The US Government efforts to create a culture of open government data is a big deal. Hopefully it signals a shift from the “pull” model of FOIA to a “push” mindset in which data is proactively returned to the public without first having to ask (and pay). Still, data.gov has a lot of room for [...]
After recovery from chairing ISWC 2009, I had always intended to blog about some of the changes my co-chair Avi Bernstien and I tried for the conference. I was prompted to do it today by a very interesting post by James Landay—it describes problems with the current CHI/UIST reviewing process, and led to some fascinating [...]
HCI research needs to get better at spreading the word, sooner, in the Web 2.0 era. Typically, by the time that CHI rolls around, the research being presented is at least 7 months old. When (or if) a group decides to post PDFs early, the papers are so distributed that interested readers can’t find them. [...]
Ever since returning from the 2009 International Semantic Web Conference last week I’ve been bursting to discuss a panel that took place there on the topic “Does the Semantic Web need Ontologies?”. But the WWW2010 deadline was today and we had 3 papers to write. With that deadline now 10 minutes past, I can [...]
Right now the world’s premiere semantic web conference is happening in Washington, D.C. As a graduate student of the fellow who’s chairing the conference this year, and working down the hall from Sir Linked Data himself, I’ve had my fair share of semantic web experiences. But my background is not in Semantic Web technology, so [...]
One of the most exciting aspects of the (in-progress) HTML5 specification is the number of data-centric features it contains. It’s almost as if the committee is saying a big, “OK, OK! We heard you!” to all the data-heads out there and is providing not one, not two, not three, but four different ways to [...]
Computer scientist researchers are used to being ahead of the curve. Researchers gain access to new (expensive) hardware and software, and use it to push the limits of what is possible: better tools can enable better work. Eventually those tools come down in price, and the research can be disseminated. Think of what motion capture [...]