Building thread-safe code with SimpleDateFormat

The scenario is simple.

Each resource in JeromeDL has an upload and update dates; each is stored in a very simple format yyyyMMdd, e.g., 20071212 (for today).

From time to time - we need to get a Java Date object of out this information.

What we do?

Use SimpleDateFormat object parse and format date, getting it back and forth between Java and RDF.

Simple, right?

Yes, as long as your read the whole documentation of the SimpleDateFormat class - to discover that the objects are not synchronized. In other words - what will run on a standalone application with one processor - might very easily break when you try it on a server with multiple processors (or Intel HT).

Luckily, the solution is equally simple - use synchronized block, and you’re done.

Who is using my system?

If you have a web application, based on Servlets/JSP (JEE), which sits behind the Apache/mod_jk, and you would like to track who is using your system, here is what to do:

1. In the Apache configuration (probably Vhost definition, as in my case), you will need:
        • JkMount /* NAME_OF_YOUR_WORKER
        • JkEnvVar REMOTE_USER "<NOTSET>"
The second entry will pass the information about user logged in on the Apache level down to your web application
2. In your application you can check who is using it, with credentials on the Apache level, with:
        • ${ REMOTE_USER } (JSP/EL)
        • request.getAttribute("REMOTE_USER") (Servlet or JSP/Scriptlets)
3. In your application you can also check who is using it, with credentials on the Tomcat level, with:
        • ${ pageContext.request.remoteUser } (JSP/EL)
        • request.getRemoteUser() (Servlet or JSP/Scriptlets)

That’s it.

Unless, your system is DSpace - where more problems will arise. You will need to, e.g.,
1. The register user is hidden in request.getAttribute("dspace.current.user"), and is of type org.dspace.eperson.EPerson
2. In order to get some human-readable description of this user you can call getEmail() method to get the email of the user.

Deadly Sins (when using email)

I have just read this post. I subscribe to this opinion. And on the top of his 7 sins:
1. Hanging Questions
2. Buried Requests
3. Wrong Medium
4. Trying to Be Clever
5. Sending Urgent Requests Through E-Mail
6. Bulky Paragraph
7. Playing E-Mail Tag

I would surely put “Attach Huge Emails”. Seriously, this is very annoying. My mailbox is no 5GB+.

Mac vs PC (by Umberto Eco)

…Insufficient consideration has been given to the new underground religious war which is modifying the modern world. It’s an old idea of mine, but I find that whenever I tell people about it they immediately agree with me.
The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ‘ratio studiorum’ of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach–if not the Kingdom of Heaven–the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.
DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revellers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.
You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It’s true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions; when it comes down to it, you can decide to allow women and gays to be ministers if you want to…..
And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is talmudic and cabalistic…
[ Being a Mac user and a Catholic - I leave no comments to that ;) ]

Java6 for Leopard

My two cents - I really miss that - anyone also interested - please put
13949712720901ForOSX
on your web page/blog

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Looking for a Researcher - Software Developer [JeromeDL project] (position closed)

Researcher - Software Developer

(please note that the recruitment process is now closed)

The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) is the largest semantic research organisation in the world. DERI offers a stimulating, dynamic, multi-cultural research environment with excellent ties to research groups worldwide. This is a unique opportunity to join the effort of bringing research prototypes to industry ready within DERI, in collaboration with our research and industrial partners will play a key role in making next-generation semantic computing systems a reality. DERI offers a unique opportunity to develop one’s career in the world-wide renown and industry strong research environment.
 
The Person
• Ability and willingness to work in a international team based environment developing state of the art software solutions on time and to specification
• Motivated and proactive attitude to take ownership and initiative in all work assignments
• Excellent analysis and problem solving skills
• Strong design, development & testing skills
• Excellent communication skills, verbal and written
• Excellent command of English, both verbal and written
• Ability to tackle wide and varied tasks
• Creative Thinking

Essential Skills
• Solid industry experience using many of the following:
• Very strong core Java
• Web based UI: JSP/Servlets/Applets/JavaScript/AJAX
• Good expertise with automated testing frameworks such as JUnit
• Good knowledge and experience with Semantic technologies
• Good knowledge of object-oriented design principles and design patterns with an understanding of their application within Java
 
Desirable Experience & Background (inc. qualifications):
• Knowledge/Experience with distributed systems and service-oriented design principles
• Knowledge of user interface design principles
• Experience/Knowledge of document processing and search techniques
• Experience/Knowledge of XML processing and related technologies
• A relevant post graduate degree (MSc) or relevant industrial experience

The position is full-time, located at DERI Galway. The duration of the post will be for 9 months in the first instance. The salary is commensurable with qualifications and experience. An early start date is preferable as the position is now open. A panel for future similar positions may be formed.
Informal enquiries about these positions may be made to:
Sebastian Ryszard Kruk, Researcher and Project Manager, Tel +353-91-495213 sebastian.kruk@deri.org

Application procedure: Candidates are requested to submit a covering letter, CV (Word or PDF format only) and the names and addresses of at least three and not more than five referees via e-mail to;
hr.ie@deri.org

Healing you windows after Skype-virus

I do not have PC, what for? Mac is cool enough.
But since I just healed two PC of my friends, a short description on what to do when you catch the Skype virus yourself:

Expert users — and only expert users — who know what they’re doing can also remove the worm manually.

1. Restart the PC in safe mode
2. Run regedit
3. Go to HKLM/software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/runonce find entry with mshtmldat32.exe. Delete this entry. [Actually there might be some other *.exe reference there - remove it just in case]
4. Go to Windows\System32 directory and delete following files: wndrivs32.exe, mshtmldat32.exe, winlgcvers.exe, sdrivew32.exe
5. Go to windows/system32/drivers/etc
6. Find file hosts
7. Open it with notepad, ctrl+a and delete all entries (this will resume your antivirus updates), save, close.
8. Restart the PC.

[Source: http://heartbeat.skype.com/2007/09/the_worm_that_affects_skype_fo.html]

Bank of Ireland - New Online Banking Services Coming Soon!

I guess it had to happen eventually. BoI has introduced multilingual support and international payments for their online banking service. See below.

Btw. have you noticed something interesting ? English, Polish, Chinese,... what about Gaelic ?



New Online Banking Services Coming Soon!

Bank of Ireland 365 online is launching a range of new services in October 2007 to improve your online banking experience.

You will soon be able to:

Register new beneficiaries for domestic and international payments
Make international payments to over 40 countries worldwide
Top up your mobile phone online with Vodafone, O2 and Meteor
Set up, cancel and amend standing orders


Take a tour of our new 365 online demo - available in 3 languages - English, Polish and Chinese. Our specially designed step-by-step guide will show you how easy it is to use these exciting new services. You can access this by selecting the "365 online Demo" link on www.365online.com

Is my accent not irish enough?

Now I'm really pissed.

These jerks from above had their party till 3am (? at least this is when I managed to get to sleep) - and the fecking Gardai did literally nothing with it - even after our 2 calls.
I am asking myself why? But I guess the answer is simple, and I conclude it based on experience of myself and my fellow non-Irish colleagues: My accent is still not irish enough, right?
When it comes to clamping in Galway - you are on the safe side if you have irish plates; you can park in any, most stupid, and usually dangerous for the safety of others places. But beware, Polish plates will get you a bill in a don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it time, even if you think you can safely park there, and you do not really see any P&D signs or ticketing machine. Having problems on the road, like driving in the night, or in the fog, without your lights turned on; at least not in the dip-lights position, so that it is either hard to see you, or we see-you-hell-too-well? No problem - cause you have your irish plates; try to do that on non-Irish ones - and you are lucky to get away without the fine.
And finally, you see someone damaging cars and bikes on the parking lot; be sure you sound Irish, otherwise no one will take your report seriously.
If you think it is just my imagination - you are wrong - this things did happen, and I can see them happening all the time; and believe me - I have seen both versions of each story already, over the last 3 years.

Conclusions? I am getting sick and tired of this place. I can get used to bad drivers (and bad “parkers” too), but I just cannot stand law enforcement forces (oh, sorry, here I should say - peace keeping forces) doing literally nothing when your neighbors decide that you do not deserve a good night sleep after a VERY hard week.

I just wonder, what would happen if the same situation was in my country? I know that Police will come quite quickly to silent noisy guys. But will they when my accent does sound foreign? Hard to tell; but even if they we be reluctant as here - it means that everyone is better off in their own country...

Bill is back

Just a short note, to share my state of mind.

Today, we’ve met Bill in the office. He came just for a short while, but it was plain to see - he does feel better than before.

I am very happy. I hope he will fully recover from his illness.

In the meantime, welcome back Bill.

Ontology Development - Do we collaborate?

One of the still unresolved problems in MarcOnt Portal is how to integrate suggestions from the community into new release of the ontology; which suggestions will conflict, how to choose the ones to be used, etc. MarcOnt Portal group still fights with the code base: switching to new SemVersion, fighting with FOAFRealm+SemVersion integration, and hardening the implementation. And we keep forgetting about that question - how to design and algorithm for semi-automated agreement on new versions of ontologies.

I guess, we should start with the definition of the ontology:

An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization. (...) Practically, an ontological commitment is an agreement to use a vocabulary (i.e., ask queries and make assertions) in a way that is consistent (but not complete) with respect to the theory specified by an ontology.
Tom Gruber “What is an Ontology?”

In other words - ontology is should be based on the agreement among the community of experts in the specific domain.

Should we try to talk to as many domain experts from various ontology development groups as possible, and see how they do that in practice?

There is some research done in that area already; have following article as an example.

But, when we look into an average ontology development - is it always based on the community agreement? I hope we will figure it out soon, as it is the cornerstone of our future research on MarcOnt Portal.

3 years in DERI (and counting ...)

It is hard to imagine, but it is precisely 3 years since I joined DERI Galway.
Man, ... 3 years ago I was almost certain I will be packing myself, and heading home.
I would never actually thought that we are going to stay longer, and that these 3 years will be so full with various, colorful events.

Let’s try to sum up the projects first:
• I came here with a prototype of my semantic digital library (Elvis-DL), which I built at GUT; now JeromeDL, next step in evolution of Elvis-DL, (Adam many thanks for the hint on the name) is getting nearer to version 2.1, and is full with various components I’ve would never dreamed of. A lot of people contributed to the project; somehow everyone is gone now, and I have to start head-hunting again ☹
• My idea of MarcOnt Initiative I brought we me that time, is still growing; thanks to Maciej, who took over from me, and our MarcOnt working group teams; from an idea of a collaborative ontology management environment (MarcOnt Portal), and bibliographic ontology (MarcOnt Ontology), with Marcin’s help we extended MarcOnt Initiative with MarcOnt Mediation Services and RDF Translator library. Piotr added Rule Generator to the stack of components.
• The quick hack (2 nights) of FOAFRealm library is also much alive; I did it before I came to DERI, and later presented at the FOAF Workshop in Galway. Based on the research, mine and D-FOAF working group, we’ve got enough stuff to put together version 2.0; Sławek, who took over from me on this, is now preparing the final version of FOAFRealm 2.0
• While morphing Elvis-DL into JeromeDL by, among the others, delivering support for multiple languages, I managed to prototype something that I wanted to do a long time before, ever since I worked with GUT - a collaborative space in a digital library. From the 3 components: shareable bookmarks annotated with established classification schemata, mini-blog, and resources ranking, the first one is now primarily identified with what I christened as Social Semantic Collaborative Filtering (SSCF). My prototype was simple and dirty, but got enough attention and we decided to give it a new face. Ever since then, Adam makes sure that SSCF looks better and better, and delivers more and more nice features, including support for SIOC, stored faceted navigation queries, del.icio.us bookmarks, and recommendation engine delivered by Daniel and Vinicius from PUC-Rio.
• In late December 2004 the idea of our own lightweight implementation of HyperCuP protocol was born. Thanks to Sławek and Paweł, we now have a pretty stable component, that has already empowered both JeromeDL and FOAFRealm in distributed computing capabilities.
• With eLITE project [see later] even more ideas and opportunities emerged. The first one to come was Didaskon project. Initiated as a GUT group project with great help from Adam, the project is currently being managed by Jacek (who also works on his SemPerKit and Copernicus). I hope in the near future we will hear about the first release, but till now, Didaskon already gave life to two spin-off projects:
• Informal Knowledge Harvester (IKHarvester) - delivered by Jarek to support aggregation of knowledge from various Social Semantic Information Sources, and delivering them as Learning Objects Metadata.
• IKAR (Informal Knowledge AdapteR) - delivered by Filip, allows to deliver auxiliary information on related resources, and toggle visibility of this information based on current level of the knowledge of the user
• Since both JeromeDL and SSCF were in desperate need of an annotation component that could seamlessly support both WordNet and various taxonomies, I hacked together JOnto, which handles RDF representation of various knowledge organization systems, and delivers nice (?) AJAXy components to access this information.
• Last year, together with Stefan, we came with an idea of TagsTreeMaps, as an alternative representation of TagCloud. We almost got TTM patented, but in the result, we are year late with publication process; I hope to get some interesting paper out within next month.
• In early fall 2006 Bill told me about his idea of HoneyCombTM, which was so brilliant I had to give it a try. This is how another JavaScript-AJAX component emerged, giving me finally a concrete ground to finally build ....
• faceted navigation component - MultiBeeBrowse. Don’t blame me for the name - when you put together honeycomb, faceted view, and busy bee (aghm, that is me ☺ ) you can’t expect anything else. To be frank, the idea of MBB was something I was waiting for the last 2 years. The early implementations of Jerome-Photo faceted navigation component, and a similar struggle with faceted component for SWSE (at the time I was an active member of the team), where not wrong, but they were missing bits and pieces; basically, they were missing collaborative space which would fit nicely to my idea of S3B [see later] services. Even though the current prototype might, and should be, improved in various places (hopefully Wladek will contribute here and there within his thesis) - I finally managed to close the loop of the ...
• Social Semantic Search and Browsing (S3B) - from the early start of my work on the PhD thesis I wanted to concentrate on this topic. Digital libraries seemed to be a perfect framework to investigate it. My MSc delivered semantic query expansion algorithm, which is now being refurbished by Jakub, Lukasz, and Mateusz, it already had both social and semantic touch. SSCF was all about social and semantics. I was missing one piece of this puzzle. I quickly learned that it was the faceted navigation. Yah, so what? I saw semantics, but where was the collaborative space? With MBB on board I am all set to finally do evaluation of this beast ☺

I guess that would be it for software prototypes (for now at least ...)


Working groups and master thesis:
Thanks to collaborative nature of both prof. Krawczyk and Stefan (should I say prof. Decker to match the context?) we managed to establish an ongoing exchange program. It consists of establishing 3-person group project at GUT, summer internship in DERI, another internship in DERI during 10th semester, and joint MSc diploma with thesis in English.
We are in the third year of this program now. The first 3 groups: W2W (JeromeDL), WMap (MarcOnt), and D-FOAF (FOAFRealm) gave foundations to Corrib Cluster Project. What has started as a joint R&D initiative between DERI Galway and GUT, slowly attracts other researchers, e.g., from prof. Hong-Gee Kim group.
I have already wrote about Didaskon (group project 2006). Currently members of 3rd group projects (JeromeDL 2, MarcOnt 2, and SQE) set up (2007) work with us in DERI. Good luck guys ☺
I will not go in to too many details about the MSc diplomas.
You can easily find them here.


Conferences and exchange programs:
There was a lot of traveling for the last 3 years, and it would be hard to list it all here. But the most important visits (mainly for the development of my research) were:
• ISWC2004 - where I discovered that my extension to JeromeDL is actually a collaborative filtering component
• exchange visit to DERI Innsbruck - where I networked with many interesting people. Together with Kerstin we wrote a paper that received the Best Paper Award, and Axel and Michael had their contribution to JeromeDL, while we now research with Ying, and her team, on the tagging.
• ESWC2005 followed by KnowledgeWeb meeting, was a great opportunity to meet even more renown researchers.
• I will never forget DEXA2005, where I met Bernhard, with who we started building the Semantic Digital Libraries community - there results are quite encouraging: 3 tutorials (JCDL2006, WWW2007 (!), and ESWC2007), 1 workshop session (NKOS2006) and ... a book with which I struggle at the moment.
• Finally, my exchange visit to PUC-Rio, where I worked with prof. Daniel Schwabe. The visit was so valuable, I wish it could be longer; on the other hand, I still struggle with implementing and evaluating all the ideas we crafted together with Daniel and his team ☺.


I have started my adventure with DERI as a PhD student.
In January 2006, however, 5 of the aforementioned projects (JeromeDL, MarcOnt, FOAFRealm, SSCF, and HyperCuP) became the corner stones of the eLITE grant from Enterprise Ireland; thanks to this grant even more people can now work with me on my projects, and in January 2006 I was promoted from a PhD Student to a Researcher (Computer Science) , leading research on the Semantic Web and Social Networking technologies, in the newly established eLearning cluster.

Now, we created notitio.us, and I wonder what the future brings ...

What is the difference?

The concerns around RDF Storages efficient are not new; many people I meet, ask me if they are scalable enough, so that they could used them in the industrial solutions.
I was not sure about it for a long time. I was not happy with Jena, we have switched JeromeDL and FOAFRealm to Sesame. I showed some improvement. I was hoping to switch to YARS, but being unable to write to this storage kept me at bay.
Anyway, over the time my confidence in the scalability of the RDF storages grew. When DERI announced the break through with SWSE/YARS2, I felt pretty confident that we have reached the stage, where the industrial world can start building upon Semantic Web technologies.

And so, I became reckless. Until only recently ...

During my summer holiday, just to play around a little, I did some changes in the TagsTreeMaps (TTM) component, preparing it for the evaluation, which I will need for my thesis. Since broadband connection and a sunny environment are mutually exclusive (at least they were in my case), I have switched from the original del.icio.us tagging provider module, developed last year, to an internal notitio.us provider module. The later one operated on the RDF storage (Sesame) with a copy of my, and some of my colleagues, taggings from del.icio.us. The graph with taggings was build following Tom Grubbers Tagging ontology (TagCommons).

If you happened to play with TTM anytime in the past, you know that what is required in the first step is a list of all tags by given user, with a number of times each tag has been used. Since none of RDF query languages (at least to my knowledge), supported by Sesame, allows for aggregations like COUNT(*), I decided to do the counting myself. Still, I needed a list of all tags.

The obvious, to me, query was following:

SELECT term
FROM
{document} tagging:hasTagging {tagging},
{tagging} dc:creator {<USER-ID>};
tagging:hasTerm {} rdfs:label {term}
USING NAMESPACE
tagging = <http://ttm.corrib.org/tagging#>,
dc = <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>

In other words, for all documents tagged by user with give USER-ID, get all literals representing tags used in this tagging.

To my surprise the whole application slowed downed to a snail pace. Why? A quick profiling with Logger in the right places of the algorithm (I could not get Tomcat profilers in Eclipse running on my Mac), gave a hint that it is the query execution by Sesame that takes ages.
I have even posted this query through the web interface of Sesame. The result was even worse: 25k ms (!) to compute the query for roughly 400+ documents with 2.5 tags per each (on average). That is BAD.

Luckily, I am blessed with a group of smarter than me (apparently) people working under my supervision in my SemInf Lab in DERI.
I told the problem to Maciej, and asked him what question would he wrote. His response was:

SELECT term
FROM
{tagging} dc:creator {<USER-ID>};
tagging:hasTerm {} rdfs:label {term}
USING NAMESPACE
tagging = <http://ttm.corrib.org/tagging#>,
dc = <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>

... and Sesame managed to compute it, giving the same results (!) in 200ms (!!!!!).

The question is if I can use his query instead of mine? Quick answer: YES,

... but what if the RDF will not conform our ontology? Like e.g., there will be resources with dc:creator and tagging:hasTerms properties, where will not be of a type Tagging, associated with a document? Unlikely to happen in the old world of SQL, but not in the open Semantic Web environment.

For the purpose of the evaluation of TTM I will stick to Maciej’s query. Hopefully, there will be some better solution out there, by the time notitio.us will go commercial.

Unofficial Anthem of Polish Community in Ireland

Well, it is surely unofficial, but I must admit that this is the only song that came with us, 3 years ago, to Ireland: Kowalski “A Irlandia jest taka zielona” (“But Ireland is so green”).

Sebciok sent it to us when we were packing for Ireland. Now, Szymon pointed, on his blog, to the movie clip for this song.

Be careful when google-ing for LaTeX

I know LaTeX is cool, and I cannot imagine publishing my research with out it.
But from time to time, I am getting caught in a trap of non-personal enough and case insensitive search in Google.

Today I was trying to find how to insert a ^TM symbol in LaTeX (\texttrademark). A simple query "LaTeX trademark" occurred to be too simple ... (you can imagine what I mean, or check it yourself).

When will be the times where the search engine will actually know what I mean?!

Technorati Tags:
LaTeX, Google, meaning

How I love Tomcat (did I say love? I hate it)

This is not the first time that Tomcat team decided to make our life easier and change the way Tomcat 6 works (compared to T5.5)

A couple of notes from our (just finished) session on how to make JeromeDL working on T6.

1. apart from small changes required here and there in JSP (like changing ${ (test)?one:two} -> ${ (test)?(one):(two)} ) - T6 seems to be much faster than T5.5



2. T6 introduced new way (they say it is a features) of handling internationalization, but it breaks common sense way of how fmt:bundle worked. Now, you cannot do .getKeys(), or bundle.keys - as this new object, that says it is a ResourceBundle is somehow mapped in EL to something behaving like a Map. so bundle.keys - returns ???keys??? indicating that such a translation has not been found - stupid.
   
   Together with Adam we wrote a helper function in Tag Lib to make sure we get Enumeration from bundle - it was required by JavaScript internationalization style we have e.g. in SSCF



3. T6 has problems with handling long URL that contains URLEncoded fragments. If you have %2F as a result of URL encoding a slash - it will fail to load the page, with error 400 -> wrong URL no Slash - again stupid. I will try to find some solution soon.

Please let me know if anyone has any idea how to fix point 3.

Technorati Tags:
jeromedl, features, tomcat, problems

Hello word from MacBook Pro

OK, I have finally made it.
If you read this post - it means that I am now 100% MacSkruk [or at least this is how my Mac is called].
There were several reasons to switch; I cannot event try to rank them. But believe me - it was for the best :)

Irish Digital Libraries Summit

We would like to invite everyone interested in the research and development of digital libraries in Ireland to participate in the Irish Digital Libraries Summit on 20th April 2007. This one-day forum explores the future of digital libraries at the eve of the next generation Internet.

The event is organized by the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), NUI Galway, a campus company with an excellent international reputation for research and teaching on the semantic web. Further details of DERI are available at http://www.deri.ie/

The goal of the summit is to bring together researchers, librarians, library systems suppliers, and policy makers in order to facilitate the implementation of cutting edge technological developments in libraries. This four-way interaction is necessary for the future development of digital libraries in Ireland.

Expected outcomes from the summit include:

• new digital projects in individual Irish libraries, and
• the basics of an application for funding of a national digital libraries initiative under the EU FP7 Digital Libraries theme.

Speakers at the summit will present current research on digital libraries in the context of next generation Internet technologies (Semantic Web, Web 2.0), such as JeromeDL, Fedora, and BRICKS. JeromeDL allows institutions to easily publish documents on the Web. Further details are available at http://www.jeromedl.org/ . There will also be presentations by practitioners and researchers on current Irish digital libraries projects.

The summit will be held at DERI, NUI Galway, IDA Business Park, Lower Dangan, Galway, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday 20th April 2007. Details of the summit are available at:  http://wiki.corrib.deri.ie/index.php/SemDL/IrishDLSummit

If you intend attending the summit please register in advance by email sebastian DOT  kruk AT deri.org or phone +353 85 7126591 (M).  If you would like to give a short presentation about digital libraries, please provide details so that we can include you in the programme.

prof. dr. Stefan Decker
Director of DERI & Cluster Leader Semantic Web

Sebastian Kruk
Lead Researcher, Project Manager: Digital Libraries

prof. Mary Burke
School of Information and Library Studies (SILS)
University College Dublin (UCD)

technorati tags:jeromedl, digitallibraries, summit, meeting, ireland, bricks, fedora

Blogged with Flock

JeromeDL and Semantic Museums

I would like to follow up (finally) on my ideas, which were crowding on my mind map since I came back from London, on how solutions, such as JeromeDL, can be used to build Semantic Museums.

One of differences between digital libraries and museums, which can be easily spotted, is less restrictive and probably, more open-minded approach presented by the museum community. The same technologies presented at DL meetings are either not understood at all or rejected as 've been there, done that already, didn't work ; while museums are more willing to allow semantic web technologies into their domain.

There is another, I think, very important difference: there is clear distinction between library and digital library; this distinction, however, tends to disappear when it comes to museums. The support semantic solutions can offer is not constrained to virtual tours delivered through museum portals. What many museums do, at the moment, is building their existence on the Internet; with technologies, such as Second Life,  we can imagine aforementioned virtual tours to come to existence. What is interesting about museums, is that new technologies can, and in my opinion should, support visitors in the real life.

A simple scenario: when I visit a museum, I usually try to be very precise in reading and listening all auxiliary material delivered along with the exhibition items. Depending on particular solution provided by the museum I am at the moment, I can usually read short, sometimes very short, descriptions of, e.g., paintings I am looking at. Sometimes, the audio guide, synchronized with my tour, gives me better understanding of what I am  looking at, at the moment.
And usually this is where all it ends. Unless, I have a very broad and deep knowledge of the topic, and can track most of important exhibitions related, somehow, to the one I am at the moment, there is no way I can get any further with my visit. It is like all that interesting information is veiled before me, so that I could not find it.

Now imagine, that instead of just an audio guide for my tour I would have a ubiquitous guide; I could it access with my, or provided by the museum, PDA or a smart phone. The sensors, such as camera, GPS, or accelerometer, build in or delivered along with my device, can track my current position and my current subject of interest. Now, looking at a painting and moving my smart phone camera in front of it, I can see regions of interest (similar to those we know from Flickr), overlayed on the view presented by my device; this ROIs are heavily annotated with information I can be interested in. If my device holds my profile, it can even filter out those that would I would not be interested in, or those I already know. These additional information bits can also allow me to start a virtual tour from the place where I am at the moment. I can browse through a picture of a dog, an allegory of trust-fidelity, to other paintings where the same allegory is presented. My personal guide, running on my mobile device, can also tell me if any of these paintings are being now on display anywhere near to where I am at the moment. I can also share my thoughts, knowledge, ideas with other people that will come across this painting.

Semantic Web, Web 2.0, adaptable interfaces, ubiquitous computing, all these technologies come handy to develop a service as described in my scenario. I was puzzled at first, when I  heard about soft and hard semantic web, but I was glad to know that JeromeDL was already addressing these, and similar, requirements. We work at the moment, to deliver similar browsing features, as presented in the scenario, in JeromeDL. So far they are constrained to the Web, but who knows maybe one day I will managed to gather a consortium of other research institutes and museums, willing to deliver a museum x.0 platform, where an average user would finally make real use of the Semantic Web, ... in the real life

technorati tags:jeromedl, museums, semanticweb, reallife, scenario, ideas

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Description Logic vs Object Oriented Programming for the Semantic Web

When in 2003 I worked on the HTML library management component for the prototype (Elvis-DL) for my master's thesis I have stumbled upon something very weird. I had a simple ontology describing concepts I wanted to manage in my library. I was using Jena (at that time) to render structures to be displayed as HTML forms based on the ontology. All was fine, until I had to handle subClassOf and subPropertyOf relations. The results I got from Jena when constructing the objects where completely wrong (in my opinion) and I ended up writing some fall back code to make the interface work as I expected.

More than a year later, when I moved to DERI Galway one of my colleagues, Knud, told me how OWL and RDF Schema (DL) are different from the way I was used to (OO). Basically they work back-to-forth.

Recently Eyal had a presentation on that matter during the Semantic Web cluster meeting. I have learned about it from Knud email (I am no longer an official member of SW cluster).

If your Jena or any other reasoning engine does not work the way you expected it to work - better check following documents first:

• http://jena.sourceforge.net/jena-faq.html#reasoner-2
• http://esw.w3.org/mt/esw/archives/000036.html
  

technorati tags:descriptionlogic, oo, objectorientedprogramming, semanticweb, why

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&quot;Libraries begin to realize that they are not alone"

I just read a short report from the   Semantic Web and Digital Libraries (ICSD 2007)  by Ivan Herman.

It was a little to far for me to go; even though the organizers "invited" me to do presentation on JeromeDL. I was wondering about the quality of this event, and eventually decided together with more senior people from DERI that we should wait and see.

I hope there will be a follow up, and then we will surely go - by all means - JeromeDL is the Semantic Digital Library, and my tutorial on Semantic Digital Libraries (and soon the book) are just yet another activities that should support this movement.
It is nice to hear that DL community finally acknowledged our presence, however, I am still not sure if we are ready for that. My cooperation with this community proved that this is not an easy task, but I have learned and I am still learning a lot from them. I guess, until we will be able to understand what has been achieved so far, and address problems of the DL community, we are sentenced for more misunderstanding.

technorati tags:semanticweb, digitallibraries, conference, blog, india, report

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Car Insurance in Ireland ... yes, but ...

Yeah, I know I have not been blogging for a long time - but one of my new year's resolutions is to keep this blog alive by posting at least once a week.

I am pretty sure everyone remembers that old joke:

"Have you heard that they give away Mercedes-Benz cars on the Red-square in Moscow? Yes, but ...  not on Red-square in Moscow but in front of the Winter Palace in Sankt Petersburg, not Mercedes-Benz but bicycles, and they do not give - they still"

Well actually I felt like this for the last couple of days trying to finalize my car insurance in Ireland. I believe this is part of the answer-quick-forget-if-it's-right culture in Ireland but this time it went way too far.

Before we bought our car some time ago we asked around all our friends if there is any way to get a cheaper car insurance. And we have been told that if we will get it from Tesco/Hibernian they will acknowledge my 6 years of no-claims and get us a huge discount. We did so, compared with others - and it was really true (well, we thought so at that time). It turned out that we only had to get PZU (a polish insurance company) to send a letter confirming that no claims have been made for the last 5+ years, and got it translated by the Polish Embassy; and our car insurance will drop from €1000 to €400.

Cool, piece of cake we thought. PZU'd send the letter pretty fast, I translated it, and sent off to the Polish Embassy for confirmation (together with a check on €60). They sent it back pretty soon as well, but since we were gone for almost a month, I called Tesco to make sure they will wait for this letter another month. "No problem" they said.

Once we got back, I'd collected the letter with the translation and re-sent it together with my car insurance agreement to Tesco. Everything according to the schedule...

And all started to go wrong. First Tesco could not find my letter (it was a registered post so I know they got it on time). Finally, they told me that I can get the no-claims bonus but ... I have to cancel my other insurance (from my previous insurer on my second car). I thought "what a hack?". l It took me a while to understand that obviously there is a rule that you cannot get discount on insurance on more than one car. Stupid, isn't it? Anyway, I was trying to explain that it is not possible to unregister my second car in Poland because I do not own it just by myself. It did not help.

I went over the whole agreement, all documents attached to the agreement, small caps notes - there was no saying I cannot get discount if I own another car that has insurance with no-claims bonus. Finally I found it - they put this information in the FAQ. Pretty professionally, isn't? But AFAIC FAQ is not a part of an agreement.

Anyway, I tried to save what I could by finding another company. I went to AXA. I knew what to ask about - my second car. Surprisingly, I have been transfered to a polish speaking person (so I am pretty sure there was nothing lost in translation). I have stared with my question. They told me - it is ok. You can have two cars, well, the discount will not be so big, but still. So I said - carry on with the quote ... €500. Pretty nice I thought. What is more - they do not need the translation from the Polish Embassy (cool!, but I already have it)

I went to AXA the next day to sign the agreement (you cannot do it over the Internet :( ). And I have heard that I cannot get the no-claim bonus, because the car is going to be insured on myself and my wife as the named driver (another strange Irish custom I have to get used to - you cannot drive a car that is not insured on your name)... but I got a quote from you!  Well, yes, I can get a no-claims bonus (around €1000) with my second car insured back in Poland, but ... I cannot insure anyone else as the named driver on this one. Well, Ewelina would not be to happy if she could not drive the car.

And, so defeated by the stupid Irish law (I do not claim Polish is any smarter most of the times) I came back to Tesco, paid what was missing to the full insurance.

technorati tags:irishjoke, car, insurace

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