Update from last post, I am in Hannover engaged in Research. Julien Gaugaz from L3S and I are working on the topic of Current work Context of a user for Nepomuk. This is tricky, as first of all, there are about 600 definitions of "context" (there is a paper about analyzing 66 of them using text analytics, context buzzword word that everyone uses with its own interpretation!) and second, we have multiple existing ontologies and implementations to integrate.

btw, this is the room for the Hiwis and guest researchers where I sit at the moment:

I will blog about our extensive literature research on context later this week.

In the meantime, Cedric Mesnage from Lugano interviewed all DFKI and L3S members about what they are working on in the project, to improve the architecture of Nepomuk and communicate it better, a good task.

We drank beer and looked at the rainy (no, its not raining, its only dripping, Hannoverians have 100 words for rain) city of Hannover.
To Heiko Haller I said in a chat, that we will probably end up in a Fiasko, but actually we started there:


Besides, Cedric can not only do great art, he can also do photographs (bummer that the autofocus didn't get this one perfect):

I am currently guest researching at the L3S lab in Hannover. L3S does research on Semantic Web, e-learning, search. They are partner in the NEPOMUK project, and I will be working on the ideas of the context a user currently works in, to guess what somebody is doing based on observations done. This is important to give support to people, showing them information that is related to the task you are doing at the moment. (for example: you are reading this blog-post, and related information is l3s, dfki, nepomuk, leo sauermann, context).

I will be at L3S for three weeks, from 24.9.2007 to probably 14.10.2007.

Here is the building where I am sitting at the moment:

Its the L3S offices at KBS, Appelstraße 4, 30167 Hannover. I am sitting in room 232. If you want to use this occassion to meet me, skype or jabber me first (check my foaf for how to).


I am living not far from that in an appartment room, where I have access to a kitchen and a bed, and free wifi for 90 minutes per day, great, what else do you need.

Members of Stanford University, together with media people, created viral marketing videos, which are irresistable.



the other videos of the campaign, the klystron tube (microwave) and FM synthesizer, are also a must-see.

via CaptSolo

Mike Robb, my praying buddy in Kaiserslautern, and his lovely wife Katharina started a new blog to inform their friends about their trip and life in Aberdeen. They called the blog called "god and numbers" . Mike is a missionary, studying theology, Katharina is a mathematician, she worked for Fraunhofer before and is now searching for a Job in Aberdeen.

btw: Are you a company in Aberdeen, in need for a mathematician that can do stuff like this diploma thesis on "Spectral Analysis of Random Closed Sets. The Surface Measure Associated with a Random Closed Set"? Comment on their blog or write them.

The first blog post was about Mike moving his stuff. I showed up late for carrying, and then it became obvious that we had two problems. One was, that not everything will fit into the truck that Katharina's dad has rented for the occasion. Using the great skills of re-structuring moving boxes I have learned with Ebo on my own move from Vienna to Kaiserslautern, we could solve that.

Here is the skills as used before:

When we moved from vienna, in the van, the boxes reached up to the very ceiling and filled the whole thing. There was not place for one extra mouse in there. For Mike and Katharina, we produces a similar result, stuffing every item into the places of air that was left in the van (*proud of tetris skills*).

The second problem was, that we were not enough people. I came late, and besides me, the parents of Katharina were there. So, we were very lucky when two mormons biked by, saw the situation, looked, stopped, and asked if they could help. First we didn't want to bother them, but looking at the situation, I asked them if they could help us carrying. They could, and then it was much easier. Love god, love your neighbour, love yourself, that is one of the many rules shared by our churches. Thanks god for giving these recommendations to make life better for this planet. At least for us, god works perfectly.

Schmap.com is a website providing dynamic travel guides. Instead of using boring stock photos, they also use flickr photos to illustrate their guides. I was contacted by them if they could use one of my photos for their guide (thanks to CC this all works).
Update (27.9.2007): As the photo wasn't CC licensed (Thanks Maggi for pointing it out), I have to add that they asked me if they could do it. Hm, I wonder if they look for good pictures or for CC pictures.

Now, their guide is updated and here is the section where they use my photo (taken during ISWC 2005, of the conference dinner :-)

They have a schmaplet to embed the post in blog-posts, but it seems that my blog-provider doesnt allow i-frames, so
click yourself.



This is the way to go: web 2.0 business!

SUN researcher Nicole Yankelovich presents an open-source 3-dimensional virtual environment, that can do many tricks, including application sharing in a like-VNC way.

Its called project wonderland, and builds on darkstar, an open source gaming server platform. Underneath, there is looking glass, an open source 3d platform.



Its a business-oriented, knowledge-work oriented environment, published open source. Unlike secondlife, which is closed-source and leisure-oriented.

With systems like this and all data represented as RDF on a Semantic Web, using Semantic Desktop applications, users could intuitively place their work in a virtual environment and share their ideas. Looking forward to see how this integrates with Semantic Web.

thanks to Henry Story for the link and his story on wonderland.

Mike Bergman blogged about a new release of Microsoft Astoria, where they announce support for Atom, JSON (who-hoo), and Web3s.

I doubt that this can be taken as a signal from the whole Microsoft Corporation but is rather the view of project members of this one project. Nevertheless, its going to be interesting what Microsoft will do: bunker themselves in (terran style) and hope that their customers will never hear of open standards? I doubt, and therefore I do not fully agree with Mike:
This is yet another stunning and lame attempt by Microsoft to replace open standards with proprietary ones. Get a clue, Redmond!

They probably got their clue already, but for big companies it always takes time... HP (Jena), IBM (SLRP) and SUN are faster this time.