Zach Beauvais

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading on the Semantic Web lately, and its primary feature from the perspective of  a writer is a difficulty of easy definition. It avoids simple sobriquet and isn’t explained without analogy and lengthy description.

The best way I have come to think of the whole system is as a set of perspectives, a way of looking at information in a network. Sir Tim Berners Lee described it using the Social Graph as an analogy, but described it using the Social Graph as an analogy, but Nova Spivack, from Radar Technologies,  has a brilliant talk about the Graph which explains the concepts and history behind the Semantic Web:

Nova Spivack - Semantic Web Talk from Nicolas Cynober on Vimeo.

Blogging about politics can be a bit of a mixed bag, so we’ll see how it goes. I want to avoid polarising talk, tabloid tactics, and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Instead, I’d like to discuss the latest raft of changes which seek to make immigrants ‘more British’ before offering them citizenship.

Personal Perspective

First, and as a matter of context: I am an immigrant. I was born and raised in Colorado, USA, and have lived in the UK for the last 5 years or so. My national identity, however, is a more complicated matter. I resonate politically better with Britain than the United States. I admire more British personages than American (probably due to the fact that the only great Americans I can think to name are either dead or long dead…). I laugh at British comedians, and listen to Radio 4. I queue. I share the occasional withering glance  with my fellow public transport passengers whenever a tourist declares loudly that something is cute or quaint. I even say: "Oh, excuse me, sorry" when someone else runs into me at Sainsburys, and I say "Cheers" or "Ta" even when someone should be thanking me.

This has put me in an interesting position at times. I have been part of conversations when the other party doesn’t actually know, or momentarily forgets, that I grew up singing The Star-Spangled Banner before watching baseball.

"Well, I think Americans are rude and ignorant".

After covering the Typeroom Light beta earlier, I sent a few questions over to the makers, and they’ve sent back some interesting answers. I should have mentioned that the Typeroom I tried out was a lite version (think 3.2 lager, but without the bubbles). The pro version seems like it will have more options, many of which seemed right in line with my questions…

1. How does Typeroom Lite work with CSS and site templates?

TypeRoom Lite does not actually work with templates. TypeRoom Professional however, does.

One of our most important design considerations when creating TypeRoom Lite was that it had to be instant. We needed a way to introduce people to this concept of "remote CMS", and instead of going through the explanations, we wanted to just show the view (using their own site as the subject of demonstration).

So while TypeRoom Lite is being released as a product in and of itself (with a free and paid version of TypeRoom Lite), it also has another and possibly even more important, role as a means to preview of the technology on which we are basing our complete CMS.

2. With the premium version, will the system be able to cope with RSS, Permalinks and other essential characteristics of Blogs and syndicated content?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is that we are planning on releasing a minimal version of the professional version to start with so we can iterate with the help of the community.

Watching TV online is becoming a bit of a hobby of mine.  I don’t have a TV anywhere in the house, and it is just so much more convenient to be able to watch what I want, when I do, without  having to play around with channels or digital interfaces which seem built to be slow (i.e. digital TV). Early efforts to watch online were riddled with frustration. I trialled Joost along with however many millions of others who signed up for a Beta invite, but found the system clunky and without real appeal in the frankly poor content. Also, it was a memory hog and froze my then-ageing Dell. There was also the problem with pirates and ‘linked TV’ Not only is there the conscience to console, but one popular link site, tv-links.co.uk, actually landed its founder in prison. YouTube only provides short clips, or pirated episodes which are quickly removed by moderators.

So, where does that leave the casual TV-watcher? With all the early difficulty of installing software, finding Betas, or perusing content which either didn’t work or you didn’t want to play, it seemed that watching tv-quality content online has always been a struggle. With new improvements, though, can you actually watch TV online easily and relatively free from frustration? I think it’s getting there.

UK TV Online

First, I’d like to note that I will be avoiding Hulu and any discussion of it aside from mentioning that it doesn’t work in the UK. Both of the services reviewed below, to be fair to US readers, currently only work in the UK.

Typeroom is a content management system which takes a different approach to traditional Content Management. Instead of using databases and managing content directly, Typeroom works more like Adobe Contribute by allowing traditional html pages to be edited in real time. With the service due for public testing shortly, I have had a Beta test of the setup and have a few observations.

The editor is web-based, and a user simply enters a url into Typeroom’s site and navigates to content they wish to edit and selects ‘edit this page’. Typeroom then displays a copy of the page and opens a WYSIWYG editing environment. This is a multi-paned approach, with the editing at the bottom and a preview panel above that updates in real time. Text and images can be manipulated from the editing pane, and there are various formatting options. The look is not dissimilar to TinyMCE or other familiar WYSIWYG platforms. Impressively, they have a drag-and-drop interface for adding images, and an auto-align by simply dragging images around the editing area. This feature, if it works consistently, could be of major advantage to non-technical users, because it eliminates the need to assign either a style or an attribute to an image to make it flow consistently. 

Publishing makes use of either FTP or a Typeroom account, which presumably stores FTP information. An interesting feature, though, is the ability to ‘publish’ by sending a revised version by email to a webmaster.

I know this is behind the game, and that the bleeding edge of blog reviews has moved well beyond online streaming service Hulu (even though it’s not yet out to the public). But I received my beta invite last week and have had all this time to play around with it.

My initial thoughts: none.

No, not one initial thought. Hulu doesn’t work in the UK. They don’t tell you: "Hey, if you live in the UK, you will be able to access and begin your Hulu experience, but when you choose a show to stream, you’ll be disappointed. Have a nice day." You have to jump through all the Beta hoops to get there first.

Now, I know I should have known better, being a generally web-savvy chap. But after a few pre-reviews of the Hulu service, I decided not to read any more blogs about it until after I’d tried it out myself. I knew not to expect too much, after reading the last review over at Between the Lines , but I wanted my own experience.

Since then, I’ve found dozens of blogs about how bad it is that Hulu doesn’t work in Europe. Aside from whingeing about the lack of support, I can’t really think of anything more to write about Hulu (apart from its ridiculous, trying-too-hard-for-the-Web-2.0-market name).

But, doesn’t this kind of go against point of the web? The idea that we can make connections, share content, stream and connect?