Archive for January, 2008

Recently, I stumbled upon a comment (Norwegian) about the semantics of Web 2.0 technologies, which prompted a response.

Since the response turned out rather lengthy, and a bit off-topic, I decided to post it here. Hopefully, it can be of use to others as well.

Web 2.0

Although the Web 2.0 has been hyped as something big and new for a while now, and things such as tag clouds are a popular part of many Web 2.0 sites, Web 2.0 sites build on old technologies (+user generated content). It’s all just (X)HTML + JavaScript and CSS. No magic.

There is not much semantics to Web 2.0. The semantics of HTML is still limited to layout/presentation of information (as will HTML5’s be). Even though one can express the start/end of a paragraph or heading, one can for example not explicitly state what an article is about (except through limited meta elements), or how different “topics” — or even what kind of topics we’re talking about — are related.

There is no way to explicitly state that “this article is about X and mentions Y”.

The tag clouds of Web 2.0 are in effect just free-floating words, and do as such not bring anything new to the table (an exception is Roy Lachica’s Fuzzzy.com where tags are structured in an ontology using Topic Maps).

The Semantic Web

The last couple of years / decade, people have been working towards a more “intelligent” web (although hardly intelligent); the semantic web. Such a web, often referred to as Web 3.0, adds the possibility of expressing semantics outside the limited domain of (X)HTML (or micro formats).

This is accomplished through adding layers of metadata to the web. The semantic web is therefore an extension (not replacement) of todays web, where different technologies, like Topic Maps and RDF/OWL, allow us to express anything about any subject - in a structured, explicit and unambiguous manner. I.e.: not limited to the element set of a given vocabular.

By doing so, one can (hopefully) bring order to the chaos, and develop better applications. Luckily, the technologies are already there, and by using Topic Maps one can e.g. boost findability.

For more on the semantic web or Topic Maps, see e.g.:

• Wikipedia - Semantic Web
  
• Wikipedia - Web 3.0
• TopicMap.com - Resources

Topic Maps Snippets

Some people at Bouvet, incl. Lars Marius Garshol and Arnar Lundesgaard, started a Topic Maps Snippets blog last year. It’s already a (the?) good source for news on Topic Maps.

TMRAP

Lars Marius Garshol wrote a post last week on how he has set up his tmphoto application to fetch remote information on topics using TMRAP. A good example on how PSIs can be used to exchange data about the same subject across different application domains, and an interesting read.

AToMs 2007 Slides

The presentations from AToMs have been made available online. Lots of intriguing stuff there.

For example, Steve Pepper seems to have been thinking a lot about converting the world to a subject-centric approach of computing lately.

I’m sure that, in a lot of ways, he’s right about how the human mind does not operate on documents, but subject-centric and associatively. At least that’s what my psychology classes told me, and most people experience on a daily basis: thinking of something might lead your thought wandering off to something completely different, but related (e.g. strawberries => milk, or even The Beatles (Strawberry Fields Forever)). When humans learn, we hook the new experiences onto existing knowledge.

Moving to a subject-centric way of computing and information management may be a good way of moving things forward, and, by nature, Topic Maps surely has its role in a subject-centric world. I’m sure we’ll hear more about it at Topic Maps 2008 (there’s also some more slides touching upon the topic).

Many people seem to think that it is impossible to write high quality code using PHP. Too often, I see comments like the ones in RHO’s Cookie Monsters in the Closet:

Or maybe he (or He) was a PHP programmer?

[...]

This effectively shouts into your face “Hey, look what cool IF-statements a PHP programmer can write.”

[...]

Alright, you might object, this is a PHP programmer, so he does not know Perl too well.

Although there is a certain funny tone to it, and although I don’t take it personally enough to go on a rant about it, I want to point to this article: 10 PHP Myths Dispelled.

Simply because I hear this kind of joke way too often. And too often, people seem to think it’s a fact. (more…)