http://liris.cnrs.fr/~pchampin/t4r/doc/

I’m moving my website content to RDF and will use Drupal and the excellent SPARQL modules to populate the site. I’ve badly neglected my website and need to reflect my current work and skills—plus better organization, search and some semantic dog food won’t hurt either. For IT types, adding current experience and using emerging technologies is often a bit of a circular reference.

I’ve been working with Drupal for the past year and am so impressed with the software and the community. Learning Drupal is like having a brand-new shiny toolbox filled with new wrenches (and bits?). I’ve set up my dev site and hope to have my new production environment up soon. Learn more at drupal.org.

This is a hot topic at the Semantic Web group in Drupal, with one of the founders of schema.org from the Bing Search Quality team weighing in. I highly recommend reading the thread.

* The partners are schema.org, Association of Education Publishers, Creative Commons, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a large number of the leading educational content publishers:

http://www.aepweb.org/mediacenter/AEP-CC-Schema_6-7-11.htm

UPDATE: See also Benjamin Nowack’s opinion post at his blog http://bnode.org/blog/2011/06/06/schema-org-threat-or-opportunity. BTW, “Finally a BNODE with a URI” — ha!

Namespace lookup for RDF developers.
Schemaweb, a directory of RDF schemas expressed in the RDFS, OWL and DAML+OIL schema languages.

SPARQL browser.
The very useful NeuroCommons query page and the amazingly interesting 2007 prototype query page.

Dbpedia’s ontology
SPARQL Explorer for Dbpedia (Snorql)
Dbpedia’s faceted browser
Querying the semantic web from the blog Life of a Programmer Geek.
Life science SPARQL endpoints from freebase.com.
Creative Commons science data.
European Bioinformatics Institute Ontology Lookup Service.

SPARQling queries by Bijan Parsia.

So even with a very basic interoperability requirement provided with Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), and the real work of the semantic web begun, the question is still how to make sure content is captured and accessible at the repository level.

That said, one solution for brute-force exposure is an hour away using a combination of OpenDOAR (the directory of open access repositories) and Google’s Custom Search Engine (CSE). Search OpenDOAR repository content here.

This search uses Google’s indexes, not OAI-PMH or the repositories’ metadata, and you have to register your repository with OpenDOAR. While you’re at it, swing by ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories). There’s help on how best to accommodate the Googlebot in Google’s Guidelines for Webmasters and Peter Suber’s guide, How To Facilitate Google Crawling.

Below is an example of Google’s CSE embedding tool, available for all custom searches. AuseSearch searches all open access research repositories in Australia that are listed in Kennan & Kingsley at First Monday.

Search sites include: espace.library.curtin.edu.au, adt.caul.edu.au/*, arada.cdu.edu.au/*, epress.lib.uts.edu.au/dspace/*, ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/44/*


Also see Arthur Sale’s CSE eSearch-Africa. Links on each CSE page lead you to create your own or embed the CSE in your own website.

http://www.cssjuice.com/25-rounded-corners-techniques-with-css/

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/customcorners/

http://www.html.it/articoli/nifty/index.html

http://www.redmelon.net/tstme/4corners/

http://www.roundedcornr.com/

http://mezzoblue.com/icons/chalkwork/

http://www.html.it/articoli/nifty/index.html

http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/

http://www.noupe.com/icons/40-new-high-quality-and-free-icon-sets.html

http://www.maxpower.ca/free-icons/2006/03/05/

http://www.dezinerfolio.com/2007/09/25/top-50-supercool-free-icon-sets/

http://www.professional-icons.com/library.aspx

http://iconfactory.com/home

Want to make a difference, and do it nearly for free? Kiva.org collects small amounts from individuals (as little as $25) and lends the money to poor entrepreneurs with humble business plans. The site allows you to pick who you lend to, and to track their progress throughout the loan. You can watch as loans are repaid and your account is credited. All accounting is in the open, and repayment rates are exceptionally high.

Kiva.org is also a social site. You can chat with other lenders from all over the world by joining one of the over 450 existing communities, or by creating your own.

As a strategy for alleviating world poverty, microlending has many advantages over traditional charitable approaches. For lenders, it is much more sustainable since each dollar can be re-loaned countless times. For borrowers it is more respectful, educational and empowering. Put simply, it’s more effective.

Microcredit originated in 1976 when Professor Muhammad Yunus, Head of the Rural Economics Program at the University of Chittagong, successfully enabled extremely impoverished people to generate income through self-employment and, in many cases, exit poverty.

John Hatch, a Fulbright-trained economist and international development expert—began a similar loan program in Bolivia in 1984. From FINCA International’s www.villagebanking.com website:

The program allows them to obtain loans without collateral and gives groups of neighbors the power to collectively disburse, invest and collect loan capital as they see fit.

Microcredit is increasingly gaining credibility in the mainstream finance industry, and many traditional large finance organizations are contemplating microcredit projects as a source of future growth.

Visit Kiva.org to find out more, and join like-minded people all over the world helping others help themselves!

Understanding the root causes and agreeing in principal with a broad set of imperatives is a still a far cry from the relentless resolve that we feel will be necessary of the U.S. to revitalize its industrial performance. Regrettably, the kind of will and purpose that we believe will be required is not yet pervasive, even though much progress has been made. Perhaps it is too early, and a few more economic tragedies must take place before the process of awakening becomes widespread.

Are we there yet?

“Made in America” is the report of the commission appointed by MIT President Paul E. Gray in November 1986 “to identify what happened to US industrial performance and what we and others might do to help improve the situation.”

It’s an analysis of US industrial problems, with detailed recommendations on how to help the US regain our productive edge. And guess what! There’s an industry study on the auto industry. In the first paragraph in the study, they ask the question

How did the auto industry, a bulwark of the American economy, lose it’s strong competitive position?

In retrospect, it appears a crucial event was Detroit’s decision to concentrate on the “family-size” car, which allowed overseas competitors to capture other market segments. The most important other segment was that of compact cars, imports of which grew rapidly after the oil crisis in the early 1970s.

The bold is mine. Deja vu all over again.

In an article on the release of the report (1989), Prabhat Mehta writes

The culmination of a two-year, eight-industry study, Made in America examines the causes of the recent slowdown in US productivity growth and makes recommendations for improved economic performance. It cites six problems relating to productivity performance: outdated strategies, short time horizons, technological weakness in development and production, neglect of human resources, failures of cooperation, and government and industry at cross-purposes.

Recommendations for improvement include specific proposals for industry reform and larger macroeconomic imperatives. Focusing upon international markets and the importance of technology and education, the macroeconomic recommendations call for a focus on “the new fundamentals of manufacturing,” the cultivation of a new “economic citizenship,” a blend of cooperation and individualism, adaptation to an emerging world economy, and provision for the future through investment and education.

This is a great book, and tragically, still absolutely relevant. Besides the mea culpa issues for the auto industry that are parroted in the media and on Capital Hill, the authors cite major productivity weaknesses, including short-term research and development horizons, neglecting technological best practices and improvement, neglecting education and training (a topic Krugman has championed for coping with a global economy), and government and industry at cross-purposes in the use of tariff and trade laws. There’s plenty of blame for the auto industry, but plenty to go elsewhere too, like universal health care, which our competitor businesses don’t pay for; like an education system that addresses the reality of a changing workforce in the face of global free trade; and like a government that doesn’t leave critical, long-term R&D to to the profits-focused free market. Just to start…

Update: Read on MIT’s website, “With over 300,000 copies in print in eight languages, Made in America is the best-selling title in the history of MIT Press.”)