Recent Blog Posts
Blogs » Archive for March, 2008
Semantic Web or: why Yahoo! resisted Microsoft’s takeover
With the recent announcement from Yahoo and subsequent flurry of posts that followed, something became clear to me. Yahoo! didn’t accept Microsoft’s offer because it had an ace card up its sleeve. Semantic technology.
With this sort of tech, who needs Microsoft or even Google for that matter? Yahoo! is positioned to leapfrog what has been possible in a Web 2.0 world. I have previously blogged about Peter Mika’s launch of microsearch which was a test bed for the upcoming SearchMonkey launch. SearchMonkey will allow for global scale and fast access to almost all forms of metadata on the web.
In a post last month I mused that Yahoo or Microsoft might be the first to embrace the Data Web/Semantic Web. It is now clear that Yahoo! has taken the lead in the war for the next generation of the Web.
Linked data is king
Yahoo! maintains a large network of content. Flickr is the most used photo sharing site on the Web. With a flip of the switch (well, maybe a bit more complicated then that) all of Yahoo’s content could become a giant graph ready to be semantically mined by SearchMonkey. This …
Interpreting the Results of the 2008 SitePoint Reader Survey, Part 1
We recently ran a survey that asked, among other things, how we could improve sitepoint.com for our readers.
The survey elicited just shy of 5,000 responses, and as the main person responsible for creating and running the survey, the task fell to me to read through and categorize every single suggestion. This was obviously an enormous job, but it was also an incredibly illuminating exercise to read so many thoughtful and exciting ideas for how we can make the SitePoint of the future even better (a lot of the motivation for people coming up with so many great ideas was no doubt related to the awesome prize that was on offer).
As I read through people’s ideas, I grouped them into categories. Here’s a summary of the results:
Some of these categories sound a bit generic and warrant further breakdown, which is something I’ll do in a later post.
There were also some ideas that were difficult to categorize — “out of the box” suggestions that didn’t fit into any particular category — which I’ve classified as “Crazy …
Preparing your sites for the data web
Okay, the Data Web (from the man himself - Tim Berners-Lee) is coming. Linked data will rule the day and if you don’t act quick your website will be left behind. Or more likely your site will simply go on strike demanding better work conditions and an observance of the fact that it is capable of oh so much more and you haven’t been caring enough to see it.
So show your sites some love and give them the respect they deserve.
Okay, so now what on earth would make you want to do this?
- Everyone else is doing it — well, not really. Mark Z isn’t. But you are more clever then him aren’t you?
- Yahoo (see quote below) and Google are doing it. Now we are getting somewhere.
- Twine, Dbpedia (the linked data version of Wikipedia), Revyu are currently linked data citizens and we all want to be like them don’t we?
- Drupal 7 will become a full fledged data web client
… Without a killer semantic web app for consumers, site owners have been reluctant to support standards …
Standards Support in Internet Explorer 8 beta 1
When Microsoft’s best and brightest took the stage at MIX08 last week, we all knew we’d be hearing about Internet Explorer 8. If we were lucky, we might even get to see Internet Explorer 8 in action. But Microsoft took us all by surprise, releasing a public beta of the new browser for is to download immediately and try for ourselves!
Though it is still a work in progress, IE8 beta 1 already represents a huge leap forward in standards support. The new layout engine makes incredible strides in the area of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and for JavaScript developers there are significant gains in performance and compatibility with Document Object Model (DOM) standards.
For the first time since IE6’s release, Microsoft has even managed to leapfrog standards support provided by the other major browsers in some areas!
There are plenty of details available for interested developers. In CSS Improvements in Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft details the new style features in the browser:
- support for data URIs, which let you embed small images directly within your style sheets for improved performance
- much less buggy CSS floats, which has …
The Week in ColdFusion: 5-11 March: BlueDragon steals the show
Without doubt the biggest news this week has been the announcement by New Atlanta that they are open-sourcing the J2EE edition of BlueDragon, one of their CFML server products. Other editions will remain as commercial products. The reactions from around the blogosphere have ranged from the enthusiastic gushing of SitePoint blogger Eric Jones in New Atlanta Does The Unthinkable!! to mild indifference in Terrence Ryan’s Yawn, Blue Dragon Goes Open Source; some see it as a great thing for ColdFusion the language, while others such as Adobe Engineer Damon Cooper, think it’s an admission of defeat by New Atlanta. For some good insight into the potential success and failure points of this move, check out Sean Corfield’s Open Source BlueDragon, Geoff Bowers’ BlueDragon is dead! Long live BlueDragon! and Charlie Griefer’s Here There Be Dragons! And if you’re wondering how this announcement might affect you personally as a CFML developer, Alan Williamson from New Atlanta has attempted to answer that question with Open Source BlueDragon, what does it mean for you?
The announcement has overshadowed what would otherwise have been pretty big news this time around: Adobe ColdFusion 8 has won a …
Twine — it’s all coming together now
I have been using Twine now for about a day and I am already in love with one feature (among many I am just starting to appreciate).
Email posting.
Email posting to your private account or a twine you are a member of is great. I like it a lot. In fact, this singe feature alone is killer enough for me to believe that Twine is great. An intelligent assistant that takes all that I shovel into it and creates connections and makes order from the mess. Nice.
Each Twine user gets their own personal address that they can email things to. Notes, URLs, pictures, whatever. And it sure is smart :) I can send an email with a bunch of links and it adds each one separately as a bookmark. Now this is the cool part, it then goes out and determines (with some Semantic Web tech) what those web links and the text are about and creates a tag cloud, pulls out People, Place, Organisations (and more) and adds them intelligently to my Twine.
These People, Places and Organisations are not the tags we know and love from flickr or del.icio.us — no …
The SitePoint HTML Reference Is Live!
The SitePoint CSS Reference went off with a bang last month, and I’m very proud to announce that, in rapid succession, The SitePoint HTML Reference is also now available.
Our esteemed author, Ian Lloyd, has penned what can only be described as the definitive source for HTML knowledge. It’s the help in HTML, the master of your markup, the encyclopedia of entities, the dictionary of doctypes … OK, you get the picture </cheesy clichés>
Whichever way you look at it, this site’s pretty cool, and is the perfect complement to the CSS Reference.
Right now it’s in public beta, so is not quite as polished as the high quality stuff you’re used to seeing in The CSS Reference … but that’s where we need your help!
At the bottom of every page you’ll find a place to leave feedback about any problems you might spot — technical, layout, or otherwise. Our technical editors are on standby to integrate any issues that you find into the site.
There are no access restrictions on this beta, so make sure you let everyone know that it’s available.
Oh yeah … I’m sure you’re all thinking “Is this going …
And The Winner of the Nintendo Wii is…
I’m excited (and more than a little bit jealous) to announce that the winner of our SitePoint Reader Survey competition is…
Ivan Soria
Ivan is a designer, student and entrepreneur from Mexico, and his interests include motion media and video games. He’s the lucky winner of a Nintendo Wii and TWO copies of Guitar Hero III.
Ivan’s suggestion for improving sitepoint.com was selected from a pool of nearly 5,000 entries. Here’s what he wrote:
I would totally love to see a SitePoint desktop or web application where one could find some tools aimed at web design, coding and business. For example, it would be cool to have a CSS coder with quick access/interaction to the reference section.
But Ivan didn’t stop at just one idea — he had quite a few. For example, he had some ideas on the type of content that would make him visit sitepoint.com more often.
I think it would be useful to have a weekly featured digital/web artist, and to see his or her portfolio. I’d like to see SitePoint develop a finer aesthetic sense, rather than having so many tutorials. (I write this because I think of SitePoint as more a “thinking” or “philosophy” site, rather than practical …
Save the Planet and Save Cash
Now there are lots of good reasons to be more “green”, saving the planet, moral obligation, yadda, yadda, yadda. But, let’s get a bit selfish here — what’s in it for me and my business? I mean, of course there is the feel good factor about doing the “right” thing, but what about saving some cold hard cash?
As it turns out (not too surprisingly), being a bit “green savvy” with your hardware purchases can save you a fair amount of power and money. So, before you buy your next computer here are a few handy resources to help make your decision:
- The Electronic Product Environmental Asset Tool can help you discover the most environmentally sound desktop, laptop and monitor.
- The energy star rating.
- Calculate the savings in terms of money, C02, trees and cars (Excel Spreadsheet).
- Investigate the efficiency of you power supplies at 80 Plus.
- Calculate your server efficiency using the SWaP (Space, Watts and Performance) metric.
You can also check how your current computer performs, using power management tool like LocalCooling for Windows or monitor your CO2 output on OSX using SusiClimate (both free).
Being energy smart with your next computing purchase will save you money. Go …
.NET on the NET March 2-9: MIX Hangover Edition
On the really off chance that you missed it, MIX08 has come and gone. I posted some reflections here and here. Definitely make sure to check out the webcasts [NB: install Silverlight 2 first] if you get a chance. Lots of great stuff was released to the web at the show—Matthew Podwyoski has a good list of the ASP.NET specific ones. Working around the release of IE8 Beta 1, the involved teams tell us about IE8 and IP licensing, Activities and Web Slices, IE8 and JScript, CSS 2.1 Testing, and the IE8 Developer Tools. A bit more mundane, but more important in my life is the torrent of releases from the IIS team. Highlights include IIS7 admin tools for XP, 2003 and Vista, configuration extensibility x2 and a very strong article on IIS7 diagnostic tools for developers.
Given that a rather significant hunk of the ASP.NET world was busy schmoozing and boozing in Vegas, there was not a lot of activity in the dotnetosphere. LINQ and other fancy, schmacy stuff …
Sponsored Links
Download sample chapters of any of our popular books.
