Google Chrome is a fresh expression of web browser, they’ve tried to make it quite bare-bones in terms of user interface but the backend is hooked into Mozilla Gecko (the engine behind Firefox, K-Meleon and Camino) and WebKit (the engine behind Apple’s Safari, and Adobe AIR), but with it’s own JavaScript engine (also Open Source) called V8.

At the time of writing this, only the Windows version was available. Mac and Linux versions are due to be released soon.

I’m writing this on Wednesday 3rd September 2008, I’m testing Google Chrome version 0.2.146.27 on Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate on a Toshiba Qosmio (2.4GHz Intel Dual Core).

Initial impressions

• Good: It’s reasonably quick with loading pages, everything seems to load up at the same time.
• Good: I like the URI highlighting. You’ll notice in the address bar the domain name is darker than the protocol, directory and file names
• Good: It handles viewing my own webpage nicely
• Good: handles javascript graphics manipulation well (for instance, my recent ModernEsotericChristianity page which uses the OpenLink AJAX ToolKit load up RDF and then show (and manipulate) an SVG graph using JavaScript)
• Good: It loads scriptaculous and jQuery (including Visual jQuery) well.
• Good: you can use search engines other than Google, in the address/search bar.
• Bad: No menu bar… I can’t stand not having a menu bar, not having one is one of the things I really dislike in Microsoft Windows Vista, the newest Microsoft Office and Microsoft Internet Explorer. It is a lot easier to use a menu bar than it is to use some silly drop down button.
• Bad: No status bar
• Bad: No plugins/add-ons/extensions… like the Firefox extensions that you get. Personally, I can’t live without the Web Developer Toolbar and OpenLink Data Explorer. I know that some people wouldn’t be able to live without Firebug, and soon alot of people will crave Mozilla Ubiquity.

Tests

How about using well established web-based tests to find out how it fairs up against Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer.

Conclusion

The conclusion is, if you want stability when it comes to accessing pages then go for Google Chrome as it is most likely to render the style and graphics of a page correctly. Safari comes up second in terms of style renderisation, followed by Firefox and Opera. Quite clearly you should never use Internet Explorer.

In terms of easiest to use, Chrome provides a nice interface but I think it needs some extra bits (such as a menu bar). Opera also provides some neat user experience features. Safari is really simple to use. Firefox has a reasonable user interface and it’s theming can make things even easier if desired. I personally find Internet Explorer really awkward to use.

For extensibility, nothing beats Firefox. The add-on system is practically perfect with its update from repository feature, and there are so many extensions in that repository. There are some plugins for Safari (see pimpmysafari.com ) , although not many. Unfortunately Chrome doesn’t have extensions yet, but as it reuses modules from the Firefox and Safari engine I suspect it will do in the future. As far as I know Opera and Internet Explorer don’t really have extensions yet, their developers tend to prefer to build features into the software.

For now, I think I’ll be sticking with Firefox… but I do suspect that Google Chrome will grow, and because of competition that will make Firefox, Safari and the other browsers grow also.

Peace and Light,

Daniel

If you haven’t signed up and want to come then please click the “Sign-up-now” link at the bottom of: http://knowledgeunconference.eventwax.com/bristol-knowledge-unconference

Recent email:

Here’s the recent email that I sent out to those on the attendee list:

– Reminder Section –

We are just sending you a reminder that this Friday, the 5th September 2008, the Bristol Knowledge Unconference will be running between 2pm and 6pm at eOffice Bristol on Wine Street in Bristol City Centre. Remember, it’s completely free to attend, we aren’t going to ask for any money.

More details about what, where and when are available on the website: http://knowledgeunconference.eventwax.com/bristol-knowledge-unconference

– Good News Section –

—- Tea, Coffee and Water —-

As some of you know, we were having problems finding tea and coffee machines. Luckily, eOffice have been very kind enough to offer them to us (with water) for free along with the conference room. So that problem has now been resolved.

If you wish to bring snacks in then you are very much free to do so as we won’t be providing snacks this time (maybe next time).

—- Preset slots are now set! —-

When organising the event I decided that we needed to have two definite preset slots in order to kick off the event… these slots shouldn’t be seen as “keynotes”, it is purely to get into the spirit of the event and they will be identical in structure to the four “set-on-the-day” slots.

I am pleased to announce that we’ve got the two preset slots set:
* 1st Preset Talk: “OpenShakespeare and Milton” by Iain Emsley of the eScience department at STFC
* 2nd Preset Talk: “The Fragmentation of Knowledge in the Brain” by Derek Smith, a Senior Lecturer in Informatics and Cognitive Science at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff

Both preset slots are about different aspects of knowledge storage, the first is a computational aspect and the second is a biological aspect. So it’ll definitely be rather interesting!

—- “Set-on-the-day” slots —

We have four “set-on-the-day” slots available, which means that on the day we turn up and those who can do a 15 minute presentation, will then put their name on a card and unless we’ve got just four (or less) people on cards we’ll take a vote for the presentations that we wish to hear. Any presentations not done will be placed on the list for the next Bristol Knowledge Unconference.

So if you’re happy quickly zipping up a 15 minute presentation about something related to knowledge then please do, it can be techie or scientific or even business related. Just remember that the target audience is a mixture of technologies, scientists, new media specialists and business-oriented people.

Just a reminder, the structure of all talks throughout the day is:
* 15 minute standard presentation
* 5 minute table talk, where people talk at their tables about the subject matter at hand, this tends to generate some more interesting ideas for the….
* 10 minute questions and comments time, in which the presenter gets quizzed

—- Posters —-

I have been asked by someone to put up a poster because they won’t be able to attend this time. If you fancy bringing along a poster to put up promoting your product, service or even job vacancies then please do.

—- Other bits —-

* At the last count we have 60 people on the attendee list, and from all kinds of aspects of knowledge - which is wonderful!
* At the venue there will be: projector, wifi, seats, tables. I will also be bringing two laptops: MacBook (with Mac OS X 10.5, including Firefox 3, Keynote, OpenOffice and Adobe Reader) and a Toshiba Qosmio 17inch Laptop (with Windows Vista Ultimate, including Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 7, OpenOffice and Adobe Reader). Feel free to bring your own laptop and/or other mobile devices.
* If you don’t want to present then that’s absolutely fine, there is no pressure. If you do want to present and don’t get the chance, then there will be more Bristol Knowledge Unconferences in the future, in which you’ll be able to present at.
* Remember: the event is going to be quite sociable, fun and a great place to learn in an informal atmosphere.
* Bring a digital camera along if you can, take some photos and then upload them to your favourite photo sharing site. If you can take movies too then that’s awesome.
* If you have a blog then please do review the event once it’s finished if you can. Your feedback will be greatly appreciated and will go into making the next one even better.

– Contact Section –

As usual, if you have any questions or comments then please do let me know either by email, skype or phone.

– Finally –

I’ll see you there!

Daniel

Modern Esoteric Christianity : http://vanirsystems.com/ModernEsotericChristianity

It’s a simple graph using two wordnet words as predicates (”invented” indicating that X invented Y, and “follow” indicating A follows B) . The URI’s are taken from wikipedia, and are therefore fetchable for humans (in HTML form) ( for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosicrucianism ) and fetchable for machines (in RDF form) using a proxy such as the OpenLink Virtuoso proxy ( for example: http://demo.openlinksw.com/proxy/rdf/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosicrucianism ).

Let me know what you think, as I say, I’m just toying at the moment… but comments are welcome.

(please be aware that some of the content of ModernEsotericChristianity may relate to Occult practices and things other than Christianity)

update: I forgot to say, it doesn’t work on Internet Explorer… because of SVG problems…. but you’ll be fine with Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, Opera and some other web browsers.

Anyway…. onward

Q: Is the desktop of the future going to just be a web-hosted version of the same old-fashioned desktop metaphors we have today?

A: In terms of becoming web-based the desktop as we know it will not change much at the very surface level. I doubt that a web-hosted version of the old-fashioned Operating System would ever be stable enough (some of you will know if you’ve ever used a “

dumb-terminal“). The Operating System, however, is likely to become more and more web-aware; taking up more and more of the challenge of “Web Universal Plug and Play”.

Q: The desktop of the future is going to be a hosted web service

A: False. I think it’ll be totally the inverse, I’m even inclined to say that everybody would host their own space which is interconnected with other services across the web…. it won’t be a “hosted web service”.

Q: The Browser is Going to Swallow Up the Desktop

A: Interestingly this is where Microsoft were heading in the right direction… the file system explorer was also the internet explorer, just by changing the location in the address bar you were capable of switching from file mode to web mode. (takes quite a lot for me to admit that). If you have a fully integrated system then you can take full advantage of everything. The web of documents, is a web of documents…. what are file systems good at manipulating… documents (and also viewing metadata)! So is the browser going to swallow up the desktop? No… it already has.

Q: The focus of the desktop will shift from information to attention

A: No information is vital…. attention will become an interesting part of search, but it’s actually has to maximise utilisation of information (aka knowledge) in order to do it’s best (just as any other program needs to do). This effects both desktop systems and browser systems.

Q: Users are going to shift from acting as librarians to acting as daytraders

A: People are always going to categorise things, and other people will always want things categorised. How can you expect someone to trawl through their bookmarks without them being categorised? However, things will become more automised when interlinked with other interlinked data…. therefore users are likely to become Personalised Knowledge Managers controlling what knowledge they possess and how they want their intelligent agents to deal with it.

Q: The Webtop will be more social and will leverage and integrate collective intelligence

A: OK, first off… really bad terminology usage going on here. Webtop? That’s a bad name… and for something which I don’t think will become widespread. Also collective intelligence is actually about agents having specific knowledge. The web-aware desktop will slowly include more and more agent technology (see some of the Apple/Xerox work on Intelligent Agents and Intelligent User Interfaces done in the late 80s and early 90s) and will certainly encorporate

Linked Data technologies (see the Semantic Desktop and OpenLink Data Spaces).

Q: The desktop of the future is going to have powerful semantic search and social search capabilities built-in

A: Yes, I’ve mentioned this in most of my answers above.

Q: Interactive shared spaces will replace folders

A: I agree with Kingsley when he says “Data Spaces and their URIs (Data Source Names) replace everything. You simply choose the exploration metaphor that best suits you space interaction needs”… there is nothing more to say than that…. a URI is the key to a data space, a data space is where your data objects are stored which also have their own URIs.

Q: The Portable Desktop

A:The portable desktop (or ubiquitous desktop) will emerge as a mobilisation of a Linked Data desktop…. all depends on hardware at the moment. This will go beyond mobile phones, mobile computers (such as the Asus EEE) and PDA’s.

Q: The Smart Desktop

A: Yes, this is what I’ve been discussing.

Q: Federated, open policies and permissions

A: Have we not got the technologies for these points already

Q: The personal cloud

A: Can’t add anything more to Kingsley’s point “

Personal Data Spaces plugged into Clouds (Intranet, Extranet, Internet).”

Q: The WebOS

A: There are some interesting implementations of the WebOS idea out there, and a few years I was actually considering building one using Ruby On Rails and AJAX….. really we don’t need to focus on this right now, it’s more about interlinking things (aka Linked Data)

Q: Who is most likely to own the future desktop?

A: I have nothing more to add to Kingsley’s comment: “You! And all you need is a

URI (an ID or Data Source Name for “Entity You”) and a Profile Page (a place where “Entity You” is Describe by You).”

Greenbelt festival 2008 was really fantastically good! Michael Franti & Spearhead are an awesome band, as are Aradhna. Plus my church (Foundation Bristol) did a fantastic service where they told the story about the Tower of Babel using some funky music and interesting visuals (it was quite “New Media” style and “Emerging“) (”To Confuse is to Liberate!”). I actually feel more enlightened after the whole weekend, and Beki and I have booked our tickets for Greenbelt 2009 and are even thinking about running our own event!

At the event I bought a didgeridoo and a Peruvian Ocarina. I also learnt how to sing Taize, Iona and Gregorian Chants and Songs.

Linked Data SemanticBible

Development of the Linked Data version of the SemanticBible is going well, and a big thank you to Sean Boisen of semanticbible.com for assisting us with various things. I’ll be working on hooking the ontologies in with various other ontologies around the Linked Data Cloud.

Fishes

It seems like two of my oranda fish are “getting it on”… having lots of little baby fish is going to be quite scary. Not sure what I’ll do with them!

Hospital

I went to hospital this morning for my Dilated Cardiomyopathy (for the first time in Bristol), they took 7 tubes of blood out of me, gave me an ECG. They are also going to book me in for an Echocardiogram appointment and potentially a treadmill, they will also be sending me a week-long heart monitor device. Also, rather unfortunately, I’ve got to double up on my Bisoprolol (a beta-blocker) which means that I’m going to probably experience some periods of fatigue while I get used to the new dosage

Bristol Knowledge Unconference

Bristol Knowledge Unconference organisation is going really really well. I sent out a few emails to people on the registration list this morning, letting them know a bit more about the style and organisation of the event. And I’m formally publicising the following event structure:

All times are pm:-

• 2:00 - 2:15 : Arrival & Whiteboard Scribbling (for the set-on-the-day talks)
• 2:15 - 2:20 : Introduction to the event
• 2:20 - 2:50 : 1st Preset Talk
• 2:50 – 2:55 : Setup
• 2:55 - 3:25 : 2nd Preset Talk
• 3:25 – 3:35 : Break & Whiteboard Scribbling (for the set-on-the-day talks)
• 3:35 - 4:05 : 1st set-on-the-day Talk
• 4:05 – 5:05 : Setup
• 4:05 - 4:35 : 2nd set-on-the-day Talk
• 4:35 – 4:45 : Break
• 4:45 - 5:15 : 3rd set-on-the-day Talk
• 5:15 – 5:20 : Setup
• 5:20 - 5:50 : 4th set-on-the-day Talk
• 5:50 – 6:00 : Clearup
• 6:00 onwards food & drink at the nearby restaurants/pubs

It looks like one of our preset slots might be fixed, so if you’d like to do a preset slot and insure that you have a presentation slot then please do email me.

University

I’ll be starting my masters at the end of September, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m in conversations with a company who is willing to fund my masters project as part of a larger project (sorry, I can’t say more than that).

I am very very pleased to announce something which I have been working on for a while which is the transformation of SemanticBible into Linked Data. Please be aware that this a very early version at the moment, and so if you see it break when you are looking around then I’m probably improving and enhancing it.

More information (and recent update information) is available on the Linked Data SemanticBible about page. But here’s a quote from it for you:

SemanticBible is an online Semantic Web version of the Bible, it has lots of facts and figures about the Christian sacred texts. Please do have a browse around.

A Brief History

SemanticBible started life as a project by Sean Boisen over at SemanticBible.com, but Daniel Lewis and his colleagues at OpenLink Software decided to help Sean out by providing a Linked Data based approach. The outcome was this service.

Starting URIs:

• http://semanticbible.openlinksw.com/bible/cgi : The Composite Gospel : holds information about the stories in the Gospels
• http://semanticbible.openlinksw.com/bible/NTIndividuals :New Testament Individuals : holds information about people and places referenced in the New Testament
• http://semanticbible.openlinksw.com/ontology/cgi : The Composite Gospel Ontology : the vocabulary for describing the stories in the Gospel
• http://semanticbible.openlinksw.com/ontology/NTNames : The New Testament Names Ontology : The vocabulary for describing the people and places referenced in the New Testament

As I said before, do expect it to break randomly…. but if it seems like theres something not quite right, or if you have any feature requests that you wish to add then do email my work email ( dlewis[at]openlinksw[dot]com ) or skype me ( daniel.lewis ).

Watch “Pale Blue Dot“

Setup:

• 64 bit processor
• Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron
• Evolution 2.22.3.1
• evolution-rss 0.0.8

Hiya.
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the cancellation of Barcamp Oxford on September 20-21. Here’s why:

i) the primary sponsor, who we were in the final stages of negotiation with (and who were ready to pay for 90% of everything), have ceased trading and brought the administrators in. Having talked with the administrators, there is no money. For anything. Evidently the company in question were VC-funded and blew too much money without keeping track.
ii) the secondary sponsor, who were initially willing to be a primary sponsor until they had marketing cutbacks, have had further marketing cutbacks and are now unable to assist with the current economic climate.

These are the two main reasons. A third reason was restrictions of internet access at the venue itself, not a deal breaker by any stretch, but the absence of wireless and an understandably well-controlled IT policy at the college itself was too big a mountain to climb with the other factors.

So, Barcamp Oxford in its current form is off, and I am hereby passing the baton to anyone who wants to take it and run with it. I am shortly to start discussions of a similar camp-style event in Abingdon (down the road, OX14), and if anything comes of that, I will communicate to you accordingly.

For anyone who is planning a camp-style event in Oxford, you have my best wishes - I am more than happy to share experiences if you want some tips. I can say that the venue, Manor Road, were by far the nicest, most co-operative people I’ve dealt with at Oxford venues, and the sponsors, until they went quiet, were very progressive thinking and very open to ideas.

With that, I wish you a good week.

best;

Pete
(Organiser)

If you’re still interested in attending a BarCamp or Unconference then these events are running from September until the end of the year (2008):

• Bristol Knowledge Unconference
• BathCamp 
• BarCampLondon5
• SocialMediaCampLondon
• Be2Camp (London)