What is the Semantic Web?

Semantic Web is global mesh of information that is easily processed by machines. It is an efficient way to represent data on the World Wide Web. This sytem was thought up by Tim Bernes-Lee, who was the inventor of the WWW, URIs, HTTP, and HTML. It is constantly worked on by a team of people at the World Wide Web consortium (W3C). Also many languages, publications and tools have already been developed based on this sytem.

The Semantic Web allows people to publish and find information faster and easier. It is built on syntaxes which us URIs, Uniform Resource Identifier, to represent data, usually in triples based structures. A language which uses URIs is called RDF, Resource Description Framework. RDF XML is considered to be the standard interchange format for RDF on the Semantic Web. Semantic Web languages are very powerful in that they make it very easy for people to create and publish information using URIs and that it is very unconstraining in what it lets people say and do. But at the same time, they are the basis for very well defined and structured applications.

The next step in the architecture of the Semantic Web is trust and proof. Applications on the Semantic Web will depend on context generally to let people know whether or not to trust the data. These applications will generally contain proof checking mechanisms and digital signatures. The Semantic Web is growing and it is important that we address these issues before they get out of control.

Source: The Semantic Web: An Introduction [http://infomesh.net/2001/swintro/]

Google Toolbar Beta 4.0

Now you can make your Toolbar as unique as you are. You can add buttons and bookmarks; get instant search suggestions; share web pages with friends; and enjoy the Toolbar's pop-up blocker, web form filler, and spellchecker. Learn more about Google Toolbar Beta 4.0 and also get a copy for yourself at http://www.google.com/tools/toolbar/T4/index.html.

Google Toolbar 4.0

XSLT Operations

<xsl:when test="ceiling(number($variable1) div number($variable2)) = 2">

You can perform the following operations on XSLT variables:

ceiling($variable): returns the smallest integer greater than or equal to $variable
number($variable): casts $variable to a number
div: performs division operation

Installed J2SE Development Kit and NetBeans IDE

The Install Wizard has successfully installed J2SE Development Kit 1.4.2_10 and NetBeans IDE 4.1 on your computer. Choose Finish to exit the Wizard.  J2SE Development Kit 1.4.2_10 installation location: C:\j2sdk1.4.2_10  NetBeans IDE 4.1 installation location: C:\Program Files\netbeans-4.1
To run the IDE, launch:
C:\Program Files\netbeans-4.1\bin\netbeans.exe
To uninstall the IDE, launch:
C:\Program Files\netbeans-4.1\_uninst\uninstaller.exe
To uninstall J2SE Development Kit 1.4.2_10:
Use Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel

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Mix 06

The MIX conference is a 72-hour conversation between web developers, designers and business leaders. When you attend MIX you’ll learn the latest about IE7, Windows Media, Windows Live!, as well as “Atlas”, Microsoft’s new AJAX framework.

MIX
March 20-22, 2006
At The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino
Las Vegas, NV

[Source: http://www.mix06.com/]

QuickNote - Firefox Extension

I've just downloaded another Firefox extension called QuickNote. It allows me to take note from within Firefox. I can open it in a seperate window, a new tab, or a sidebar. As a web developer, I tend to switch between NotePad and Firefox a lot but not anymore. Thanks to QuickNote. This extension is my new favorite. You should give it a try too. Download it here. Let me know what you think.

Javascript Keywords

break case continue delete do else false for function if in new null return switch this true typeof var void while with

Reserved keywords but not used by Javascript
catch class const debugger default enum export extends finally import super try

My Firefox Extensions

If you haven't done so already, you should go ahead and download Firefox browser. It comes with extensions and themes that you can download and install to improve your browsing experience. My favorite extension is the Web Developer and my favorite theme is iFox. Here is my recommended list of extensions.

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New Year Resolutions

Top 10 Most Common New Year Resolutions

1. Lose weight


2. Stop smoking


3. Stick to a budget


4. Save or earn more money


5. Find a better job


6. Become more organized


7. Exercise more


8. Be more patient at work/with others


9. Eat better


10. Become a better person

Top 10 InPhonic New Year Resolutions

1. Make coffee when taking last cup


2. Do own dishes in kitchen


3. Clean up mess when making beverages


4. Throw out old food in fridge


5. Restock coffee, MOOs, etc.


6. Remove paper jam in printer


7. Add toner to printer


8. Put paper in printer


9. Leave cell phone outside bathroom


10. Attend IT Bowling Bash

Thanks to Holly for this list.

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New HR Policies

Please be advised that there are NEW rules and regulations implemented to raise the efficiency of our firm.

TRANSPORTATION:

• It is advised that you come to work driving a car according to your salary.


• If we see you driving a Honda, we assume you are doing well financially and therefore you do not need a raise.


• If you drive a 10 year old car or taking public transportation, we assume you must have lots of savings therefore you do not need a raise.


• If you drive a Pickup, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a raise.

ANNUAL LEAVE:

• Each employee will receive 52 Annual Leave days a year (Wooow!). They are called Sunday.

LUNCH BREAK:

• Skinny people get 30 minutes for lunch as they need to eat more so that they can look healthy.


• Normal size people get 15 minutes for lunch to get a balanced meal to maintain their average figure.


• Fat people get 5 minutes for lunch, because that's all the time needed to drink a Slim Fast and take a diet pill.

SICK DAYS:

• We will no longer accept a doctor Medical Cert as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

TOILET USE:

• Entirely too much time is being spent in the toilets.


• There is now a strict 3-minute time limit in the cubicles. At the end of three minutes, an alarm will sound, the toilet paper roll will retract, the door will open.

INTERNET USAGE:

• All personal internet usage will be recorded and charges will be deducted from your bonus (if any) and if we decide not to give you any, charges will be deducted from your salary. (note: Rs.20 per minute as we have 4MB connection).


• Just for the record. 73% of the staff will not be entitled to anY salary for the next 3 months as their internet charges have exceeded their 3 months salary.


• Thank you for your loyalty to our company. We are here to provide a positive employment experience.

Q&A: MySpace Founders Chris DeWolfe And Tom Anderson

A year ago Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. was an Internet also-ran. Now his Web presence rivals that of giants Google, Yahoo! and America Online, due in large part to his $629 million purchase of Intermix Media, and its MySpace social-networking business.

Two-year-old MySpace is a next-generation Friendster--a series of individualized Web pages maintained by some 46.7 million users, who generate 12.5 billion page views a month. Natalie Pace, CEO and founder of i-Sophia.com, talked to co-founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson about creating an Internet brand overnight, and the challenges of sustaining it in the future.

You did this in two years. Was it as easy as it looks?

Anderson: Actually, things did go remarkably easy for us. I can’t say that we struggled for a long time; we only struggled for about a month. When we were about a month into it, I remember thinking, “This may not work out.” Just one day, in particular, we saw this huge spike because of people telling each other. It just went crazy from there. We didn’t have this big, long struggle behind it. We put it up, and it got popular very quickly.

DeWolfe: One of the major reasons it worked so well is that we had a very experienced management team. We’ve worked together for the last seven to eight years. With respect to timing, when we launched the site, social networking began to take off, and the advertising revenue stream came roaring back. Two of the most interesting points were that we had no content costs and no customer acquisition costs. We had to make sure we had enough money to cover engineering and bandwidth costs, and we were confident that we understood the advertising business.

How do you get 46 million people to find out about your product without buying advertising?

DeWolfe: It was really key to create a set of functions that were compelling to our users and an efficient way to use them. Users socialize to figure out what they’re going to do on the weekend. They use MySpace to discover new music and post events. Musicians upload their music. People use it for entertainment purposes or to sell goods in the classified area. MySpace makes what they do in the offline world a) more efficient or b) more interesting. If you have ten friends, and nine are on MySpace and you’re not, you feel pretty left out. People end up joining sooner rather than later. The bigger the network gets, the faster it grows. We are now registering 160,000 people per day with no marketing.

Anderson: We didn’t do traditional marketing, but we did try to find photographers and creative people because we thought that would make the site more interesting. In the beginning, it was all Los Angeles--actors, photographers and musicians. That made for an interesting community, and brought in a lot of people. A lot of the early growth, however, had to do with the features and what our competitors were not allowing people to do.

Like what?

Anderson: On Friendster, if you were a band and you made a profile, they would delete it. They didn’t want bands on their site. If you made a profile for your company or for where you lived or a neighborhood or an idea, you’d get deleted. We recognized from the beginning that we could create profiles for the bands and allow people to use the site any way they wanted to. We didn’t stop people from promoting whatever they wanted to promote on MySpace. Some people have fun with it, and others try to get more business and sell stuff, like a makeup artist or a band, and we encourage them to do that.

Music has become particularly important to MySpace. How did you attract over 660,000 artists and bands to the site?

DeWolfe: Tom has a deep passion and understanding for what emerging musicians go through. He understands the frustration. I understood the macro trends of the music business. Labels were signing fewer acts, giving them less time to prove themselves and spending less money on marketing. We saw a need to develop a community for artists to get their music out to the masses. With MySpace, when they went out on tour, they could actually tour nationally. The band might have 20,000 friends on their list and send out a bulletin saying, “I’m going to be in Austin on Tuesday night. Come see our show.” It has allowed bands to make money on music without having a deal.

You can create a professional-sounding CD, sell merchandise and get your touring revenue in and make a living. It gives those artists a longer period of time to develop themselves before they get signed, or make a living without getting signed at all.

In the early days, there were a lot of bands signing up. They told us that they’d like to post their lyrics and tour dates. Users told us what they wanted to see, and we just built it. That’s how we do a lot of our updates. We catalog what people tell us that they want. It’s not super-complicated.

You've been growing at breakneck speed. How did you manage to stay on top of your business?

DeWolfe: I’ve run businesses before. The other people on my team have worked in senior positions in other businesses. Your partners are the most important things. If you don’t have good partners, it can’t work. Some of our competition had extremely high turnover. It wrecks the continuity of running the business. You need to have similar sensibilities and people you trust to fill in your weaknesses with strengths that they have. That is underrated.

Another trap that people fall into, when you start to grow and there is a little bit of success, is that people get on the soapbox, like pundits and venture capitalists, who tell you how to run your business. It’s important to be very disciplined in terms of not listening to them. We were resolute to do what our users wanted. Having discipline and saying no is why we ended up being successful.

Anderson: In a way, it’s our lack of experience that helps--definitely for me. The thing I like about Chris is that he’s not like all the other people I’ve met in business. He’s able to cut to the chase right away. We don’t waste time on things. We didn’t sit down and write up this big plan and spreadsheets and try to force that imagined plan. We’ve been quick and nimble on our feet. I was working from common sense. Even though Chris does have that background, he’s never been pushing me to that mold, and he doesn’t follow it himself.

So we are not doing what everyone else is doing. When we were getting popular, people were saying, “Why aren’t you doing this or that?” I thought they were ridiculous, and they thought I was ridiculous.

DeWolfe: They said that we were trying to do too much--music, instant messaging, blogs, etc.--and that we should just focus on one of those. That was the antithesis of what we aimed to do. Most of the sites that did that became boring after a while.

With that said, once you chose your product road map, then it becomes very important to focus on the top three to four initiatives and get those things done. Others try to do too many things at one given time. Our overall strategy was to build the next-generation portal that would be extremely sticky and layer those features in and around a social network. At any one time, we focus our developers on the top three to four initiatives and don’t get distracted with what others tell us we ought to do.

There's a good deal of buzz today around two different kinds of communication technologies: text messaging and podcasting. What are you planning on those fronts?

DeWolfe: Podcasting is not really that different from streaming music, which we’ve done for quite a long time. Having a traditional podcast that people subscribe to--the hype is ahead of the quality. Podcasting is essentially a download, and you run into copyright issues. What you’re left with currently is podcast talk radio. If it’s an established station, like NPR, it’s fabulous. The average person having a talk radio show will not be that great. We’ll keep our eye out and may undertake it at some point. We have a couple of different ways that people text-message one another. There is instant messaging on the site. We also have an Internal e-mail product, where people write messages. You can also leave testimonials on your friend’s pages.

You've now launched MySpace Records, which you are using to promote bands who are popular on the site but haven't signed with a major record label. Do you have more products coming through the pipeline?

DeWolfe: We’re always looking for the right opportunities. We are going to be doing some events in Sundance, in conjunction with our independent filmmaker section on MySpace. We’ll be doing more festivals, at least one major one over the summer.

You’ve certainly won the allegiance of some great bands and music fans in the U.S. Do you think that MySpace can be as successful at attracting the independent film community?

Anderson: Another part of my background was that I was in film school. It made a lot of sense to me that the music part of our site would work for filmmakers as well. They’ll be able to upload clips. There will be a section where you can watch what they are doing. They’ll tell where their screenings are. It took a lot longer than we wanted to because we were growing so fast. For actors, directors and everyone associated with film and television, this will become as big of a resource for them as it has been for musicians.

Google’s founders hired Eric Schmidt to run Google, and since then, the company has grown to $127.4 billion market capitalization. Do you imagine a time when the multibillion-dollar executive should come in and run things? Or, on the contrary, do you think that would be the kiss of death for a hip, young business?

DeWolfe: We feel really comfortable with our progress. We have huge plans for next year--international, wireless and expansion into other mediums. We’re hiring quickly, but in a controlled manner. We have set a plan that we believe everyone at News Corp. will bite off on.

At the end of the day, time will tell. Continuity with senior management is very important. It’s been one of the reasons why we’ve won. If we’d hired a big-time media executive a year ago, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. We have a great relationship with our new bosses at News Corp.

Culturally and aesthetically, News Corp seems like the opposite of the youth-based brand that you've created at MySpace. Did you get much fallout from your users after the acquisition?

Anderson: When this was announced, people were worried. It went away pretty quickly when we didn’t change. If anything now, people will see it get better. We have more money to grow, faster bandwidth and more programmers working on more features. We aren’t getting pressure on designing it this or that way. It’s our baby on what we want the experience to be. News Corp. has been great about that. I think we’re going to continue to do well.

Do you see any other benefits about being part of a large media conglomerate, like News Corp.?

Anderson: I just came back from a screening at 20th Century Fox, and they were asking me what bands to put in the movie.

Featured Site: MySpace

MySpace has surpassed Google, and is currently ranked as the number three web site, in terms of page views and user time online, just behind Yahoo and MSN (source: comScore Media Metrix). With 45,579,475 registered users (as of 12.28.2005), and increasing at 160,000 people per day, MySpace receives 12.5 billion page views per month and is transforming today's popular culture and digital lifestyle. All that in just two years of operations. [Source: www.i-Sophia.com]

Read the interview with MySpace founders conducted by Anderson.
[Source: www.forbes.com]

Nov-05	Unique Visitors (000)	Total Pages Viewed (MM)	Average Minutes Per Visitor
Total Internet: Total Audience	169,747	454,480	1,547.0
Yahoo! Sites	125,038	43,345	260.1
MSN-Microsoft Sites	115,526	19,821	182.3
Google Sites	90,889	6,736	30.6
MYSPACE.COM	26,684	12,511	78.0

Firefox Shortcuts

• Select location bar: Ctrl+L or Alt+D


• Select search bar: Ctrl+K


• Back: Backspace or Alt+Left


• Forward: Alt/Option+Right or Shift+Backspace


• Change search engine: Ctrl+Down (Next) +Up (Previous)


• Find as you type text: /


• Find as you type link: ‘


• Regular old find: Ctrl+F


• Open link in new window: Shift+Enter


• Open link in new tab: Ctrl+Enter


• Open address/search in new tab: Alt/Option+Enter


• Caret browsing: F7


• Refresh: Ctrl+R or F5


• Refresh (override cache): Ctrl+F5 or Ctrl+Shift+R


• Switch tabs: Ctrl+Tab


• Select tab (1-9): Ctrl+[1-9]


• Compose email: Ctrl+M

[Source: www.lifehacker.com]

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Happy New Year

Wishing you a new year filled with fun and happiness!