There’s an art to explaining concepts (technical or not) and CommonCraft are definitely gifted with this skill. I’ve really not seen Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Wiki’s and RSS explained so simply. The videos are creatively made and a pleasure to watch! Something to recommend to Academics wanting to get a handle on the whole social Web 2.0 thing!

I guess the title of this post says it all…

AirPress essentially is an offline blog post editor (WordPress), but its true potential comes from its media capabilities. Pics, audio (mp3), Flash video (flv), webcam recording, webcam snapshot and Flash animation can all be added to posts. AirPress is created in Adobe AIR and Flex.

…Now would it not be great if something like this was able to integrate with Blackboard and Moodle. There is an alternative desktop app to add content to Blackboard called BB Toolbox so I am pretty sure that the Blackboard API would support this sought of thing. Possibilities, Possibilities……..

UCompass have come up with a great concept that injects life into static content. They are calling it the “Content Enrichment System“. The framework consists of:

• a set of tags (fun tags) that allow content from sites like Flickr and Del.icio.us to easily be add to content
• dictionary and search integration - click on any word and a quite comprehensive popup to all sorts of apps appears
• groups tools that overlay content

UCompass also seem to be the first to have created an offline content editor in Adobe AIR and a making great use of Flash Media Server.

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed something quite incredible - machine learning techniques slowly (but surely) creeping into mainstream conferences. It all started with the Machine Learning Made Easy with Perl presentation at OSCON 2007 by Lino Ramirez. Then the amazing Programming Collective Intelligence book was published. And now straight from RailsConf 2007 comes Making Rails More (Artificially) Intelligent which is quite filled with Ruby code richness. The presentation covers Bayesian Classifiers and Genetic Algorithms. A GA was used to “optimize web page revenues from advertisements” as an example.

Its interesting to note that all three examples that I quote use a dynamic language - Perl, Python and Ruby.

….now where are those AI in Web 2.0 style jobs in Brisbane, Australia? Where?????

I’ve always placed Submit buttons on the bottom left hand side of the form, just below the form elements. Based on the latest research, it seems my instinct was correct. Luke Wroblewski has just posted some interesting eye-tracking visualisations. Essentially placing the Submit button on the right hand side of the page is just wrong, wrong wrong!

In Rails, you have no excuse not to write tests! The model and controller generators create the tests - you just need to keep them up to date. In Java land, a little more is involved in writing JUnit tests. I’ve been trying to get into the practice of writing the tests before I actually write the code. I must admit that I have found this hard. I prefer to code first and then write the tests (if time permits). This is against TDD but I enjoy writing the actual code and not the tests. I recently discovered ModelJUnit. The process is simple - create a Finite State Machine to model the code/functionality and then let ModelJUnit generate test cases and coverage metrics. The concept has a lot of merit. I’ll be using ModelJUnit in some small projects - I’ll be sure to post my experiences.

I declared that “Programming Collective Intelligence” was the must have book of 2007 even before I received my copy. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks reading and working through the examples. I am pleased to say that it has lived up to all expectations. The explanations are clear, the examples are relevant and the code is easily re-usable. I’ve tried to read numerous other Machine Learning books and papers only to be confused by the mathematics. “Programming Collective Intelligence” provides a great introduction to Machine Learning in the context of creating social networking application. I’d recommend the book for anybody new to Machine Learning or with a general interest in making their applications a little bit smarter. Machine Learning is a vast and complex field, so be warned that to fully understand the algorithms and implement the latest advances, you’ll need to visit more advanced books and academic papers (Maths, Maths and More Maths).

Project Highlights:

• Building a del.icio.us Link Recommender
• Clustering and Filtering Blog posts based on word usage
• Using Decision Trees to predicting signups
• Use Support Vector Machines for matchmaking
  (…. never thought of using SVM on a dating site … )
• Simplicity of Python libraries used
  (Including the Imaging Library used to draw a Dendrogram and the wrapper for LIBSVM)

Go and buy the book right now!

I heard that Madonna was going to open the show, but that did not eventuate.  Oh well - maybe next year! I did not like the format of the show and overall found it was quite disappointing. Britney did a good job of opening the show but needed to do something controversial.

A new service from Yahoo will allow teachers to network and share resources - Yahoo! Teachers. Will this be the answer to sharable learning objects? Only time will tell, but it is a great idea and with the suport of Yahoo I hope it takes off in a big way and will eventually be available for Universities. The Gobbler feature, which allows text and resources on a web page to be dragged into a project portfolio and re-used in lesson plans. Blackboard Scholar could learn a lot from Yahoo! Teachers. Imagine lesson plans that could be imported into Blackboard that included collaborative activities.

The latest version of Eclipse (Europa) just seems more pleasant to use!

• It’s been crashing less!
• I can now drag text around in the editor. (Yipee!!!!!)
• Offers great assistance for creating unit tests and refactoring code.
• Has wizards and extensions to create and consume web services (eg Eclipse SOA Tools Platform plug-in).

Now this could all be because I code only for pleasure (i.e. I’m a Business Analyst and not a developer anymore), my home computer has more RAM than the one at my previous workplace and I am not forced to code in a rush. Whatever the reason - I am happy I finally feel that I can leave Notepad behind.