Related link: http://internet-apps.blogspot.com/2005/10/curies-compact-uri-syntax-semantic.htm…

Over the weekend, I was looking for some Manhattan accommodation between 8th and 13th December this year, for a vacation that a friend and I are taking. Not a city that’s known for value hotels, I started with the obvious websites, and moved on to the ‘riskier’ ones:

• A: The usual suspects. Expedia, Travelocity, Opodo, Orbitz. Standard hotel booking agents, offering standard-ish prices, but you know what you’re getting.
• B: Hotwire. Choose a location and a hotel rating, and you’re given prices but without the hotel name. A bit riskier, but can be better value.
• C: Priceline. Choose a location, a hotel rating and a price, and it automatically books anything that matches. Pretty risky, but the rewards (lower price) can be significant. I book most of my hotels through priceline, but this time it failed me, so I moved on to:
• D: Craigslist

. I think this is the way I’m going to go. Plenty of vacation apartments to rent, at reasonable prices. Of course, you don’t exactly know how much the vendor is/isn’t telling you, but for the money saved, it’s worth the risk.

• E: Couch Surfing. A great site, and would have been my option of choice, had more Manhattanites signed up for it. Find a couch (usually free!) anywhere in the world, and meet new people while you’re at it. There are elements that reduce the risk (e.g. an ebay-like feedback system), so it’s not as dodgy as it sounds.

What else could be offered using this high-risk/high-reward model? Because sex sells on the web, an obvious choice would be a ‘blind date’ service (this might already exist?). Put in some basic details, and following a similar format to priceline, if anything matches, it’ll arrange a place and a time to meet. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up with Scarlett Johanson. If not, you’ll end up sitting next to a nutter like Ann Coulter (or for British readers, the very unlucky would get Linda Barker).

Maybe a map/directions service could also use something like this. “I’d like to go for a drive, for about an hour, starting at this point”. It’ll then give you directions to a random place within your specified limits. Not sure if this is useful, but could be interesting for a boring Saturday afternoon.

I also thought about online grocery shopping. It would be great if a random selection of international vegetables and breads landed on your door-step, but you’re just as likely to get four cases of dog food and some icing sugar.

Anyone have any other ideas for a high-risk/high-reward web site?

Related link: http://jason.diamond.name/weblog/2005/10/20/unicycle-script-for-vim

Contents

• UniCycling in Vim
• Install
• Config
• Go UTF-8
• Use it
• Troubleshoot
• XMLUnicoding in Emacs
• Install
• Config
• Use it
• Troubleshoot

A while back I tried out a Unicode-aware editor called
Mined. I found out about it from reading
Ed Trager’s A Quick Primer On Unicode and Software Internationalization Under Linux and UNIX, which I wrote a short item about earlier.

One thing I really liked about Mined was its support for automatically inserting “smart quotes” while you type. At the time I saw it, I thought: Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if my main editor of choice, Vim, let me do that? Well, now it does…

UniCycling in Vim

A few days ago, Jason Diamond posted an entry on his blog about a new little Vim script he wrote called UniCycle. Here’s his description of it:

It’s called UniCycle because it cycles through different unicode characters as you’re typing them. It’s similar to the “Smart Quote” feature in Word except it’s easier to get back to a dumb quote if that’s what you really want: just hit the quote key again and it’ll cycle to the next character.

It works with hyphens (turning them into en and em dashes), periods (turning them into horizontal ellipses), apostrophes (turning them into left or right single quotation marks), and quotes (turning them into left or right double quotation marks).

How to install UniCycle

The script now has its own page at the Vim.org site and you can download it from there. As with other Vim scripts, you can install it just by dropping it into your Vim plugins directory; that directory is ~/.vim/plugin by default; if you don’t know if you have such a directory, you don’t really need to bother to check, because you can just do a quick install like this:

mkdir -p ~/.vim/plugin && 
cd ~/.vim/plugin && 
wget -O unicycle.vim 
  http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=4689

Some short (optional) config

There are no additional install or config steps required, because once you’ve installed UniCycle in your ~/.vim/plugin directory, vim will load it automatically each time it starts up. That said, though, there are a couple things you might want to add to your ~/.vimrc file to make UniCycle work better.

" Turn UniCycle on by default for all XML and XSLT files
autocmd FileType xml,xslt UniCycleOn
" make the vim command-line 2 lines high so that we can see secret
" messages emitted by UniCycle
set cmdheight=2

As far as the cmdheight=2 part, I’ll say more about that in a minute.

Make sure vim starts in a UTF-8 environment

Before you start up vim and give UniCycle a try, make sure to launch Vim in a UTF-8-ready way. Otherwise, it‘s not going to work they way you would expect.

There are a couple of ways to launch vim in a UTF- 8-ready way:

A. Gvim way

Run gvim instead of vim, and start it up like this:

LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 gvim

That will launch Gvim in a separate X-Window and you’ll be all ready to go.

B. Unicode X-terminal way

Start up a Unicode-enabled terminal such as mlterm or xterm and then run the vim command there.

LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 xterm -u8 -fn 
  '-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1'

Using UniCycle

After you’ve started vim or gvim, open a new or existing *.xml or *.xsl file, hit i to get into insert mode, and type a quotation-mark (") character. If you did the Some short (optional) config step above, you should now see a curly left quotation mark, and a message in the vim “command-line” (a the bottom of the frame) saying “LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK” (that’s what the cmdheight=2 line in your ~/.vimrc file is for; it expands the command line so that you can see these messages). Hit " again, and you’ll see a message saying just “QUOTATION MARK”. Hit it one more time, and you’ll see “RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK”.

If that all works for you as expected, try typing an apostrophe or dash. You’ll see that vim (uni)cycles through character choices for them just as it does for the quotation mark. Then try typing three dot/period characters in a row, and you’ll see vim replace them with a real ellipses chararacter.

Troubleshooting

If you didn’t do the Some short (optional) config step above or if you did but you’re still not seeing the behavior described above, manually type the :UniCycleOn and :set cmdheight=2 commands and then try again.

You should now see the “LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK” message. But if you see weird boxes or spaces or garbage characters where you’re expecting to see curly quotation marks, then it probably means you are not actually running vim in UTF-8-ready way.

And if you see the message, but the quotation marks that appear don’t look so curly, it probably just means your default font doesn’t have good glyphs for curly quotes. So either try switching to a different font in your X-terminal; or if you are using Gvim, change the font by typing :set guifont=Monospace\ 13 (or whatever font and size you want to try).

If it all works out, you’ll end with an easy way to type curly quotes and em/en dashes and ellipses in docs you edit in Vim. If it doesn’t, well, you can always consider switching to Emacs. :)

XMLUnicoding in Emacs

Vim is my main editor of choice, but there are some things for which Emacs currently provides a better editing environment. For example, there currently is no way to do context-sensitive validated editing in Vim. But there is a way to do it in Emacs. A very good way: using James Clark’s nXML mode.

nXML is a mighty piece of work. It’s hard to imagine now how I ever did any XML editing without it. As good as it is, though, when I first started using it to edit UTF-8-encoded documents, I found myself thinking: Hey, now that I can actually work with a document format that allows real (Unicode) special characters (instead of just some ascii escape code or entity or whatever for representing those characters), wouldn’t it be great if I had an easy way to actually directly enter those special characters ― especially characters for curly quotes and em/en dashes?

Enter XMLUnicode

At the same time I was just sitting around dreaming about it, Norm Walsh was actually doing something about it; namely, cooking up something in Emacs lisp to make it work. The result is a package he named XMLUnicode.

Around the time when Norm released XMLUnicode, he also wrote up a blog entry about it, describing the variety of ways it gives you to enter special characters.

But to describe it briefly: it lets you enter smart quotes, em/en dashes, and ellipses in a way very similar to what UniCycle does, plus more.

(In fact, I guess that it’s a little odd to describe it that way, since it was around for quite a while before UniCycle and was actually, I believe, a big part of the inspiration for UniCycle.)

How to install XMLUnicode (and nXML mode)

Before installing XMLUnicode, you’ll probably first want to install nXML. It may already be packaged for your distro, so check first. For example, on a Debian system, you can install it with this command:

sudo apt-get install nxml-mode

To install it manually, you need to put it somewhere in your Emacs load path. If you have root access on the system where you want to install it, the appropriate place is probably /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. So do something like this:

cd /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/ && 
sudo wget 
  http://www.thaiopensource.com/download/nxml-mode-20041004.tar.gz && 
sudo tar xvfz nxml-mode-20041004.tar.gz

Install XMLUnicode itself with a similar set of commands:

cd  /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp && 
sudo wget http://nwalsh.com/emacs/xmlchars/xmlunicode.el && 
sudo wget http://nwalsh.com/emacs/xmlchars/unichars.el

Getting nXML and XMLUnicode set up and available within Emacs takes a little more work than getting UniCycle working in Vim, but not too much more.

Some (non-optional) configuration

To configure nXML, and to configure XMLUnicode for use within nXML mode, add the following to your .emacs startup file.

;;; nxml setup
;; load autoloads for nXML mode
(load "rng-auto.el")
;; auto-start nXML mode for *.xml and *.xsl files
(setq auto-mode-alist
  (append (list (cons "\.xml\'" 'nxml-mode)) auto-mode-alist))
(setq auto-mode-alist
  (append (list (cons "\.xsl\'" 'nxml-mode)) auto-mode-alist))
;;; end of nXML setup

;;; xml-unicode.el setup
;; The xml-unicode.el code relies on some Common Lisp functions,
;; so you need to make sure the the Common Lisp package is loaded
;; before loading xml-unicode.el
(require 'cl)
;; location where unichars.el file is installed; needs to be
;; specified before xmlunicode is loaded
(setq unicode-character-list-file
  "/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/unichars.el")
(load "xmlunicode")
;; Set up xmlunicode for use within nXML mode
(defun bind-nxml-mode-keys ()
 (set-language-environment "utf-8")
 (define-key nxml-mode-map """ 'unicode-smart-double-quote)
 (define-key nxml-mode-map "'" 'unicode-smart-single-quote)
 (define-key nxml-mode-map "-" 'unicode-smart-hyphen)
 (define-key nxml-mode-map "." 'unicode-smart-period)
 ;; display UniChar menu when in nXML mode
 (define-key nxml-mode-map [menu-bar unichar]
  (cons "UniChar" unicode-character-menu-map))
 ;; set input method to "xml" (xmlunicode) when in nXML mode
 (set-input-method 'xml))
;;; End of xmlunicode setup

Using XMLUnicode

After you’ve started Emacs, visit a new or existing file with a .xml extension (foo.xml or whatever), and type a quotation-mark (") character. You should now see a curly left quotation mark. Hit " again, and you’ll see a regular straight quotation mark. Hit it one more time, and you’ll see a curly right quotation mark.

If that all works for you as expected, try typing an apostrophe or dash. you’ll see that Emacs cycles through character choices for them just as it does for the quotation mark. Then try typing three dot/period characters in a row, and you’ll see Emacs turn replace them a real ellipses chararacter.

You’ll also notice that your Emacs now has a UniChar menu that you can use to insert a variety of other special characters. And that’s not the only additional feature that XMLUnicode provides for inserting special characters ― read the docs for it to find out more.

Troubleshooting

If the quotation marks that appear don’t look so curly, it probably just means your default font doesn’t have good glyphs for curly quotes. So try switching to a different font in your Emacs.

If it all works out, you’ll end with an easy way to type curly-quotes and em/en dashes and ellipses in any UTF-8-encoded docs you want to edit in Emacs ― and also a menu and some additional commands for easily adding other special characters. If it doesn’t work out, well, you can always consider switching to Vim and using UniCycle. :)

Other methods for entering special characters in your favorite text editor?

Most web developers don’t do what they do for the money. There are less stressful and less complicated jobs that offer higher monetary rewards. Developers want to solve interesting problems. Developers want to learn, to experiment, to make cool things happen. It’s not about prestige, and it’s certainly not the job title. In fact, if anyone ever asks what you do, giving your job title is a sure-fire conversation killer. Here’s a tip for developers: say that you’re a Biscuit Designer. That’s a much better conversation starter (I’m not sure of the language barrier issues here, but Biscuit == Cookie).

And with that in mind, I can thoroughly recommend that if you ever get the chance to work with museums, then go for it. Museums have evolved into the perfect playground for developers.

For a start, there’s the data. If you’re going to try something new and exciting, it helps if you have access to a vast collection of quality, detailed data. By their very nature, museums appreciate the value of high-quality, consistent, standards-compliant, granular data and metadata. Their Collections Management Systems (which catalogue objects within a museum) can contain hundreds of thousands of data records, containing every type of data imaginable: geographical co-ordinates, time and date information, people, thematic and subject information, copyright and usage, physical information (dimensions, weight, materials), and so much more. By just using the geographical data alone, you can create some amazing applications, but combine this with the temporal and other data, and the world is your oyster.

Then there’s the people. I often feel that there’s an affinity between developers and museum staff – maybe because of the ‘love, not money’ aspect of the job. So there’s no pretense, no ego. The museum community also fully embraces the opportunities of the web; there are specific discussion forums, mailing lists and at least one annual conference (Museums and the Web). People are therefore generally clued-up on new technologies, and are open to pushing the boundaries. Some organisations would be wary of trying out Semantic Web or Social technologies, but most museums are pro-active in adopting them.

I’d be interested to find out: as a developer, which other areas of work interest you? What kind of data do you like building applications on top of? Are you more interested in specific ‘aspects’ of development (e.g. accessibility, interface design, architecture) than the subject of the work?

When I began studying social networks a couple years ago, I started by building a list of every social network on the web that met a set of criteria. That list currently has over 130 social networks, with about 170,000,000 user accounts among them.

What surprised me, but shouldn’t have, is that sex sells social networks as much as anything else.

The second largest social network on the list, with around 20,000,000 members, is Adult Friend Finder, the self-proclaimed “World’s Largest Sex and Swinger Personals Site”.

20,000,000 Active Members!

Also coming in among the eighteen million-member networks is Alt.com which proclaims itself as the “World’s Largest BDSM & Alternative Lifestyle Personals”. It has about 3,500,000 active members.

All I can say is that networks like HotSaints.com (motto “…Chase and be Chaste”) have a lot of catching up to do.

Related link: http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2005_10_11.shtml#051787

Related link: http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/unicode/

Ed Trager’s A Quick Primer On Unicode and Software Internationalization Under Linux and UNIX is a good intro to configuration and tool setup for working with Unicode in a Linux environment. (Cheers to Greg Thomson for posting a link about Ed’s page to the Tokyo Linux User’s Group mailing list, where I came across it.)

Some of the areas it covers:

• Locale configuration
• some Unicode-enabled terminal emulators (mlterm and xterm)
• some Unicode-enabled text editors (Yuedit, Vim, and Mined)
• font info and info about assorted Unicode-related command-line utilities

It is a well-written, nicely laid-out document (with lots of screen shots and examples), and it aims for concision rather than comprehensiveness. That said, though, it has some noticeable omissions; Why no mention of GNU Emacs or XEmacs, even though it’s possible to do work with Unicode in those apps (maybe not in all locales, but still in some)?

Overall, though, it’s a great place to start, and even if you’re already hip to Unicode, you may find out a thing or two you didn’t already know.

Other good intros to Unicode?

It’s hard to go to a content management or publishing technology conference these days without there being a presentation on DITA — the Darwinian Information Typing Architecture. For the uninitiated, DITA is an XML architecture for authoring and publishing topic-based content, typically technical documentation. The brainchild of IBM, where it is used internally for many documentation projects, DITA is now an open-source standard under the aegis of OASIS. A reference implementation containing a toolkit is available from Sourceforge.

So what’s all the fuss about?

While single-source XML publishing has benefits that are well lauded — for example, content reuse and multi-channel publishing — implementing it can be an absolute battle for an organisation. A large project starting from scratch needs major upfront development: extensive information analysis; the development of company-specific DTDs, and significant programming to create publishing processes. Not to mention the effort of migrating legacy content to the new formats, installing new editing software, training users to think in XML, and possibly paying for a content management system.

DITA offers help at two of these stages, by providing a set of thoughtfully designed, extendable DTDs and the tools to publish conforming documents to multiple channels. As the current surge in interest attests, it can make the process of adopting single-source publishing an easier pill to swallow.

Much thought has been put into the development of the core topics that comprise DITA, and the result is a set of semantically rich DTDs and schemas. These encapsulate three types of topic required in the majority of technical documentation — conceptual, task-oriented, and reference information.

On the publishing side, the toolkit provides a set of XSLT stylesheets driven by an Ant pipeline which transforms conforming XML documents into HTML, PDF, JavaHelp, EclipseHelp and more.

However, the real beauty of DITA — and what turns DITA into an XML architecture rather than application — is the ability to specialise core topic-types into new document classes that more closely encapsulate a given information domain. DITA prescribes a method for doing this that lets your new document classes retain compatibility with existing XSLT transforms.

Specialisation works through well-understood XML syntax rules — external entities and attributes. Your new document class pulls in the element definitions of a core topic type, and overrides certain elements where necessary with elements of your own design. But crucially, where a new element overrides an existing one, you provide a mapping to the overridden one using an attribute called class.

This class attribute is generic to all DITA elements, and is critical for the selection of template rules during DITA XSLT transforms. By providing a mapping, you ensure that your new element matches the same XSLT templates as the element it overrides.

This is seriously useful stuff. Using a few simple rules of XML I can subclass a core DITA DTD, creating an entirely new class of document that encapsulates my own information domain. But this new document class is born with multi-channel publishing capabilities already in place.

There are exciting possibilities for information interchange if, as looks likely, a significant body of organisations start basing their information designs on DITA. For, all content based on a DITA specialisation is theoretically interchangeable as any specialised topic can be generalised back into one of the core DITA topics. (The toolkit contains XSLT transformations to perform this backward-mapping - again the class attribute which declares an element’s path of derivation is critical).

Although this results in some loss of granularity, it does means that it’s an awful lot easier to re-use another organisation’s content for your own purposes if it’s based on a DITA derivation than if it’s based on a bespoke DTD. For example, integrating third-party XML data into your site or CMS becomes less daunting if it shares the majority of its element vocabulary with your own data. This is a great development : after all, effective information interchange is part of the promise of XML.

The DITA toolkit, in the hands of an XML-savvy documentation group can significantly lower the barrier to adopting single-source XML publishing. It’s possible for a team to create its own topic specialisations basing them on the rich DITA core topics, then hit the ground running with basic publishing transformations already taken care of by the open-source toolkit.

Now for the disclaimer : I’m not an evangelist or contributor to DITA; however I am currently involved in a project to migrate a mission-critical document corpus to the DITA architecture. There will be issues along the way, and I will be blogging at regular pit-stops as the project progresses.

I was recently talking to another alternative music geek at a party — trying to explain the incestuous relationship between many of the bands I liked — and started sketching out something that resembled a lo-fi version of this:

After a few relationships had been drawn, I started thinking about how this could be represented with RDF (yes, I am a lot of fun at parties). I don’t want to re-invent the wheel, so does anyone know if anything already exists that could model these relationships? I’m aware of the Musicbrainz metadata scheme, which borrows from Dublin Core, but the scope doesn’t go so far as to map relationships (from what I’ve seen).

If nothing does exist, what kind of classes and properties should we have? I’ll start making a draft list below - if you can think of any others (or corrections to mine), let me know below.

• I was thinking about sub-classing the MusicBrainz Artist class with Band/Group and Musician (which would include vocalists, etc.) classes
• Maybe the MusicBrainz Album and Track could be sub-classes of something like a Recording class? That might make it easier to say that someone can ‘feature on’ or ‘produce’ (etc.) any type of ‘recording’ (whether it is an entire album or a track)
• So we probably need properties for is member of, produced (which would apply to a recording, not a band, as in my diagram above), features in/on (there’s probably a much better semantic term for this), has covered (again, unlike my diagram above, this should go from a band to a track, not a band - the original band/author can be found from a second relation)
• I guess we’d want to be able to say that someone was is member of for a particular date range too, so that we can represent musicians moving from one band to another.
• There are plenty of vocabularies to describe family relationships (e.g. http://vocab.org/relationship/), so we don’t need to add anything for this

What else?

A couple years ago, Plink.org was launched as a new kind of web-based social network. (You can see how Plink used to look through the internet archive.) Instead of requiring users to register, input information, and add contacts to other people in their centralized network, Plink crawled the web for FOAF Files.

FOAF is short for Friend-of-a-Friend, and it is a Semantic Web vocabulary for representing information about people and their relationships. Because FOAF is a Semantic Web project the files are written in OWL, a machine readable language. This means they can be easily read, processed, and aggregated from distributed sources.

FOAF information is generated from a lot of places. People can create their own FOAF files by hand, or by using Foaf-a-Matic. The largest sources of FOAF data, however, are web-based social networks that choose to share their user’s information in FOAF form, as well as in HTML form. LiveJournal, Tribe.net, eCademy, and Buzznet are just a few of the networks that publish users’ data in FOAF. In 2004, Howard Dean’s campaign was also collecting social network information, by recording which visitors sent emails through the site, inviting their friends to come visit. They published this data as FOAF, as well.

Plink encountered all of this information, freely available on the web, and displayed what it found as part of its website. The result was a nice website that showed all of the data about a person from a variety of sources. It also inspired a lot of angry email from people who never “signed up” for Plink and were very surprised to see their information there. As a result, Plink was forced to shut down.

In one sense, the Semantic Web is designed for exactly the type of activity that Plink undertook: to make information stored in distributed files easy to access, read, and aggregate. However, the ultimate failure of Plink was due to concerns from users about their privacy. People who register for web-based social networks expect some of their personal information to be available on the web. For the users who are concerned, there are privacy policies that can be consulted to explain what will be shared and with whom. But really, how many of us actually read those? There was less of an expectation that information entered on a political website might be shared. Did Howard Dean’s campaign have a privacy policy that said people’s information might be shared? Yes, but we can’t say whether or not people read it or understood it.

I would argue that the standard privacy policy is not a practical way to inform users about how their data will be shared. Sure, users should probably read them…but they don’t (I don’t read them, and I know better). Privacy policies are long, rambling, and boring.

How can we more effectively inform users about how their data will be shared on the web? I admit that I have not worked hard to come up with a good solution. On first impulse, I could envision a system that maintains the privacy policy, but that also has a simple visual indicator (an icon or something similar) that conveys basic information about how data will be shared (e.g. data will be strictly confidential, some data will be available on the web, data may be shared with commercial third-parties, etc.). In any case, the growth in technologies and interest that will allow this information to be published on the web ensures this is an issue that won’t go away. Someone will need to dedicate time and thought to this issue.

As we consider this, let’s all share a moment of silence for Plink, may it rest in peace.

What are your ideas about privacy on the Semantic Web? Are there systems you think could be or should be deployed?

This is pushing things a little, but there is some obvious correlation between the features offered in the very first internet applications, and those we see in the new “Web 2.0″:

• Collaboration Tools = Usenet/BBS (Bulletin Board Systems). Some of the old BBS software was far ahead of its time, letting people upload and download files, with message boards, email and real-time chat.
• File-Sharing/Flickr = FTP/Gopher
• Tagging = Meta Keywords

This could be seen as a step backwards, but it feels more like a step forwards. We’re getting back to what the technology was originally built for, and removing some of the unnecessary fluff that got built in along the way. The Web interface is adding efficiency and consistency across these applications, letting them spread like wildfire. Maybe Web 2.0 is a more accurate moniker than I originally gave credit for.

This week’s round of SOA Architect Forums began in London with over 100 attendees! We then traveled to Milan, and ended the week in Utrecht, Netherlands. I’m currently sitting in a coffee shop in Amsterdam reflecting on the events of the week.

The attendance at these forums has been averaging between 80 and 100. The quality of the audience at these events continues to be extremely high, with most people being Sr. level architects who are responsible for defining and delivering a SOA strategy for their organization. Its interesting to note that a year ago, when I asked the audience for a show of hands on who is actively involved in a SOA related project for teir company, I would get about 10% of the audience. Now when I ask the same question I get almost everyone in the room raising their hands. The intensity of the questions and depth of their inquiries indicates that they are keenly interested in what is being presented and discussed at the forum.

This week we had some special guest speakers from one of Sonic’s sister companies, Mark Palmer and Giles Nelson of the Progress Real Time Division, who explained the Progress Apama Event Stream Processing (ESP) engine. The ESP engine can provide real time analysis and recognition of complex patterns within an event stream. The Apama engine takes it one level beyond BAM dashboarding in that it allows for the creation of scenarios that take an autoamtic course of action based on scripted rules which are specified by the visual tools of the Apama workbench. The event stream in the context of our discussions was of course the Enterprise Service Bus.

In London we also had a guest speaker from British Telecom, who talked about their adoption of ESB based on a thorough evaluation of SOA enablement approaches. He then talked about some of the projects they were working on (more on this to come).

In Milan we had a guest speaker from Telecom Italia, who told a similar story about their adoption of ESB as a means for building SOA. I was in an out of Milan so fast I didn’t even get to sample any Gelato! If you ever go to Italy, you must try this stuff. It looks like ice cream but it is like eating a cloud. Nowhere else in the world have I been able to find the stuff quite like the real thing. Real Gelato is light and fluffy, and served chilled or at room temperature. The non-authentic stuff is usually like ice cream. I did however, get to sample plenty of Italian espresso, which IMO is the best in the world.

Anyhow, back to the SOA Architect Forum series - Finally in Utrecht, Netherlands, we had several special guest speakers. The morning started with a discussion of the Business-IT Case for SOA adoption by Cor Baars of Cibit. This was followed by an overview of SOA with an introduction of ESB by Professor Mike Papazoglou of Tilburg University. (Mike is working on his next book on SOA, a part of which I reviewed. Its turning out to be really a big book, but it is quite good).

We then had presentations from 3 Sonic customers who talked about their adoption of SOA -
“Designing an EAI Architecture” by Dennis Attinger, Philips International
“A Green Oriented Architecture” by Harry Geelen, The Greenery
“Bookmarket Becomes Supermarket” by Jan Vink, Boekhandels Groep Nederland

Last but not least was a presentation by yours truly on the architectural components of an ESB and how an ESB enables an organization to accelerate the adoption of SOA across their extended enterprise.

We usually have a roundtable discussion where we get the audience members to share with their peers the issues they are facing and solving with regard to adopting SOA in their organization. In the Utrecht event, there were so many presenters there wasn’t time to do that. I still feel that the audience got equally as much value out of this forum because there were so many customers talking about their real projects.

Since my arm is finally starting to recover from recent surgery, I was able to do a book signing for 90+ people at the end of the day’s events.

In the midst of all this, Mark and I also did quite a few press interviews on a recently announced SOA Maturity Model. Next week, its on to Zurich and Stockholm, then its back to Boston to check in at HQ!

Dave

(Disclaimer: Every now and again, I like to break up my bad cartoon blogs with some provocative, opinionated, ill-informed ramblings. This is one such entry.)

I really want the Semantic Web (SW) explosion to happen, and sooner rather than later. But a
sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach tells me that it’s still a long way off. And worse still,
that the Web 2.0 momentum could push it further back. Let me explain.

Web 2.0: Beautiful but deadly

Without getting into a protracted argument over the exact definition of “Web 2.0″, let’s go with
the general consensus that it’s all about people. That’s it. It doesn’t care about
technology or standards; use AJAX, SVG, FOAF, PHP, Ruby, XHTML, P2P or XSL - it doesn’t matter, just
make sure that it’s people-oriented. Let people create, collaborate, share and interact. Who cares
what the back-end uses, or how it does it - just give “Power To The People”, quickly and
efficiently.

The Semantic Web is the polar opposite: standardise all your data in RDF; encode it in XML (OK,
so there’s also N3, but it’s probably mostly going to end up as XML); create your OWL. And then, once you
have all this standardised data, let the machines loose on it! Because this data is for computer
consumption, the SW should be more or less transparent to its users.

So whilst Web 2.0 is about high-level (user experience) and immediate benefits, the SW is a
low-level (data), long-term solution. Users are seeing all this cool, flexible new
Web 2.0 stuff, and it’s making the SW look even more complex, rigid and unnecessary. Both
technologies appear similar to the outside world - share and aggregate data - but
Web 2.0 has a pretty interface, and is here and now. And thus the (finite) budgets of
organisations are being spent on wikis and blogs, rather than RDF database converters.

Semantic Web: All hail the true king!

But don’t write off the SW. What do we really want from the future web? I mean
really want? Web 2.0 has given us more efficient maps. We can share photos. And
collectively criticise the same websites. But, you know something - so what? Are these the
impacts we dream about making; is this our legacy when we die? The SW could save lives. Because it could enable the identification of otherwise un-detected patterns in
large-scale, distributed data sets, it could help find medical cures and aid other problems in
life sciences. It could help detect and prevent organised crime and terrorist activity. It might
help analyse geological or meteorological data and limit the destruction of natural disasters. It
could help detect and contain viruses and outbreaks. It could help distribute and re-use important
educational resources. These are bold claims, but these are the goals we should be aiming for, and
this is why we need the SW to flourish. We can’t let a fancy map get in our way.

What’s the way forward? Well, we need the SW to take advantage of the Web 2.0 pile-driver.
As Daniel Weitzner recently told me, it’s all
about finding the “sweet spot” between the formal SW
semantics and the flexible, free-form Web 2.0. GRDDL
is one such project hoping to help us find this elusive middle-ground, by re-purposing existing web content into
SW data.

We can also take advantage of the flexibility of Web 2.0. As it is technology agnostic, we
can use SW technologies in our Web 2.0 applications and get the best of both worlds (the FOAF RDF
vocabulary has already succeeded at being integrated into many social networking applications).

So lets push things forward. The Web 2.0 applications are amazing, efficient, and without doubt
interesting and a huge step forward. But don’t let them distract from the benefits that the SW could
realise. Only 10% of the world population have internet access, and those of us who regularly use Web
2.0 applications a very small niche within this. The SW benefits are further reaching; giving us
developers new toys to play with, but also potentially impacting the lives of the other 6 billion
people in this world without internet access.

Related link: http://www.understandingxml.com/archives/2005/10/the_return_of_t.html

There seems to be a general belief in the hacker world that if Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and a handful of other companies were given the chance they would steal your wallet, your shoes, and as a result, your girlfriend too as theres not a girl on this planet who dreams of dating a shoeless, pennyless, and all together “poor unfortunate soul” as yourself who is now rushing home to make sure your comic book collection is “still where I left it…” which just so happens to be buried 16 feet underground in a Gun Safe thats been welded shut to ensure that *EVEN IF* they decided to go digging in your backyard AND as a result were lucky enough to stumble upon the safe, “THEY’RE NOT GONNA GET MY COMIC BOOKS TOO!!!” or so you said when you sparked that flint to “seal the deal” “once and for all!”

Way to go tiger… roar.

Just one question before we move on…

How’d ya get the girl in the first place?

No big deal, just wondering…

—
So heres the deal. I just did a mental survey of all the data that I have personally created that I could in any way, shape, or form classify as “mine.” Being a Consultant/Contract Software Developer now entering my 10th year of “service” in particular field of software development theres a *HUGE* chunk of code that, while technically was written by me, with the price I was being paid to write it I most certainly can’t even come close to claiming any of that should in some way still belong or in any way be attributed to me.

Extending from this I also had to delete from this list anything I have written and published to the open domain, as such material, when published to the open domain without any sort of “licensing” or “terms of agreement” attached to it becomes the property of the open domain. As such, that too has been deleted from my list.

Now I am sure there is a lawyer or two out there who would be willing to help me, for a “small fee” of course, reclaim some or even all of that data, sending a bill to each and every person on this planet who has so much as read one letter of one word of such writings without first paying me for such luxury. First off, using the word “luxury” would be a bit of a stretch… no, in fact a flat out lie. Thats not to say that I’m a junk writer will little to no self esteem. Trust me, I have plenty of self esteem. Furthermore, while I will admit (and I assure you I know plenty of people who will back up this claim) that such a proposition could put me in retirement before I even finish this post, sorry…. not interested.

As a side note: Personally I believe phreaks like you (refering to lawyers who seek out this kind of ambulance chasing legal work) ought to be “marooned” on a desert island that “no one even knows exists” along with all of your other “buddies” and left to handle things from there… While I’m sure such a proposition would make for a *GREAT* reality show… I don’t watch T.V. so, again, not interested.

So moving past this, lets get down to the nitty gritty. Of all the content that I could possibly claim as my own, with a quick and simple calculation my guesstimate suggests that I am still in possession of *AT LEAST* 95% of it. The other 5%? Well, simply put… we don’t need to dive into that particular girlfriend story right at the moment.

Boy do I miss her…

and the remaining 5% of my personal belongings (which includes my cat!)…

No, I’m not bitter. Why do you ask? :)

—
Well, now that we’ve come full circle to sad and pathetic “girlfriend’less phreaks” lets get back to why Microsoft, Google, etc.. etc.. etc.. could really care less about your personal data. However, instead of just laying it down in opinionated smut, I’ll just leave you with some facts, some links, and then let you figure out for yourself what you think they could possibly mean…

Fact One: Since a few years back when Microsoft released MSDE, their SQL Server-based personal use database engine(at the time, geared towards developers such that they could write and test code against their local instance of SQL before actually deploying it to a test or production server.. or so they said anyway) various sources began to suggest that this was going to become a much more permanent fixture on the Windows Desktop. As the years continued what was rumor became accepted and now proven fact, culminating into what is now called SQL Server Express which is prepared to ship along with its full-featured counterpart, SQL Server 2005, in about a month from now.

While there are more than just these two, heres a couple possibilities as to why they would just give away what has turned into be pretty powerful little mighty-might, licensed to contain up to 4GBytes of data per database install:

* They believe that Structured Query Language(SQL) and the English language, which from what I understand is the language most often spoken by a current Microsoft customer, are both syntactically AND semantically so close that its only a matter of time before it becomes the prefered and more often used language of the English speaking human population. As such, “get em’ hooked now” and then “charge em’ big for it” later.

- or -

* They believe that as we move closer and closer to “the Bigtop” the line between desktop and server will become all but transparent and as such they best prepare now and begin to place on the dektop the tools that developers will be using in the future to deliver applications and information securely and at incredibly high speeds that customers have subsribed to through various mechanisms. While data is still the key operative here, “ownership” of that data in a centralized and Microsoft controlled location is not whats important. Whats important is how the data got there in the first place and was it able to do so securely, without any concern for compromise, especially when that data happens to be extremely sensitive, a list too long to try and even pull an example from. And most of all, will the customer pay for this?

Yeah, they will.

NOTE: Anybody who just started screaming “DRM!, DRM!, DRM!”

Please stop. This post isn’t about DRM, please don’t make it become one. WAY TO BIG of a subject to try and talk about in a blog posting.

Plus, I don’t care.

But I still love you!!! Don’t worry, all the love is still here. Just not when DRM becomes the topic. Then my love goes as far away as it possibly can.

Thanks for understanding. :)

—
POINT TWO : Six words, all nouns, several even Proper Nouns :

“Adam Bosworth’s MySQL Developers Conference Keynote”

Read it.

Twice.

If the original is still available online for download, burn it onto a CD and listen to it over and over and over until you can finally understand the point he is trying to make…

Which, by the way, when paraphased suggests in no uncertain terms:

“Forget Oracle. The Money is On The Desktop!”

Those are not code words. That wasn’t his way of stating “don’t look now, but a mad Gorilla is running down the hallway… save yourself while you still can!”

While much more entertaining, I promise, there were no mad Gorilla’s at the conference.

Wait, were talking about MySQL aren’t we. Hmmm…

Well, while there could have been mad Gorilla’s, this wasn’t what he was refering to, I promise.

The money *IS* on the desktop.
Chant that over and over and over. Sing it if it helps. Don’t dance though. I’ve seen you dance. Please don’t dance again.

Thanks :)

Oh, and if you’re not already aware… Adam Bosworth kinda’ knows a thing or two about this whole computer business thingamajig.

How so?

Google for him. It shouldn’t take long.

One final point and then I’ll leave you in peace:

By the way, this is going to be chopped up and in bullet points. But it should make complete sense. If it doesnt, read it again. If you want I’ll read it aloud and record it, of which for the rediculously small asking price of three easy payments of only $9.95, I’ll send you a copy on CD such that you can play it alonside Adam Bosworth’s keynote, rotating them to keep things fresh and exciting :)

The chopped up statments presented in all there bullet point glory are as follows:

* Ray Ozzie

* Groove

* Peer-to-Peer

* Microsoft

* Reorg

* Chief Technology Officer

and finally, from the recent reorg press release that most of the above refers to:

“Kevin Johnson and Jim Allchin will be co-presidents of the Platform Products and Services division, which will comprise Windows Client, Server and Tools and the MSN division. Microsoft said Allchin will hold that new position until he retires, once the company ships Windows Vista at the end of next year.”

and:

“Ray Ozzie, who joined the company as one of its three chief technical officers earlier this year, following Microsoft’s acquisition of Groove Networks, will expand his responsibilities to drive the software-based services strategy.”

and one more for good measure:

“Under Ray’s technical leadership and weaving together both software and software-based services, I see incredible opportunity to better address the changing needs of our customers’ digital lifestyles and the new world of work,” Ballmer wrote in the e-mail.”

So you can end this article and start your day in fun heres a little brain twister for you:

What does:

- the merger Windows Client, Server and Tools and the MSN division.
- combined with Ray “Peer-to-Peer” Ozzie
- which, as Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer, Steve Ballmer states:
- “Under Ray’s technical leadership and weaving together both software and software-based services, I see incredible opportunity to better address the changing needs of our customers’ digital lifestyles and the new world of work,”

suggest as to where Microsoft’s focus and direction will be for the next 10 years?

I’ll give you a hint:

DECENTRALIZATION!!!!

It doesn’t matter where it resides, data is data and services are services. “You want to host it on your Vista box? Great! That’ll save us 500 million a year in data center costs PLUS you pay us for a copy of Vista” which, if I were to guess would be exactly the type of thing Steve Ballmer would say… [NOTE: THAT IS NOT IN ANY WAY A REAL QUOTE. SPECULATIVE ONLY, AND MY OWN SPECULATION AT THAT. EXTENDED NOTE: The reason I say it sounds like something Steve Balmer would say has to do with and old (and faked) TV commercial that had him in an infomercial setting selling copies of Windows 1.0. If you’ve seen the video, you know what I’m refering to when I state its the funniest damn thing you ever seen, even when you know its fake, and even more fun to watch with someone who doesnt know its fake. The “dropped-jaw” look on there face is worth every re-run :)]

Peace and Love unto you all :D

Oh, and also. I do recognize that control of your own data is EXTREMELY important. Please don’t think that I am suggesting that its not. I just don’t believe that MS, Google, Yahoo!, etc… are all that concerned about where content resides, and instead how it got there and did they get paid to deliver it to you.

I’m pretty sure thats what Web Services are all about.

But I could be wrong. :)

Again, all my XOXOXOXO

Oh, almost forgot… The link at the start of the article goes to an article written last night by my good friend Kurt Cagle who always ends his posts with an interesting twist to his bio. This one had me smiling so I thought Iw ould share it with you.

When I came here to make a quick post regarding his comments on the Google/Sun deal I noticed and read a couple of the recent points regarding owndership of data and, as you can tell, got a bit sidetracked.

All in good fun, right? :D

The quote:

Kurt Cagle is an author and software architect for Mercurial Communications, and is the author of seventeen books and a couple of hundred articles on web technologies. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia, where he’s discovering WHY the Canadian symbol is a maple leaf.

If, in Canada, enjoy your Maple Leaf’ed enhanced day :)

Am I right? Am I wrong? Do you even care? And are you still thinking about the mad Gorilla’s? Hmmm, sorry bout’ that! Hope you don’t have nightmares cuz’ of it!!

Related link: http://www.openunderstanding.com/mapping/wiki/index.php

As mentioned in the intro, I have taken a few moments to set-up a communtiy wiki such that we can begin to work together to develop a one of a kind resource regarding web service-based mapping technologies such as Google Maps, MSN Virtual Earth, and Yahoo! Maps.

Located at http://www.openunderstanding.com/mapping/wiki/ the first paragraph reads:

Welcome! Please excuse the obvious abuse of using a pre-existing image as a place holder until such time as I have a moment to create one more specific to this site, UnderstandingWebServices.com with a focus on “Mapping” technologies. Until just a few minutes ago it hadn’t occured to me to crack open one of the Understanding*.com sites I own and begin to make use of them from a community perspective. This seemed to be the best choice to host this topic, so I’ve quickly set this up such that we can work together as a community to start development of interesting content, pointers to cool mapping projects, code samples, etc…

UPDATE: For reasons of consolidation and to avoid confusion I have moved everything under the openunderstanding.com domain. I have updated the links accordingly. I am in proc ess of moving the content from the old server to the new server. If you attempt to access these links and they don’t seem to work, the move in still in progress. Thanks in advance for your patience!

At the moment, I invite anyone and everyone with interest to take part in this community-based effort to begin documenting and sharing with each other all that we can regarding the latest and greatest extension projects, the underlying base API’s, links to books and online resources to learn more, etc…

To kick things off I have created a “services” namespace and added two pages to begin keeping track of each and every extension project for MSN Virtual Earth and Google Maps. You can go directly to either of these following one of the links below:

MSN Virtual Earth API Extensions Projects
and
Google Maps API Extension Projects

Now we’re back on even ground :) If you have something to say and would like to document your own findings, posting images, links, etc… to help back up your comments, you now are completely enabled to do just that in a central location in which we all can benefit from.

Oh, and I still plan a follow-up to this post in another day or two, but wanted to get the ball rolling with this ASAP such that you all can get involved in a way that sounds a lot less like my voice and a lot more like yours.

Or better said, ours :)

With that, Enjoy!

Please visit the wiki and post your comments there. Thanks! :)

The marketing machines at different organizations attempting to define a market segment for ESBs have only proven to confuse the market. The importance of a market segment is the ability to identify competitors and compare and contrast their product offerings. But when no-one can agree on what features constitute an ESB then the point of segmenting a market is lost.

This became apparent after writing a paper on Web Services for a networking company.

If we take a look at the history of Google, an obvious pattern of content aquisition and aggregation emerges:

• Usenet (Deja)
• Blogger
• Groups (email lists)
• Gmail

It makes sense - the more content that Google controls, the more powerful, targeted and integrated its advertising can be.

To me, there is one huge gap in the content market that Google has yet to control: generic websites. This would be the coup de grace; direct insight into users content, with the ability to advertise alongside.

I think this will happen; Google will eventually offer a free equivalent of a hosted Content Management System - create your templates, manage your content - do everything you need to create and manage your website; a super-Blogger, if you will. All the small organisations and users from across the world who need more than a blog or wiki, but can’t afford or support a content managed website could subscribe for free, and get their content online. The only price would be a couple of Adwords on every page.

And, if the software happened to allow users to define meaning/metadata and relationships between content (as it probably would), then Google could have extremely focussed adverts for each item of content - leading to better click-throughs, and higher revenue.

I don’t think this should worry producers of flexible, large-scale content management systems </blatant plug>. In the same way that I don’t subscribe to the notion that wikis are the ‘Web 2.0′ equivalents of content management systems (Wikis create content, CMS software manages websites), I think most medium and large organisations will still need the flexibility and control of large systems.

What do you think? Is it inevitable that Google will eventually control all online content (and offline too, by the way it’s going)? Or does their more recent strategy of providing services (maps, news, froogle, talk, desktop) imply an altogether different vision?

Related link: http://virtualearth.msn.com/

Google Maps vs. MSN Virtual Earth

A while back I posted an entry to my personal blog soon after I had watched the Scoble MSN Virtual Earth demo on “Channel 9” of Microsoft’s Developer Network (MSDN). After watching this demo I came to the realization that Google Maps, as nice as it is, was in for a rude awakening when MSN’s Virtual Earth hit the streets.

Was I correct? I’ll let you be the judge:

Cross-Browser/Cross-Platform

As mentioned in the preview the following results are based from an installation of Fedora Core 4 (Linux/GNOME) and Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7. After having a chance to play with MSN’s Virtual Earth on a WinXP Pro install using Firefox 1.0.7 and discovering that yes, as claimed, MSN Virtual Earth was cross-browser, I thought it safe to assume that given Firefox was available on Linux then it must very well be cross-platform as well.

But instead of just assuming I decided to boot into my install of Fedora Core 4 just to make sure MSN didn’t have something funny going on behind the scenes.

The result?

See for yourself:

An enlarged view is available here.

For the record, this is an actual screen shot from an actual instance of Firefox running on an instance of Fedora Core 4. How can you know for sure? Well, if I could figure out how to take a full screenshot with toolbars and all, I could show you. Unfortunately, as much as I love the GNOME Desktop [1] I have way too much invested in my Windows dev tool experience to be able to use it as much as I would like. As such I haven’t spent the time to figure out all of the details, such as how to take a screenshot of the entire screen as opposed just the active window (alt+PrtScrn works fine and as expected, but nothing else seems to be mapped as it is in Windows… if you happen to know and don’t mind leaving a comment with a quick explanation, I’d appreciate it :) But don’t take my word for it… Chances are good that if you doubt this to be the actual case, you yourself are running your very own Linux distro with your very own instance of Firefox 1.0.7 (unless you haven’t upgraded yet, which if this is the case, you should;)

Ok, so we’ve established MSN Virtual Earth to be cross-browser/cross-platform - which is another way of saying “No. They haven’t blocked out users who are not using Internet Explorer on Microsoft Windows.” Definitely a step in the right direction. :)

Just to make sure, lets see how Google does using the same platform/browser combination as above:

Again, here’s an enlarged view.

So far so good. Two products, two platforms, two browsers. (Google Maps/MSN Virtual Earth, Windows XP Pro/Fedora Core 4(Linux/GNOME), Internet Explorer 6.0/Firefox 1.0.7, respectively) [NOTE: While I haven’t actually taken any screenshots of both of these products running inside of Internet Explorer on a WinXP Pro install, do I really need to? I promise, they both work in IE 6.0 on WinXP Pro (and I’m guessing ‘WinXP Home’, ‘WinXP Media Edition’, as well as ‘Win2K3′, ‘Win2K’, and any other version of Windows that IE 6.0 runs on - but I’m just guessing ;)]

Quality

In case you hadn’t already noticed lets take a look at the difference in quality (speaking in terms of the images only at this stage) between the two products.

Same shot, this time with the added explanation that this is a shot from above of my apartment complex in downtown Salt Lake City, UT, USA [NOTE: This is with the zoom cranked to as high as it would go.]:

Again, an enlarged view is available here.

Not too shabby. And in some ways, a little scary just how close and how clear of a shot this is. But I’ll let the conspiracy theorists who believe that such closeness and clarity means something all together different than a *REALLY NICE CAMERA* used onboard a *REALLY NICE SATELLITE* (or potentially a non-orbital aircraft of some sort) deal with that angle… I’m not that kind of conspiracy theorist (I only dabble in such things from time to time, the “weekend warrior version who’s missed a few seasons yet still thinks he can ride ‘just like he used to!’” kind of conspiracy theorist if you will. NOTE: If you have no clue what I just said… Ummm… I don’t know what to tell ya… ask a friend maybe?)

Alright, now lets take a look again at Google Maps offering (again, this is a shot from above of my apartment complex in downtown Salt Lake City, UT, USA with the zoom cranked to as high as it would go.]:

One more time, here’s an enlarged view.

Just so you can delete this from the list of possibilities, no this is not an image of a petrie dish experiment gone bad. This is the same apartment complex taken from maximum zoom from within Google Maps.

I would go on, but I like Google too much as a company to want to take this any further than it needs to go… you’ve seen the images, I’ll let you judge which one you believe to be of better quality.

Features

I think I’m going to save the features bit of this piece for another post as I haven’t had enough time yet to really get a feel for all the features made available from MSN Virtual Earth. This, of course, would include any and all access to MSN Virtual Earth exposed via an API, something I know exists, but am unsure what all is made available as I haven’t played with it yet. Suffice it to say I plan to and will report back once I have.

Until then, enjoy!

[QUICK-UPDATE: To avoid confusion Google Maps and Google Earth are two separate projects. While it may seem that the proper comparison should be between Google Earth and MSN Virtual Earth, this is not the case. While Google Earth provides a much improved experience the codebase, formerly known as Keyhole which was purchased by Google, runs exclusively on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. As far as I know there is no webified version of Google Earth and as a result the product doesn’t qualify for the cross-browser, cross-platform nature of this post.

My apologies for not clarifying this point ahead of time.

In regards to the follow-up piece: I am currently researching what has turned into a fairly lengthy list of extensions that have already been developed for MSNs’ Virtual Earth using the available API and associated “run-time” (Dare has a nice teaser piece from a few days ago.) Of course Google Maps has similar capabilities with the added benefit of being first to market. As such, they too have an impressive list of extensions utilizing the API they have made available. All-in-all (and with my Mapping Hacks and Web Mapping Illustrated titles in hand) this should lend well to a nice follow-up piece showcasing the strenths and weaknesses of both, with the final result bringing a better understanding as to which product makes the most sense for your particular projects needs.

And we haven’t even touched Yahoo! yet :)]

[UPDATE(2005.10.04 15:52 MST): As mentioned in my follow-up comment to ‘rlgura’ I have added two(2) images to the wiki I created in response to this post. You can access both of them via:

Hotchkiss, CO (via Google Maps)

Hotchkiss, CO (via MSN Virtual Earth)

If you take a look at these images you will note that just as ‘rlgura’ made note, the clarity (and overall quality) of the MSN Virtual Earth image compared to the Google Maps version of the same area is pretty significant.

I guess you could argue that Google Maps version is in color. But when your’e trying to explain to your Aunt Bertha “our house is just to the left of the baseball field in >> “this >> [link to Google Maps || MSN Virtual Earth] << image" << I doubt much Aunt Bertha cares if the Google Maps version is in color... she's not going to understand what you mean.

Now maybe you don't like Aunt Bertha all that much anyways and would prefer that she didn't stop by on her "venture to 'SEE THE WORLD!'". If this is the case, I would probably choose Google Maps color version over the MSN VE black-and-white offering.

[DISCLAIMER: Usage of this advice is made on and by your own free will. If, because of my ‘advice’, Aunt Bertha decides to exclude you from her will… I’m not taking responsibility! :D]

[UPDATE(2005.10.04 16:29 MST): As per the original comment from ‘rlgura’ I have added images of Cleveland, OH to the same wiki. The links are as follows:

View of Cleveland, OH from Google Maps centered at or about St. Claire Ave NE and E. 9th St

View of Cleveland, OH from Google Maps centered at or about St. Claire Ave NE and E. 9th St.)
]

—
[1] : Regarding my love of the GNOME Desktop, I really do… It has by far and beyond won my desktop heart over. KDE? Let’s just say that I believe in the principals of K.I.S.S., or Keep It Simple Stupid. It seems to me that the KDE folks could care less about foreplay, they want *all the action* and they want it now! GIMME, GIMME, GIMME, MORE, MORE, MORE - Kind of the adolescent who just hit puberty approach to the desktop, where as GNOME has had a chance to grow up a bit since then. Just my opinion, I’m sure you have yours…

Keeping your comments to the topic of Google Maps vs. MSN Virtual Earth (or answering my GNOME Desktop screenshot question, or, in other words not turning this into a GNOME vs. KDE debate based on my footnote comment) what are your thoughts? Is MSN Virtual Earth the clear winner thus far (features set aside for now until I have time to offer up more on this subject) or am I just not seeing things as ‘clearly’ as I think I am?