"Plans to create an internet domain specifically for pornographic websites have been rejected. The proposal for the .xxx domain was voted out by the overseer of the net's addressing system, seven years after the ideas was first put forward. Board members said they were concerned that approval would put the agency into the position of a content regulator. Backers of the .xxx domain said they were disappointed by the decision and would pursue the matter further. It is the third time that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has rejected the bid."

Via the BBC

The Irish Times have finally begun blogging...

Via Bloggorah

On the Record

"Hackers have stolen information from at least 45.7 million payment cards used by customers of US retailer TJX, which owns TJ Maxx, and UK outlet TKMaxx. In a statement to US watchdogs the firm said it did not know the full extent of the theft and its effect on customers. TJX added that the security breach may also have involved TKMaxx customers in the UK and Ireland. But the company added that at least three-quarters of the affected cards had expired or data had been masked."

Via the BBC

"Virtual Worlds 2007 is the leading event for Fortune 500 businesses seeking to understand and maximize marketing and business strategies within virtual worlds.

VW07 gives you an inside look at the Virtual Worlds activities of MTV, Disney, AOL, Pontiac, Nickelodeon, Leo Burnett, Sundance Channel, GSD&M, IBM and other major brands. In addition you'll gain exclusive insight into a variety of Virtual Worlds platforms including Second Life, There.com, Multiverse, Forterra Systems, Whyville, ProtonMedia, Entropia Universe, Habbo, Areae and more.

Virtual Worlds 2007 -is Sold Out.
Demand has exceeded all expectations - 600 professionals from 19 countries are registered to attend."

"The support for a blogger hounded by death threats has intensified with some high profile web experts calling for a code of conduct in the blogosphere. Kathy Sierra at the centre of the row has been shocked to discover that hers is not an isolated incident.

"As well as around 900 comments on my blog and hundreds of comments on other blogs, I have received around 300 personal e-mails and about 70% of them say they have been through a similar thing," she told the BBC News website.

Among the messages is one from a blogger Ms Sierra described as "far more prominent than me" who has been avoiding industry conferences because of persistent online threats.

Among those calling for a bloggers' code of conduct is Tim O'Reilly - one of the web's most influential thinkers.

He told BBC Radio Five Live that it could be time to formalise blogging behaviour.

"I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn't come through any kind of [legal/government] regulation it would come through self-regulation."

While condemning the bloggers who issued the threats, Mr O'Reilly was keen that the whole blogosphere should not be tarred with the same brush. .

Via the BBC

"The US has lost its position as the world's primary engine of technology innovation, according to a report by the World Economic Forum. The US is now ranked seventh in the body's league table measuring the impact of technology on the development of nations. A deterioration of the political and regulatory environment in the US prompted the fall, the report said. The top spot went for the first time to Denmark, followed by Sweden.

Innovation

Countries were judged on technological advancements in general business, the infrastructure available and the extent to which government policy creates a framework necessary for economic development and increased competitiveness.

NETWORKED READINESS INDEX RANKINGS 2006 (2005)

1: Denmark (3)

2: Sweden (8)

3: Singapore (2)

4: Finland (5)

5: Switzerland (9)

6: Netherlands (12)

7: US (1)

8: Iceland (4)

9: UK (10)

10: Norway (13)

Denmark, in particular, has benefited from the very effective government e-leadership, reflected in early liberalisation of the telecommunications sector, a first-rate regulatory environment and large availability of e-government services," said Irene Mia, senior economist at World Economic Forum. "

 No sign of Ireland in the top ten....

US no longer the Technology King

 Picture courtesy of East-West

[youtube yJ85R3ZWFms nolink]

"Designed by IconNicholson for client Nanette Lepore, Social Retailing mashes together social networking and the brick-and-mortar store so customers can connect live w ith their online friends w hile they shop. An interactive mirror transmits high-bandw idth video to friends who comment back via instant message (IM) and w ho send their own suggestions from an online catalogue. "

Social retailing

"The Rupert Murdoch-owned social networking phenomenon MySpace.com is planning to establish an operation in Dublin that may include a network operations centre (NOC), siliconrepublic.com has learned. Fabricant, who was one of MySpace.com’s first European hires three years ago, says that globally MySpace has 168 million registered members and is growing at a rate of 350,000 a day. “That equates to a million people every three days. We’re finding internationally that the bigger we get the faster we grow, it’s exponential.”

The MySpace site, which is understood to be the fifth most visited website on the planet, is a user-generated collection of user profiles, websites, friends and music and has become an important launch pad for new acts.

In Fabricant’s words it is: “a next-generation portal based on a social network. It’s a place where people live their lives online and where they can express themselves, connect with like-minded people and discover popular culture”."

Via SiliconRepublic

"The recent situation involving Kathy Sierra is horrible: she’s received death threats to the point that she doesn’t feel safe even speaking at conferences. Her post is scary.

Many folks are saying things like “this is the underbelly of the blogosphere”.

No, it isn’t. It’s the underbelly of humankind. This stuff has happened forever, to all kinds and sorts of people, in all walks of life, for thousands of years. It wasn’t right in prehistory. It wasn’t right in Greek and Roman times. It wasn’t right when the major religions blossomed. It wasn’t right in Medieval times, it wasn’t right during Enlightenment, and it’s not right now.

This is the Social Web. This is the point where the distinction between what’s going on offline and what’s going on online isn’t important anymore. Posting an anonymous comment is the same as yelling at someone across the street. The only difference is that its recorded for others to see. "

According to Joshua Porter

Benazir Bhutto with her children Bakhtwar, Aseefa and Bilawal. Photo: Karan Kapoor/Corbis

And according to Benzair Bhutto who broke the bastions of tradition by becoming Islam's first elected woman prime minister of Pakistan.

"I do believe my career has been more challenging because I am a woman. Clearly it's not easy for women in modern society, no matter where we live. We still have to go the extra mile to prove that we are equal to men. We have to work longer hours and make more sacrifices. And we must emotionally protect ourselves from unfair, often vicious attacks made on us.Nevertheless, we must be prepared not to complain about the double standards, but to overcome them. We must be prepared to do so even if it means working twice as hard and twice as long as a man. I am grateful to my mother for teaching me that pregnancy is a biological state of being which should not disrupt the normal routine of life. "

From the Guardian

"Prominent blogger Kathy Sierra has called on the blogosphere to combat the culture of abuse online. It follows a series of death threats which have forced her to cancel a public appearance and suspend her blog. Ms Sierra described on her blog how she had been subject to a campaign of threats, including a post that featured a picture of her next to a noose. "

Lovely.

"Ms Sierra, author of popular blog Creating Passionate Users, began receiving death threats four weeks ago. While blogging feuds are common, she believes the campaign against her is more likely to be because she is a woman in the male-dominated technology world.

Robert Scoble, author of popular technology blog Scobleizer, condemned the campaign against her.

"It's this culture of attacking women that has especially got to stop. I really don't care if you attack me. I take those attacks in my stride. But, whenever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn't happen if the interviewee were a man," he said "

Via the BBC

Ivan Herman has an excellent presentation on the State of the Semantic Web.

" In-car navigation systems exist for some time now. But BBC News reports that a new German project, dubbed SmartWeb, will use the semantic web and peer-to-peer networks to interact with drivers. This system, which is currently in its development phase, will use speech recognition and human gestures as interfaces. And it will warn drivers about jams and dangers. For example, a car detecting slippery conditions will pass the information wirelessly to all the vehicles following it. The drivers will be informed via their dashboard screen or a GPS-equipped mobile device. But the SmartWeb will also transmit other kinds of information to drivers, such as parking availability or speed traps."

Via Semantic Bits

Photo courtesy of All-car

"The link between quality of life and research and development (R&D) recruitment, the need to create “learning regions” throughout Ireland, creating a vibrant pool of PhD graduates and preventing bureaucracy from stifling research were identified as major issues impacting Ireland’s future knowledge economy at a round table event in Dublin yesterday. The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin TD hosted yesterday’s National Forum on Europe, which focused on the creation of Ireland’s knowledge economy.

He said he fully subscribed to the development of a European Research Area and to the objective of raising EU research efforts to 3pc of EU GDP, two thirds to come from industry.

The director-general designate of Science Foundation Ireland Professor Frank Gannon said the knowledge economy was the future for Europe and for Ireland."

Via SiliconRepublic.com

Photo courtesy of Rymus.net

Nova Spivack talks with Talis about Web 3.0 and more

"In our latest Talking with Talis podcast, I talk with Radar Networks' Founder and CEO, Nova Spivack.

Radar Networks is a stealth-mode Bay Area technology startup closely associated with the pragmatic implementation of the Semantic Web popularly referred to as 'Web 3.0.' During our conversation, we cover some of Nova's background before exploring his views on the Semantic Web, the way in which it is currently perceived, and the opportunity for companies such as his to deliver its potential in the mainstream Web of today."

Talk with Talis

Picture courtesy of Nova Spivack

"After seeing a reference to his own value on Ivan’s page, I’ve found out that my Erdös number is no more than 4 (via an IEEE paper with Eugene G. Gath, who wrote a paper with Thomas J. Laffey, who wrote a paper with LeRoy B. Beasley, who wrote with Paul Erdös), using the MathSciNet author search and collaboration distance calculator.

The Erdös number (more info here) is the number of links required to connect scholars to mathematician Paul Erdös, a prolific writer who co-authored over 1500 papers with more than 500 authors, and this number is commonly referenced in social network materials."

Via Cloudlands

Photo courtesy of the Hungarian Mathematical Institiute

"Why is the Bebo generation shying away from technology, science and engineering as career options? Surely the most wired generation yet to emerge from Irish schools should be embracing the job opportunities that exist in the local high-tech sector, where industry leaders say there is a wealth of quality employment opportunities.

Last week's official statistics from the CAO revealed the first-round college preferences of this year's crop of Leaving Cert students. Overall applications for courses in technology, science and engineering were down 8 per cent from the previous year. The big winners, rather surprisingly, were teaching, medicine and nursing.

There have been many initiatives in recent years to encourage students to consider studying science or technology at third level. Survey after survey has shown that there are plenty of highly-paid jobs in the sector - just last week, a Eurocom survey found that 63 per cent of European technology firms will increase headcount this year."

Generation Bebo needs to tune into careers in Technology.

Picture courtesy of "Ledgette" Orla O'Huadhaigh via Bloggorah

"Sony has launched its PlayStation 3 (PS3) console in Europe and Australia, hoping to retake its gaming crown. The company trails Microsoft and Nintendo in sales of next generation consoles and the launch has been beset with problems in the last year. But the PlayStation brand remains strong with gamers and one million PS3s will hit shops on day one. At the London launch everyone who bought a PS3 also received a free 46-inch HD television and a taxi home.

In total, the giveaway amounted to £250,000 worth of televisons to more than 100 gamers."

Via the BBC

"The Future of Learning is the topic of the next in a series of MacArthur Foundation regional public events on digital media and learning issues. This panel discussion will take place on Saturday, April 21 at 9:00 a.m. in the Peter and Ginny Nicholas Auditorium at Duke University's School of Nursing. The event is organized by HASTAC, a consortium of humanists, artists, scientists, social scientists, and engineers from universities and other civic institutions. Panelists will discuss how the digital age is changing learning. Video of the event will be available the following week on MacArthur's website.
MacArthur’s $50 digital media and learning initiative seeks to gain a better understanding of how digital technologies are changing how young people learn, play, socialize, exercise judgment, and engage in civic life."

Via Semantic Bits

Picture courtesy of MacArthur

It is common knowledge that technology jobs took a hard hit after the dot-com crash and the Y2K scare. But today those events, along with the myth that all technology jobs are being outsourced, are causing a new problem.

Despite the fact that high-paying technology jobs are plentiful, students have been shying away from the profession and leaving a talent gap across the U.S.

Students staying away form IT 

Photo courtesy of Rio.edu

"The Semantic Web will never work because it depends on businesses working together, on them cooperating. There is no way they: (1) would agree on web standards (hah!) (2) would adopt a common vocabulary (you don't say) (3) would reliably expose their APIs so anyone could use them (as if)."

So says Stephen Downes 

Picture courtesy of Oleswanson

"IN 1994, when Tim Berners-Lee left CERN, the particle physics laboratory near Geneva where he created the world wide web, to move to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his children were toddlers—just like the fledgling information-sharing system he had released onto the internet three years earlier. Since then the web has grown up fast, expanding from around 10,000 websites in the world at the end of 1994 to over 100m today. After this rapid growth spurt the web is now, like Sir Tim's children, in its teenage years. The painfully self-conscious “Web 2.0” movement—a label which encompasses a range of technologies such as blogs, wikis and podcasts—represents the web's adolescence. It has all the hallmarks of youthful rebellion against the conventional social order, and is making many traditional media companies tremble."

Via the Economist

From The Really Useful Guide to Words and Numbers RTÉ One, Sunday, 12.15pm

" In this programme we feature a really useful guide to getting things done in the community, give useful tips on sending an email, and have a look at how the government is made up and who the main government ministers are.The episode also includes a studio interview with Brendan Smith from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI).

Brendan explains the work that is done by the DERI and how they are trying to improve the accessibility of the internet to a wider group of people who don’t have previous experience. He talks about online communities (e.g. Bebo), describes what a blog is and how groups can set up their own websites, and he also talks about the Digital Storytelling project he is working on where community members are recording and archiving their own memories of their younger days on ipods and digital video cameras. "

Watch the Show Here 

"I was quoted for this article in the Sunday Tribune by Damien about our boards.ie CI (commercial interaction) forums. There are other interesting parts to the article, in particular Cisco’s move into the social networking domain earlier this month. When I wrote earlier about Cisco’s “Human Network” ad, I hadn’t realised that Cisco had actually purchased Tribe.net (and Five Across), thinking that they were content to simply have us use their networking infrastructure for whatever collaborative purposes we enjoyed. But despite much bewilderment, there seems to be some good reasons for this acquisition (see Marc Canter’s list and Winer’s tongue-in-cheek take on the move). (From the Semantic Web side, maybe Cisco could be persuaded to provide further convergence via OpenID, Tribe’s FOAF provisions and something similar from Five Across’ “Connect” product.) "

Via Cloudlands

Picture courtesy of Tribe.net

"Today's Web has terabytes of information available to humans, but hidden from computers. It is a paradox that information is stuck inside HTML pages, formatted in esoteric ways that are difficult for machines to process. The so called Web 3.0, which is likely to be a pre-cursor of the real semantic web, is going to change this. What we mean by 'Web 3.0' is that major web sites are going to be transformed into web services - and will effectively expose their information to the world."

When Web sites become Web services

Picture courtesy of Daniel Bersak

"St. Patrick’s Day is Ireland’s national holiday and understandably St. Patrick himself is looked on as the personification of all that is Irish.
Yet he and so much of the traditions associated with the Festival have their origins far beyond our green shamrock shores.

So for instance:
1. St. Patrick- British & Roman!
St. Patrick himself was actually Romano-British, the son of a Roman official that was taken as a slave by Irish sea raiders probably from near Carlisle (at Hadrian’s Wall) in northern ...."

Via Speedies Blog

"Services like Twitter are simultaneously leaving some people with a feeling of not being connected, by feeding the fear of not being in the loop. By elevating the importance of being "constantly updated," it amplifies the feeling of missing something if you're not checking Twitter (or Twittering) with enough frequency."

The Twitter Curve

This a documentary done by Rageh Omaar, BBC's former correspondent in Iraq. He has visited Iran and has made this fair and beautiful documentary on many aspects of life in Iran.

Video link 

 "It took a year of wrangling to get permission to film inside Iran."

"Video-sharing website YouTube is to present awards for the best user-generated videos of 2006. YouTube users will be able to vote for their favourite clips in seven categories, including most creative, and "most adorable" video ever." Pop band OK Go are among the nominees for their infamous treadmill-based music video for Here It Goes Again."

"The head of Google in Spain and Portugal today publicly announced the company is developing a mobile phone. Isabel Aguilera told a Spanish newspaper that Google hase dedicated engineers currently working on the mobile technology despite recent silence on the issue from US headquarters.
It is rumoured that Google will be teaming up with Samsung to deliver this new phone since the two companies announced a partnership in January to package mobile versions of Google Search, Google Maps and Gmail on certain Samsung phones.
This announcement by Aguilea follows on from Google vacancy listings for telecoms engineers. Google also employs Andy Rublin, founder of Android, a mobile software company bought by the company in 2005.
This new phone will be the latest in Google’s move into hardware. It already has two products, Google Search Appliance and Google Mini, both for business information optimisation."

Google phone

Picture courtesy of Gizmodo

"As people are increasingly coming to believe, Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web have a lot in common: both are concerned with allowing communities to share and reuse data. In this way, the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 can both be seen as attempts at providing data integration and presenting a web of data or information space..."

A relational view of the Semantic Web

Picture courtesy of Writerspace

"Annoying noises that distract you at work could soon be just an unpleasant memory.

Scientists believe that advances in sound engineering will mean that silence can be achieved at the press of a button. Sound nullifiers will be built into desks and PCs to allow office workers to select a soundscape. Whether the problem is a noisy printer, passing traffic or a colleague's irritating cadences, it will be possible to create a quiet zone. In the home, the yapping of a neighbour's dog and the noise of doors being slammed may be silenced. The technology of soundscaping is already part of some headphones and cars. The principle of "active noise cancellation" is that sound has waves of peaks and troughs and can be cancelled out by producing the inverse simultaneously. Researchers at the School of Computing at Napier University, Edinburgh, are among those trying to devise the software to predict noises and create nullifying soundwaves. They hope to develop the technology to provide "silent pools" - just as desk-lamps create pools of light."

Silence at the push of a button?

Picture courtesy of Desktop-mediatation

"Videolectures.net is a new web service, still in beta, that provides “free video lectures from the world’s leading and prominent scientists”. The most common topics are drawn from computer science with an emphasis on Semantic Web and machine learning, although there is an obligatory lecture by Noam Chomsky.

The videos include lectures, tutorials, paper presentations and informal interviews. Most of the current ones are from recent conferences, including NIPS, ICML, ECML and ISWC as well as various workshops and summer schools

Users can leave comments and the system will recommend videos based on “visitors who watched this lecture also watched…”. I

While I doubt that Google will pay a billion dollars for this company, it looks like a great resource for CS researchers"

Via Ebiquity

"From Google's blog post:

When you search on Google, we collect information about your search, such as the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details. Previously, we kept this data for as long as it was useful. Today we're pleased to report a change in our privacy policy: Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google's services and protect them from security and other abuses)—but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months."

Picture courtesy of Felix Halim

" Across the front of Apple's Fifth Avenue store in New York, yesterday, an ad for the iPhone. The cellphone, dangled in front of Apple fans by chief exec Steve Jobs in January, isn't due till the summer. But Apple, in a break from its usual marketing style, is advertising the pretty device ahead of time on TV, and outdoors, now, too."

[Source: Mac Rumors.]

 "It is no secret that we live in an information overload age. The explosion of new types of information online is a double-edged sword. We both enjoy and drown in news, blogs, podcasts, photos, videos and cool MySpace pages. And the problem is only going to get worse, as more and more people discover the new web.

Because of this information explosion, we no longer read - we skim. The news that used to last a day now lasts just a few hours, simply because we need to pay attention to the new news. So it is becoming increasingly difficult to juggle all the news sources and keep on top of things. Which brings us to the law of information, stated first by Herbert Simon: the rapid growth of information causes scarcity of attention."

The Attention Economy-An Overview

Picture courtesy of Urbandictonary

"It seems we can't get through a single day without cameras being added with high-tech wizardry, either to make us appear thinner, give us 'the perfect face', or even recognise up to nine faces in a photo. Samsung have joined forces with FotoNation, to use their FaceTracker technology in several of their cameras (the S1050, S850, L73, i70, i7, NV11 and L74 to be precise), which automatically detects the location of a <s>victim's</s> subject's face, locks it in and tracks the position as it moves about within the preview image frame. Once the technology has ensured the face is exactly where they left it (extensive research finds it's generally under the couch cushion), it then adjusts the parameters, so the face is well exposed with all skin tones reproduced with 'exceptional accuracy'. The aforementioned cameras are worth checking out, just to see if this added feature will prove useful."

FotoNation
Samsung "

Via Shiny,Shiny

Picture courtesy of Shiny,Shiny

"Last year, Eric Miller, an MIT-affiliated computer scientist, stood on a beach in southern France, watching the sun set, studying a document he'd printed earlier that afternoon. A March rain had begun to fall, and the ink was beginning to smear.

Five years before, he'd agreed to lead a diverse group of researchers working on a project called the Semantic Web, which seeks to give computers the ability--the seeming intelligence--to understand content on the World Wide Web. At the time, he'd made a list of goals, a copy of which he now held in his hand. If he'd achieved those goals, his part of the job was done.

Taking stock on the beach, he crossed off items one by one. The Semantic Web initiative's basic standards were in place; big companies were involved; startups were merging or being purchased; analysts and national and international newspapers, not just technical publications, were writing about the project. Only a single item remained: taking the technology mainstream. Maybe it was time to make this happen himself, he thought. Time to move into the business world at last."

Technology review -A Smarter Web

Picture courtesy of Nova Spivack

"Tom Raftery has posted his podcast interview with Ross Mayfield at PodLeaders, well worth a listen. Ross, whom I met him briefly at Wikimania 2005, is CEO of SocialText.

To follow up on my question about Semantic Wikis, I think that sometimes there is the misapprehension that anything semantic has to involve some automatic AI-like deduction of metadata from the content by some agent or computer. A big part of the Semantic Web is enabling users to add structured content / annotations to pages (wikis being a good example here!) that can then be used to link things together (see the latter part of my IIA blog post on this). The Wikipedia page about Ross Mayfield links to about 25 pages - but it isn’t possible to get help with even a simple question such as “find me all the organisations that Ross has worked with or for”"

Via Cloudlands

"A new breed of worker, fueled by caffeine and using the tools of modern technology, is flourishing in the coffeehouses of San Francisco. Roaming from cafe to cafe and borrowing a name from the nomadic Arabs who wandered freely in the desert, they've come to be known as "bedouins."

San Francisco's modern-day bedouins are typically armed with laptops and cell phones, paying for their office space and Internet access by buying coffee and muffins.

"In 'Lawrence of Arabia,' the bedouins always felt like they were on the warpath. They had greater cause," said Niall Kennedy, a 27-year-old San Franciscan who quit his day job at Microsoft Corp. to run his own Web company, Patrick Media, out of cafes and a rented desk. "At a startup, you're always on the go, plowing ahead, with some higher cause driving you.""

The new Bedouins

Photo courtesy of Abbeville

“ "Money, Power & Respect”celebrates the definition of the category…advancing the best use of online technology. And one of the best uses on the web is that anyone can be a publisher. If you have a great and important story to tell, you no longer need to submit it through a news organization or a publisher in order to get work like this in front of people. By working with a small multimedia team, you can get the story out where people can see and experience it."

Money,Power & Respect

"China is expected to have more than 600 million mobile phone users by 2010, state media said.
Xinhua News Agency, citing the Ministry of Information Industry, said the number of mobile users this year should reach 520 million, up from 460 million in 2006.
It also said the number of Chinese using the internet will top 200 million, accounting for 15 per cent of the country's population of 1.3 billion.
China now has the world's second-largest population of internet users after the United States, with 137 million people online, according to the government."

Via the Sydney Morning Herald

Picture via Chindaily

"In its Paris store, Adidas has installed a virtual mirror that, instead of displaying a true reflection, shows a 3D image of customers' feet with different shoe models on them. Gizmag writes, "The camera captures the customer’s feet and legs and displays them as a video scene on the monitor. The various shoe models are inserted into this picture. Customers can now try on a variety of models in front of a virtual mirror without changing their shoes. They can navigate through the collection by simply pointing at products on a computer screen."

Via the Advertising Lab

Picture via Advertising Lab

"Danny Hillis' latest venture, Metaweb, is about to unveil its first product, the aptly named freebase, tomorrow. While freebase is still VERY alpha, with much of the basic functionality barely working, the idea is HUGE. In many ways, freebase is the bridge between the bottom up vision of Web 2.0 collective intelligence and the more structured world of the semantic web.But once you understand a bit about what metaweb is doing, you realize just how remarkable it is. Metaweb has slurped in the contents of several of the web's freely accessible databases, including much of wikipedia, and song tracks from musicbrainz. It then turns its users loose on not just adding more data items but making connections between them by filling out meta tags that categorize or otherwise connect the data items, using a typology that can be extended by users, wiki-style."

Via O' Reilly Radar

"A great day by my account at least (and by some others that I overheard!) was had at the WebCamp workshop on social networks held at DERI, NUI Galway yesterday.

Considering the short notice of just nine days, there was an impressive turnout of between 50 and 60 people, and as well as six talks in the morning we had some interesting “birds of a feather” discussion sessions in the afternoon.

All presentations from the day are available at SlideShare. We hope to publish some of the day’s videos to YouTube during the next week. Thanks to Conor and Uldis for their help with organising the event, and to Ina for recording the videos."

Via Cloudlands.

With great thanks to Dr John Breslin and his incredible organisational skills.

"Big media firms are rushing to copy the success of online games like World of Warcraft, a conference has been told.
Millions of dollars are being spent trying to emulate the massively multiplayer online game, experts at the Game Developer's Conference said."We are going to have so many failures it is going to be unbelievable," said Mark Jacobs of Electronic Arts.
The panel also predicted that non-gaming MMOs such as Second Life would be prevalent in the short term."

Bubble...

Virtual worlds in for shakeup

Picture courtesy of Gamelander

Via Semantic Bits

" There will be an additional speaker at today's social networks event - Mark Tarbatt from Generator - he is MD of this leading Irish online advertising company and has directed some big campaigns on Bebo, Ireland’s most popular SNS.

Mark Tarbatt is the managing director of Generator, which promotes Internet advertising and sponsorship opportunities to clients and their agencies on behalf of a select number of publishers.
Through his work with leading brands such as Coca Cola and Disney, Mark has delivered some very successful campaigns on the popular social networking site Bebo.Mark previously worked with Hoson Publishing, with eircom.net / rondomondo, and he has served on the board of the Irish Internet Association, the Advertising Press Club of Ireland, and is a founder member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau in Ireland."

Via Cloudlands

 Webcamp

Another talk given by Dr John Breslin a lecture on content sharing, presented this week. Talking about sharing maps, photos, bookmarks, events, etc.

Via Cloudlands

Dr John Breslin gave a talk about RSS, uses for feeds and a bit about mashing with Yahoo! Pipes.

Via Cloudlands

" China will not allow any more internet cafes to open this year, according to a government order obtained by the state news agency Xinhua.

The notice, issued by 14 government authorities, also vows to crack down on gambling through online games.

Xinhua said the new restrictions were part of a campaign to combat the rising problem of internet addiction.

Internet cafes that have already been given approval must be completed by the end of June, the news agency reports.

There are currently about 113,000 internet cafes and bars in China, according to the country's Ministry of Information Industry."

Via the BBC

Picture courtesy of SFgate

This is a tutorial and explanatory article that Richard Cyganiak and Leo Sauermann have written with contributions from Max Volkel.

It is a really good example of  how tutorials or introductory articles for the Semantic Web should be done.

Cool URIs for the Semantic Web

Picture courtesy of Chris Abraham

" Half a million Irish workers will need to improve their educational qualifications by 2020 if the Republic is to compete internationally, a major Government report to be published today is expected to reveal.

It is believed that the report by the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs will propose that an additional 500,000 workers will need to progress by "at least" one level of educational attainment above their current highest level by 2020.

The report is also expected to state that the labour force should reach 2.4 million by 2020. This will include 1.43 million already in the workforce, to be augmented by some one million extra workers. Details of the report's contents have been outlined to educationalists and career experts, including college presidents, in recent weeks.

The report is understood to state that the number of school leavers proceeding to third level will have to increase by 15 per cent by 2020. It will also propose an eight per cent increase in the numbers completing the Leaving Certificate.

The new workforce of 2.4 million will include 310,000 extra workers who are immigrants or who enter the workforce as a result of "increased participation" - mostly women returning to the workforce - by 2020.

Another 640,000 will come through the education system."

However something drastic is going to need to be done in the schools to encourage people to further study and also to promote and encourage young girls to take up Science,Engineering and Technology subjects.Its at secondary level that this needs to be pushed.

Knowledge Economy-500,000 workers will need to improve skills, warns report

The Knowledge Economy

Picture courtesy of Businessweek

John Breslin has put more information together regarding this weeks Webcamp on Social networks.

Via Cloudlands.

Via Corrib Cluster Blog

Dr John Breslin and Dr Stefan Decker in Cambridge, where discussions on SIOC, the Semantic Web and entrepreneurship took place.

Via Cloudlands

Amazingly stories can spread over the internet like wildfire whether they are true or not!

This story from Galway First got mentioned on Boing Boing.

It is of course people a hoax. : )

I mean how did he get the donkey into the hotel in the fist place??

Photo courtesy of Boxset

As developing countries increasingly join the networked world, what will change? Globalization is already having a huge impact on economies and societies, and it is only getting started. Though Internet access remains out of reach for much of the world's population, profound changes are occurring as connectivity spreads through India, China, and elsewhere, with significant ripple effects in the West.

Excellent podcast from ITconversations

Photo courtesy of Bugbog

Money for the Rest of Us has a fantastic article that draws parallels between protecting your identity from identity thieves and protecting your home from robbers.

10 ways to protect yourself from identity theft.

Photo courtesy of istockphoto

The Irish blog awards are taking place this Saturday in Dublin.

The University’s first Buy-a-Book Day (held in March 2006) was a great success and won the University’s Staff Suggestion Scheme award for Dr Jim Duggan.   It made €5,800 on the day – shared between the University’s United Charities Group and the Library’s Special Collections.   A key criterion for the success of the event was the involvement of staff and students campus-wide along with the citizens of Galway.

Plans are well in hand for a bigger and better sale this year – so note the date in your diaries - Thursday March 1st in the Aula Maxima, Quadrangle, NUI, Galway.

The event will however only be as good as the books and CDs we have to sell, so check your shelves for those treasures for which sadly you no longer have space, and bring them to the Aula Maxima on Friday February 23rd or Monday February 26th or Tuesday February 27th between 10.00 and 18.00.

Buy a book day

"Ireland is "miles behind" other OECD states when it comes to the provision of information and communications technologies (ICT) in schools, according to the main school management bodies.

In a significant move yesterday, the management bodies for almost 500 Irish second-level schools said realistic Government investment was required "to pull Irish schools from the bottom of the league in the use of computers in classrooms".

Both the Joint Managerial Body (JMB) and the Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools (ACCS) said the €254 million commitment for ICT in schools in the new National Development Plan (NDP) falls far short of what is needed.

Ferdia Kelly, JMB general secretary, said: "We're miles behind. This investment may take Irish schools up to the start line but it will not even get us into the race. Every one of our schools needs at least €140 per student every year over the next seven years to embed ICT in teaching and learning."

Via the Irish Times

If Ireland truly aims for a knowledge economy unable to compete with India and China in the IT sector ,surely it should be investing in the Technological education of its potential future students and encouraging uptake of technological subjects at secondary level?

"Internet law professor Michael Geist takes a look at a fundamental shift in the way research journals become available to the public

Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy that would require all government-funded research to be made available to the public shortly after publication.

That requirement - called an open access principle - would leverage widespread internet connectivity with low-cost electronic publication to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe.

Despite scant media attention, word of the petition spread quickly throughout the scientific and research communities."

Via the BBC

Picture courtesy of the nonist

SIOC can be used to link the content that a single person posts to a number of community sites. The picture above shows an example of stuff that John has created on Flickr, YouTube, etc. through his various user identities on those sites (these match some SIOC types that are wanted to add to a separate module) each Web 2.0 content item is a user-contributed post, with some attached or embedded content (e.g. a file or maybe just some metadata). This is part of a new discussion on the sioc-dev mailing list.

via Cloudlands

"Within a decade the net will be able to deliver smells as fast as it does data, predicts a report.
The forecast came in a wide-ranging survey produced by the South Korean government to find out what consumers will want from future technologies.
It also predicted that by 2012 batteries in mobile phones will last perhaps two months between recharges.
The experts taking part in the survey said that by 2018 robots will be routinely carrying out surgery.
The long-range predictions in the survey came from interviews carried out with about 3,500 technology experts in South Korea."

Via Semantic bits

Picture courtesy of callofthewildphoto