So, how'd you do? Web trends for 2013 [infographic]

Semantic web, social web, and the progression of the web (presentation)

Well, this is a pretty unwieldly subject to pack into a 1 hour presentation (and I didn't go very far into the details of the mechanics of the semantic web, at all)....

I'm on the road... upcoming presentations and talks

Since my calendar thingie is not working so well, here is what I have on my schedule for upcoming talks/presentations:

Sept. 19, Digital Initiatives w/ Tim Daniels, GPLS Director's Meeting,
Current and emerging trends in library technology -- is my part

Oct. 22 Semantic web. vs. Social Media, Master of Internet Technology Program, Gwinnett Campus: What REALLY is the semantic web and is it at odds with social media and user generated content? Can folksonomies exist alongside dublincore metadata?

Oct. 23 Facebook, privacy, and your digital identity, UGA Web Editors Group (Dweebs) Have you wondered what digital identity you are leaving behind? What about privacy? If you are not actively cultivating your online identity, is someone else creating one for you? Even if you are not a Facebook user, chances are that you know someone who is -- someone who could be sharing information about you.

We'll talk about the uses of Facebook by individuals and organizations, as well as its role in developing identity and how to control what is shared. We'll talk about social media etiquette and what it means in this world where we are all "friends".

Nov. 16 Learning about cataloging: free online tools to help your learn about cataloging from the basics to more advanced, USG Cataloging Committee (ONLINE)
Do you know there are FREE cataloging tools and training on the web? While some are interactive and some are not, there are a variety of tools and resources out there to help you learn about cataloging, metadata, and databases. Explore some of the resources found on the web ... you might even find some time saving resources!

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yeah, I know, I am a busy girl...

Various links: academia online, sustainability of digital projects, LC and Cloud storage, web tools & more

Link roundup... Lots to read and consider and ponder....

Very cool...Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars.
http://academicearth.org/

a multi-year, international exploration of the strategies being used to support digital initiatives over the long term.
http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/strategy/ithaka-case-studies-in-sustainability

Social networking site for researchers aims to make academic papers a thing of the past
http://www.physorg.com/news166943362.html


LC tests cloud storage
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10286280-62.html

Yahoo pipes... if you haven't played, you should!
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

Data rot. sigh.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/01/sunday/main4836569.shtml

Google to launch operating system to compete with Windows
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8139711.stm
Yay? I don't know -- both are still commercial companies.

An unofficial Q and A about the Discontinuation of the XHTML2 WG
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/xhtml2-html5-q-and-a/

Question of the Day: what will not migrate in Google Pages?

So, google pages (the online editor/hosted website creator available for free to google/gmail customers) is going away. It will be replaced by google sites. I, as well as a ton of other google users, received the following message (prompting a question from friend, about whether her site would migrate properly):

However, we've identified you as using Google Page Creator to host files that Sites doesn't support. We are writing to inform you that, as part of this migration, if you take no action to address this, your hosted files will likely break. If they are important then we suggest you move them to a different hosting service.

The problem is NOT the files that she uploaded. Nope -- nothing nonstandard about those, very run of the mill. The problem is going to be her embedded widget for flickr, which although from flickr is CSS + Javascript.

My answer:
...but I think the problem is your flickr script (from Googles blog):
"Google Sites does not support custom JavaScript or CSS at this time for security reasons. Many embeddings are available on Google Sites through Google Gadgets (insert -> More Gadgets...), but arbitrary JavaScript and CSS will not work once the content is migrated to Google Sites.

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So, they are moving away from allowing you to add Javascript and/or custom CSS, even embedded widgets UNLESS it is an approved Google Gadgets. Sooo, if you've done a custom designed Google page, sorry, my friend. Your CSS and/or Javascript is just not going to work. If you have used a common widget (such as flickr) there will hopefully be a widget available via Google Gadgets. Sucks, doesn't? Even blogger gives you more control over your site than that.

Well, you could complain make suggestions here but the voting has been closed.
Oh, and the templates are way ugly -- just sayin' -- Google you should know better than to add to the fugly on the 'net.

Coding likes its 1999

Very interesting post on coding using HTML4 vs. HTML5 or XHTML.

http://cameronmoll.com/archives/2009/06/coding_like_its_1999/

9 browsers (a comparison), css your icons, & standard icons for use

A few links to share today:

• Nine Browsers of today and tomorrow compared
• CSS your icons
• Standard icons for use
  

she's geeky

http://shesgeeky.org/sg/

How cool is this? I'd love to go, but I don't have enough travel money and I am swamped with work, freelance, & committee stuff at the mo -- intense xhtml/css training at the end of the month, too. of course, if someone paid my way, I'd find the time, ya know. ;-)

e-Publishing? Isuuu?

Has anyone used Issuu to epublish? If so, what do you think?
I've been considering switching platforms for the arts magazine. I like PacerCMS, but I don't have much time for development these days. I chose PacerCMS because it created a nice issue and did everything I wanted out of the box (and it pretty much does, once I created my CSS templates). So, I don't HAVE to switch to anything... but whoa, does Issuu look good. However, the free version is ad based. ;-(

Is there anything opensource like Issuu? I'd rather run something on my own server, but I understand these can be embedded into a website.

Wandering around in Second Life and musings on digital identity

Although I was late, I managed to attend the Carolina Conversations webinar in Second Life. Yep, I actually got my avatar to the presentation and I got her to sit down. I've been wanting to attend an academic event in SL for a while, but they always seemed to either cost money (real money!) OR were at 3AM my time. Sorry, I may be an insomniac at times, but even I have to sleep occasionally! ;-)

It was a very interesting experience and I could see how that there might be a place for SL (or other virtual worlds, such as Smallworlds or there.com) with distance ed, presentations, committee/project meetings, training, etc.

I was too far back in the crowd to see if anything was being projected on a screen, but I think that it would be very neat to have visuals. Although I haven't spent alot of time in SL (the old joke, I don't have time for my first life -- ha ha! is definitely true for me), I did find it easier to move around. I'm not sure if SL has changed things, but I felt there were more prompts to guide me. I was also able to finally change my avatar's clothing. In my first foray into SL, I managed to find a free box of clothing, but I could never figure out to actually change outfits.

At one point during the webinar, I was listening to the presentation in SL and working on revising the Libraries' blog CSS template based upon recent feedback, and I noticed that my avatar had "away" above her. I suppose because she hadn't moved in a while, so SL thought I walked away from my computer. In actuality, I was just listening and working on other things.

The webinar itself was interesting -- at least the portions I could hear. I had to access SL via my laptop and wifi, which is probably not the best way. I had a few small issues with dropped sound and a few echoes. I will listen to the webinar archive when it is up, because I thought it was interesting -- lots of discussion about digital identity, one of my favorite topics.

It was also interesting because earlier I attended the Faculty Learning Committee on Emerging Technologies and we spent a considerable amount of time discussing digital identity. Very interesting stuff indeed. My personal belief is that digital identity will become the next big thing. People online are already starting to decide what to reveal or not (such as changes in facebook privacy controls) and some of the other tools such as claimid.com allow users to stake their claim on their identity by designating what is their content (or about them or even not about them.)

As someone with a very common name, I've been working to establish my own digital identity. I bought my namesake domain when it became available a few years ago (the previous owner was a Real Estate Agent in NY) and I setup a claimid to start separating myself from all of the other folks with my name. Right now, that probably all seems like overkill.

As the world becomes a smaller place, and we all know more about each other (just google yourself!), it makes sense to apply some control over that collective identity. If I don't shape my digital identity, then who will? Facebook? Google? Photos in flickr tagged with my name (which may or may not be me)? The presentations I do? Old school assignments? Old outdated webpages that I created years ago that are now poor examples of webdesign by today's standards?

Image galleries: Coppermine, 4images, plogger, Gallery

I've been looking at a plugin to expand my image gallery (hosted at my domain via opensource coppermine, not the flickr version) by using feeds -- basically, for each category I would have a feed. I looked at migrating to different systems, too: Gallery, plogger, and 4images.

Here is the rundown of what I need:

• RSS Feeds per category/image album
• Ability to list an image in more than one category/album, e.g., black and white photographs all in one album + in subject albums
• Ability to assign keywords
• Easily customizable through CSS and maybe a sprinkling of php
  
• Opensource, hosted on my domain (I already have a several art/photography sites at social networking spots)
  
• Easy batch upload process
• Good enhancement and upgrade workflow
  
• Plus:
• Easy import/migration from Coppermine
• Bridging or crosswalking to Drupal
  
• Good documentation (I can usually make things work without a lot of help)
• Note the importance of easy!
  

Coppermine does all of that minus the feeds, but there is a feed plugin. To be honest, my only complaints with coppermine, have been 1)some of the developers/user community help -- it can get harsh 2)lack of built in RSS feeds and 3)crosswalking into Drupal -- it's doable, but not quite what I have in mind. Of course, using feeds would probably give me what I need, anyhow.

So, in my various experiments and investigations:

• Plogger, Gallery, and 4images all have some form of a RSS.
• Plogger, Gallery, and 4images are all opensource.
• Plogger, Gallery, and 4images all seem to be relatively easy to install -- relatively.
• 
  
• I can import/migrate my coppermine gallery into Gallery. I couldn't figure out if I could do that in plogger or 4images. 4images is primarily in German, so I hit some language barriers a few times.

..and here is my comparison chart -- I'm still trying to figure out some of the plogger features, so that part is a little bit incomplete.

Semantic Search engine?

From Read/WriteWeb:

Evri Beta Launches: Search Less - Understand More

Evri, a Paul Allen backed semantic search engine, launched into a limited beta this week. Evri was first shown publicly at the D6 conference. Evri's CEO Neil Roseman likes to talk about Evri in terms of organizing content instead of calling it a search engine. At its core, however, Evri definitely is a search engine, though it adds a very sophisticated semantic layer on top of its results that emphasizes the relationships between different search terms.

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Hmm? Believe the hype? I've requested an invite to the beta testing, so I'll share my thoughts soon, I hope.

Tables + CSS (and captioning an image)

For those of you who use CSS in web design (or have been following its evolution), you may remember the battle cry of "tables are dead" from a few years ago, which was soon followed by rallying cry "Long live tables!"

According to the thinking (and gurus) at the time, EVERYTHING that could be done with a table could be done with div layout and a little creativity. In spite of the fact that tables can easily resolve some very tricky problems and can be styled with CSS, tables are still kind of a dirty word in web design.

I've had a few attempts to go tableless; some very successful, some not so successful. My least successful tableless adventure, happened in 2005. As part of a class project, I decided to create a tableless and very graphics heavy website. The tableless part was easy until I decided to embed flash. Without a table to control the size output, there was no way to force IE and firefox to render the flash movie the same. Believe me, I searched high and low. Nope, not doable. Because the "lesson" or project challenge that I was supposed to be learning was tableless layout, I was stuck with a website that doesn't render perfectly in IE and firefox (although to be honest, most people couldn't see the problem).

A table would have been the easy answer. Although I shy away from tables, I do find they still have value in web design, as I re-discovered just recently.
For the magazine (and the pacercms dev group), I've been working on the rss feed output. The original feed outputted the summary (the first feed image), but my goal is to output the whole magazine in a readable format, including images, links, and proper line breaks.

The easiest way to fold the images into a rss feed is through an embedded image (as in my new version of the feed). However, with an embedded image, there is no easy way to caption it. Sure, alt tags and names can provide popup and additional info, but I need to be able to easily and visibly include copyright info, author info, etc. AND have it show up in the feed in context, not at the bottom or top of each item.

Tables to the rescue! Using the caption tag, I am able to add both a caption and locate it below the text (actually, in my case, an image). I am also able to style the table so that it renders the same in each article: the placement will be the same, the padding will be the same, etc.

I can't believe how easy this is and I also can't believe that I had forgotten how useful tables are.

http://www.aurora-il.org/table_test.htm

the always wonderful, alistapart.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/practicalcss/

Online workshop XML in Libraries

Nifty little online workshop about XML in Libraries -- very well organized and easy to follow. Covers the basics of XML to writing XML, with lots of exercises.
http://infomotions.com/musings/xml-in-libraries/

css-ize tables

I love all of these handy little web tools online. Just in case you really feel the need to use tables, you can CSS 'em, here.

My e-portfolio in drupal (beginnings)

Although I still have lots more work to do it, I managed to get drupal upgraded to 6.1. As I stated in one of my previous drupal posts, the difference between 4.7(? I think that was my latest version pre-upgrade) and 6.1 is amazing. It looks like on the "to do" list for the upcoming upgrades is a WYSIWYG theme editor. Whoa. Would that it ever make it easy to use Drupal! The only real problems that I had with Drupal was that my custom created theme using the Zen theme module (nod to CSS Zen Garden) didn't work. Oh, and I then had to re-do my modules.

Anyhow. ;-)

This is just a sketch at this point. I'm missing so much content, but at least I have some of my projects in the portfolio, as well as a brief CV.

I'd love some thoughts or feedback.

http://www.robinfay.net/site/

drupal - what it is & how it works (overview)

For those unfamiliar with Drupal it is a largescale opensource CMS for a website which is used by the likes of Tim Berners-Lee.

Drupal is scalable and modular built which even includes design elements. Each Drupal website is like a house built out of legos -- just like legos fit together to create something (a working door, a roof, etc.) which then creates the overall house, the modules fit together to create larger functionality, which in turn, creates the website.

Sounds confusing? Not really these days. The initial versions of Drupal were not so user friendly -- figuring out which module went with which version and which module was needed for which functionality was sometimes hard (and complicated!). Early themes were very bland and all had a very Drupalesque view. At that time, it was very easy to figure out if a site was running Drupal. If the look didn't give it away, then the urls (node!) would!

The latest version continues to move forward -- even the actual Drupal website is getting more user friendly. Although the ability to search for modules by version at the website has existed for a while, it now clearly states which module (or theme) works with each version. Upgrades are getting easier to do, too. With the creation of the Zen theme (CSS based) and with some of the newer themes also supporting CSS, getting a more personalized look is becoming easier, too. The Pathauto module (version 5+) allows the user to create personalized and relevant URLs, e.g., mysite/resume vs. mysite/node/1

Finally, Drupal continues to shine at what it has been good at: providing web editors with a means to design a website by moving the construction and design away from the content creation. By having the content creation separate, adding content to a Drupal website can be a simple as posting to a blog. Of course, user authority levels and passwords are part of that, too.

Drupal does lack in some specialized functionalities such as creating an e-publication and e-portfolios. Given that Drupal is highly customizable and many of the modules can (and do) work together, there are many different ways to create more specialized functionalities such as e-publication and e-portfolios.

Drupal also has limited support for crosswalking third party applications. However, it does seem like support for third party applications is becoming more common, and with widgets being developed (or already available) for many of the common web 2.0 sites (flickr, youtube, etc.) it is easy enough to incorporate those bits of code into Drupal.

Drupal has recently branched off into a commercial project which is working with Millenium (III). I hope that there is no negative impact on the opensource project, as there has been with Joomla (a rival opensource CMS, for which most of the advanced functionalities are fee based).

Libraries or library related organization using Drupal: NW Central , Standford Univ. Information Center, Fish4Info (library portal), and there is even a module to import MARC into Drupal!

Drupal screenshots including behind the scenes are here.

Oh, and my little e-portfolio.

Ideas and...

So, I decided I would put all of Powerpoint handout stuff into my website to make it a little more interactive and interesting than just downloading a Word doc. I couldn't quite figure out how to dump a Word doc into drupal and in looking around on the messageboard I discovered I was 2 versions behind anyhow. Isn't that the way of the world? Anyhow, I upgraded to the latest version, and wow, is it a BILLION times better. My only complaint so far, is that I am having problems getting the Zen template (based upon CSS Garden!) to work. So, I am stuck with a modded template that belongs to someone else. Oh well. The second reason I decided to work on my website/drupal installation is that my original idea was to use it to build my e-portfolio, but I hadn't really done much with it.

I received some inspiration this afternoon (Weds, 3/19/2008) at an Emerging Educational Technologies workshop taught by David Noah from the Center for Teaching & Learning. His presentations/workshops are always interesting. Although they are based strongly in educational theory, he is a creative and forward thinking person. So, the discussions are always food for thought! He also talked some about e-portfolios (in addition to all of the Web2.0 stuff, second life, etc.), which made me think: where I am with my e-portfolio?

textpattern, wordpress, & redesign

I'm re-doing one of my domains with textpattern or wordpress. I considered drupal, but to be honest, I want something with a little stronger 3rd party support. There are several features & functionalities missing in drupal which I need. For a site from scratch or one with content generated from within drupal, all is well. For those working with 3rd party apps already, well, it may or may not work (or even be available).

Drupal templating is also notoriously tough to work with, although with the new css zen template, it is easier to give it a look which is not straight out of the box. Drupal sites are generally u-g-l-y, but very functional! ;-)

Anyhow, I decided to try something new. I need:

• a blog - one with categories, subcategories, tagging, css templating, rss, upload images + the ability to import a rather large MT export file
• image gallery - preferably one that can import from coppermine or gallery with category support, metadata, rss, crossposting of images (assign images to more than 1 category)
  
• easy support for 3rd party scripting from flickr, youtube, blogger, other rss, etc.
  
• a way to generate 5 or 6 mostly static pages
• ability to template and design with css; slightly different templates for various sections
  
• valid coding would be nice, but I know there are sometimes compromises

On this domain, I have been using expression engine (ee) for years for a blog software. However, I am now ready to dump ee, due to its cost and licensing restrictions. Actually, I started out with greymatter (opensource) then migrated to MT (movable type) and then migrated to ee. So, some of my data has already been through 3 migrations.

I know wordpress can do this. Textpattern seems to be an option too. So, an interesting experiment.

new things for 2008... crystal ball gazing with opensource, social networking, digital identity, and more aka the predictions.

I was poking around trying to find a better video editor, when I stumbled across an opensource project called, Jahshaka. Jahshaka is positioning itself as being a fullbodied product that can compete with such software as finalcut pro (wow!). Not sure about that, because I could never (ever, ever) get the windows installer to work properly. Maybe if I had already switched to ubuntu ALREADY...

Anyhow, I started thinking about all of the new things out there that I probably don't know about (and some that I do) and somehow I ended up crystal ball gazing (a very dangerous occupation).

It is really amazing how fullbodied some of the opensource products are (openoffice, wordpress, drupal, anyone?) and perhaps, even more amazing, all of the online tools now available (thinkfree, etc.)

As for my thoughts on the near future on the 'net: niche social networking, user centered aggregated content (perhaps, even some consolidation?), and digital identity. Web3.0 and semantic web? Maybe.

I think niche social networking will become even more popular (social networking sites tailored to the needs of visual artists have popped up recently). Considering how easy it is to get lost in the crowd at facebook or myspace, I can see how appealing a specialized site is. Plus, the one size fits all just does not really... well, fit. Visual artists have been advocating/begging/petitioning myspace for years to create a visual arts portal, as myspace has for musicians. Why bother with that, when there are several sites specifically for visual artists?

However, having a specialized site means another profile and spot on the web to maintain. Social networking and content aggregators are surely to be even stronger in '08. How else to manage all of the personal content bits floating out on the web? All of the stuff you want to read? Google reader can help, Pageflakes might be even be more useful (a variety of content, not just feeds or clipped websites), but then there is the other stuff: all of the various profiles, with logins and passwords. Social networking aggregators such as spokeo, profilactic and others, can be handy. Digital identity tools are certainly helpful, for logging in OpenID (one login for multiple sites) and in distinguishing what is yours and perhaps, more importantly, what is NOT yours (and is in no way affiliated.) Consolidation is bound to happen and a little is a good thing -- unless google ends up owning EVERYTHING....

Among sites being touted as 'hot' for '08: PowerSearch (a semantic search engine) , Pownce (social networking & more), etsy (an online store similar to ebay focused on handmade and originally produced products... most of the art community that I know, do not seem overly enamored with etsy, thus far), Dopplr.com (a travel & meetup site), twitter (really? I thought we were all tired of twitter by now), children's social networking such as moshimonsters and webkinz (if you know a tween or preteen, just ask them about webkinz), seesmic (video diaries)...

..and of course, Google opensocial, if it ever makes headway. I also like some of the projects which allow users to make a positive contribution to a body of knowledge in some way, like the steve museum project, where users assign keywords/tag artwork, identifying artists' work, and more) and also recaptcha, which uses scanned images from books as captchas (a phrase or word typed in some sort of form, that the user must enter in a text box, which prevent spambots from automatically using the form).

..and then there is always wikipedia, citizendium, the new Google Knol, and those sorts of sites.

Other trends & technologies that have popped up in the onslaught of 2008 predictions posts/articles include:

Location based services (niche marketing of a sort), Mobile Social Networking (I keep reading about this as a big trend, but it just seems more like a means of access to me -- be it a pda, iphone, laptop, desktop, psp or whatever... but freely available WIFI at most public buildings, that could definitely continue to change things), lots of chatter about Google taking on the cellphone/mobile industry with Android, Gaming, SecondLife/Virtual Worlds (OpenSL?), internet habits changing as the mobile industry & high demand downloads continue to increase, increase in usage of Linux and other opensource projects (evergreen, the opensource ILS?), and an increase in distrust in google (I love google products, but they are a corporation after all.)

Creating widgets and apps to work with much of this technology is usually (but not always, of course) fairly easy to do and can easily be done by someone with minimal coding experience. I see lots of places where libraries can be, if they want to be. I guess that is the question.

Facebook is so last year http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/24/facebook.socialnetworking

2008 Predictions http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2008_web_predictions.php

2008 Technology predictions http://latestgeeknews.blogspot.com/2007/12/2008-technology-prediction.html

The Economists Prediction for 2008 http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10410912

Top 10 Startups Worth Watching in 2008 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/12/YE_10_startups

30 Library Technology Predictions http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2007/12/30_library_tech.html

..and of course, a generous sprinkling of my thoughts.