Today is (hopefully) softball day! The whether is fine, and I'm so looking forward to smash the finance people (again)…
Make a comment to this post if you want to come. We do need more people…
AND SOFTBALL is cancelled today 🙁
I just want to say for the record, that I were the first to put a status widget on my front page…
Following this blog post by Edwin I've had these thoughts.
I am familiar with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (the nature of a persons language influences that persons thoughts and behaviour), but I think that it is a rather restrictive hypothesis, especially when seen in "cross-over language situations" (bi-language) and "emergent languages" such as folksonomological reifications.
I'm very often observing new (mostly) English words being adopted within my mother tongue, and there it seems like new words appear because somebody is thinking in a certain way and then needs a language shift. So effectively a symmetric Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is observed where thoughts and behaviour is influencing language (as well as the other way around)
It would be a very interesting study to look at the different approaches to foreign word usage in the Nordic countries!. Iceland and Faroe Icelands simply doesn't allow foreign words in their languages, hence they create new words. Norway and Sweden allow then but change the spelling. Denmark adopts them as spelled, but perhaps using a sligthly different pronoucination. How does this change their behaviour, if at all?
Effectively folksonomies is "emergent language" creation, as fluent patterns of symbols are attached to meaning by the intentional behaviour of users. In this situation I believe that it is a opposite Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that is working where behaiour and thought changes the "language". Perhaps this is the case because folksonomies aren't "human language" but a symbolic link language", which provides further meaning to the normal thoughts of humans (and by use of folksonomological reification also computers.)
Hmn – my head hurt, I'm a computer scientist and should think this way. Perhaps I should program a little bit before writing a book :o)
Nintendo is opening up their games API to home brewing coders, following the Microsoft example of releasing XNA. This is good news for aspiring games programmers, and really makes me want a Wii even more…
The biggest question really is: When will Sony open up their API???
Kapor (who invented lotus 1-2-3) is, according to http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/25/mitch-kapors-foxmarks-to-lea , working on a new search engine. It uses foxmarks as the backbone, another Kapor creation which enables uses to store their firefox bookmarks in one place, but use them on many computers, so sort of a MeAggregator™ of bookmarks.
According to the article the searches that they tested on the prototype system was amazing. I definitely have to watch this development in my own quest to find an alternative search engine to google.
Every time something becomes too big, I get the creeps. Call me neurotic if you like, its just how I am…
At the moment I really do not like that google almost has monopoly on my search results. Especially now that they are looking at buying doubleclick which would give them almost 360 view of me as an Internet individual.
So I'm on a mission to find other means of "googling"! I've tried my old favorite altavista but really don't like it, and yahoo is too structured and commercialised for my liking, although they do great radio and games though 😉 Ask.com doesn't really work for either, without knowing exactly why…
This morning I discovered clusty which clusters the search results from other search engines in tabs depending on the topics of the pages. The cluster algorithm seems really "clever", and I will be testing it for a while now. I've even downloaded their firefox plug-in, so I'm serious!
I hate personality tests. They usually degrade the individual to a mere number, and are often very easy to cheat in!!!
So why do I write about this personality test? I don't know, perhaps because it is the first time I've seen a programming personality test, and just for that is a fun thing to do!
Here is my Programming Personality made without cheating too much :o)
DLTC
You're a Doer.
You like coding at a Low level.
You work best in a Team.
You are a Conservative programmer.
This article starts out by claiming that searching on the Internet is dead!
This obviously isn't claimed by goggle but yahoo. What they say is that the next "new" web will be a personalised web, where the user gets and uses interesting information according to who they are and what they are interested in. As they state: "now the web is about 'me.'"
So, as we are working in the personal learning environment area with the MeAggregator, are we creating a "true" Web 3.0 application? Are Web 3.0 the Personal Web rather than the ordinary assumption that it is the Semantic Web, or is the Semantic tools just the driver (or back bone) to making the Personal Web truly personal, including semantics and pragmatics, and not just another widget style web application like NetVibes?
Whether you need a good excuse to be sick, or you just are hypocondriac (misspelled?), this site http://whoissick.org/sickness/ is a quite interesting piece of web 2.0. It enables people to register their sickness, and allow others, by using google maps, to see who is sick in their area.
The closest illness right now to the Uni is somebody down by London Road with head ache, cough and a runny nose!
Use case 1:
Mr X is a student at UoR in his final year. He is job hunting, but has found it difficult, because he hasn't received any grades yet, nor has he finished his exams yet. Luckily he his been able to gather all of his coursework and validated exam results from previous years using the MeAggregator, which has enabled him to create a "view" of his work on a website, which he shows different companies. The MeAggregator has also allowed him to create a pdf file of the material, which he has showed of at various graduate fairs.
Use case 2:
Miss Y is a keen programmer that would like to be involved in a open source games project. Unfortunately she doesn't know anybody who shares the same passion (strange she is a CS student, hmnn!) Through the tags and trust network of the MeAggregator she has been able to find two other students at Kings who wants to create a network based game for girls. Because the trust levels of the students are high she has decided to contact them to see if she can be part of the project.
