All posts from
May 2005

Social Bookmarking Tools (I)/(II)

Added on 17 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
“This paper reviews some current initiatives, as of early 2005, in providing public link management applications on the Web – utilities that are often referred to under the general moniker of ‘social bookmarking tools’. There are a couple of things going on here: 1) server-side software aimed specifically at managing links with, crucially, a strong, social networking flavour, and 2) an unabashedly open and unstructured approach to tagging, or user classification, of those links.” (Tony Hammond et al. – D-Lib Magazine April 2005)

The Future of Indexing?

Added on 17 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
“A recent article in the Society for Technical Communications’ Intercom magazine proclaimed that indexing is on the rise (Seth Maislin, “The Indexing Revival,” February, 2005), and that there is a renaissance of work in the field. But at the WritersUA March Conference, Microsoft’s Longhorn features session declared that Longhorn’s Help system will not contain an index, because ‘no one uses it’. Then, to add to the discussion, at that same conference Apple revealed that their next help engine will include synonym rings and will add a form of indexing back into their display. Who’s right? Who’s correctly predicting the trends?” (Jan Wright – WinWriters UA) – courtesy of usablehelp

Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags

Added on 16 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
“Today I want to talk about categorization, and I want to convince you that a lot of what we think we know about categorization is wrong. In particular, I want to convince you that many of the ways we’re attempting to apply categorization to the electronic world are actually a bad fit, because we’ve adopted habits of mind that are left over from earlier strategies.” (Clay Shirky’s Writings About the Internet)

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Added on 16 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
“Throughout thirteen succinct but thought-provoking chapters, Kuhn argues that science is not a steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. Instead, science is ‘a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions’ [Nicholas Wade, writing for Science], which he described as ‘the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science.’ After such revolutions, ‘one conceptual world view is replaced by another.'” (Thomas Kuhn) – courtesy of anne galloway

Blogpoly

Added on 13 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
“It is just a name. It is just a game. It is fun to use the board to lay out the Blogosphere Ecosystem. It helps me to think and learn about blogging culture by transforming the original game into this version. I had to think about which company and enterprise to choose and set up first on the board. The space is limited, so I picked well known names in blogging industry. Besides the private properties, there are two public utilities — the water works and the electric company. (…) There is not much difference for me transforming the game than writing a poem, using similes, metaphors and symbols.” – (littleoslo) courtesy of thomas garrood

Mobile Web Initiative

Added on 11 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
Making Web access from a mobile device as simple, easy and convenient as Web access from a desktop device – “World Wide Web technologies have become the key enablers for access to the Internet through desktop and notebook computing platforms. Web technologies have the potential to play the same role for Internet access from mobile devices. However, today, mobile Web access suffers from interoperability and usability problems that make the Web difficult to use for most mobile phone subscribers. W3C’s ‘Mobile Web Initiative’ (W3C MWI) proposes to address these issues through a concerted effort of key players in the mobile production chain, including authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators.” (W3C)