Me2 findoo.info

An excuse to get stupid with a chainsaw, this ashtray was “carved” from a post oak limb that fell a couple years ago.

These are almost as old as some of my coworkers.

W3C today published the report of the Workshop on Data and Services Integration, hosted on 20-21 October 2011 by MITRE in Bedford, Massachusetts, USA. This workshop provided a way for the community to meet and discuss some of the challenges of integration of heterogeneous data and services. With the emergence of the Web, the need for reusing data and services has become even stronger as the number of available services has grown. Different services stacks now exist from Web Services to Cloud-based services. One goal of this workshop was to figure out the needs in the domain of integration that would benefit from standardization, or where discussion via Community or Business Groups could gather a critical mass.

The participants came to the conclusion that solutions to the data integration issues can be the result of better integration of tools helping going cross-stacks. They also discussed how to architect RESTful services in the enterprise, with a plan to create a group to work on Linked Data Patterns, specifically REST-based patterns on RDF and other formats.

The Media Analysis Management Interface Incubator Group published its final report, Media Analysis Management Interface XG Final Report. The Media Analysis Management Interface (MAMI) enables the understanding of the real world at a low cost by using analysis engines such as video image processing engines, sensor data analysis engines, and so on. It also enables various services to be easily provided, such as physical security, environmental load reduction, and intelligent accessibility services. The MAMI Incubator Group described the requirements of the MAMI and six use cases in three fields: energy saving, video surveillance, and operational improvement. The Incubator Group expects to collaborate with other W3C working groups, in particular the Multimodal Interaction Working Group.

This publication is part of the Incubator Activity. This work is not on the W3C standards track.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published a Group Note: MMI interoperability test report. This document describes an interoperability test, executed by various members of the Multimodal Interaction Working Group, to demonstrate interoperability of multimodal components which are implementing the "Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces" specification. Learn more about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

The XML Processing Model Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of XML processor profiles. This specification defines several XML processor profiles, each of which defines how any given XML document should be processed, both operationally and in terms of what information must be made available to applications. It is intended as a resource for other specifications, which can by a single normative reference establish precisely what input processing they require as well as what information they require. Comments are welcome through 29 February. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The XML Security Working Group invites implementation of three Candidate Recommendations: XML Signature Syntax and Processing Version 2.0, Canonical XML Version 2.0, and XML Signature Streaming Profile of XPath 1.0. XML Signatures provide integrity, message authentication, and/or signer authentication services for data of any type, whether located within the XML that includes the signature or elsewhere. The XML Security 2.0 specifications are designed to update the XML Signature and Canonical XML specifications to improve performance, streaming support, robustness, and reduced attack surface.

The Working Group has also published a W3C Note: XML Security RELAX NG Schemas, a document that provides RELAX NG schemas corresponding to the normative XSD schemas for XML Signature 1.1, XML Encryption 1.1, and related specifications.

To address patent disclosures related to the XML Signature 1.1 and XML Encryption 1.1 specifications, W3C has chartered a Patent Advisory Group. Concerns related to XML Signature 1.1 may also apply to XML Signature 2.0.

Learn more about the Security Activity.

Tiny ARM-based linux pc geared as a HTPC, for about $35. WANT.

Raspberry Pi | An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!

Tags: want, hardware, raspberrypi, mediapc, htpc, linux, arm, tiny, video

Original Article: Raspberry Pi | An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte! Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings - WordPress, web development, and world domination.

If you have an ammo box and some leftover chalkboard paint, why not? This one holds my assortment of tea, each of which are bagged in aloksaks. You can figure out the other things that store well in an airtight stash box.

The XML Schema Working Group has published Proposed Recommendations of two specifications: W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 Part 1: Structures, W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 Part 2: Datatypes. The former specifies the XML Schema Definition Language, which offers facilities for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML documents, including those which exploit the XML Namespace facility. The schema language, which is itself represented in an XML vocabulary and uses namespaces, substantially reconstructs and considerably extends the capabilities found in XML document type definitions (DTDs). This specification depends on XML Schema Definition Language 1.1 Part 2: Datatypes, which defines facilities for defining datatypes to be used in XML Schemas as well as other XML specifications. The datatype language, which is itself represented in XML, provides a superset of the capabilities found in XML document type definitions (DTDs) for specifying datatypes on elements and attributes. Comments are welcome through 20 February. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The XML Print and Page Layout Working Group has published a Working Draft of Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 2.0. XSL-FO is an XML vocabulary that uses CSS and additional properties for formatting documents to paged media. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Text Level 3. This CSS3 module defines properties for text manipulation and specifies their processing model. It covers line breaking, justification and alignment, white space handling, text decoration and text transformation. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of XMLHttpRequest Level 2. The XMLHttpRequest specification defines an API that provides scripted client functionality for transferring data between a client and a server. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C today published the final report of the Linked Enterprise Data Workshop, hosted by W3C on the 6-7 December in Cambridge, MA, USA. This workshop provided a way for the community to meet and discuss some of the challenges when deploying application relying on the principles of Linked Data. The presentations covered many different topics, ranging from the benefits a set of additional conventions would bring to specific technical issues such as the challenges of dealing with the reality that URLs do change sometimes, as well as the need for a more robust security model, and specific gaps in the current set of standards.

Participants of the Workshop agreed that W3C should create a Working Group to define a “Linked Data Platform”. This is expected to be an enumeration of specifications which constitute Linked Data, with some small additional specifications to cover specific functionality such as pagination. We anticipate a draft charter will be available in the coming weeks.

The Web Performance Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Navigation Timing. User latency is an important quality benchmark for Web Applications. While JavaScript-based mechanisms can provide comprehensive instrumentation for user latency measurements within an application, in many cases, they are unable to provide a complete end-to-end latency picture. To address the need for complete information on user experience, this document introduces the PerformanceTiming interfaces. This interface allows JavaScript mechanisms to provide complete client-side latency measurements within applications. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Basic User Interface Module Level 3 (CSS3 UI). The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a language for describing the rendering of HTML and XML documents on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. It uses various selectors, properties and values to style basic user interface elements in a document. This specification describes those user interface related selectors, properties and values that are proposed for CSS level 3 to style HTML and XML (including XHTML and XForms). It includes and extends user interface related features from the selectors, properties and values of CSS level 2 revision 1 and Selectors specifications. Comments are welcome through 14 February. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Patterns and antipatterns in JavaScript.

JavaScript pattern and antipattern collection

Tags: javascript, patterns, programming, webdev, js, jquery, antipattern,

Original Article: JavaScript pattern and antipattern collection Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings - WordPress, web development, and world domination.

W3C today published the final report of the Social Business Jam. The report authors recommended starting a W3C Social Business Community Group to evolve social standards around customer-driven use-cases. Participants in the the event, which took place last November using IBM's Collaboration Jam platform, explored how standards around social networking, such as those developed by the Federated Social Web XG, could lead to increased innovation throughout the business cycle. Over 1000 participants discussed topics such as identity management, mobile, attention, business processes, integration, and metrics. W3C invites people to join the Social Business Community Group.

Over the past few years, we’ve heard from a lot of business and hiring managers that they find it hard to find qualified UX professionals and UX-minded businesspeople to fill vacant jobs in their organizations. We’ve also heard from UX pros who say that, in a world where anyone can claim to be able to “do UX,” it’s hard to stand out from throngs of job seekers on high-volume sites such as Monster.com and Indeed.com.

We’re therefore pleased to announce that we’ve launched a new jobs board exclusively for the UX community. We believe that UX Magazine’s strong reputation in and focus on the UX community, coupled with the very high traffic volume our site receives, will mean our jobs board will be valuable to job seekers and employers alike.

You can find our new jobs board by going to uxmag.com/uxjobs, or by clicking “UX Jobs” in the nav bar from anywhere on UX...read more
By UX Magazine Staff

I travel through time / Walking toward the future / One day at a time. #haiku #moblog #fb

48 minutes ago via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@dougal

Dougal Campbell

Original Article: Tweetage from @dougal Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings - WordPress, web development, and world domination.

With waffle fries, at Rogue Tavern. Pretty tasty.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces. The specification describes a loosely coupled architecture for multimodal user interfaces, which allows for co-resident and distributed implementations, and focuses on the role of markup and scripting, and the use of well defined interfaces between its constituents. Learn more about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

The HTML Data Task Force of the Semantic Web Interest Group has published two documents today:

• The HTML Data Guide aims to help publishers and consumers of HTML data. With several syntaxes (microformats, microdata, RDFa) and vocabularies (schema.org, Dublin Core, microformat vocabularies, etc.) to choose from, it provides guidance on deciding what to choose in a way that meets the publisher's or consumer's needs.
• The Microdata to RDF describes processing rules that may be used to extract RDF from an HTML document containing microdata.

Both documents are Working Drafts, with the goal of publishing a final version as Interest Group Notes. Comments and feedbacks are welcome; please send them to the public-html-data-tf@w3.org mailing list.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 3. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. This module contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to the <image> type and replaced elements. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are the generalization of the <url> type to the <image> type, several additions to the ‘<image>’ type, a generic sizing algorithm for images and other replaced content in CSS, and several properties controlling the interaction of replaced elements and CSS's layout models. Comments are welcome through 07 February. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Weathermob is a niche social networking service for sharing information about local weather, much as Instagram is a service for sharing pictures. It lets you share what you’re feeling about local weather and see what your friends are saying about theirs. A lot of weather apps allow users to share the weather report with Facebook, Twitter, and so on, but what’s interesting with Weathermob is the manner in which it helps the user put together an engaging story.

This is a great example how to make a utility application engaging. It takes a basic function—viewing a weather report—and helps users create whole stories around local weather to express themselves.

Inviting, Conversational Language

...read more
By Sachendra Yadav

Use a second computer (Mac or Windows) as an additional external monitor for your Mac.

ScreenRecycler

Tags: mac, windows, osx, lion, monitors, screenrecycler, utils, vnc, remote

Original Article: ScreenRecycler Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings - WordPress, web development, and world domination.

The W3C Advisory Committee has elected Robin Berjon (unaffiliated) and re-elected Henry Thompson (U. of Edinburgh) to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG). W3C Director and TAG co-Chair Tim Berners-Lee also re-appointed Noah Mendelsohn (unaffiliated) and Jonathan Rees (Creative Commons). They join continuing participants Peter Linss (HP), Ashok Malhotra (Oracle), Larry Masinter (Adobe), and Jeni Tennison (unaffiliated). Many thanks to Dan Appelquist whose term ends this month. The mission of the TAG is to build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary, to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG, and to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C. Read the TAG's December 2011 finding Identifying Application State and learn more about their public work plan.

During a break in a long research day, I was speaking to a client about a project I was working on to develop iOS standards for a global financial company. Their initial response was, “What, you’re creating something beyond the Apple iOS Standards? What else is there to it?” We ended up having a lengthy discussion about mobile standards—what they are, what they are not, and what they should be. Apple, for instance, does a great job of explaining their touch interaction model and the individual UI elements of iOS, giving examples of when and how they are used. But there’s more to it than that.

From this conversation and other experiences I’ve had with creating standards, I realized that most companies approach standards from a branding perspective. Some may even approach them from...read more
By Megan Geyer

Unfurl, my pretties.

The Protocols and Formats Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of WAI-ARIA 1.0 User Agent Implementation Guide. This document describes how user agents should support keyboard navigation and respond to roles, states, and properties provided in Web content via WAI-ARIA. These features are used by authors creating accessible rich internet applications. Users often access the content using assistive technologies that rely on platform accessibility APIs to obtain and interact with information from the page. The WAI-ARIA User Agent Implementation Guide defines how implementations should expose content to accessibility APIs, helping to ensure that this information appears in a manner consistent with author intent. This document is part of the WAI-ARIA suite described in the WAI-ARIA Overview. Comments are welcome through 17 February. Learn more about the WAI Technical Activity.

The Provenance Working Group has published two First Public Working Drafts:

• PROV-AQ: Provenance Access and Query which specifies how to use standard Web protocols, including HTTP, to obtain information about the provenance of Web resources. This is part of the larger W3C provenance framework. Provenance refers to the sources of information, such as people and processes, involved in producing or delivering Web documents, data, and resources.
• PROV Model Primer which provides an intuitive introduction and guide to the core data model for building representations of the entities, people and processes involved in producing a piece of data or thing in the world.

Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

For anyone interested in trends in consumer electronics or in this year's Consumer Electronic's Show (CES), the folks at Upstream have put together an interesting trend guide. In their words:

In advance of this year’s show, we’ve created a trend report. We hope it will serve as a valuable guide for visitors, placing the products, services and experiences they see into the larger context of 5 macro-trends:

QUANTIFIED SELF & M-HEALTH

Personal biometrics and digital enabled behavior analysis will increasingly let consumers discreetly track and manage their lives more effectively.

GESTURAL INTERFACES & AUGMENTED REALITY 

New natural interfaces based on movement will allow more intuitive control of tech, increasing access to information and digital content.

SoLOMo...read more
By UX Magazine Staff