Yesterday I installed and played with the new ontology editor, SemanticWorks 2006, by Altova. I posted my 30 minutes user experience on my blog.

In summary, I think the software need some more work. Many functions are rough. This doesn’t mean that I don’t like. I think Altova did a great job in being the first commerical company to offer an ontology editor product.

Microsoft Shared Source Initiative

These new licenses represent a broad spectrum of approaches needed to facilitate an ever-growing, rich set of technologies for release.

The three licenses are:

• Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL) — The Ms-PL is the least restrictive of the Microsoft source code licenses. It allows you to view, modify, and redistribute the source code for either commercial or non-commercial purposes. Under the Ms-PL, you may change the source code and share it with others. You may also charge a licensing fee for your modified work if you wish. This license is most commonly used for developer tools, applications, and components.

• Microsoft Community License (Ms-CL) — The Ms-CL is a license that is best used for collaborative development projects. This type of license is commonly referred to as a reciprocal source code license and carries specific requirements if you choose to combine Ms-CL code with your own code. The Ms-CL allows for both non-commercial and commercial modification and redistribution of licensed software and carries a per-file reciprocal term.

• Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL) — The Ms-RL is a reference-only license that allows licensees to view source code in order to gain a deeper understanding of the inner workings of a Microsoft technology. It does not allow for modification or redistribution. This license is used primarily for technologies such as development libraries.

Paper presentations at CASCON 2005 started today. This annual event is sponsored by IBM Toronto Labs and IBM CAS in co-operation with National Research Council Canada. Initial impressions — a very good place to demonstrate/present work relevant to IBM.

CASCON 2005, the 15th annual international conference hosted by the IBM Centers for Advanced Studies, is the premiere computer science and software engineering conference in Canada. CASCON is an excellent venue for exchanging ideas, showcasing results, experiences and tools, and networking with researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government.

Check out CASCON blog for information as it happens.

A few months back I had a discussion on an interesting concept initiated by our group, but was not yet public. Response from the person I was talking to was short — “We will uncloak soon”. He eventually did, and at the right time. This brings me to a interesting question — “What does it mean to uncloak on Web 2.0?”

A recent post we and others (here, here, here and here) made about Sphere – a new blog search engine based on initiation by Om Malik is an interesting example. Om, an A-List blogger now posts on yahoo blog search engine and how Sphere is better. Some readers would have noticed del.icio.us count at the bottom in our previous post. What was 3 then is now 47! Moreover it is (was) widely discussed on the blogosphere.

It’s all a result of Web 2.0. In this context the Blogosphere and Folksonomies. Both have been able to generate higher visibility and provide fresher content. You no longer have to wait for centuries before a traditional web search engine indexes them and find out what people were (! not are) talking about you. You know what is being said NOW — or rather as Technorati rightly puts it — We are in the The World Live Web.

Web 2.0 has then an important implication — there is a new way of uncloaking

• Initiate discussion on your product.
• Monitor Buzz (the key).
• Uncloak!

In the context of Sphere it’s when buzz is at the peak. One of the creators of Sphere, Tony Conrad says, they are still waiting and will uncloak next week. Is NOW the peak buzz — well, arguable. Are they waiting for the second peak following a trough — well may be, or are they waiting for the buzz to continue – well only time will tell.

Bottomline — Web 2.0 has made sure that the Web aspect is even more important and you know what is being said about you NOW. It’s not just about “discussions on the Web”, but also about “when?”. Hope Sphere Beta is uncloaked on time. That said, Technorati has been doing fairly well in the middle of all competition. Good job!

We all know how blog search engines have made themselves a name, by tuning traditional IR techniques to the Blogosphere. Enter Sphere. It is in “stealth mode” now — not even a Beta. Over at GigaOm, Om Malik has some interesting thoughts on Sphere. Some excerpts —

Think Blog Rank, Instead of Google’s Page Rank. The company has also taken a few steps to out-smart the spammers, and tend to push what seems like spam-blog way down the page. Not censuring but bringing up relevant content first. They have pronoun checker. Too many I’s could mean a personal blog, with less focused information. That has an impact on how the results show up on the page …

The coolest feature they have is matching Blog content with relevant web articles from mainstream media.

The bottomline is of course tuning (there is still a lot of opporutunity here) relevancy to the Blogosphere. They are expected to launch their Beta soon. Current del.icio.us count — 3(only). Watch this space!

UMBC website now publishes RSS for news and Podcasts.
(More )

Good move – subscribed!
Atleast now I will follow what should have been regularly checked by all students at UMBC.

Altova, the maker of popular XML editor XMLSpy, annouced the release of Altova SemanticWorks.

Altova SemanticWorksâ„¢ 2006 is the ground-breaking visual RDF/OWL editor from the creators of XMLSpy. Visually design Semantic Web instance documents, vocabularies, and ontologies then output them in either RDF/XML or N-triples formats. SemanticWorksâ„¢ 2006 makes the job easy with tabs for instances, properties, classes, etc., context-sensitive entry helpers, and automatic format checking. It is the sensible way to put the Semantic Web to work for you.

This is a good sign for the Semantic Web research and development community. It’s a sign that semantics is getting commericial attention. I remember seeing a similar pattern back in the old days when XML was a new term that not everyone knows. Altova released their XMLSpy in a time when many people are skeptical about the use of XML. Could this mean that one or two years from now, RDF & OWL will be the key languages for building smart applications? I surely hope so.

It can play games. It can play your Movies. It can play your music. It can view photos. It can read Ebooks. It runs on just 2 AA batteries – And it can do all this in the palm of your hand or on your TV screen. GP2X is a linux handheld with two 200mhz CPU’s with 64meg of RAM, custom graphics hardware and decoding chips and a slot for SD cards. Price? $189 US! (preorder).

The US National Security Agency (NSA) is planning to build a secure wireless PDA that also does voice and data communications over public networks, including CDMA, GSM and 802.11. Dubbed SME-PDA (for “secure mobile environment – portable electronic device” — boy do they need better marketing!), it’s rumored to support voice and data communications up to Top Secret and email up to Secret. The device will be developed for NSA by L-3 Communications and another, not yet named company. Earlier reports named General Dynamics C4 Systems as being involved. …more…

Local governments and agencies are waking up with a start — could it happen here? If first responders cannot communicate with each other in the first 72 hours — how do they do their job?

The New Orleans tragedy manifested the worst communication nightmares imaginable — underground communication lines were disabled due to flooding, cell towers were blown over, backup generators ran out of fuel — or filled up with water. Radios of police, firefighters, ER couldn’t talk to each other. In some cases first responders were simply walking over to each other to talk!

Ad hoc networks boast of working in especially such situations … after more than 10 years and millions of $$ in research … where is the first deployed/working ad hoc network?

Baltimore Sun:

No sooner had a 46-truck convoy of Baltimore first-responders and equipment left for Louisiana on Sunday than it received an education in emergency communications: Even state-of-the-art systems can fail.

Grand Rapids Press:

“The lessons we can learn from the Katrina disaster is what happens to those with mobility and transportation issues. If there is a need for a mass evacuation, how would we get those without transportation?” 1st Ward Commissioner James Jendrasiak asked.

Eyewitness News:

The Nevada Homeland Security Department is taking up the issue of disaster response. From their own experience and what they’ve seen with Hurricane Katrina relief, they’ve determined the channels of communication are broken.

UMBC is designing a new home page, about to be unvealed by the end of September. What was interested to note was the use of blogging as a mechanism to solicit user input. UMBC’s Webteam blog notes –

UMBC is providing a “sneak peek” of its new homepage, which begins the process of redesigning UMBC’s entire web presence by summer 2006. If you’d like to comment on the new homepage or the process for developing the site to follow, use the comment form below.

However I must add, I agree with many of the comments on the blog. It would be nice to see atleast some of these comments incorporated into the new design.

On a similar note, I wonder when UMBC will host blogs of students on the same lines as many other universities.

This new automatic door from Japan creates a minimal opening for an object to pass through. The door is composed of a series of strips which open when activated by the infrared sensors on their edges. It’s said that the door also can identify people (RFID?) for security. Such doors can help manage energy loss in a a room, garage or freezer and protect a space from unwanted dust, pollen, bugs, and germs. Plus, they are cooler than the doors on Star Trek. See this video.

Here’s a marketing tip: get the door to occasionally say “Gee, you’ve lost weight, haven’t you?” and it will sell like hotcakes.