"For all the mind-numbing buzz about Web. 2.0, most business collaboration and information sharing remains mired in endless e-mail strings and scheduled conference calls. More than half of business technology pros surveyed by InformationWeek are either skeptical about tools such as blogs, wikis, and online social networks, or they're willing but wary of adopting them. What gives?

The usual impediments. Business technologists are concerned about security, return on investment, and their staffs' skill in implementing and integrating new Web tools. "This group has been burned by being on the leading edge of technology."

And if its this hard for them to uptake Web 2.0 how on earth will they open up to Web 3.0?

See the post from Ian Davis below....

Via Semantic Bits

Top ten most beautiful keyboards.

Via fosfor gadgets

Photo courtesy of Industrial keyboards.

Interesting blog post from Ian Davis

"2007 is the make-or-break year for the Semantic Web. The specs are done. The tools are in place, and there’s still not a whiff of a killer app anywhere to be seen. The Achilles heel of the Semantic Web may well be the complete disinterest of most authors in producing anything remotely approximating metadata for their pages. Search engines have learned to ignore any user-created metadata because honest publishers don’t bother with it and dishonest spammers abuse it. Screen readers don’t even bother with the limited semantics already in HTML, trying instead to figure out what the page looks like."

Make or break for the Semantic Web

"Club Penguin is a leader among a tidal wave of new community Web sites designed specifically for tweens and even younger kids: think of it as MySpace in braces. At Club Penguin, which launched in October 2005 and had 4 million unique visitors in January, according to comScore Media Metrix, your 8- to 14-year-old can waddle through a virtual world as a flightless waterfowl, interacting with other penguins of her choice."

Your igloo or mine

Picture courtesy of Newsweek

"The New York Times has launched its first regular user-generated content features.

On Wednesday, The Times launched a Share and View Photo Gallery on its Collectible Cars site that allows members to post photos and personal stories of their collectible cars and rate and post comments to other members’ collectible car submissions."

New York Times launches user generated features.

Picture courtesy of Experentia

"When Toyota Motor Corp. wanted to promote its new Scions to young buyers, it turned to one of the growing number of digital design companies doing business in the popular online universe "Second Life."

The firm, Millions of Us, conjured up Scion City - a futuristic urban island with a dealership that sells the cars and a racetrack where consumers' online personas can take them for virtual test drives.

"The goal is to build a community in 'Second Life' that is really engaged and really excited and really involved," said Reuben Steiger, 35, chief executive of Sausalito-based Millions of Us."

Virtual Designers busy in Online Worlds

Picture courtesy of Gigaom

Experience the darker side of Galway on the Galway Gothic City Walking tour.

Experience the darker side of Galway’s medieval past with turbulent tales of siege, rebellion and religious strife. Visit the scenes of public execution and the site of the gruesome Spanish Armada massacre. Explore the bloody origins of the Kings Head pub, the stern and unbending justice of Mayor Lynch and discover what became of Warden Bodkins hand!

The Tour lasts one and a half hours and needs a minimum of two people per tour.The Tour runs at 11.00 am and 3 pm Monday-Saturday.The tours are given through English only.Group rates are on offer from 7 euros.

Legend Tours

Picture courtesy of Legend Tours

John Breslin informs us that there is a Social networking seminar on next Wednesday the 7th of March.

"It’s a late announcement but we will have a special seminar on social networks here in DERI, NUI Galway next Wednesday.

I’m pretty excited by this, and we should have some interesting talks by various guest speakers, with some breakout sessions in the afternoon.

Our main guest speaker will be Valdis Krebs, an expert on social networks who has worked on over 500 projects in this area."

Via Cloudlands

Picture courtesy of Blog-edu

Data, data everywhere...hows it going to be all managed?

The possible potential for Semantic Web technologies managing all this information is massive...The Semantic Web is a set of related technologies which will make it easier to find and share information online.

DERI team member Sebastian Kruks' Jerome DL got a good reception at the UK Museums and Semantic Web meeting recently.

From Jeremys blog on the Event:

"JEROME! Wow, fantastic, and also very encouraging in that it offers an example of the merging of what we’ve started to refer to as “SW” and “sw”. By mapping microformats, UGC, profile information, FOAF etc onto RDF via graphs (I think?!?), great semantic power is extracted from diverse material. I’ve banged on about finding a path to SW that allows museums to take lots of small steps in that direction with a pay-off at each one, and JEROME lets me see a little more how this might work. Thank you, Sebastian Kruk and his gang."

Primary collaborators:

The Museums Computer Group
MDA
24 Hour Museum
Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester
with strategic input from the Natural History Museum.

Well done to Sebastian!

Via the Corrib cluster blog

Picture via CRWL

Very handy tube and subway maps available online

[youtube s25fjjbDef4 nolink]

"The world's smallest radio frequency identification tags have been unveiled by Japanese electronics firm Hitachi. The minute devices measure just 0.05mm by 0.05mm (0.002x0.002in) and to the naked eye look like spots of powder. "

The picture shows the tags beside a human hair.

Via the BBC

Picture courtesy of the BBC.

"Researchers at Rutgers are leading an effort funded by the Department of Homeland Security to research techniques for monitoring social networks news articles, Web blogs and other social media for indicators of potential terrorist activity.

The Rutgers Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science will lead the team made up of researchers from the University of Southern California, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Pittsburgh. The group includes researchers from AT&T Laboratories, Bell Labs’/Lucent Technologies, Princeton University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Texas Southern University. Rutgers will get $1 million per year for three years. The DHS will fund the entire team $10.2 million over three years.”

Via Tim Finin

Thanks to Smita for the article

"The Association for Computing Machinery, has named Frances E. Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. This award marks the first time that a woman has received this honor. The Turing Award, first presented in 1966, and named for British mathematician Alan M. Turing, is widely considered the "Nobel Prize in Computing." It carries a $100,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation."

However according to the LA Times:

"But computer science still is dominated by men. Fewer than one in five bachelor’s degrees in computer science were given to women in 1994, according to the Computing Research Assn. Ten years later, that figure remains about the same, at 17%."

Via ACM

"An Egyptian court has sentenced a blogger to four years' prison for insulting Islam and the president. Abdel Kareem Soliman's trial was the first time that a blogger had been prosecuted in Egypt. He had used his web log to criticise the country's top Islamic institution, al-Azhar university and President Hosni Mubarak, whom he called a dictator. A human rights group called the verdict "very tough" and a "strong message" to Egypt's thousands of bloggers. Soliman, 22, was tried in his native city of Alexandria. He blogs under the name Kareem Amer."

Via the BBC

Photo courtesy of the BBC

Overview of what the Semantic Web is from Barcamp London.

"Alcoholics have one, and so do drug abusers. Now people addicted to e-mail also have a 12-step program designed to tackle their obsession.

An executive coach in Pennsylvania has devised a plan to teach people how to manage the electronic tool, which some users say can be as much an intrusive waste of time as it is fast-paced and efficient.

Developed for cases such as a golfer who checked his BlackBerry after every shot, and lost a potential client who wanted nothing to do with his obsession, Marsha Egan's plan taps into deepening concern that e-mail misuse can cost businesses millions of dollars in lost productivity."

12 step programme for email addiction.

Picture courtesy of Contemporary Teaching

Another Dr John Breslin lecture about online games and machinima, the art of making movies with games.

Via Cloudlands

"Our lives are becoming increasingly digitized—from the ways we communicate, to our entertainment media, to our e-commerce transactions, to our online research. As storage becomes cheaper and data pipes become faster, we are doing more and more online—and in the process, saving a record of our digital lives, whether we like it or not."

Interesting article on the evolution of our digital lives.

Picture courtesy of CIO-Weblog.

A reminder that DERI Outreach will  be giving a public lecture on Second Life in the Digital Enterprise Research Institute, NUI, Galway, on this Thursday from 8pm. The event has been organised as part of the Engineering Week of Wonder. Further information is available from (087) 2935106, or online at www.weekofwonder.ie

Article from Galway First

"The way we use the web is changing and the future lies in mixing, mash-ups and pipes, says columnist Bill Thompson.When the web was young we were happy just to see words and pictures on the screen in front of us.Since 1994 we have seen the web turn into an all-singing, all-dancing multimedia experience, with the simple page layouts we once delighted in replaced by interactive services and web-based tools, while embedded video is everywhere.
Anyone with an internet connection can have their own web site, whether a blog or a profile on MySpace, and photo and video sharing is becoming the standard way to share holiday snaps or family events.

And the quality of the experience has been enhanced by the move from a page-oriented model, where each site is collection of separate pages, to the services approach that underpins web 2.0.
Sites like Flickr and Google Maps don't load or reload pages, they use the browser to provide interaction with online data sources."

Via the BBC

picture courtesy of the BBC

"Virtual reality is being used to treat soldiers returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder.The immersive system combines realistic street scenes, sounds and odours to allow patients to relive traumatic events in a controlled environment.During the "exposure therapy", a clinician determines the intensity of the events the soldier experiences.The prototype system is currently being trialled in the US but has already successfully treated four volunteers."

Via the BBC

Picture courtesy of the BBC

"On Friday 23rd February 2007, Our Ladys Boys Club Rugby Club brings the hugely popular “Who wants to be a Thousandaire” to The Radisson Hotel in Galway. This show has attracted large audiences all over Ireland over the past five years and is fast becoming the most popular source of fund-raising for Clubs & Charities. Contestants are drawn from tickets sold and each contestant will play for €1,000. The show is fully computerised with 50/50, Ask the Audience and a brilliant video linked Phone a Friend."

Connacht Rugby

Picture via Pallas

If you are interested in attending this Friday please contact Sylvia,Hilda or Mike Turley in the office for tickets.

Curriki, a play on the words 'curriculum' and 'wiki', is a nonprofit organization that is building the first and only Internet site for Open Source Curriculum (OSC), which will provide universal access to free curricula and instructional materials for grades K-12.Curriki, a nonprofit group that's trying to build a mega-Web site of educational materials that teachers, students and parents anywhere in the world can use, modify, critique and expand on. And they can do all that for free.

"There is no reason why in California (we) need to spend $400 million a year on textbooks when we can open-source. ... If we had half of the annual California textbook budget -- and we just need it one time -- we think we can become self-funding." -- he says.

Via Captsolo

Curriki

Dr John Breslin's last guest posting for the IIA blog what next for "Yet another social network service"

Photo courtesy of Weblogsinc

John Breslin's fifth guest posting for the IIA blog

Picture courtesy of Ezmosaic

"Content Labels are files that contain powerful metadata that enable search engines and browsers to provide more trust in search results. They’re based on the W3C Semantic Web method called Resource Description Framework (RDF).

Content Labels act in a similar fashion to SSL Certificates. However, SSL Certificates are restricted to making claims about an entire Web site and they’re only used for security and identification purposes. Content Labels can be used to make assertions about an entire domain, or specific URIs. Furthermore, they can be used to make conformance claims to any standard or code of conduct."

Content labels

Photo courtesy of Pattersonlabels

Didnt get any kisses for Valentines day? You could have got a kiss if you had gone to Second Life!!

[youtube -X_btCjGnPc&eurl= nolink]

Excellent little demo on the future of computer user interfaces!

via Semantic Bits

John Breslin tries out Yahoo Pipes.

"So I created a basic pipe to take three feeds from Planet Journals, IrishBlogs.ie and awards.ie about the forthcoming Irish Blog Awards using the “Fetch” module. I then used their “For Each: Annotate” module to add a sioc:topic annotation, using the first matching result from a Yahoo! search for the phrase “Irish Blog Awards”. The graphical interface is very easy to use, and a screenshot of the pipe construction is shown on the left. You can see the pipe output on the right below; unfortunately the RSS 2.0 dump loses the sioc:topic annotation I added, but the JSON dump still retains it so with a bit of manipulation this could provide the appropriate RDF."

Via Cloudlands

A followup to "Yahoo! opens [a Web of] Pipes".

From a comment to the Yahoo! Pipes article by Tim O'Reilly:

" It finally seems, Yahoo! secretly started building a Semantic Web powerhouse, by making clunky RDF chunks (re-)deployable for the average web developer without having to care about the groundwork… ;-) "

Yahoo! Pipes is a wonderful service which makes creating new mashups very easy, but its dependence on RSS, while part of its success, could also be limiting its potential. Please correct me if I am wrong, but the structure of data that flows through these pipes is RSS or something very similar.

This may create problem if you want to use data that are not RSS and are not easily representable in RSS. E.g., how would you describe in RSS who are your friends?

Via Captsolo

"Software firm Comverse Technology has created an application that runs Second Life on Java-enabled mobile phones, along with other software that allows integrated SMS and instant messaging and the streaming of mobile video directly in-world.

“People are spending more and more time in virtual worlds,” Daphna Steinmetz, head of Comverse Innovation Labs, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. “We want to bring closer the first life and the Second Life.”

The software was developed over the last six months, well before the open-sourcing of the Second Life client, and relies on using a separate PC or server as an intermediary. Comverse, which plans to demonstrate the products at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona next week, has also created an application that allows Second Life to run on IPTV platforms."

Second Life on Mobile phones

Photo courtesy of Reuters

"Consider it The Sims: Liffey Edition , or a Dublin version of online "game" Second Life .

Trinity College Dublin researchers call it a "virtual Dublin simulator" in which they have duplicated, in full 3D, two square miles of the city centre down to exact buildings at street level.

And they have populated it with 50,000 virtual Dubliners who even now, in the bowels of some computer, are milling about the streets, looking for a decent virtual pint perhaps, or considering where best to invest their virtual SSIA.

"The dream here is to reproduce The Matrix ," says Dr Steven Collins of TCD's computer science department. And he's only half joking.

The 2.5 million endeavour, which has only just begun, is called Project Metropolis and is a collaboration between four TCD researchers from computer science, engineering and neurosciences. It will bring together academics and companies working in the areas of human communication, computer graphics, animation, motion and artificial intelligence."

TCD plans virtual Dublin

Photo courtesy of SLuniverse

[youtube olDpQwR8Fhk nolink]

This short video presents Eyal Orens' view on the difference between Tagging and The Semantic Web.

[youtube WQuijzuX1IE nolink]

In this short video leader of the E-learning cluster Bill McDaniel, introduces E-learning and the future of E-learning with Semantics at DERI Galway.

[youtube gEKYHyOfWLs nolink]

In this short video Liam Moran introduces his role at DERI Galway as Business Outreach Officer.

From the WordWeb dictonary

Tolerance

1. The act of tolerating something.

2. The power or capacity of an organism to tolerate unfavourable environmental conditions.

3. Willingness to recognize and respect the beliefs or practices of others.

4. A disposition to allow freedom of choice and behaviour.

Picture courtesy of www.tolerance.cz

Cyworld is the largest online community site in South Korea.It has more than 20 million members.Interestingly about 950,000 of its members are aged 50 or more.

Cyworld members reach 20 million

John Breslin has published his fourth guest post over at the IIA blog.

This time around its about Semantic blogging.

Picture courtesy of Idealliance

John Breslin is currently giving a series of interesting lectures on Emerging Web Media that can be found here

This weeks interesting lecture can be found here..

Yahoo! has just opened a new services - Pipes.

It allows everyone to process, remix and publish RSS content and implements a number of paradigms and design patterns:

• mashups
• pipelines a.k.a. pipes and filters design pattern
• a simple drag & drop GUI for building pipelines

This service allows people to combine a number of data sources (e.g., from existing RSS feeds) customised by user input and process them through a number of operators or filters. Resulting data are published as RSS feeds called Pipes. Users can share pipes, browse other's pipes and clone them into new pipes thus providing a nice introduction into "playing" with a web of RSS data.

Read more:
- Introduction to Pipes by Tim O'Reilly
- "Yahoo! Pipes: The Modules For Building Pipes" by Brady Forrest for more technical information

Followup:
- "Semantic Pipes and RSS" (coming soon)

Via Captsolo

Picture courtesy of Yahoo!

From January 2007’s issue of Physics World

"Talking physics on the Social Web"

After nearly two years, a cryptic treasure hunt played out between the real and virtual worlds has been won.
Andy Darley from the UK was one of 50,000 players who took part in the alternate reality game, Perplex City.
Gamers from 92 countries have solved clues on the web and around the world in a quest for the Receda Cube, an "artefact" buried in a hidden location.Mr Darley eventually tracked the object to a wood in Northamptonshire. Finding it nets him £100,000 ($200,000).

Via the BBC

Photo courtesy of the BBC

The net is facing the need for serious upgrades in order to meet fresh demands such as high definition video on the web and social networking.

A recent report from Deloitte said 2007 could be the year the internet approaches capacity, with demand outstripping supply. It predicted bottlenecks in some of the net's backbones as the amount of data overwhelms the size of the pipes.

On Tuesday last more than a million people watched a video clip of a friendly fire incident in Iraq via the website of the Sun newspaper, reflecting the explosion of interest in online video.

via the BBC

photo courtesy of  Spectris

Looking for some new fonts for your presentation?

Head over to Urbanfonts a site that does both free and pay for fonts.

There are typefaces available for both Pc and Mac.

Europe has begun rolling out its new research and development initiative - the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

FP7 will see more than 7bn euros (£4.6bn) a year handed to investigators to advance scientific knowledge and, by extension, boost the EU's economy.

It runs until 2013 and amounts to a significant jump in investment over previous community programmes.
UK Science Minister Malcolm Wicks told a launch event in London that Europe had to get smarter to stay competitive.

"Globalisation is the buzzword now; we are aware that we cannot compete on price alone in producing many of the goods that are made more cheaply in China, India and other emerging economies," he said.

Via the BBC

Photo courtesy of the BBC

The Seventh Framework Project

John Breslin is organising BarCamp Ireland 4. He has setup a Wiki for more details.

"Vodafone customers will now be able to access and update their MySpace websites from their mobile phone.Social networking website MySpace said the tie-up with the UK's largest mobile phone company was its first extension into Europe's mobile sector.Launching first in the UK, Vodafone Live! users will be able to download MySpace Mobile to their handsets.They will then be able to edit their MySpace profiles, post photos and blogs and send and receive MySpace messages.

"This partnership brings together the world's number one lifestyle portal and the world's leading mobile operator," said MySpace's Colin Digiaro."

via Semantic Bits

Photo courtesy of the BBC

[youtube 6gmP4nk0EOE nolink]

The Web described in 5 mins.

Video created by Michael Wensch.

Via Semantic Bits

The Second of John Breslin's guest posts' to the Irish Internet Association blog.

The Semantic Web: Web 3.0?

Photo courtesy of Wynia

The first of John Breslin's guest posts' to the Irish Internet Association's blog.

From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0.

Photo courtesy of Contentrobot.

Via Reuters in Second Life

" Weaponry,is a booming business in Second Life. Some weapons come as in-world objects, visible guns that you can attach to your hands and aim like a first-person-shooter game. Some come as invisible fields of code surrounding you. Defensive mechanisms will light up in a sphere around you like the shields of the starship Enterprise when you’re attacked. The range of weaponry is astonishing. There are lots of very basic free weapons available — you can get boxes full of them for nothing at places like Yadni’s Junkyard, and some of them even coded by Linden Labs employees."

Photo courtesy of Alphavilleherald.

Should DERI build an institute within Second Life?

A bandwagon or a useful collaboration tool?
With many others setting up educational Institutes within Second Life it could prove to be a very valuable place for collaboration with other educators.Even if Second Life is over hyped the Metaverse I believe certainly isn't going to go away.

Photo courtesy of Semantic Bits

Congratulations to all at DERI. Your donation for Fridays lunch was 152 euros!

The Digital Media 2007 awards for the Blogging category was won this year by the Irish Blogging site Bloggorah!

More U.S. teachers are using national and international online-news sites in the classroom, leaving behind newspapers that fail to grasp the Internet's importance in trying to reach students, a study found.

"Students do not relate to newspapers at all--any more than they would to vinyl records," one teacher said in the study.

The findings reflect a wider trend in the United States of falling circulation and advertising revenue at many daily papers as people go online for news and entertainment.

via ZDnet

Possibly old news for DERI researchers but interesting that the BBC is reporting on it finally and that tagging is getting the recognition that it deserves.

Tagging takes off for Web users

To Tag or not to tag

photo credit BBC