Reuters just opened access to their corporate semantic technology crown jewels. For free. For anyone. Their Calais API lets you turn unstructured text into a formal RDF graph in about one second....
It's "free" for "anyone" for loose definitions of the terms. Glancing at their terms of use (emphasis added):
You understand that Reuters will retain a copy of the metadata submitted by you or that generated by the Calais service. By submitting or generating metadata through the Calais service, you grant Reuters a non-exclusive perpetual, sublicensable, royalty-free license to that metadata. From a privacy standpoint, Reuters use of this metadata is governed by the terms of the Reuters and Calais Privacy Statements.
So you pay with your metadata. One can say you're doing that with Google too. Nevertheless, that's not entirely free.
Also, it's not yet for "anyone." According to the Calais roadmap, only English documents are accepted: "Calais R3 [July 2008] begins... to incorporate a number of additional languages... Japanese, Spanish and French with additional languages coming in the future."
Some USER TESTS to back up all those claims maybe?
on
What Makes a Good Web Font
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· Score: 4, Insightful
So I scanned TFA in hope of some new research on web typography re: readability. And found nothing but opinion, not even references to research done elsewhere.
Sure, the author seems to know his typography 101, but how is he backing up his various claims?
All I see is "established and time-tested principles of typography" and similar hand-waving.
This-or-that font is more legible than some other font, because... "I fall firmly in to the camp that believes that sans-serif faces are a more suitable [readable] option." In the article he even states "It is [low screen resolution], more than any other [factor], that defines the recommendations and principles behind good Web typography."
So without research/testing (or references to research/testing), how the hell does the author know which font is more readable than the next?
I'm not saying he's wrong (or that good guesses are worse than no guesses), but he's pointing to various best practices without any research/testing to back up a lot of these claims.
A quick search produced some promising-looking results. Perhaps too much work for a busy web usability professional.
Several observations can be made regarding the examined font types. First, no significant difference in actual legibility between the font types were detected. There were, however, significant differences in reading time, but these differences may not be that meaningful for most online text because these differences were not substantial. It may, on the other hand, be helpful to consider using font types that are perceived as being legible. In this study, the font types that were perceived as being most legible were Courier, Comic, Verdana, Georgia, and Times.
Their conclusions supports some of his claims, but why should I as a reader have to do his job.. Lazy.
And Quickbase can't be the only example of such a web app. This latest thing from Google is certainly interesting, but reaching for the innovative tag might be overdoing it.
Monsanto. They want to take threatening and bullying farmers with patented gene-infected crops to a whole new level.
Re:I wish I could make that much moola....
on
Yahoo buys Flickr
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· Score: 1
Yeah, it is a business model in itself of course - creating something that has "potential (possibly)!" written all over it, and selling it to the highest bidder.
Well, if they're doing something neat (which I think flickr is) and are having fun doing it, more power to 'em.
Re:I wish I could make that much moola....
on
Yahoo buys Flickr
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· Score: 1
Perhaps this is a "big buyout", but I honestly don't think so.
The Ludicorp people themselves speak of their money troubles (on their Typepad, no less, weblog) "It means that we'll no longer have to draw straws to see who gets paid."
So, my take is that while they do have a vibrant, growing, etc. community of photosharing/social networking, they do not have a sustainable business model.
A lot of energy and buzz, no profits.
I.e. Yahoo might not have paid through the nose for Flickr. And now it'll be subsumed in the Yahoo 360 corpus (whatever that turns out to become).
That could become an interop mess though (browser support, maintaining several implementations for a given site's interactions with its users) and on top of the current mess. I'm not all that hip to all of the w3c standards, but [backwards] compability seems pretty important on the web.
But perhaps compability is impossible to gain enough power, though looking at this 'newish' Web Forms 2.0 effort (which seems to extend existing standards in compatible yet quite powerful ways), it's unclear to me whether the pretty massive XForms will pay off.
E.g. will creating a non-trivial web-app become as complex as, say, writing a C++/Java/etc. client - and if so, without compability, why not do that instead (as XForms will never be that powerful)?
I read Joe Gregorio's take on XForms a while back. XForms seems to make everything regarding forms/interactivity unnecessarily complicated. (The standard might've been simplified since then, un-RTFA etc.)
Exact same thought. Plus their "Diary" function. Personal thoughts and links tied to an Amazon account (and whatever else), bookmarks, etc. Their "market research division" must be salivating.
Mmmmm...I'm leaning towards 'no-way-in-hell' myself.
Very informative and very frightening. Googling "Castle Nectar" returned - among others - this interesting page: Project Castle with an image of the beast.
Yea, but if history has shown us anything else, it's that the web has been around a mere decade and already has had a tremendous impact on a whole lot of stuff. It's still early days.
Re:Not suprising; I hope the book's good
on
Dive Into Python
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I guess you could see it that way. But I read his weblog semi-often, and from what I've learned, Mark did a sort of 'project house-cleaning' a while back (sometime after his marriage?). He talked about wanting to use his time in the most meaningful way, and therefore listed a few time-consuming things he would
a) stop doing altogether
b) keep maintaining but not work actively on
c) spend his 'new-found' time on.
I believe the Diveintopython project was put in group a). So IIRC this would mean that APress gave him an offer to finish it after he chose to abandon the project himself.
I could be mistaken but I'm too tired to check his site now.. You do it;).
Sure, but rather quickly such a household name (either by using $AD_SYNDICATE, or by committing their own irritating ad-deeds) becomes a standard "*$CATDEVNULLED*" filter in the nice extension of your favorite browser.
And in the meantime, while filters are updated for the real world, we make do with the baseball bats, as has been suggested.
My 12" iBook is about as small as a computer can go and still be functional.
I've been looking at the 12" PowerBook, and thought the same way. But the Gizmodo people kind of changed that belief with this Panasonic R3 review. (That's a 12" PowerBook next to it in the picture... Tiiiny.)
You might regret that (it's "public information"!);).
Well, there's always the 'resetting' me to neutral if you find my ramblings tedious/irritating/dumb/all-of-the-above and stick out too much in your augmented/. perusal.
The cynical/downright nasty people quoted in the OP article had me really fuming. My choices were either gallows humor or starting another 50-hour work week with an even more damaged faith in our industry's future, the corruption of ethics, the plight of the common nerd, et al...
Couldn't bare the latter alternative, hence the post (and now, off to work..yay).
Yea, I know.. I was just pointificating - that it's a continuum - 'gotta spend money to make money', etc. (If not, things would grind to a halt in a hurry:) )
Or, they could make good on their implied threats (Mutual Assured Damage/Destruction).
I just hope that one of the big'uns start a fight! And we'll get to watch all the Microsofts and the IBMs and the Novells and all the rest of the patent pimps Mutually destroy each other. Oh, man, it would be so great:
"Feel the pain of our 'one-click-purchase'!!"
"You call that pain?! Taste our 'listing-photos-BY-DATE'!! *ka-boom*
Slashdot Mirror
Also, it's not yet for "anyone." According to the Calais roadmap, only English documents are accepted: "Calais R3 [July 2008] begins
So I scanned TFA in hope of some new research on web typography re: readability. And found nothing but opinion, not even references to research done elsewhere.
Sure, the author seems to know his typography 101, but how is he backing up his various claims? All I see is "established and time-tested principles of typography" and similar hand-waving.
This-or-that font is more legible than some other font, because ... "I fall firmly in to the camp that believes that sans-serif faces are a more suitable [readable] option." In the article he even states "It is [low screen resolution], more than any other [factor], that defines the recommendations and principles behind good Web typography."
So without research/testing (or references to research/testing), how the hell does the author know which font is more readable than the next?
I'm not saying he's wrong (or that good guesses are worse than no guesses), but he's pointing to various best practices without any research/testing to back up a lot of these claims.
A quick search produced some promising-looking results. Perhaps too much work for a busy web usability professional.
Second link from the search results: Usability News performed user tests on readability in 2001 (A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which is Best and When? by Michael Bernard, Melissa Mills, Michelle Peterson, & Kelsey Storrer).
Their conclusions supports some of his claims, but why should I as a reader have to do his job.. Lazy.Monsanto. They want to take threatening and bullying farmers with patented gene-infected crops to a whole new level.
Yeah, it is a business model in itself of course - creating something that has "potential (possibly)!" written all over it, and selling it to the highest bidder.
Well, if they're doing something neat (which I think flickr is) and are having fun doing it, more power to 'em.
Perhaps this is a "big buyout", but I honestly don't think so.
The Ludicorp people themselves speak of their money troubles (on their Typepad, no less, weblog) "It means that we'll no longer have to draw straws to see who gets paid."
So, my take is that while they do have a vibrant, growing, etc. community of photosharing/social networking, they do not have a sustainable business model.
A lot of energy and buzz, no profits.
I.e. Yahoo might not have paid through the nose for Flickr. And now it'll be subsumed in the Yahoo 360 corpus (whatever that turns out to become).
Apparently, the main idea behind it is the slideshow - makes perfect transitions when every "squared circle" is identically cropped.
Other than that, I don't get the 'point' either.. just something to do, probably.
But, didn't IBM sell off its PC/laptop ("Think" brand) business to Lenovo? (IBM press release "Lenovo to Acquire IBM Personal Computing Division" ..that I didn't actually read to the end.)
That could become an interop mess though (browser support, maintaining several implementations for a given site's interactions with its users) and on top of the current mess. I'm not all that hip to all of the w3c standards, but [backwards] compability seems pretty important on the web.
But perhaps compability is impossible to gain enough power, though looking at this 'newish' Web Forms 2.0 effort (which seems to extend existing standards in compatible yet quite powerful ways), it's unclear to me whether the pretty massive XForms will pay off.
E.g. will creating a non-trivial web-app become as complex as, say, writing a C++/Java/etc. client - and if so, without compability, why not do that instead (as XForms will never be that powerful)?
I read Joe Gregorio's take on XForms a while back. XForms seems to make everything regarding forms/interactivity unnecessarily complicated. (The standard might've been simplified since then, un-RTFA etc.)
Exact same thought. Plus their "Diary" function. Personal thoughts and links tied to an Amazon account (and whatever else), bookmarks, etc. Their "market research division" must be salivating.
Mmmmm...I'm leaning towards 'no-way-in-hell' myself.
not "Project". One preview wasn't enough, aparently. Data on "Nectar" is close to the end the page.
Very informative and very frightening. Googling "Castle Nectar" returned - among others - this interesting page: Project Castle with an image of the beast.
Yea, but if history has shown us anything else, it's that the web has been around a mere decade and already has had a tremendous impact on a whole lot of stuff. It's still early days.
I guess you could see it that way. But I read his weblog semi-often, and from what I've learned, Mark did a sort of 'project house-cleaning' a while back (sometime after his marriage?). He talked about wanting to use his time in the most meaningful way, and therefore listed a few time-consuming things he would
;).
a) stop doing altogether
b) keep maintaining but not work actively on
c) spend his 'new-found' time on.
I believe the Diveintopython project was put in group a). So IIRC this would mean that APress gave him an offer to finish it after he chose to abandon the project himself.
I could be mistaken but I'm too tired to check his site now.. You do it
Sure, but rather quickly such a household name (either by using $AD_SYNDICATE, or by committing their own irritating ad-deeds) becomes a standard "*$CATDEVNULLED*" filter in the nice extension of your favorite browser.
And in the meantime, while filters are updated for the real world, we make do with the baseball bats, as has been suggested.
You know what they say, "In the land of the only-to-2-counting, the 3-counter is king."
Congrats OG, you lucky lucky bastard ;)
I've been looking at the 12" PowerBook, and thought the same way. But the Gizmodo people kind of changed that belief with this Panasonic R3 review. (That's a 12" PowerBook next to it in the picture... Tiiiny.)
Might not be practical for this particular problem, but I recommend the WML browser extension for the occasional viewing of WML pages in Firefox.
It's not perfect, but useful for quickly testing WML pages you're coding (it gets old real quick testing solely on a phone over GPRS..).
If so, do not use the BlueSniper in NYC..
You might regret that (it's "public information"!) ;).
/. perusal.
:)
Well, there's always the 'resetting' me to neutral if you find my ramblings tedious/irritating/dumb/all-of-the-above and stick out too much in your augmented
Thank you for the kind post and befriending
My humblest thanks :)
..yay).
The cynical/downright nasty people quoted in the OP article had me really fuming. My choices were either gallows humor or starting another 50-hour work week with an even more damaged faith in our industry's future, the corruption of ethics, the plight of the common nerd, et al...
Couldn't bare the latter alternative, hence the post (and now, off to work
Yea, I know.. I was just pointificating - that it's a continuum - 'gotta spend money to make money', etc. (If not, things would grind to a halt in a hurry :) )
I just hope that one of the big'uns start a fight! And we'll get to watch all the Microsofts and the IBMs and the Novells and all the rest of the patent pimps Mutually destroy each other. Oh, man, it would be so great: Barring that, your thing might have some merit