http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog MIT CSAIL Research Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:15:59 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog/2009/11/18/plotting-a-course-for-data-gov/ I had an interesting discussion with my student Katrina Panovich today.  I'm intrigued by the way people use twitter for "ambient awareness"---watching what goes by, but not worrying about what they miss.   I find this paradoxical---if you don't care about missing stuff, why watch at all?  Especially given that each ... http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog/2009/11/17/information-glut-or-information-gluttons/ A few weeks ago Adam and I blogged about some of our recent work investigating how link-sharing happens on the web. In contrast to most sharing tools out there, which broadcast your shares to anyone who will listen, we found that lots of sharing happens point-to-point, from friend to friend. ... http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog/2009/11/16/introducing-feedme-a-new-sharing-tool-for-google-reader/ While I prefer Windows XP [1] for my main work machine--that is, my laptop--nothing beats Linux when you need good, plain command-line access to every conceivable feature of a computer. For the last three years I've been keeping a Linux box [2] running 24/7 in a closet in my family's ... http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog/2009/11/12/caring-for-your-pet-offsite-server/ 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, ... http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog/2009/11/11/iswc-afterthoughts/ Having gotten ISWC's Ontology Panel off my chest, I want to take the time to discuss the Best Paper Awards we gave at the conference.  The papers that got these awards received uniformly high ratings from their reviewers, were recommended for awards by the program committee, impressed the program chairs, ... http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog/2009/11/08/paper-awards-at-iswc/ 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 ... http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog/2009/11/04/blogs-and-the-dissemination-of-scientific-research/ 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 ... http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog/2009/11/03/does-the-semantic-web-need-ontologies/ 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 ... http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog/2009/10/25/tales-of-a-semantic-web-skeptic/ Many years ago I discovered NoteWorthy Composer, and I've been using it for music notation ever since. Unfortunately, I find that NoteWorthy doesn't scale very well in several important dimensions. In particular, it lacks the ability to: Let the user manipulate multiple staves at once (even just for copying/cutting and pasting a ... http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/blog/2009/10/22/on-music-notation-guis/