Executable Abstractions

New Interactive Fiction

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 23:47:12 GMT

Tagsonomy Management

Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:35:12 GMT

Following the recent growth-spike in social software systems like del.icio.us and flickr (systems that support the use of tags to classify content and to then share those tag schemes with others) has been the use of the term folksonomy to describe these tag-based taxonomies.

Personally, I find a lesser-used term, tagsonomy, more appropriate.

Of course, these recent 'net-based systems aren't the first place that I've run into on-the-fly creation of tags to help classify content.

I believe I have various tagsonomies now in effect in a number of places, including at least the following:

- Outlook categories for PIM content

- Office document keyword metadata

- del.icio.us bookmark tags

- Adobe Album photo tags

- iPhoto photo tags

- posts on this blog

- grouped news feeds in Sharpreader

- etc.

[Some may object that the tags used in systems that manage purely private content (e.g., Outlook categories) cannot be considered true folksonomies, since neither the content nor the tags are visible to anyone but myself. That may be true, and is maybe the root difference between folksonomy and tagsonomy. However, my guess, without having (yet) studied the patterns/structures in tags used across the different systems, some private some public, is that my informal tagging systems probably bear more similarities than differences. They probably all reflect to a significant extent my particular way of viewing the world.]

I have been quite intrigued with the exploration that del.icio.us lets one do by browsing not only who else is bookmarking the same content you are, but also seeing how they have tagged the same links...in some cases, there is quite a bit of diversity! And then when you see someone else with a similar tagsonomy, you think, hey, they must think in some way like me.

I realize that the simple, informal, ad-hoc nature of these tag-based classifications is a feature, yet I am unable to avoid thinking that there may be a way to, without diminishing those properties, somehow do a better job of managing at least my own global tagsonomy as it grows and evolves. By manage it, I mostly mean do something special to help make the tags more consistent across my own content. The anticipated benefit will be better searchability across my own content. And beyond that, some better means for discovering related content elsewhere on the web.

Next step (if I had the time) would be to build a tool that harvests all the tags from these decentralized tagsonomies, and presents them to me in some unified way. This would be a nice little sem-webbish python project, I recall seeing python libs for del.icio.us and flickr, I can use win32com for the com-based apps, I'll have to explore to see what some of the other apps provide in the way of exposure or api.

ABM for Decentralized Markets

Tue, 21 Dec 2004 01:57:20 GMT

UMBC's eBiquity links to a good -looking intro site to agent-based modeling in the social sciences; in particular, it appears to have some good references to the use of ABM for simulation of decentralized markets.

Disorganize = Decentralize?

Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:00:16 GMT

Are human organizational structures on a parallel path with information systems toward decentralized architectures?

Are "greater autonomy and flexibility" always reasonable expectations when moving from centralized architectures to decentralized ones?

Python Native XML Datatype redux

Tue, 07 Dec 2004 22:06:56 GMT

Logix makes this and that feasible (or so it would appear) with a working implementation of a multi-language programming system.

Thanks to LtU for the pointer

The New New Mod-pubsub

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 20:48:00 GMT

So, the new new mod-pubsub engine is out. This is the long-awaited twisted-based one. If you are not yet familiar with mod-pubsub, and you have any interest in the two-way web, event-routing, and progressive RESTian architectures (amongst other possible profound themes into which this could be categorized), go check this out pronto.

Native XML Datatype for Python, contd

Sun, 10 Oct 2004 12:45:52 GMT

Jon Udell, taking it to the next level by suggesting that such a native type be added to the mainstream VMs, kept me thinking about how to move toward the ideal of a native xml datatype in python...xmltramp looks like it is worth some experimentation.

Then yesterday, serendipitously, I was browsing around the site of one of the giants of Python, Frederick Lundh, when I ran across this post of his from late 2002: Idea: XML Literals for Python. Maybe we should be praying for rain?

PEP: Native XML Datatype

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 17:27:28 GMT

Request for new Python Feature: support for a native (or quasi-native) XML datatype, a la E4X. As recently discussed by Jon Udell and Phil Windley.

I wonder how close to the ideal user (developer) experience a solution could get without changes to the core language? Does python 2.3.x have enough innate extensibility to make something decent possible?

Jive Talkin'

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:59:44 GMT

I have been waiting for some time for a convenient, easy-to-use Jabber/XMPP server that I could run on my laptop so I'd have a portable XMPP development environment.

When I saw PSA's recent missive about the lack of such, I thought that I wouldn't be waiting much longer. Now while I would ideally like to have an easily extensible server (preferably python-based) so that when I get to the point of wanting to build server-side extensions, I'd be positioned to do so, for now I would be more than happy with just being able to work on my client-side code.

So I was pumped when I saw the announcement for a new, freely available xmpp server: Jive Messenger. The install couldn't have been smoother, and I have now been cookin' on a side-project that uses XMPP and some custom x tags for message metadata.

My only problem now is that since then, I can't get that old BG song, Jive Talkin', out of my mind. It puts a little groove in my walk...

IronPython

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 07:45:04 GMT

Bonus! Tonight was an all-niter, wasn't it sweet to take a glance at the news before retiring circa 4am only to see jump from the page that IronPython has finally been made available. I thought maybe I was hallucinating, but no, it is there. Maybe I won't hit the hay just yet...

Open Source BPEL Engines

Wed, 14 Jul 2004 02:40:00 GMT

Two open-source BPEL engines have recently come to my attention:

Twister

Active BPEL

Subsequent additions [last updated 23-Aug-2005]:

FiveSight PXE (pixie)

Goto Conference List

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 14:51:44 GMT

Over the past 3 years, I have ventured out to just a couple of industry conferences. One of the reasons for not getting out to more has been the increase during that same period of other channels for networking, conversations, and cross-disciplinary idea pollination: RSS, blogging, IM, and open-source projects.

Now, though, I think I have incorporated these newer mechanisms into a more-or-less balanced steady-state diet and understand better their properties and the opportunities they offer for meeting the needs that conferences and hard-copy industry mags/sites once fulfilled on their own. These latter mechanisms have been mostly replaced by the former in my SOP, and for the better, but there is still a place for a select set of in-person conferences in my operating model.

I don't know if I'll actually make it to them or not, but herewith my wish-list of candidate conferences for the next few years:

The New Seinfeld/Superman Webisode

Sat, 22 May 2004 02:37:52 GMT

See it here.

PyDS as a Windows Service

Mon, 10 May 2004 04:20:16 GMT

I now have my PyDS desktop server running as a Windows service, thanks to these clues. This is much more convenient and 'cleaner' than the previous mechanism of starting up the server from a cmd-shell.

The best impact is that I no longer run into localhost-not-localhost because I forgot to start up PyDS.

This solution leverages the ZService.py script from the Zope distribution. Nice little gem to keep in mind for running some python as a Windows service.

PySpaces 3

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 22:56:00 GMT

Another python-based tuplespace implementation has turned up: PyLinda [thanks to Georg Bauer for alerting me to it].