I was once posed an interesting question, “Do you think this internet thing is a fad?”. At the time you’d not sound crazy by replying with a yes. However as time went on and retrospect began to creep up on us all the answer eventually became a firm and resounding no. So as the internet has developed it has gathered more information than it knows what to do with and the worst thing about this is most of it is unstructured data that has no way of relating back to another piece of relevant data. Google has made and continues to make huge steps in making sense of this data but what we really need is another way of preparing and distributing data. This is something that will become more and more important as we all continue to flood the facetubes with superfluous information. Now this is where Metaweb, Google’s latest acquisition, comes in.
Metaweb is company that, like Google, has been trying to catalogue the worlds data and been doing a pretty good job of it since 2005. The main tool in Metaweb’s arsenal is Freebase (no, not the chemical kind). Freebase can be best explained by its famous quote as being an “open, shared database of the world’s knowledge”. What Freebase and Metaweb have done is create a common framework for everyone to structure their data, from content writers to web developers, so that it can be used and re-used ad infinitum. The power of this idea is not new to database administrators but bringing it’s power to the average person is where the real magic begins. This video should help illustrate…
So, other than being a database developers wet dream, it will create a structure to user generated content that hasn’t been easily available until now.
Also, i’ve been watching a new show called Louie. It’s a bit funny.
For all you nerds out there, if you hadn’t already realised, jQuery 1.3.2 has been released… so go get it and love it. It’s pretty much the choicest JS framework available at the moment, all the cool kids are using it. Also worth a mention is the new jQuery UI 1.7 framwork… it’s not here yet but will be soon, so look out for it.
FYI… Ajaxian is a top place to geek out to the latest web dev news
Lamrock supports the bushfire appeal to help those left homeless after horrific bushfires engulfed hectares of rural Victoria over the weekend - our heart go out to those who have been effected.
You too can make a donation @ www.redcross.org.au/Donations
Adobe is working with Apple to develop a version of Flash specifically for the iPhone, according to a report Adobe’s CEO said tailoring Flash for the touch-screen handset required Apple’s involvement.
Epic 2014 is the original flash online movie made by Robin Sloan for the Museum of Media History. Set in 2014 it charts the history of the Internet, the evolving mediascape and the way news and newspapers were affected by the growth in online news. It coined the word “Googlezon” from a future merger of Google and Amazon to form the Google grid, and speaks of news wars with the Times becoming a print only paper for the elite culminating in EPIC Evolving Personalised Information Construct.
Epic 2015 is a new updated vision of the future set in 2015.
