Archive for February, 2008

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TBL says the time for a Semantic web is now


28 Feb

Posted in Technology | Comments Off

In an interview yesterday Tim Berners-Lee inventor of the Web said that all the pieces are in place to move full steam ahead and realize the potential of a world of structured, machine readable data aka a Semantic Web. To be honest I had to look up a definition of Semantic web before I wrote this post. Wikipedia had the following:

“The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the meaning of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.”

I was still confused so I carried on looking

“Humans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as finding the Finnish word for “car,” to reserve a library book, or to search for the cheapest DVD and buy it. However, a computer cannot accomplish the same tasks without human direction because web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines. The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web.”

When TBL was asked what needed to be done to bring the Semantic web into the mainstream from the research level that it is now he responded by saying:

I think the Semantic Web is such a broad set of technologies and is going to do so many different things for different people. It is really difficult to put it on one thing. What are the steps necessary right now for the life sciences community to be able to use it for their data about proteins is probably different from which steps do we need to be able to get interoperability between repositories of library data and museum data.

So, different communities have different faces, different communities always have different social considerations and often there is social steps, which when you finally get people to share data more, to be able to re-use data more; then, just like with interaction of the Web, there is a lot of echos of the same sort of social concerns.

From my point of view there is amazing potential for the semantic web but there are also some large issues that need to be addressed before it can become mainstream.

I am going to do some research tonight and speak to some people and then I am going to do a proper post on my position on a semantic web.

Stay tuned

A
 

 

1st real WM virus/trojan out in the wild


27 Feb

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I just spotted this on Unwired.net:

“McAfee Avert Labs Blog posted a warning about a new Windows Mobile Pocket PC virus yesterday which seems to be the first real Windows Mobile virus/trojan. While we have seen proof of concepts before, this Windows Mobile trojan for Pocket PCs disables Windows Mobile application installation security as well as it protects itself from deletion by copying and installing it again from infected memory cards. Furthermore, the virus which is called WinCE/InfoJack sends the infected device’s serial number, operating system and other information to the author of the trojan.”

As more information filters through I will update. for now the be very wary of what you receive over bluetooth and what you install.

A

TinyURL …. useful or dangerous.


27 Feb

Posted in Me | 1 Comment »

I was talking to my housemate Dave last night (credit goes to him for this article as he got me thinking about it). He mentioned TinyURL and how he would never ever click a link that was a tinyURL one. I asked him why and he responded by saying

“you have no idea what’s behind that link, it could be anything”

It made me think that indeed we do not know where that URL actually links too. Now living in a house of Geeks we all know exactly what could be behind the link, anything from viruses to pornography or phishing site. The average end user however, very often does not have any concept of these dangers or if they do, does not stop to think that these links might conceal one of these threats.

There used to be a site that did the same service but offered an option where the user would see an interim page showing the exact link and they could then choose whether or not to continue. It was called something “42″ but the name at the moment escapes me. This though adds another click to get to the site and could get irritating. I thought I saw a site which used javascript so, when you held your mouse over the link, it showed a mini picture of the page that it was linking too. I could not find such a site today though (maybe I dreamt that).

Fine, if the link is from someone you know and trust then you can assume it’s safe, but certainly in the future I will be thinking twice about clicking all those URL’s

A

UK feels 5.3 force Earthquake


27 Feb

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At 00:58 last night I was awoken from my sleep by the feeling of my bedroom shaking. It lasted about 10 seconds and to be honest was the strangest feeling I have ever felt. If I am truly honest I thought that I was having some sort of fit or seizure but found it strange that I was so aware of what was happening. Once it had stopped I thought “I’ll go to the doctors in the morning” and promptly went back to sleep. Then when I woke up the radio was talking about an earthquake. So obviously I realised what it was!

One person on the BBC website described her house as being ‘Like a jelly mould’ and to be totally honest that is the best description I could give it. It was a slow rhythmic shaking that just made everything feel very very strange!

It was my 1st earthquake and I hope my last!

A

New look complete:


25 Feb

Posted in Blogging | Comments Off

So I have been changing and setting up the theme for the past few hours and thanks to a friend who has a great eye for colour schemes I have got a site that I like a lot now! It’s not a massive change but it’s noticeable. I think it looks a little less cluttered.

For those that had advertising on the site I will work to get that replace ASAP.

Hope you like the site! If you do please complete the poll on the right or leave a comment

A.

Update done, theme changed


25 Feb

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So I did the update and that was fine.

I have had to change my theme. I am not sure I like it totally so it will probably change over the next few days!

Overall though it’s done and working nicely.

I have added a twitter plugin too so this post will test if it works!

A

Updated my Blog


25 Feb

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So I updated wordpress to Version 2.3.3 today.

So far it seems to have worked fine, except, the sidebar!

I’ll keep fiddling and see if I can get it working

Any downtime will be due to my working on the system. (hopefully there will be none!).

A

UPDATE: It seems to be working a bit better now.

UPDATE2: I Was wrong I am only getting the default sidebar config. Custom widgets are not showing!

Sorry about the bonkers posts.


25 Feb

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Ok so I was testing a new plugin and kinda got all my posts messed up!

Just to clarify. I am trying to line up a surprise for next week (Starting Monday 3rd of March). I’ll keep you posted when I know more.

A

Palm bashes Blackberry


22 Feb

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So last week (and yesterday interestingly) Blackberry lost service to all of its US customers. This was put down to a systems update that went wrong! Now forgive me if I am wrong but that happened in 2007 didn’t it? You’d have thought that they might have learnt something since then? Anyway when this happened last week Palm decided to do a bit of Blackberry squishing by taking out full page adverts in national papers across the US and on their website.

Palmtakethemickey

 All the adverts stated:

“Palm smartphones include voice, e-mail, text, Web, calendar, and contacts. And most importantly, uptime.

Connect to your Microsoft Exchange Server.
No third-party servers and no nationwide blackouts.”

As a palm user I totally agree (hehehe).

Let’s hope that RIM don’t screw up again and have more downtime as users might get a bit pissy!

A

Nasa's Latest ISS mission returns home safe and sound


21 Feb

Posted in Space | Comments Off

Usually I provide good commentary on NASA missions as it is one of my interests, this time though I have been so stacked with other work I didn’t STS 122 was a mission to install the Columbus laboratory to the ISS. This mission was originally scheduled for late last year but after problems with the fuel cutoff sensors in the tank launch did not happen till Feb 7th.

213500main_landing-m

The module was installed perfectly and other spacewalks also went well to do some maintenance to the ISS. There was one anomly to the mission where one of the astronauts became ill during the mission but NASA declined to comment on the nature of the illness. All that was said was that “it was not life threatening”. I guess we’ll never know!

The next Shuttle mission which will see Space Shuttle Endeavour deliver the first section of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory and the Canadian Space Agency’s two-armed robotic system, Dextre.

Space shuttle Endeavour and the entire flight team are now gearing up for a targeted March 11 launch at 2:28 a.m. EDT.

A

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