David Siegel discusses the Power of Pull; a different view of the Semantic Web? | The Semantic Web| ZDNet.com

David Siegel discusses the Power of Pull; a different view of the Semantic Web? | The Semantic Web| ZDNet.com

Siegel wrote books such as Futurize Your Enterprise and Creating Killer Websites (both impressive books, though at a view from 10000 feet).


In his new book "Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business" he suggests that using Semantic Web (though not just W3c technologies such as OWLS, RDF SPARCQL) can be the savior for web enabled businesses (and those who aren't :-)
What IS interesting is that Google are in an indirect way doing this - "PULLing" past information to make interesting deductions for the present. It's sometimes spooky how their data mining algorithms work - check the advertisements displayed from gmail.

motorola milestone - finally rooted

not in a bad sense, rather I managed to get my phone updated to Android 2.01
(since I have a british milestone from expansys.com.au, it gets its update from europe motorola via the internet),
Menu -> Settings -> System Updates ... & it runs for while....

When complete, you can now root.
Follow instructions from http://news.lehsys.com/?p=7537
1. download http://rapidshare.de/files/49019165/milestone_root.zip and rename to /sdcard/update.zip
2. switch off phone
3. hold camera button. Then power on.
4. When you get the triangle screen, release the power & camera button
5. Now tricky bit: Press Volume+ button & camera simultaneously. I had to attempt this about 10 times to get it to work
6. Now you get a list of options - Open the keyboard, use the navigation pad to select "Update from SD card."
7. Use the centre pad key to select - what ever you do, don't choose the "Format SD card" or "Hard Reset" options!!
8. You should see an updating screen - this may have an error message, but as long as you see the message "Rooting phone" (or similar :-), it has worked
9. Reboot the phone
10. Assuming it all booted up & you get your normal phone scree, start a Terminal emulator (I used ConnectBot or "Android Terminal Emulator (Jack Palevich)" from the Android Market, others use "Terminal Emulator"  but this gives me the dreaded Force Close message)
11. Type su  to get root access!!! ps: Android throws up a big screen "The following application has requested Superuser access to the phone". Select Yes.
ps: sometimes su hangs. I have to restart the terminal emulator to get it working again.

now for linux tools for android: http://android.modaco.com/content/htc-hero-hero-modaco-com/299984/linux-tools-coming-to-mcr/ & http://alldroid.org/threads/16201-HOW-TO-Root-Extras-Telus-Motorola-Milestone

Axis2: Why bother?

The BileBlog - Axis2: Why bother?

Bit harsh but very true - axis2 is not really a usable system. Sun's metro stack is way better. Just trying to get axis2's wsdl2java working resulted in me breaking a tooth in anger.

What get's my goat about Eclipse is it's linkages to Apache - the Web Tools Project webservices stuff deals only with Axis and it's ilk.
Oh yeah, there is a new Apache CXF interface which at least implements a marginally better product. But just check out the predic8 blog entry: http://www.predic8.com/axis2-cxf-jax-ws-comparison.htm
I'll quote it here for your reference:

WS-* Standards

The support of the WS-Standard family can also be decisive for the selection of a SOAP engine. For example, messages sent to services can be secured with signatures as described in the Web Service Security standard (in short WSS). Table 1 shows the support for WS*-Standards of the toolkits.

Standards	Axis2	CXF	JAX-WS/Metro
WS-Addressing	X	X	X
WS-Coordination	X(2)		X
WS-MetadataExchange			X
WS-Policy	X	X	X
WS-ReliableMessaging	X(3)	X	X
Web Services Security	X(1)	X(4)	X
WS-SecureConversation	X(1)		X
WS-SecurityPolicy			X
WS-Transaction	X(2)		X
WS-Trust	X		X
WS-Federation

Table 1: Support for WS-* Standards (stand: Juli 2008)

(1) Supported by the additional module Apache Rampart
(2) Supported by the additional module Apache Kandula2
(3) Supported by the additional module Apache Sandesha2
(4) By Apache WSS4J Interceptor

Who just wants to code against the standard is well advised with the JAX-WS implementation. The enterprise pack of the Netbeans development environment supports JAX-WS RI very well. Only a few clicks are needed to build a server or to call a Web Service

Another post is: http://www.arobs.com/innovationtech/tag/axis2-vs-cxf-vs-metro/ ps: this seems to be mostly a cut and paste from Thomas's blog... mmm ggrr.
And also: http://srikanthnukala.net/devblog/2009/06/29/axis2-vs-jax-ws-vs-apache-cxf-vc-spring-ws/

My problem is that Eclipse only supports the Apache products with the web services client generator.
Bugger them.

Oscars for former UTS students

From an internal email"

Congratulations to the following computer graphics students:

Glenn Sharah, who is credited on Avatar as a Shader Writer. Avatar won the
Academy Award for best visual effects.

Andre Mazzone, who is credited on Star Trek as a Research and Development
Programmer. Star Trek was nominated for best visual effects.

This is not the first time that these people have been up.

How many gadgets?

How many gadgets?
Originally uploaded by wongcr

How many mobile gadgets did these boys have?
Mark only had 2.
I had 2.
But I also have about another 4 hanging around in various places.
Sigh.