Zach Beauvais Online

Image via Wikipedia

I’m trying out a Zemanta blog post. What it does, apparently, is to suggest ideas for the article you’re currently writing. It’s a semantic blog suggestion feature, and it’s manifested in this instance as a firefox plugin that adds a write widget to my WordPress WYSIWYG editor. IIt updates every 300 characters, and also has ’semantic features’. There’s an interview over at R/WW, for more information. I’m kind of trying to see what it recommends so need to fill in the 300 characters:

Well it looks like it suggests related articles, and adds a bunch of Zemanta boxes into the blog space. It also finds images from Flickr.

I could see this tool being very handy in future, though I usually blog from a client, and I don’t think this supports ScribeFire or ecto (which is rubbish, by the way.) However, there are a few problems with it:

1. It generates an unhelpful set of areas in the blog itself. So if you include a Zemanta suggestion, it pastes it where you’re typing, and you end up typing in an alt area in the code… annoying.
2. It updates every 300 characters. This is annoying because it’s not necessarily that real-time. This is an awkward interface feature. It also places your curser at the top of the post every time it updates, meaning what I just typed appeared above the opening line…

I tend to live in a world of metaphor. It’s not my fault, according to Lakoff and Johnson. We all use metaphor all the time: to construct our thoughts and work out abstract concepts.

I’ve been exploring this a bit in the context of the Semantic Web over on Nodalities. Please feel free to have a look and send me some feedback on what you think about this set of ideas.

Well, since blogging about Talis several times, I’ve taken the plunge and accepted their gracious offer to become a researcher for their Semantic Web Platform. That means I’ll be blogging a lot about the Semantic Web and it’s cool features etc. over on one of Talis’ blogs, especially ‘Nodalities’ where you can see my first post: Hello World–really original title, that.

Hopefully all my blogging here will put me in good stead to encourage discussion and facilitate dialogue (fancy words!) over there, and I hope everyone likes what I write… we’ll see.

Zach Beauvais

Curriculum Vitae

Nationality: United States of America (resident without restriction in the United Kingdom)
Born: 1984
Gender: Male

Career Objectives:

To produce positive impact in the most effective and interesting way possible
To take opportunities to apply reasoning through efficient communication to solve problems; and to have the responsibility to make that difference
To help others reach their full potentials while maintaining a good environment in order that the entire network may see positive results

Relevant Employment:

Talis Information Ltd:

April 2008 - Present
Researcher

Talis—Shared Innovation—is exploring and applying semantic web technologies to business, education, and potentially public-sector markets. By researching high-level concepts, and synthesising ideas though blogs and print, as well as at conferences, I am working with Talis to advance its innovations. My position is with the Talis Platform, a Semantic Web enabling medium, and I work through Talis blogs and also edit the magazine Nodalities.

For more information on Talis, or for more information on my perspectives from here, feel free to email me on: zach.beauvais(at)talis.com.

Grandstand Media Ltd

Jan 2007 – Dec 2007
New Media Executive

Grandstand Media, organisers of Horse of the Year Show and the British Open Show Jumping Championships employed me to project-manage their electronic marketing and online presence. I was responsible for furthering Grandstand’s brand on the web—now their primary marketing tool—, for exploring the potential for Social Media involvement and for developing content with the marketing department. My remit included the production of the British Open official programme, press office work, and some graphic and digital design.

Live Writer

Right, so I’ve been blogging using Windows Live Writer for a few weeks, and have generally enjoyed it. It’s easier than logging into my CMS, and it integrates with the site theme, so what I see is actually what the post looks like.

As you can see, it’s a pretty slick interface, and I think it’s  relatively simple, so the focus is on the writing rather than the application (Windows’ biggest design fault IMHO!) There are a few exasperatives, however:

• Insert Video only works with a select set of video sources, and I even had trouble with YouTube. It’s a slick idea, but it executes poorly.
• My Site favicon appears, which is nice, but it runs over ‘View Weblog’ and falls off the bottom of the window. Surely it’s not too hard to resize or align it in a satisfactory way?
• Set-up was quick, but there’s no native support for Drupal (you have to cheat and call it WordPress or MetaWebLog). This isn’t so bad, but it does limit the options you’re given if you choose the wrong one.
• It has the ability to tag posts, but it calls them ‘Categories’. They’re Tags. It’s a Blog. And, it’s one of the things that doesn’t work if you choose the wrong set-up type.

Aside from those, it’s brilliant. I use it all the time, and it is easy to use. You just have to html-in the videos you want.