τεχνοσοφια

1. Ruby

I gave a little talk on Ruby at today's VALE-NJ Technology Awareness Group meeting, and so I'm using my slides to finally kick off this vaporseries.

[Slides are embedded as Flash here if you're reading in an aggregator.]

It seemed to be taken pretty well, though it could easily have been dismissed as the fanboyish ravings of a neophyte Rubyist. The folks from Rutgers were interested in having me come talk to their software architecture group, so it couldn't have gone too badly, I suppose.

I need to stop cramming so much into presentations. Rambling about reflection and OO at a speed the Micro-Machines Guy would envy isn't the best way to share enthusiasm about Ruby.

The rest of the meeting was interesting: Ron Jantz, the Digital Library Architect at Rutgers, posed a number of challenging questions about trust, authenticity, and reliability in the digital realm; Terry Catapano, Special Collections Analyst at Columbia, exposed the lack of data model inherent in many current metadata schemas and suggested ontologies as a potential direction; and Jeffery Triggs, Applications Programmer at Rutgers, demonstrated the Java DjVu Viewer Applet for displaying DjVu-based images outside the DjVu browser plug-in. Many good questions were asked, and new faces were in the crowd, so the future of TAG seems to be bright.

I'm hoping to follow up my Ruby talk with another on Rails. That was my initial goal for today, but there was far too much to cover, knowing the audience was relatively new to both technologies.

This is a slightly modified (read: rough) transcription of the talk I gave at this year's NJLA conference, called "Library Revolution." Continue reading…

Maybe I'm late to the party — nods to John Blyberg and Rob Styles — but damn(!), does Microsoft have some exciting visualization projects or what?

John and Rob wrote about Microsoft Surface, a hardware/software combination that allows for tactile manipulation of data. In Microsoft's own words:

Microsoft Surface represents a fundamental change in the way we interact with digital content.

With Surface, we can actually grab data with our hands, and move information between objects with natural gestures and touch.

Surface features a 30-inch tabletop display whose unique abilities allow for several people to work independently or simultaneously. All with out using a mouse or a keyboard.

Don't take my word for it; go watch a demonstration video and be amazed.

But wait, open the video in another window, and keep reading before you lose interest in my uninteresting prose.

I noticed among the recently released TED talks a brilliant short presentation by Microsoft's Blaise Aguera y Arcas on their Photosynth project. My first impression was just the visual joy of the photo browse / pan / zoom interface. It's impressive in its own right. But what really tickles me about Photosynth is that it "takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space."

For example, throw it at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/seattlepubliclibrary/ and it will construct a collage-like view of the Seattle Public Library. Zoom in and you'll see images at that level of zoom. Pan in three dimensions and (assuming there are enough photos to support the various views) you can virtually be in front of SPL. See for yourself:

Imagine browsing the stacks with this thing. Imagine finding a book on the stacks and being able to hook directly into its full-text. Super cool!

Microsoft Surface is tentatively planned for a November release, which will be targeted for "retail and entertainment settings". It could be available to the public in a few years' time though it will likely cost a few times more than an average PC. [Gleaned from a Seattle PI article.] Photosynth is also not available yet, but you can track its progress on the Photosynth team blog. (Yes, there's a feed.)

[Disclosure: I lived in the shadow of Redmond not long ago, though I was not employed by Microsoft. I probably invest in Microsoft indirectly, but I haven't scoured my portfolio distributions in a while.]

I kicked around the idea of having a Library Camp NJ a few months ago. Response wasn't fantastic but, then again, I didn't try very hard to spread the word, and perhaps I am not the best champion for the cause. In the meantime, Baruch College in Manhattan will be sponsoring Library Camp NYC this August.

I certainly plan on attending if I can get approval to take that day off and may even be talking about this or that if I can come up with an appropriate topic — Ruby on Rails might be too narrow or technical. Those of you who are relatively local to NYC should read more about it and consider coming.

What is a "Library Camp?"

The first Library Camp was held at the Ann Arbor District Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan in April 2006 as an "unconference" to talk about opportunities and challenges regarding Library 2.0. It was organized by John Blyberg, and went over so well a Library Camp East was held in September 2006 at the Darien Public Library (CT) with about 50 attendees (organized by Alan Gray).

So what's an unconference? Unlike a traditional conference, where people have to pay registration fees to sit in an auditorium and listen to someone read off PowerPoint slides, there are no registration fees and everyone is a active participant. Whoever shows up are the right people for an unconference. The discussion topics are decided by the participants when they arrive, as well as topics that are brought to the forefront during discussions that are deemed as particularly important and are thought to be worthy enough by members of the discussion groups to have these topics break off into their own core discussion groups. The format has gained popularity in the technology field in recent years, because it promotes collaboration and engagement.

I'm at the NJLA 2007 conference today talking about technology. I'm using this post to demonstrate RSS, OpenSearch, unAPI, and auto-discovery.