Loosing Site

Reuters have launched OpenCalais a service that will encourage the development and growth of the Semantic Web.

OpenCalais via kwout

Aimed at developers and information publishers, OpenCalais is web service that can extract meaningful terms from well written text. When fed a newspaper article or business report the service will identify the people, places, monetary values, companies and institutions mentioned and will organize references to those terms to ease further research. In well structured business text Calais can also interpret and classify facts; recognizing and reporting joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions, earnings announcements etc.

End users will not interact with Calais directly, but will access the service through third party applications, plugins and utilities. Development of these will be encouraged through programming bounties, the first offers $5000 for the development of a Wordpress plugin.

In the long term, initiatives like OpenCalais will help us work more effectively with the increasing flow of information that surrounds us. These are distinct strategic and personal benefits to be gained from generating, and being able to work with, structured information instead of being swamped by raw data.

Described by its developers as the worlds easiest database, Blist (web list) aims to be a database “for the rest of us”; one that is designed for ordinary users rather than programmers or database administrators.

Using a spreadsheet layout as its primary metaphor, Blist extends the model with individual cells able to hold images, documents, and multiple values. It presents intuitive views of the data, with form and calendar modes for viewing and manipulating information.

Unveiled at DEMO 08, Blist is now open to beta testers.

xFruits offer a range of services for transforming information to and from RSS feeds. A popular example is their RSS to Mobile web service.

xFruits – Compose your information system via kwout

This takes an RSS feed and formats its content for ease of reading and navigation on small screen mobile devices.

Loosing Site via kwout

To see the difference this makes take a look at these Opera Mini emulations:

• original website

• xFruits RSS to Mobile version

It was a welcome relief at Monday’s Vancouver Facebook Developer Garage to see so many useful, well-designed and well engineered applications. Of particular note is Active State’s Eat-O-Rama.

Miss604’s Vancouver Blog » Blog Archive » Facebook Awards: Developer and Design Garage Live Blog Tonight via kwout

A restaurant discovery and rating application written in Python with a mySQL database, the application’s smooth and responsive interface shows the quality that can be expected from a dedicated, experienced team devoting months of focussed effort. Equally impressive is the commitment to a development philosophy that makes comparison testing an integral part of the design process.

Some notable quotes from the presentation are:

“People like to interact where no response is necessary, but a response is possible.”

“The most important thing is to deliver real value to the person using the application. Then impart additional value to their friends.”

Details of the other applications presented are on Miss 604’s blog, which amazingly was produced live during the event.

issuu™ is a beautiful way to publish documents on-line. Created to give a magazine look and feel to online documents issuu has a breathtaking interface combined with a simple publication process.

Issuu – You Publish via kwout

issuu documents are hosted free of charge and can be embedded in any web page or blog, or shared on social networks.

The embed gives a thumbnailed view of the entire document from which the publication can be opened for more comfortable reading. This in turn allows you to open a full screen view that is an absolute pleasure to use. In full screen the interface fades into the background leaving the viewer to enjoy the publication design with no distractions.

This is an ideal solution for presenting work where the fidelity of the graphical composition and typography is important.

It has limitations:

• Text is not exposed to search engines and cannot be copied to the clipboard.
• The hosted publications can be embedded by anyone, on any site; which means you must be very conscious of copyright issues.
• Comments can only be made on the publication as a whole, which can be a little coarse-grained for larger documents.

Other than that, issuu is an excellent technology that will be as useful in the publication of brochures, books and portfolios as it is in magazine publication and photography.