In this post I described my “information processing pipeline”. Here is a diagram that touches on the same area. It was created by Mario Asselin in a response to this paper “Distributed KM” by Martin Roell
The blogging workflow.
This is a very very nice summary of how blogs work by Roland Tanglao at Streamline, it complements my comments because it provides more details of some of the server side infrastructure:
1. Joe Blogger writes something and publishes it to his blog.
2. Joe’s Blog system updates his site’s HTML, updates his RSS file and sends a ‘ping’ message to the ‘Aggregation Ping Server’ indicating that his site has updated.
3. Search engines like Google and RSS specific services like Feedster, Technorati and PubSub periodically ask the Aggregation Ping Server, “Which sites have updated?”.
4. Since Joe’s site sends pings and has an RSS file and is easy to update frequently, Joe’s search engine rank is higher than a ‘normal site’.
5. Techie Teresa uses a program called an RSS reader to subscribe to Joe’s site. The RSS reader checks Joe’s RSS file for updates periodically (usually once/hour or once per day) and notifies her of Joe’s updates. Teresa no longer wastes time manually surfing Joe’s site. She just checks her RSS reader.
6. As a result, Teresa’s information flow is more efficient and she can monitor more sites in less time.
7. Joe Surfer (who …
This article describes some of the characteristics of XML that make it so powerful The bottom line is that its generic nature means that generic solutions can be created tat can be applied to all manner of different problems. The example quoted is a tool that compares two XML files, produces an XML file showing the differences. The article then goes on to explain how this generic tool might be applied to different types of problem. Well worth a read if you are trying to get your mind around some of the things that will be possible in the future. Reminds me a bit of Unix pipes!
These video’s are pretty good examples of some of Microsoft’s integrated innovation ideas. Illustrated by the connected car concept
Office news.
A new version of open office is available. The main improvements are:
Enhancements to the open-source productivity suite include support for PDF and XHTML exports and improved compatibility with Microsoft Office, according to the OpenOffice Web site. The new release, for example, will support forms conversion within Word documents and import text document layouts with more fidelity. OpenOffice 1.1 also boasts enhanced support for mobile device formats such as Palm’s AportisDoc, Pocket Word and Pocket Excel.
IBM has ideas of its own, taking a thinner approach with its WorkPlace products
A wild card in the Office wars is IBM, which plans to offer server-based word processing, spreadsheet and presentation functionality to buyers of its WebSphere portal. At the very least, that could allow large customers to negotiate better Microsoft Office pricing/licensing, observers said. (See IBM Plans Sneak Attack On Microsoft Office.)
The MS Office team are majoring on quality for their next release, does this imply major changes, requiring major testing, or just good practice?
Software development, especially for a product as feature-rich as Office, is a repetitive process comprising what can seem to be endless feedback loops and rework.
“We’re trying to reduce the iteration of …
Atlantic published an article about the tools and techniques promoted by David Allen the author of the book Getting things done, which I read a few months back. I liked the book and gave it a quick review here. However for a better introduction its a good idea to read the article. I have repeated a small snipit of it here to get you started.
The doctrine that inspires this devotion starts with the idea that the difference between done and undone tasks is more stress-inducing than most people recognize. In earlier times, Allen says, work was more physically exhausting than it is today. But it produced less anxiety; because people could easily tell what they had to do and whether it had been completed. Either the wood was chopped or it was not. The typical modern day, he says, is a fog of constantly accumulating open-ended obligations, with little barrier between the personal and the professional and few dear signals that you are actually “done.” E-mail pours in. Hallway conversations end with ‘I’ll get back to you.” The cell phone rings. The newspaper tells you about movies you’d like to see, recipes you’d like to try, places …
Its interesting to see the slow but sure emergence of middleware to exploit XML documents. Microsoft have WSS which can manipulate Infopath docuemnts stored in its document libraries for example. InfoWorld report on a mor ambitious tool from IBM, code named Project Cinnamon, you can get the full details here, but here is the real content:
Cinnamon was born in IBM’s Almaden Research Center and is a tool designed to automatically create mappings among different forms of data. By allowing users to define how an XML document gets mapped into a database such as DB2, the technology makes it easier to store those documents and to manage their content.
The upcoming utility hopes to address one of the thornier problems associated with XML-based development. Although XML serves as a clear standard for how content in a document is defined, the schema or definition of that content can be markedly different from document to document. This makes it impractical to place thousands of different documents in even a single data source and be able to retrieve certain data using a single search engine, an IBM representative said.
InfoWorld also says:
Some analysts think the upcoming technology can play a central …
Some background on NewsGator and Syndication.
This post by Brad Feld, a Venture Capitalist who has recently invested in NewsGator is useful if you too have invested in a copy and want to understand a bit about where the tool is going. But its also interesting if like me you want to understand a bit about syndication in general and the market opportunity as investors see it. I recently posted on how I see the market from a technical perspective for behind the firewall corporate environments, in discussion with NewsGator this market is certainly in their plans.
Greg adds a bit more detail in his blog
David Chappell, a professional speaker, who often works for Microsoft has written a very interesting little article on the subject of the experience trap. In essence, as you get more experienced, especially in IT, that experience can cause you problems as well as give you an advantage. He recalls discussions with computer science professors who are debating which programming language a person should be taught. Here is an extract in his own words:
The difficulties faced by teachers of computer science provide one example of the problems experience can cause. But the challenge certainly isn’t limited to professors—we’re all in danger. And since the experience trap isn’t much of a problem at the beginning of a career, it can sneak up on you. When you’re twenty five, you don’t rely much on experience because you don’t have any. When you’re forty five, however, it’s tempting to rely too much on experience. The truth is that experience is useful only if the future is like the past. In software, what will be important next year is often very, very different from what was important last year. Realizing that a significant part of our hard-won knowledge becomes valueless every year is …
As I have mentioned before I use X1 for all of my local system searching, a friend of mine asked how I was getting on with it, he is using Blinkx. So here is an update. I am running X1 on Windows 2003 Server, its not supported but it seems...