XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a powerful markup language providing functionality for data exchange and sharing. By using XML, we separate data from representation. It means that data in XML format can be displayed in many forms. Each software developer can decide how display this data, related to his own requirements.
For example European Central Bank (ECB) is publishing exchange rates on their website in XML format (http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml), these rates are updated on daily base. Developers are free to access these rates and implement them into websites or applications. Developers can also select only currencies which are important for their countries. One example from my country using these ECB XML exchange rates is http://www.zoz.sk. You can see exchange rates of important currencies in my country on the right side. Developer of this site chooses his own graphical representation of data provided by ECB.
The next example of service provided by XML is weather forecast. You can get current weather in RSS format (RSS is written in XML language). For example, here is the forecast for Bratislava (city in Slovakia) http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?w=818717&u=c. You can transform this XML information to required graphical format. The example is on bottom of http://www.zoz.sk. Related to weather code provided by http://weather.yahooapis.com the icon of actual weather is changing.
Last example is related to government taxes in my country. There is a lot of different accountant software, but each of them is able to export required documents to XML format. These documents can be sent to tax authorities of my country, and they can process them automatically.
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML
15 February 2011
14 February 2011
Project Chanology
Occasionally collaborative tools such as internet forums have been used to organize activities on voluntary basis. One such voluntary-based movement is the Project Chanology, a protest movement by activists, labeling themselves "Anonymous", against the Church of Scientology.
The Church of Scientology is an organization promoting the belief system of Scientology. It was founded by a pulp fiction author Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, and has - despite the author's obvious fiction background, addiction to painkillers and his critics' common characterization of him as "a liar, a charlatan and a madman" - has gathered numerous members and become financially very successful over the years. [Urban]
The Project Chanology began after the Church of Scientology attempted to censor a rambling and chaotic monologue by actor Tom Cruise about his faith in Scientology, starting with a video published in YouTube named "Message to Scientology" where the Anonymous group state their opinion of Scientology's actions as a form of Internet censorship and assert the groups goal to "expel the church from the internet".
Project Chanology originally began with distributed denial-of-service attacks and various pranks on the Church of Scientology operations, but later moved to more legal methods, such as public protests and complaints to IRS about the church's tax exempt status. Besides its use of YouTube the project has been organized through internet forums, imageboards, wiki pages and internet relay chat channels.
The group behind Project Chanology, called Anonymous, is estimated to number in thousands of members. However, due to the group members generally staying - as the name implies - anonymous and interacting with it's members through collaborative tools that easily enable hiding or disguising one's identity, there is no way to know or even define the membership accurately. Anyone can view, partake and/or orchestrate the group's activities, or simply act under the name of the group on their own, thus making 'membership' definitions blurry at best.
Sources:
Urban, Hugh B. "Fair Game: Secrecy, Security, and the Church of Scientology in Cold War America." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74.2 (2006)
Tom Cruise on Scientology
A Wikipedia overview on Project Chanology
Anonymity in Groupware
The Church of Scientology is an organization promoting the belief system of Scientology. It was founded by a pulp fiction author Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, and has - despite the author's obvious fiction background, addiction to painkillers and his critics' common characterization of him as "a liar, a charlatan and a madman" - has gathered numerous members and become financially very successful over the years. [Urban]
The Project Chanology began after the Church of Scientology attempted to censor a rambling and chaotic monologue by actor Tom Cruise about his faith in Scientology, starting with a video published in YouTube named "Message to Scientology" where the Anonymous group state their opinion of Scientology's actions as a form of Internet censorship and assert the groups goal to "expel the church from the internet".
Project Chanology originally began with distributed denial-of-service attacks and various pranks on the Church of Scientology operations, but later moved to more legal methods, such as public protests and complaints to IRS about the church's tax exempt status. Besides its use of YouTube the project has been organized through internet forums, imageboards, wiki pages and internet relay chat channels.
The group behind Project Chanology, called Anonymous, is estimated to number in thousands of members. However, due to the group members generally staying - as the name implies - anonymous and interacting with it's members through collaborative tools that easily enable hiding or disguising one's identity, there is no way to know or even define the membership accurately. Anyone can view, partake and/or orchestrate the group's activities, or simply act under the name of the group on their own, thus making 'membership' definitions blurry at best.
Sources:
Urban, Hugh B. "Fair Game: Secrecy, Security, and the Church of Scientology in Cold War America." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74.2 (2006)
Tom Cruise on Scientology
A Wikipedia overview on Project Chanology
Anonymity in Groupware
11 February 2011
Future Multitouch Meeting Room
I was interested to see if some kinds of “meeting rooms of the future” already existed, so I searched around the internet for a few. I came across Oli Mival’s Interactive Collaborative Environment, located at Edinburgh Napier University. Mival demonstrates the features of the room in a video.
The first thing you will notice in the video is an interactive table in which photos and documents can be moved and resized. Using documents in this way is no doubt very intuitive, as it resembles a traditional way of looking at pictures or whatever at a table. However, one could ask if that is precisely the problem – does the interactive table really offer something to make meetings and working more efficient? We could make a few points here: interactive table saves physical space and prevents obstruction of view for other people, as there are no real documents lying around everywhere. Also, digital documents won’t get lost or drop on the floor. Furthermore, resizing and zooming can be done easily, allowing everyone to see what is being talked about without the need to pass the document around by hand.
Also, there are touch screens scattered across the walls in the room, all of which have the same display, i.e. when someone does something to one screen, all the others will follow. The benefits I could think of would be that people wouldn’t have to gather around the same display and they could make changes for everyone to see more easily.
Now, a bit more than one and a half minutes into the video, things really start to get more interesting. Mival demonstrates how the interactive table can be used to spin around 3D objects, play games and scan maps. The table seems to be capable of many things, and I believe it would really help in making meetings more interactive and fluent.
There is almost no doubt in that these kinds of futuristic meeting rooms would make working more efficient. However, it is certain that the rooms will require lots of money, so the only real question would be if these improvements are enough to make these kinds of meeting rooms a beneficial investment.
References
http://vimeo.com/8238997
http://www.futureinteractions.net/
10 February 2011
Indaba Music
Last week I wrote about online collaboration of musicians and how it would be nice if there was some kind of a internet database for hobbyist musicians where songwriters could search and ask musicians to play for their projects.
This week I actually found out that there is a service called Indaba Music (Indaba being a Zulu word for community and collaboration). Inbada Music does pretty much everything I wrote about earlier. It basically allows musicians from different geological places to find each other and create music online. Musicians can create their own profiles like in every other social networking community, in addition they can hire each other and create jam sessions. Indaba Music has its own Java-based digital audio workstation called Mantis, which is ideal for those who don't have their own recording software. To record a track user just has to sign in, plug in microphone and push the record button.
Members of a jam session can then upload their own tracks and download the tracks of other players, as well as mix and edit the tracks online with Mantis. Indaba also supports feedthrough: The music player displays a song or a track in waveform and people can comment along the waveform in order to refer to specific moments in time. The jam session owners can decide which type of players they want in their session, e.g. which instruments they want to use in their sessions, what kind of a players do they need and do they want to use paid musicians only. Indaba members can communicate through messages, chat, discussion lists and Indaba hosted conference calls.
Sources:
09 February 2011
New technologies in the classrooms
Kids these days are starting to use computers earlier and earlier. I remember when I was in school there were only few people in all class that had a computer at home. Kids these days learn to use computers as soon as ages 4 to 5. A common thing is to see kids teaching their parents "computer stuff".
It would be a waste not to use technologies we have ant those which are still in progress in classrooms. If a simple reading devise like kindle can replace a whole library why the same devise couldn't be used for storing all the books that school children has to carry every day. I remember when I had to carry 6-7 books and lot of notepapers every day as a child. And also carrying those books isn't good in any way for kids health and spines.
I had read a paper about experiments of using different electronic devises in classrooms for education purposes. Especially one used in seventh or eighth grade classroom. Every kid had a devise that was connected to teacher's computer and the displayer. Teacher gave kids a question and they could answer them anonymously and then the answers would be displayed on the board. That study showed that it greatly increased productivity in classroom. Kids who usually would ignore the assignments put a little more effort in the tasks and especially in voting tasks. Kids that were shy to speak in front of the class showed even greater Involvement in the class work.
Of course a bit more work has to be done to create perfect system and methodology for schools. There are lot of debates what sort of system it should be: or individual electronic desks or devise like kindle that could be brought home by student; whether it has to have color or not, if it has to have wifi or cable connections are better in this case, whether it has to be touch screens of traditional input ant control model is better for classrooms. For example touch screens may be more interesting for kids but it has more reliability problems, it is easier to break ant not necessarily faster and more efficiently that standard screen and keyboard.
08 February 2011
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation
Microsoft SharePoint is software product from Microsoft Corporation providing complex functionality for group work like sharing documents, web publishing, corporate blogging, creating wikis, indexing database data and so on. The version of this solution dedicated for small companies, or company's department is called Microsoft SharePoint Foundation.
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation is lightweight version of Microsoft SharePoint Server designed to simplify corporate web publishing. MS Foundation is integrated and secure product which includes templates of websites, which can be quickly edited and published, tools for indexing data from multiple databases for fast searching, functionality for blogging, writing wikis, content management system, discussion boards, file sharing etc.
MS SharePoint Foundation sites are accessed by web browser. That's one of reason, why is this solution popular. System administrators don't need to install, update or maintain client site software. Ordinary user can simply modify layout of site by self. By reason that sites are powered by Ajax components, user feels like he or she is working on desktop application.
SharePoint Foundation is free to download and install as an add-on of Microsoft Windows Server OS (2003 or 2008), there is also special version for Windows Vista.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer is tool for rapid website development by combining predefined web parts (components). These web parts contains various bussiness functionality (graphs, workflows, calendars, contact lists..) and could be combined to the one page, related to needs of specific user.
Official Page
SharePoint Foundation on Wikipedia
Comparsion between free and server version
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation is lightweight version of Microsoft SharePoint Server designed to simplify corporate web publishing. MS Foundation is integrated and secure product which includes templates of websites, which can be quickly edited and published, tools for indexing data from multiple databases for fast searching, functionality for blogging, writing wikis, content management system, discussion boards, file sharing etc.
MS SharePoint Foundation sites are accessed by web browser. That's one of reason, why is this solution popular. System administrators don't need to install, update or maintain client site software. Ordinary user can simply modify layout of site by self. By reason that sites are powered by Ajax components, user feels like he or she is working on desktop application.
SharePoint Foundation is free to download and install as an add-on of Microsoft Windows Server OS (2003 or 2008), there is also special version for Windows Vista.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer is tool for rapid website development by combining predefined web parts (components). These web parts contains various bussiness functionality (graphs, workflows, calendars, contact lists..) and could be combined to the one page, related to needs of specific user.
Official Page
SharePoint Foundation on Wikipedia
Comparsion between free and server version
07 February 2011
Usenet, an early groupware tool.
Last week I wrote about Nethack, an early collaborative software project undertaken by voluntary coders around the world. The project had (and has) an amazing longevity thanks to it's collaborative nature, remaining long since some the original creators have moved on or even passed away. Before that I touched on the coarse practice (or 'fine art', depending on who you ask) of Trolling, the act of baiting users into losing their cool in internet-based conversations. While seemingly completely unrelated, the concept of Trolling and the groupware nature of Nethack share a common aspect: their origin.
This week I'll look into the primary tool used in the Nethack project, as well as the source of the concept of "Trolling for Newbies"; Usenet, a worldwide internet discussion system that can be considered an early workgroup support system. While this may not be the original intention of the project, the Nethack example clearly shows it was successfully utilized as such.
History: Usenet was conceived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University in 1979 and publicly established in the following year. A decade before the world wide web even came to exist, Usenet facilitated group conversations in a manner that resembled standard email but was delivered into servers instead of individual recipients. The articles would be organized into 'newsgroups' which themselves contained their articles organized in hierarchical manner. Far from real-time conversations modern users have come to expect, Usenet's articles would be relayed in batches, from server to server, sometimes only once or twice a day. While largely overtaken by modern forums, blogs and mailing lists, usenet still remains in use to this day.
Layout of the system: As I mentioned before, the articles in Usenet functioned somewhat like emails directed at servers instead of individual users. The user would post his/her post on the original server used, which would then (sooner or later... usually) push it's posts forward to other servers, which would then do the same at their own time. The articles themselves would remain on the servers, organized in a hierarchical logic; for example, a newsgroup still in use containing Nethack-related information and stories is organized as rec.games.roguelike.nethack - meaning the articles are contained in the category of 'nethack', which belongs to the category of 'roguelikes' that itself is contained in the rather large cathegory of 'games'. The final category of 'rec' refers to very generic and large Usenet category that stands for 'recreational, making the logic in this organization very obvious.
Source and references:
A Piece of Internet History
Internet and Usenet Explained
Nethack, collaboratively developed project with vintage
Trolling!
This week I'll look into the primary tool used in the Nethack project, as well as the source of the concept of "Trolling for Newbies"; Usenet, a worldwide internet discussion system that can be considered an early workgroup support system. While this may not be the original intention of the project, the Nethack example clearly shows it was successfully utilized as such.
History: Usenet was conceived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University in 1979 and publicly established in the following year. A decade before the world wide web even came to exist, Usenet facilitated group conversations in a manner that resembled standard email but was delivered into servers instead of individual recipients. The articles would be organized into 'newsgroups' which themselves contained their articles organized in hierarchical manner. Far from real-time conversations modern users have come to expect, Usenet's articles would be relayed in batches, from server to server, sometimes only once or twice a day. While largely overtaken by modern forums, blogs and mailing lists, usenet still remains in use to this day.
Layout of the system: As I mentioned before, the articles in Usenet functioned somewhat like emails directed at servers instead of individual users. The user would post his/her post on the original server used, which would then (sooner or later... usually) push it's posts forward to other servers, which would then do the same at their own time. The articles themselves would remain on the servers, organized in a hierarchical logic; for example, a newsgroup still in use containing Nethack-related information and stories is organized as rec.games.roguelike.nethack - meaning the articles are contained in the category of 'nethack', which belongs to the category of 'roguelikes' that itself is contained in the rather large cathegory of 'games'. The final category of 'rec' refers to very generic and large Usenet category that stands for 'recreational, making the logic in this organization very obvious.
Source and references:
A Piece of Internet History
Internet and Usenet Explained
Nethack, collaboratively developed project with vintage
Trolling!
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