Fed Thread is a front end for the newly XMLified Federal Register. Why is this a big deal? It’s a daily publication of the goings-on of the US government. It’s a primary source for all kinds of things that normally only get rehashed through news organizations. And it is bulky–nobody can read through it on a regular basis. A yearly subscription (printed) would cost nearly $1000 and fill over 80,000 pages.

Having it in XML enables all kinds of searching, syndication, and annotation via flexible front ends like this one. Yay for transparency. -m

Another XForms site launched this week. This one seems pretty close to what I would like XForms Institute to become, if I had an extra 10 hours per week. -m

I had been asking around earlier for large RDF datasets. Here’s one. Looks like a great contest to build an app around this, but unfortunately, the deadline looks like it’s soonish (1 Oct).

What is it?

The major part of the dataset was crawled during February/March 2009 based on datasets provided by Falcon-S, Sindice, Swoogle, SWSE, and Watson using the MultiCrawler/SWSE framework. To ensure wide coverage, we also included a (bounded) breadth-first crawl of depth 50 starting from http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card.

The downloaded content was parsed using the Redland toolkit with rdfxml, rss-tag-soup, rdfa parsers. We rewrote blank node identifiers to include the data source in order to provide unique blank nodes for each data source, and appended the data source to the output file. The data is encoded in NQuads format and split into chunks of 10m statements each.

The page includes some fairly detailed statistics on the data breakdown. Cool. -m

As part of the 300 program, Steorn recently released specific details about their technology, which was pretty much the whole point of the 300. The general reaction has been vaguely positive and appreciative (like this posting), though there is a huge self-selection bias in play.

Their key operating principle is clever and unlike anything I’ve seen in my armchair studies of supposed magnetic motion machines. But it’s complicated, in a way that is like the EM equivalent of the three-body problem. In other words, their description is neither obviously wrong nor right. Any time you have moving magnetic fields and pulsating electromagnet currents, hard-to-predict interactions tend to happen. There’s also a host of measurement difficulties, including properly accounting for power factors and complex number phasors for power input/output in inductive circuits.

There’s still a vast disconnect between the jury announcement and failed public demonstration and everything else still going on. It’s fascinating to watch. :-)

-m

I’m heading off to beautiful downtown Montréal this weekend for Balisage, my first appearance at this particular conference. If you’re heading there too, look me up. -m

I hate moving at high speed with multiple large chunks of metal in close formation.

I hate the sound of traffic. The smell.

I hate it when  people jump in a car to drive somewhere a block away.

I hate driving. I hate parking. I hate SUVs.

Also, getting a root canal leaves me in a foul mood.

More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.

I’m noodling around with requirements and exploring existing work toward a solution for “decentralized extensability” on xml-dev, particularly for HTML. The notion of “Java-style” syntax, with reverse dns names and all, has come up many times in the context of these kinds of discussions, but AFAICT never been fully fleshed out. This is ongoing, slowly, in available time–which as been a post or two per week.  (In case there is any doubt, this is a spare-time effort not connected with my employer)

Check it out and add your knowledge to the thread. -m

Come join me at the Demo Jam at Balisage this year. August 11 at 6:30 pm. There will be lots of cool demos, judged by audience participation. I’d love to see you there. -m

The Steorn 300 program is underway, and yes, I am one of the 300 looking at their information which is coming out in once-a-week bursts in the form of educational modules. So far, nothing interesting. Some basic physics lessons, and somewhat more interesting forum activity.

But all signs seem to be pointing in the wrong direction for a miraculous breakthrough. A jury of members selected by Steorn recently unanimously stated:

The unanimous verdict of the Jury is that Steorn’s attempts to demonstrate the claim have not shown the production of energy. The jury is therefore ceasing work.

Even this announcement raises more questions, and at this point in the game, more questions is not a good thing. Of the 22 original jury members, apparently only 16 were left at the end. Those 16 were unanimous, but what did the other 6 think? Were they booted as dissenters? Also allegedly the jury was never presented with actual hardware, which seems completely crazy and counterproductive from the standpoint of the company that convened the jury.

This kind of story has unfolded many times before, and it doesn’t end well. I’ve spent many hours debunking energy claims and perpetual motion devices. But hey, the company says they are proceeding with plans to commercialize the technology by the end of 2009. No matter what happens, it will be interesting to watch. -m

Previously: How Orbo works, When the experimenter wants to believe, and The downside of free energy.

I’m thrilled to announce MarkLogic 4.1 and with it my project App Services, is here. Top-of-the-post props go out to Colleen, David, and Ryan who made it happen.

You might already know that MarkLogic Server is a super-powerful database slash search engine powering projects like MarkMail. (But did you know there’s a free-as-in-beer edition?) The next step is to make it easier to use and build your own apps on top of the server.

The first big piece is the Search API, which lets you do “Google-style” searches over your content like this:

search:search(“MP3 OR iPod AND color:black -Zune”)

The built-in grammar includes AND, OR, parens for grouping, – for negation, quotations for phrases, and easy ways to define facets like date:today or author:”Bill Shakespeare” or GPA:3.95. By passing in additional options, you can redefine the grammar and control all aspects of the search and how the results are returned. Numerous grass-roots efforts at doing someting like this had begun to spring up, so the time was right to come out with an officially-sanctioned API. For those developers who haven’t seen the light yet and don’t fancy XQuery, an API like this is a huge benefit.

The next piece builds on the Search API to offer a graphical App Builder tool that produces a simplified MarkMail-type app around your content. It looks like this:

The App Builder itself is based on XForms via the excellent XSLTForms library and REST, making it a full-blown XRX application.

Lots more info, videos, screencasts, articles, and more are coming soon.

You can start playing with this now by visiting the download page. Under the Community License, you can put 10 gigs of content into it for noncommercial production free-as-in-beer.

Enjoy! I’ll be catching my breath for the next two months*. -m

* Not really

When I get time, I want to watch all of this program on fora.tv from Dave McLean in SF who talks about how to make beer, why it tastes like it does, and why some people prefer various styles of beer.

It’s a good follow-up to the NHC reception I made it to last week, with a 3 course dinner (each made with and served with a different beer), a lecture by the highly entertaining Brewing Scientist Charlie Bamforth, and a tasting panel of 20 different additives as palate training.

Even if you’re busy, take some time to appreciate the things you might otherwise enjoy without thinking. -m

I’m sticking around Sunnyvale, but am selling my house. It’s a smaller “starter home”place good for a small family. It’s close to Yahoo!, Google, Ebay, Cisco, and lots of other South Bay companies. In a great neighborhood with lots of parks, restaurants (Giovanni’s Pizza just down the street is fantastic), and a nearby movie theater. If you know anyone moving into the area and looking for a place, here’s a chance to short-circuit a lot of the hassle and get straight into well-cared-for place from a reputable seller.

I’m hesitant to post my address and pictures of my house, etc. here. Email me if you want to see more. -m

I was shocked today to find out that one of my old friends from the Yahoo Search days was let go in the last round. He’s simply brilliant and would have been one of the last people I would have expected that the managers-in-purple could do without.

At the same time, I’m getting hounded by recruiters–five so far just this week.

So let me put these two forces against each other and see if they cancel out. To any former Yahoos: get in touch with me and I’ll do what I can to hook you up with a cool opportunity. This offer is good for June and July–after that I can’t reasonably say I’ll have time for matchmaking. Send me your CV via email and I’ll get started. No promises on results, but I’ll do what I can. :-)

-m

Balisage, formerly Extreme Markup, is the kind of conference I’ve always wanted to attend.

Historically my employers have been not quite enough involved in the deep kinds of topics at this conference (or too cash-strapped, but let’s not go there) to justify spending a week on the road. So I’m glad that’s no longer the case: Mark Logic is sponsoring the conference this year. I’m looking forward to the show, and since I’m not speaking, I might be able to relax a little and soak in some of the knowledge.

See you there! -m

About a week ago I moved XForms Institute over to Subversion. Now the entire site is under version control, with a local copy I can edit. Publishing is as easy as logging in and running the command ‘svn up’. Honestly, I should have done this long ago. And any future sites I work on will use this approach too–it’s fantastic.

If you notice any glitches, let me know. -m

Another anniversary this week, one year at Mark Logic. Much of it in stealth mode, but more details of what I’ve been up to are forthcoming. -m

My plan is to start unsubstantiated rumors about the SUV Flu, and by association cause people to distance themselves from said implicated devices. You can help.

Despite denials from the CDC (you know they’re in the pockets of the auto industry), SUV flu is serious and spreading fast. You might already have it and not realize it. The SUV flu spreads primarily through close contact with gas-guzzling vehicles, such as so-called Sport Utility Vehicles. California has been hit the hardest, with sources reporting that in a small hamlet outside of Oxnard over 3000 drivers have been seen staggering away from their parked vehicles, and further reports indicate that up to 80 top epidemiologists nationwide are stranded and unable to commute to work.

Transmission occurs primarily via exhaust emission and requires close contact between source and recipient because contaminants do not remain suspended in the air and generally rise directly to the ozone layer. Contact with contaminated surfaces (including bucket seats and 4-wheel-drive shifters) is another possible source of transmission.

The estimated incubation period is unknown and could range from 1-7 days, but more likely 3 years or 36,000 miles.

Patients with uncomplicated disease due to confirmed (or unconfirmed) SUV flu virus infection have experienced inflated ego, increased road rage, chronic lack of consideration for others, decreased awareness of nearby traffic, fatigue, vomiting, or diarrhea. In West Palm Beach, 95% of patients with SUV flu met the case definition of opprobrism.

Anyone showing signs–however faint–of possible SUV flu should pull over, immediately self-diagnose, and proclaim the results on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or a nearby blog. If you are somehow still disease-free, carefully avoid contamination vectors mentioned above. Please help spread the warning about this dangerous disease, using the hashtag #suvflu.

Be careful out there.

More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.

As of today, I have been out of Yahoo! for a full year. And what a year it’s been… I guess that means I’m now free to recruit…any good XML people still wearing purple? -m

The universe is deeply, fundamentally weird. At the quantum level, all kinds of non-intuitive effects are the building blocks of, well everything. So what if not just observing, but believing in a particular outcome could influence the actual outcome of an experiment?

Something like that could explain a lot: many of the claims of perpetual motion machines, cold fusion a la Stanley and Pons, the placebo effect, Steorn Orbo technology (previous discussion), and numerous similar endeavors. Who’s to say that some aspect of what we call consciousness doesn’t involve some kind of probability manipulation?

The conventional scientific method would be at a loss to deal with such a situation. True Believers would proclaim miraculous results from their experiments, but Skeptics would be unable to reproduce the results. Strong skeptics would set up million dollar rewards to prove crackpottish claims under “controlled conditions”, and nobody would ever collect.

Such a conceit is the basis for a story I’m working on. The first drafts were written 18 months ago, as part of NaNoWriMo 2007. I may be ready for some early reviewers by the summer. Interested? -m

1. Don’t panic. Panic == not thinking clearly.
2. Avoid Twitter until symptoms subside. Probably HuffPost and Drudge too.
3. Think ahead. If you don’t already have an Emergency Preparedness Kit assembled, well, that was kind of dumb. Over your next few trips to the grocery store, gradually get stuff for one.
4. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. If in doubt, ask a doctor.
5. The Time.com article is pretty even-handed, worth a read.

-m

Thanks to those who wrote in with bug reports about the XForms Validator: something changed recently and made the inserted Google Ads script confuse browsers, resulting in a blank page where you’d expect results. I’ve turned off the response-page ads, which were only getting in the way, and the problem seems to have vanished. Carry on. :-) -m

I’ve always thought that the EXSLT model of developing community specifications worked well. Now a critical mass of folks has come together on a similar effort, aimed at providing extensions usable in XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, XQuery, and other XPath-based languages like XProc. Maybe even XForms.

Check it out, subscribe to the mailing list, and help out if you can. -m

Never trust a document with “Manifesto” in the title, nor that document’s writer.

More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.

The 1980 BBC version with John Cleese. Available for instant watching, but will go away on April 01. Apparently lots of BBC stuff is supposedly going away soon. (I’ve never linked to a Netflix title before, let me know if it doesn’t work) -m

With apologies to a real news site. (02-27) 16:14 PST SEATTLE, (AP)

Amazon.com Inc. changed course Friday and said it would allow copyright holders to decide whether they will permit their works to be read aloud by the latest laryngeal apparatus, a feature that has been under development for several thousand years.

The move comes nearly two weeks after a group representing authors expressed concern that the feature, which was intended to be able to read every book, blog, magazine and newspaper out loud, would undercut separate audiobook sales. The average American can use their larynx to read text in a somewhat stilted voice.

Amazon said in a statement that it, too, has a stake in the success of the audiobook market, and pointed to its Brilliance Audio and Audible subsidiaries, which publish and sell professionally recorded readings.

“Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rights holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat,” the company said.

Amazon is working on the technical changes needed for authors and publishers to turn text-to-speech off for individual titles.

The Web retailer also said the text-to-speech feature is legal — and wouldn’t require Amazon to pay out additional royalties — because a book read aloud doesn’t constitute a copy, a derivative work or a performance.

More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.

From the company home page, reknown XSLT trainer and friend G. Ken Holman has expanded his offerings to include XQuery training. The first such session is March 16-20, alongside XML Prague.

I’ve always thought there is great power in having both XSLT and XQuery tools at one’s disposal. I’ve seen people tend to polarize into one camp or the other, but in truth there is a lot of common ground, as well as cases where the right technology makes for a much more elegant solution. So learning both is easier than it seems, and more useful than it seems.

If you will be around the conference, take a look at the syllabus. I’m curious to see others’ reactions toward the combined XSLT + XQuery toolset. -m

XSLTForms, the cross-browser XForms engine (written about previously) that makes ingenious use of built-in XSLT processing, reached an important milestone today, with a beta release. Tons of bug fixes and additional support for CSS and Schema.

If you’re thinking about getting involved with XForms and are looking for something small and approachable, give it a look. -m

This year’s Mark Logic User Conference is May 12-14, in beautiful San Francisco. Attend the conference at no charge as a speaker! Submit a proposal for a breakout session on business applications, technical implementation, or best practices. Deadline is February 13th. Thanks! -m

If you’ve seen MarkMail before, you may be pleased to know that a new version launched last week, including new features (like saved search sets) for power users. If you haven’t seen MarkMail before, what are you waiting for? -m

P.S. If you could use something like this behind your firewall, ping me.

Busy week ahead. Minimal posting. -m