interaction in the real world. Undoubtedly, there are people who use online social networking sites as ‘Push’ for widening their sphere, getting pleasure out of the ever increasing visitor numbers, of ‘friends’ and ‘contacts’.

However, we will find some aspects of a learning disposition relationships in online social networking environment as it requires (inherently) our ‘willingness to disclose vulnerabilities’ and expose and bare one’s thoughts to attract others. Unlike ‘Pushing’, the online social networking site is largely designed to do ‘Pulling’, attracting the like minds to share explicit as well as tacit (I dare say) knowledge. This is certainly my approach to writing and posting blogs.