Information Takes Over

I am sitting in a meeting room at work and watching our CTO Ian Davis bring the semantic web to life.

Clipper uses javascript ‘recognisers’ to spot properties and classes in RDF data returned from queries. So if Clipper sees a pair of lat/long coordinates, it shows a map.  If the results of a search also include some map data? The recognisers are already there and they just show the points on a map.

So, people introduce new ontologies that describe things. Other people write ‘widgets’ that know what to do with certain properties. If the people who write the ontologies re-use properties that other people have written widgets for, then half the work of visualising the data in the new ontology has been done.

It lives.

Blog in Blog: breakdown of versions in the wild

Looking at the download statistics for my WordPress Plugin Blog-in-Blog, (over 15,000 downloads so far whooo!) I see that WordPress is now giving me a breakdown of which versions are still out and running in the wild.  This is interesting.  Most people are using a more up-to-date version – but only just.

I wonder if the picture reflects a quarter of internet users who are always (perhaps obsessively) updating their plugins; a quarter who regularly update their plugins, and the rest who may or may not update plugins.

There’s actually probably a hundred and one reasons why people aren’t using the latest version. If it’s because you are having issues with a new version, then let me know and I will fix it!

What would students do with open data from academic institutions?

What would academics do with open data from academic institutions?

What would administration staff do with open data from academic institutions?

In each case the answer  will be different.

Students will probably want to see where courses are held, and what other extra curricular activities the institution offers or is close to. They may also want to compare their progress against their peers at other universities while they are there. This last idea could provide positive reinforcement in provision of quality teaching.

Academics are primarily interested in a couple of linked questions.  What Is new in my field?  How much stuff have I published in my field and how does that  contribute to the research counts of my department?

Administration staff would probably want to smooth the wheels of tracking a student’s progress through the university.  Which course they are on, who is paying their fees and when, any other status of the system. Not sure if there is any way in which they will want to share information openly? there must be something they wished that they could know easily…