An example multi-file, Web-based presentation (click to start)

ENCENTLY, I have being passively swayed (“forced” rather) towards using WYSIWYG applications for composition of a presentation. I have done that as a teenager, but I sure know the issues associated with the paradigm. I use OpenOffice at the moment, in conjuction with colleagues who stubbornly stick to PowerPoint.

As sad as this may sound, it seems obvious that, judging by the large, conferences do not accept presentations in formats such as HTML, even if they are as advanced and rich as S5 (exemplified above). Many conference them make PowerPoint the sole option, thus snubbing anybody who does not use Windows or is unwilling to invest in expensive licences that lead to vendor lock-in. Fortunately, I work in O/S-tolerant environments, so I rarely need to suffer from such narrow-mindedness.

WYSIWYG is a good paradigm in principle. Alas, as explained several times in the past (e.g. Dangers of Abstraction), WYSIWYG tends to be lossy. Also, re-use becomes as serious problem; searching and indexing likewise. The idea of encapsulating objects like arrows and circles in a single file, along with videos, images and text is ‘unhealthy’ to say the least. A binary presentation is not one which is open for standards-based tools to interpret. It is also poorly-structured.

OpenDocument does not make it trivial for one to extract individual objects unless various tools are used. Therefore, I am reluctant to ever use OpenOffice and yet I recommend and promote it. Hypocrisy? I say “nay”. Its entry barrier is low, and if not the cost, then open formats should make the difference and end the vendor/product dependency. OpenOffice will never suffer from the same pitfalls Microsoft vainly ignore.

An HTML presentation has its text stored separately (under e.g. index.html). Additionally, there are videos and graphics as individual files in their own isolated directory. The technology which drives S5, as in this particular case, involves a collection of stylesheets which are easily exchangeable, interchangeable, and are stored aside, together with their associated graphics. Lastly, there is JavaScript to integrates this technology and make keyboard navigation, buttons and the like a practical reality.

To finish off with a rant, why is it that ‘simplicity’ ended up attaining a huge tar-like file which is obscure in terms of its content? If it were not for Microsoft Office, would somebody else have done the same? Some time ago I heard that Office files were bound to become a compressed files which contain all the peripheral files, e.g. images and graphs, completely apart. XML is frequently echoed by the media in this context. Could this be related to Microsoft’s recent proposal to open up their formats?

I happened to find these astounding monitors, which reminded me of spherical desktops. Put in the words of the vendor: “The Elumens VisionStation allows for a fully immersive display of 160°. The VisionStation’s ultra-wide FOV creates an amazing sense of space and depth, without need for goggles or glasses“. All the same, such a display would of course be quite pricy. It doesn’t appear to offer substantial and pragmatic benefits unless one uses simulators.

Also see: Another odd use of a dish

OR the past 4 months I have been syndicating 7 distinct news feeds. The feeds contain search results for keywords of interest, which pertain to computer vision. I syndicate from a couple of sources, which makes the scope even broader; the total number of feeds is 14 at present.

I needed to keep myself regularly informed about developments in computer vision. That field is not only important to my research. It it also serves some required content, which enables me to extend The Computer Vision Digest. For the task of news ‘digestion’, I have been using RSS feeds from Google News and Yahoo! News. Both merely serve as aggregators, encapsulating and centralising news from agencies from all around the world, niches included.

As much as I respect and even fancy Google, I am disappointed with their news service. I am almost reluctant to say that their news aggregation is filled with (if not plagued by) commercial sites that attempt to sell stuff rather than provide news items. It is not only implied by the .com suffix, but also by content, which is glaringly promotional. This is of course a real deterrent, which becomes appalling at times. Others have noticed similar issues, so it is not a matter of coincidence, but a recurring pattern. I have come to take every link that spot in Google News with a grain of salt. Rather often it leads me to what can only be described as news spam — an attempt at sales that is shrewdly disguised as a news item.

To syndicate news, import any of the following templates into your feeds reader. Replace KEYWORD1 and KEYWORD2 with keywords of interest and isolate keywords using a plus (the + symbol).

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=KEYWORD1+KEYWORD2&ie=UTF-8&output=rss

http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=KEYWORD1+KEYWORD2&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&x=wrt

This time, for a change, my warm recommendation goes to Yahoo. They simple manage to isolate real news from the ‘noise’.

Related items on feed-based services:

• Google News Feeds
• Yahoo RSS
• Search Results as RSS
• Weather RSS Feeds

Season of the playful penguins from Oyonale

INUX distributions and their great diversity lead to endless discussions at best and flame wars at worst. Because they all incorporate the same kernel, they can be equated to beer from different brands (the infamous beer analogy). Each person, however, will try to convince you that his/her favourite beer is distinct and superior to all others.

A survey was conducted by ZDNet, which aimed to identify the best Linux distribution for a small business. Among the options that have been put to the test: Mandriva Linux 2006, Novell Linux Desktop 9, Red Hat Desktop 4, SUSE Linux 10 and Ubuntu Linux 5.1. The outcome:

We emerged from our Linux experience with a strong preference for Ubuntu Linux 5.1, with SUSE Linux 10 a close second. Both did everything we required of them, and both have very low setup costs. Ubuntu, in particular, costs absolutely nothing to purchase.

Interestingly enough, Ubuntu and SuSE have naturally become my preferred distributions. At some stage, I had 2 Ubuntu boxes and one preloaded with SuSE, but I now have 2 SuSE boxes and one which runs Ubuntu. One wonders if the crucial factor which is cost could have put SuSE at the very top rank. OpenSuSE can definitely make the exception in due time.

Related link: also in the headlines, among the ‘recent attractions’, is a comprehensive review of processors — mainly a collection of benchmarks comparing AMD and Intel.

“How did a newspaper reveal so much about me…?”

PYING provides information. Information is power. The simple implication is that spying grants an organisation extra power. Especially, it gives an organisation advantages over its competitors. For this very particular reason, search engines put an end to privacy over time. As a matter of fact, the Internet in general has exposed most of us at a certain level. Controversially enough, Google can finally analyse the behaviour of rival search engines as they possess statistics of many Web sites.

Search engines and information management authorities are not alone in this. What I see more and more of are signup requirements for reading on-line newspapers (the New York Times is a notable example). I am not speaking of paid subscriptions, but rather about identification. It is no longer a secret that sales of in-print newspapers decrease, if not slowly diminish. As previously said, one must evolve and this includes publishers. More and more people simply find greater convenience in reading news on their personal workstation. So how can publishers keep up and protect their revenue? Can spying provide a solution?

Newspapers and publishers might not like the use of network bandwidth, which even when accompanied by advertisement, does not give them the same touch with the readers. Moreover, newspapers become more susceptible to plagiarism (which is a simple copy & paste), frequently due to millions of bloggers, some of whom are immoral. I occasionally find a heavily-cited article in blogs and it is ranked higher than its origin, which stems in mainstream media. Needless to say, such articles are copied verbatim, in full, and neglect to link to the source. No wonder the media is afraid of blogs.

All in all, newspaper head towards targetted content and they attain to get full information about their readers. This way, content (e.g. articles), as well as commercials, can be tailored to individuals. By localising items and customising them to a person’s taste, the relevance and thus value rises. This all comes at the expense of the individual’s privacy, of course. It all depends on the ability to make assumptions and generalisations in the process of ‘profiling’ an individual reader. Since the reader enters personal details at the start, too much is known. The browser cookie sooner or later contains full personal information about the reader, as well as all the article s/he has read. Similar issues and can in fact be ascribed to Google’s cookie.

I thought that the following story would be of interest. A little hack in the new service allowed it to be spammed rather quickly.

A technology glitch temporarily turned Google’s new personal listings service, Google Base, into a vast, virtual red-light district earlier this week.

Some bystanders speculate that Google Base is intended to take the place of eBay and Craigslist (as previously mentioned). I heard another analysis that said Wikipedia is under threat too. The rate of Google’s expansion is by all means phenomenal.

am not entirely sure how long Google Print (renamed Book Search) has actually been up for. I have just carried out a standard Google search and was suddenly advised to use Google Print to search among books. This was apparently an arbitrary promotion of their new shiny service.

Below are my first impressions and impulsive observations (primarily complaints):

• The top inch of two of each page in each book initially gets displayed as a scan (-)
• The search pages incorporate the option to purchase the book (+)
• Users are encouraged to open an account with Google Print. I am not too fond of this. Registration opens the door to dependencies, much like the signup with Google Sitemaps, which is a pre-requisite to taking advantage of Google Analytics (-)
• The interface is light-weight, clean and navigation is intuitive (+)

All in all, Google Print does not appear as bad as I anticipated. I said a few things against it and a few things in favour. Nonetheless, having so many books scanned and available for viewing per subscription raises a brow or two. It somehow gives Google ownership over the books and will discourage crowds from going to the public libraries. On-line music sales had similar impact on record stores.