…probably many of you know the yahoo’s social bookmarking site del.icio.us is now re-designed in its look and feel. del.icio.us is now moved to standard url delicious.com
But when I read Delicious 2.0 Who bookmarks any more I just wondered as we are so much addicted to revert to google for search, how useful it would be to customize Google search on my delicious bookmarks.
It took me just a few minutes to quickly setup google custom search of my delicious bookmark.
The steps i followed is rather simple even my mom would claim no difficulty. (well i ‘ve made her computer savvy 😉 )
Exported delicious bookmark saved it to my desktop (an html)
Composed an email to post[at]posterous.com from my gmail
Send email with delicious bookmark (html file) as attachment
In an eye blick i got email back from Postereous with one link to my delicious bookmark
Used this link in google custom search using their wizard
Did you ever wonder how much information is hidden about you on the web, try Microsearch by Yahoo! One of the latest release by Peter Mika at Yahoo research Spain. The idea is:
…instead of hiding metadata, brings it to the front, thereby showing the user just how much metadata is out there for any given query.
my “bloggie” is now 2 years old. naming just to cutify my “blog” :o). I guardianed and nourished it carefully for a while and now i am slowly realizing that my own blog is becoming a way to reflect myself (my interests, my knowledge, my work, my impressions, my social connections and to some extent my personal competence). After making the claim as a [hardblogging scientist], i took efforts to sincerely reflect my web presence and give insight of my work experiences. Over the time i feel my blog has emerged (1) the way it looks to you and myself; a centralized view of my different associations (2) the way it is internally structured for my own view; a mental map. For example, there are many blog drafts unpublished, there are many bookmarks, pictures, knowledge and experience which are unshared, but still useful for me, this way i preserve the right to present myself. I perceive now that after email, blog has eventually become a “contextualised mirror of my mind“, which means it reflects how things in (real-world) have associated in my mind over the time of 2 years in a given context(work, travel, associations and impresssions) and ofcourse my social connections. What is interesting to know now is, does my blog help me to “learn” and make me self-organised?. Atleast, i am making effort to enrich it extensively with features and consequently it would become a “home” for me where i would keep all “bits” of my digital presence which flows in the “veins” of web. I envision a day would eventually come when i would ask my “bloggie” to serve me with my(“learning goal”, “journey itinerary, “traces of globetrotting”, “interests”, “associations”, “materialistic necessity”, “spiritual quest”, and what not…). All at one place, anytime and always immortal. Do you agree to me ?
the main research motivation is based on the following questions :
Does Semantic Desktop minimizes information overload by providing enhanced support to perform daily task of knowledge worker?
Does it help in organising (personal) information, the way we think with respect to our working context?
Does it able to formalize our mental models?
Can we query and visualize our personal information resources (emails, files, contacts, photos) with the help of Semantic Desktop to know our meetings, schedules and tasks in order to organise ourselves better?
After realizing that Evaluation of Semantic Desktop remains still in its infancy and needs high attention, I don’t find any publications addressing the usability issues of Semantic Desktop. But now I am delighted to see some latest focus in Personal Information Management (PIM) research. The research has gained momentum with around 32 publications this year [look here] is quite interesting and for me it’s a light of hope that my current research efforts have some audience to appeal. My position to defend my work could be summed up briefly as follows:
PIM is not uniform or structuralised behaviour rather it is dynamic, diverse and flexible, based on context. PIM behaviour has to be studied in particular context (e.g. working, education, projects, research ). The strategy to study PIM behaviour would involve “divide and conquer”.
Evaluation of PIM is challenging, major issues involve privacy and users different world-view.
Understanding Mental Model, which is a hint (clue) in peoples mind to the concept they represent. In physical sense they may represent an operation of a device, In abstract sense they may represent system process. Mental Model could be used to explicitly define user working scenario to study her PIM activity.
Representing Mental model in [PIMO] as proposed by my scientific advisor Leo Sauermann or [CDS] as proposed by Max and Heiko : where mental model needs to be formalised, they should serve as an analytical tool that should provide features to document user’s current mental images, ideas and concepts.
Google is buying Youtube, a business little more than a year old. The rise of the likes of Wikipedia and Youtube, Linux and Craigslist means for the way we organise ourselves, not just in digital businesses but in schools and hospitals, cities and mainstream corporations. My argument is that these new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a society in which participation will be the key organising idea rather than consumption and work. People want to be players not just spectators, part of the action, not on the sidelines.
“Google and YouTube are not alone. Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia created and maintained almost entirely by amateurs, attracts more visitors than The New York Times online, carries more content than almost all other encyclopaedias combined and threatens to dwarf the services offered by large publishing companies”.
“Linux, a computer operating system started by a wispy Finnish computer science student and at first developed almost entirely by unpaid volunteers, is the main challenger to the operating system created by Microsoft, one of the world’s largest corporations”.
“Welcome to the world of We-Think. We are developing new ways to innovate and be creative en masse. We can be organised without an organisation. People can combine ideas and skills without a hierarchy”.
In my view, making web collaboratve is interesting, but there is a threat itself. World might get more knowledgeable but would certainly lack wisdoms. Democracy for expressing thoughts are human rights but if hijacked by capitalistic-mongers or extremist school of thoughts, then this is danger. This new culture of communication should be encouraged for bringing millions to the global network of information. At the same time world should preserve wisdom. In a way what i meant is the ethics of collaborative intelligence, and standardization of thoughts, so each of us could participate more freely and democratically saving the minorities as well.
Google has just agreed to pay about £889 million for YouTube, a website that barely existed 18 months ago and does not turn a profit, yet attracts 100 million viewers a day.
In the words of Andy Budd “Web 2.0 is a state of mind”, he highlights some of the advantages of web revolution aka Web 2.0
Using existing technologies in new and innovative ways
… I have just been to a talk given by [Prof.Ben Schneiderman] here at [DFKI] on the issues of Creativity needed in comtemporary software tools, so far Software has been a productivity support tools, he emphasized on embedding improved usability and creativity within the software.The terms he used for developing Software supporting Creativity features should have
less Threshold (easy to use or start with )
high Ceiling ( Should have much support for Creativity in terms of usabilty and visualizations)
wide Wall ( wide applicability of domains and support for domain experts)
Evaluation of Creative research tools are difficult, he comments "controlled studies are inappropriate and brief case studies are not adequate". A proposal for Multi-dimensional In-depth Long-term Case-studies (MILC) is suggested.
Overall his talk gave a thought provoking impressions with big picture and a vision for Creativity research methods needed for future Software tools.
… many ethical issues for thinking machines,some interesting philosophical brainstorming.If you want to know the details of the mentioned issues FOCUS here
I captured the following snap from demo poster at German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence at Saarbrücken,Germany.
…for two days I received many food for thoughts and also for belly:), I was in WSPI ’06 workshop at DFKI Saarbrücken
I had a nice time spent meeting people and talking on different issues and challenges in Information era,from services to Science,the idea was to pack together Philosophers and Computer Scientists in Alan Turing room at dfki saarbrücken and see who convinces whom. The debate was heated but never led to conclusion, at least many of interesting ideas emerged …
some smart words from Barry Smith I specially like to jot down, at times he was too explicit that he never hesitated to say the Computer Scientists as “teenagers“, interestingly funny.
But he made the room to ponder on many coherent ideas and science of system (be it formal or non-formal)
some of Barry’s words :
” Semantic Web missing to raise the Standard of Ontology”
” High quality shared Ontologies build Communities”
” Instances are not represented in Scientific Ontology, Why ? …. notion of instances is different in Ontology than the notion of instances in programming languages”
” Human brain is highly flexible but computers are not”
my point in conclusion would be that No thinking, No Consciousness are involved in Computers it’s only a play of words and a hype from Sci-Fi.
Computers are only helpful machines,which should be intelligently designed to be usable and that behaves according to the user’s demand.
…As planned, today i was among SemDesk Hackers for Gnowsis [A desktop application based on RDF to view the hype of Semantic Web Technologies on Personal Computers : A tool to better organise your personal resources on desktop computers].
nice time to meet smart peoples who are quite eager to smoke Semantic Desktop and encourage others to get addicted in Gnowsis 🙂
…Semantic Desktop idea is based on visualizing your organisation of work, categorising your thoughts in personalised ontology and making you smart in work efficiency
…here is my philosophy to support semantic Desktop idea,
basically we as human,are both social and individual in different contexts,wouldn't it be nice to know about ourself [metacognition] and evolve from experiences of our behaviour in different contexts,the more i know about myself the better i organise myself,what if this is realised in Gnowsis: whose idea is to provide a better platform for personalised Ontology right on your desktop.
my way of learning and memorizing a new concept is through association and collaboration,the more i associate myself the better i organise myself,does it work the same for you ? if yes,then get addicted to personal organisation,visualize your mental model,know your social and personal contexts,make your Personalised IM Ontology and be smart :Gnowsis keeps this vision.
my ideas are a bit exaggerated but not impractical "Usability increases metacognition" and "metacognition makes you more intelligent"
…this world needs smart people atleast for Godly reasons 🙂
..so wait we are not finished yet ,two more days to work together,sharing ideas and hack together to make things work together
Danzinde 