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25 April 2007

mashup* covers Identity 2.0

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As reported from the auditorium (after Sam Sethi shouted out the very secret password for the wifi network, getting around the continued absurdity of our national telco not providing users of its swanky meeting facilities with complimentary access to their network), I headed down to London last night for my second mashup*. Sam's live-blogging from the venue (I still reckon he prepared those posts in advance) remains a good overview of what was said, and is supplemented by posts from Piers, Ian Forrester, and 'Paul' (another one!).

The topic, Identity 2.0, is certainly an important one, and each of the speakers had something interesting to say. My over-riding impression of the formal proceedings, though, was that there were far too many people on the panel, covering way too broad a gamut of Identity-related issues. As such, they all (through no fault of their own) tended toward the superficial, and the discussion careened from one important and complex topic to another, never settling on anything long enough to even unwrap it in order to see the meat beneath.

Just one of the speakers, for example, spent almost an hour covering the same ground in a podcast with me just last week, and I'll be approaching a number of the others to see if they'd like the same opportunity to expound upon their points. Maybe we should aim to have podcasts and/or prepared position papers ahead of the next event, so that more time can be given over to debate rather than providing background? Alternatively, allocate the time to 2-3 panelists rather than so many.

So, plenty of enticing glimmers... but a little more focus from a smaller panel would have been of more value. Post-event discussion was better, and it was great to have an opportunity to spend physical time with people I tend only to encounter online...

I look forward to the next one...

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24 April 2007

At mashup* in London, talking Identity 2.0

As reported, I'm at mashup* in London. Sam Sethi is live blogging over on Vecosys. I'm taking notes, and talking to attendees on irc instead. A report to come, here, after the event.

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23 April 2007

Danny Ayers on Building Web 3.0 Apps

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Recent Talking with Talis podcast subject Danny Ayers takes a break from saying nice things about almost every podcast I've recorded this year except his own to offer some initial thoughts on his 'Pre-releases tips for Web 3.0 system builders'.

“At this stage in the game it isn't really possible to truly draw on past experience, all there is to go on is guesswork. But by looking at the environment and considering how pieces of the Web can fit together, I believe there's plenty of material around to inform that guesswork. Nothing of what follows is remotely new - it's essentially a collection of cliches. But I'm reasonably confident they're the right cliches.”

I'm pretty confident that they're the right cliches, too... and have no hesitation in pointing to the steps being taken by companies such as Talis in doing exactly this.

There does appear to be a growing acceptance of an approach like the one Danny outlines. So are we all right (I hope so!), or collectively deluded and about to be overtaken by some upstart with a revolutionary new business model such as bombarding every house in the land with junk mail or making users pay for the privilege of filling in a complex application form before beginning to work in a little silo where the lack of APIs is a selling point?

I look forward to watching Danny's ideas on this evolve...

Today's Creative Commons-licensed piece of Flickr goodness is by Casey Bisson, and just shows how small a world it can be (in more ways than one!)

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19 April 2007

Tom Ilube talks with Talis about Garlik and the Semantic Web

Tom Ilube
In our latest Talking with Talis podcast, I talk with Tom Ilube. Formerly CIO at pioneering Internet bank Egg, Tom is now CEO of UK-based Semantic Web startup Garlik.

During our conversation Tom describes his background, the problem-space that Garlik seeks to address, and the role that Semantic Web technologies play in this. Tom shares some of his experiences in attracting investment to Semantic Web-based companies, and suggests that this is becoming easier to accomplish.



Listen Now | Download MP3 [48 mins, 33 Mb]

During the conversation, we refer to the following resources;

This conversation was conducted as a SkypeOut call on Thursday 19 April 2007, recorded with Ecamm Network's Call Recorder for Skype, and edited in Garageband.

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17 April 2007

Jeff Sutherland talks with Talis about SCRUM

Jeff Sutherland


In our latest Talking with Talis podcast, I talk with Jeff Sutherland about SCRUM. Jeff is one of the co-creators of SCRUM and is also the Chief Technology Officer of PatientKeeper.


During our conversation, we discuss the SCRUM process, examining the theory and the history behind it and we explore the benefits of adopting SCRUM in software development.




 Listen Now | Download MP3 [28 mins, 20 Mb]


During the conversation, we refer to the following:

This conversation was conducted by telephone on Friday 13th April 2007 and edited in Audacity.

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16 April 2007

Data Spaces ?

I was quite taken, this evening, with Kingsley Idehen's notion of the Semantic Web 'Data Space.'

Kingsley defines a Data Space, simply, as;

“a place where Data Resides”

and

“A Web Data Space is a Web accessible Data Space.”

So far, so straightforward. Yet the notion helps (me, at least) to clarify some thinking about the disconnect between data, application, interface, etc.

A significant aspect of the environment in which we find ourselves that I felt the Data Space notion usefully threw into quite explicit visibility was that of rampant siloisation.

Kingsley writes,

“Unfortunately, what isn't as obvious to many netizens, is the fact that each of the activities above results in the creation of data that is put into some context by you the user. Even worse, you eventually realize that the service providers aren't particularly willing, or capable of, giving you unfettered access to your own data. Of course, this isn't always by design as the infrastructure behind the service can make this a nightmare from security and/or load balancing perspectives. Irrespective of cause, we end up creating our own 'Data Spaces' all over the Web without a coherent mechanism for accessing and meshing these 'Data Spaces'.”

Exactly. As we gambol, carefree, through the elysian fields of participative webbiness, promiscuously participating with every new service that looks our way, we leave a sad trail of orphaned Data Spaces in our wake, many of which we'll probably never revisit and (almost?) all of which are wholly incapable of communicating with either their creator or one another at or after their conception.

Kingsley goes on to propose a 'product' solution to the problem from his company. I haven't looked at it directly, so can't comment. I do think, though, that we could usefully think through some of these issues in more detail before too much more time passes, and too many more orphan Data Spaces are born.

Part of the solution may well be technical, involving some action on the part of ourselves as users, the hosts of the services in question, or (maybe more likely) some equivalent of the original Google that comes in and disrupts flaky paradigms from left field. Surely more important, though, is a reimagining of the problem on the part of those multitudinous services that so irresponsibly encourage us to scatter our data across the web like so many lumps of used chewing gum. They are responsible for this, and they should be encouraged to clean up their mess by offering us the means to join up or purge the putrefying legacy, whilst breathing life into the new Data Spaces of today and tomorrow by giving them the ability to evolve, to communicate, to grow, and to make themselves available to more than one ridiculous little niche application at a time.

Notions of 'open data' take us some way forward. Products such as the one that Kingsley describes may meet that movement from the other side. Are the two together enough, or is there more to do to firm up the ideas and principles, and to extend the capability of the technology?

Whatever, I can see plenty of opportunity to run with this 'Data Space' idea...

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13 April 2007

Eric Miller talks with Talis about the Semantic Web and Zepheira

Eric Miller
In our latest Talking with Talis podcast, I talk with Eric Miller. Eric was previously Activity Lead for the Semantic Web Initiative at the World Wide Web Consortium, and is now President of Semantic Web company Zepheira.

During our conversation, we examine progress that has been made to date, and explore some of the ways in which the Semantic Web is being made real for businesses around the world.



Listen Now | Download MP3 [72 mins, 49 Mb]

During the conversation, we refer to the following resources;

This conversation was conducted as a SkypeOut call to a US telephone on Thursday 12 April 2007, recorded with Ecamm Network's Call Recorder for Skype, and edited in Garageband and Audacity.

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10 April 2007

“Rivals fear spread of piracy after EMI music-video deal with Apple”

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That was the headline for an article in Saturday's Independent, and the key words are quite clearly the first and second, rather than the scaremongering bug-bear of the fifth.

Rivals aren't really worried about a sudden explosion in availability of EMI content (the vast majority of which could doubtless be found - illegally - somewhere today if you really wanted it), now are they?

Rivals fear that their neat little business model is being further squeezed, and are having difficulty coping with the fact that this particular squeeze is entirely legal and above-board. Hysterical squealing about piracy is harder (although they're still trying, with the help of this paper's copy editors), and running to the MPAA for a nice big lawsuit is simply not possible this time around.

Rivals fear the need to change, and the Innovator's Dilemma of finding ways to evolve and cannibalise their existing revenue models whilst remaining sufficiently solvent to continue.

That problem is not one limited to the music world, but most other industries seem somewhat less prone to bleating about how 'unfair' all this progress is.

I do have to quibble, though, with journalist Stephen Foley's assertion that;

“The decision was a little-noticed part of the company's ground-breaking deal with Apple that made all of EMI's catalogue available on iTunes in a format that can be copied and played on any digital device without restriction. That deal, announced with fanfare by EMI chief executive Eric Nicoli and Apple founder Steve Jobs, was hailed as ushering in a new digital music era.”

Stephen should clearly read Panlibus.

Picture by InfoMofo, and Creative Commons-licensed on Flickr.

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BusinessWeek digs into the Semantic Web

BusinessWeek online today carries quite a number of Semantic Web-related items, including a Q&A with Tim Berners-Lee, a podcast with Eric Miller (with whom I should also be talking this week), and more.

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5 April 2007

Nova Spivack sees to it that Robert Scoble finally gets the Semantic Web

Robert Scoble writes today that he “finally get[s the] 'semantic' web”, after seeing the work of Radar Networks at first hand.

“Basically Web pages will no longer be just pages, or posts. They’ll all be split up into little objects, stored in a database (a massive, scalable one at that) and then your words can be displayed in different ways.”

Nova Spivack, Radar Networks' CEO, took part in our most recent podcast, and a listen to that will provide some hint as to the potential of their work for those not quite so well connected as Robert Scoble. Have a listen, and watch this space. Radar Networks, Metaweb, Garlik, Talis, Joost. All these and more are on the verge of moving way past the years of hype to deliver practical and compelling implementations of the Web of Data.

I, for one, can't wait.

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Open Data bits

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As I turn my thoughts to XTech papers and WWW2007 panels, two snippets of recent Open Data goodness rise to the top of the pile as worthy of sharing here.

For your delectation, delight, and weekend reading, I offer a paper from PLoS ONE, Sharing Detailed Research Data is Associated with Increased Citation Rate. Thanks to Peter Suber for the heads-up on that one, with Peter remarking that;

“Many studies have shown a correlation between OA articles and citation impact. I believe this is the first study to document a similar correlation between OA data and citation impact. Spread the word to colleagues who are still hoarding data, waiting too long before releasing it, or unable to see any gain for themselves in data sharing.”

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Then there's a long blog post from Michael Bergman, 'Did you Blink? The Structured Web just arrived.' In his post, Michael takes a detailed look at dbpedia,

“the first and largest source of structured data on the Internet covering topics of general knowledge. You may have not yet heard of dbpedia, but you will. Its name derives from its springboard in Wikipedia. And it is free, growing rapidly and publicly available today.”

Both are well worth some of your time.

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