I _Really_ Don't Know

The records in a university library catalogue typically have many different origins: created by the library, obtained from a national library or a book supplier etc. So, who ‘owns’ them? And what are the legal implications of making them available to others when this involves copying, transferring them into different formats, etc.?

The JISC has just commissioned a study to explore some of these issues as they apply to UK university libraries and to provide practical guidance to library managers who may be interested in making their catalogue records available in new ways. Outcomes are expected by the end of 2009. from Sharing and re-use of catalogue records: what are the legal implications? : Information Environment Team.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Printing Press by Thomas Hawk, Licensed cc-nc"][/caption]

I was talking to a colleague recently about ebooks and the lack of access to course text books electronically. I asked why he thought that was, and he suggested that we were waiting for digital rights management to be sorted out - he meant that in his view we were waiting for DRM technology to be strong enough to protect publishers' intellectual property rights.

Computing and communicating through the Web makes it virtually impossible to leave the past behind. College Facebook posts or pictures can resurface during a job interview; a lost or stolen laptop can expose personal photos or messages; or a legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating or just embarrassing details from the past.

Vanish is a research system designed to give users control over the lifetime of personal data stored on the web or in the cloud. Specifically, all copies of Vanish encrypted data — even archived or cached copies — will become permanently unreadable at a specific time, without any action on the part of the user or any third party or centralized service. from Vanish: Enhancing the Privacy of the Web with Self-Destructing Data.

Introduction

ExcelRDF is a proposed serialisation for RDF using the Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet format. This work was inspired by the discussions in the semantic web community about Linked Data and whether or not it mandates the use of RDF. This document is not trying to prove a point, insult anyone or come down on either side of the argument. I just noticed that it hadn't been done and it didn't seem too difficult. Of course, that it hadn't been done should have been enough of a warning to me that it is not, in any sense, desirable.

Conventions used in this document

Overview

• The spreadsheet MUST contain one or more sheets that meet the following conventions.
• A sheet SHOULD contain zero or more rows of RDF data.
• Column A of each non-empty row of a sheet SHOULD contain a URI indicating the Subject of a statement.
• Column B of each non-empty row of a sheet SHOULD contain a URI indicating the Property of a statement.
• Column C MAY contain either a URI or a literal value as the Object of a statement.
• If Column C contains a literal value then Column D MAY contain a language identifier in accordance with [IETF BCP 47](http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#RFC1766).
• If Column C contains a literal value then Column E MAY contain a type specifier indicating the type of the literal value.

Example

ExcelRDF Example File

Use Cases

ExcelRDF may be useful where a specific contract, policy or agreement means that the data must be delivered as an Excel spreadsheet while the underlying data is more useful in RDF.

great explanation from Dan Brickley:

The non-RDF bits of the data Web are – roughly – going to be the leaves on the tree. The bit that links it all together will be, as you say, the typed links, loose structuring and so on that come with RDF. This is also roughly analagous to the HTML Web: you find JPEGs, WAVs, flash files and so on linked in from the HTML Web, but the thing that hangs it all together isn’t flash or audio files, it’s the linky extensible format: HTML. For data, we’ll see more RDF than HTML (or RDFa bridging the two). But we needn’t panic if people put non-RDF data up online…. it’s still better than nothing. And as the LOD scene has shown, it can often easily be processed and republished by others. People worry too much! :) from What else? « Web of Data.

Paul Miller, a good friend and ex-colleague, has been having a tough time arguing that perhaps Linked Data doesn't need RDF. Don't misunderstand that, he thinks RDF is a Good Thing and Best Practice for Linked Data. But he thinks a dogmatic stance is unhelpful.

The problem, I contend, comes when well-meaning and knowledgeable advocates of both Linked Data and RDF conflate the two and infer, imply or assert that ‘Linked Data’ can only be Linked Data if expressed in RDF.

This dogmatism makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I find myself unable to agree with the underlying premise. In the twitter stream that Paul links to there is some comment reminding people that RDF can take many forms, not just RDF/XML.

kidehen: @andypowe11 re. #rdf, it's the data model for #linkeddata based #metadata. Remember #rdf != RDF/XML, no escaping RDF model re. #linkeddata. Ian Davis (my boss) took a strong stance saying that if things weren't RDF then they weren't linked data. Perhaps the very thing Paul sees as a dogmatic stance. Ironic as Ian is far from dogmatic. But Ian is defending the term Linked Data, not saying that's the only way to publish data on the web...

TallTed: @iand "I think LD better for many cases, but there are times i'd rather hv a spreadsheet." What? Can a spreadsheet not hold #LinkedData? Well, it seems to me both Paul and Ian are right to a strong degree and are essentially arguing over only one thing - the meaning of the term Linked Data.

Paul quote Tim Berners-Lee's design note on Linked Data:

Steve Dale pushing question of why local and central government is still using IE6.

The latest information on IE6 market share is just over 12%. I’m betting that a good proportion of this 12% is public sector workers who continue to be poorly served by their IT departments and CIOs who don’t see the browser as being an important component in improving user productivity. from Communities and Collaboration » Why are Government and Local Councils still using IE6?.

Fancy a job building great web apps? Interested in being an early part of publishing large amounts of data on the semantic web? Want to help build fantastically useful search interfaces to be used by millions of people? We're hiring.

We're looking for a Web Application Technical Lead who knows how to build great web interfaces and wants to get into the next wave of the web, Linked Data and the semantic web.

So, after my success fixing a Philips Plamsa TV my dad is giving me his Sony Bravia LCD KDL32V. It's not working following lightning storms and has been written off by the insurers following a £350 repair quote, but we all know that £350 buys you a handful of capacitors and maybe a triode or three from a pro repair shop.

Hence I pick it up tomorrow to take a look at :-)

from OTTO - Controllerism Instrument at djtechtools.com:

Controllerism continues to take small leaps forward as the software and techniques improve but the giant steps are going to happen in the realm of performance interfaces. Without a solid controller surface that has been designed to play like an instrument we wont be able to leave the realm of noodling and enter the fabled land of flow. Specialised controllers continue to evolve and this is a really interesting, focussed, loop controller.