What is the semantic web?

I just posted a message on my blog detailing my thoughts about the semantic web. I tried to take it down to the core goals in simple-to-understand terms. If anyone is interested, you can go here to see it.

Cheers,
Jonathan Giles

feedback from industry

We had an Auckland based company presenting here a few days ago. They were really impressed about our students, I have received the following email (I removed the company name as this was a confidential email, most of you will know it anyway):

 

Hi Jens,

 

It was good to catch up the other day.

 

I wanted to provide you with some feedback on my recent visit to Massey. For the past couple of weeks I have been presenting at each University on graduate recruitment at *****. While it has been disappointing that attendance numbers have been down at each University I was extremely impressed with the caliber of students from Massey. Your students listened intensely and asked extremely good questions, were the only audience to hang around afterwards to learn more about ***** but more importantly they were the only students that provided me with a good vibe that I was talking to very intelligent and passionate technical people.

 

I seriously think that Massey's Computer Science department can pat themselves on the back for producing some very good students which Orion and every expanding NZ company are currently struggling to employ.

 

I look forward to working closely with you and Massey and again I applaud you on producing some very good students!

 

kind regards

 

*** ***

Human Resources Manager

SummerOfCode

I am forwarding an email from Ned:

 

Dear Jens,

"Summer of Code" is a collection of companies to provide software development summer internships in Wellington to 2nd and 3rd years. It's a competitive program - they did 13 students last summer, looking to do 30 this one coming up.

 

Details: http://www.summerofcode.co.nz/

 

Cheers, Jens

 

sample post

I am trying to reactivate the blog by posting by email. /Jens

Java Manifest Frustration

If you are a Java Dev, take two seconds to read this and store it in your memory banks.

Offline web browsing

At the post grad meeting today Jevon spoke about WebML, and one of the lacking areas is that of 'offline browsing', which I guess is becoming increasingly important with our increasing dependence on websites. Chris Double is a developer in NZ that is working for Mozilla in the area of 'offline-enabling' Firefox (in time for FF3 apparently).

The main links that I know of (without going to Google) are:

• Rod Druries blog titled 'Firefox3: Web Apps Game changer'. This is a very nice blog and Rod is pretty much my hero at the moment for his success in the last few years (and for that coming up in the next few years).
• Chris Double's blog titled 'Offline Zimbra with Firefox
• The Dojo Offline Toolkit
• Adobe Apollo

Having not googled for anything, please feel free to post comments with additional sites to visit. And just a heads up, this doesn't have the slightest crossover with my research, but I thought it was cool nonetheless. If you do like this kind of stuff, talk to Jevon.

Oh, isn't it cool the Mozilla is being developed by New Zealanders? Chris Double working on offline support, and I know of Robert O’Callahan who does the rendering engine. Who else is there.....?

Oh, while I'm at it....Planet NZTech is a highly recommended blog to add to your RSS feed reader. It features the blogs of a number of interesting NZ Tech people (which you could never tell from the name :P). It's where I go to learn about what is happening in NZ Tech these days. You might even spot my blog on the list if you look hard enough :-)

Cheers,
Jonathan

Reminder: PostGrad Meeting

Just a reminder that the SE postgrads (+ everybody else interested) meet tomorrow (Tue 27/03) 1PM in AH3.43A. Jevon will talk about WebML.

Component Contracts Prototype

We have done some research on contract between components in recent month, and I have implemented a little prototype based on the JPF.
Here is the link: http://www-ist.massey.ac.nz/JBDietrich/componentcontracts/comcon.html.

My first Yahoo Pipe

.. is here:

Great stuff, I have merged different feeds from Yahoo (weather PN), this blog (you should be able to see THIS on the pipe), slashdot (with content filter "New Zealand") and the NZ Herald tech section. Chck it out:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/AJd32sy82xGPeyAEE5PZnA

The coolest thing is that the output of the pipe can be a source for another pipe (i.e., there is a rss feed at the end of the pipe).