technology

Recently we’ve been talking about how it’s complicated to create and implement new standarts - which have no body, no techniques and no practical approach but only a set of rules. So the new HTML version 5 is no exception. But today we are going to talk about something more sophisticated and deep - SPARQL, which is drafted by the same crew - W3C.

Web 3.0 as we see it

I know, the term itself is very subjective - but if we use our imagination a bit - what Web 3.0 would be formed of? There are many visions - 3D applications in browser, operation system in browser and so on, but there’s one more - artificial intelligence. We have to make our machines think someday! What does any intelligent system need? Brains. The most perfect and suitable brain for intellegent network machine is RSS feeds - lots of them. So to unify somehow we have to have one query language for all of them.

One type of query for different types of data

So, SPARQL - imagine all the RSS feeds for blogs / news services/ social networks around the Net. They are all different - different structure, different formats - and now, with one SQL-like query you can fetch the information from all of them. Cool, ha? This is what SPARQL is about.

What makes SPARQL so simple and so intelligent?

Ontologies and prefix. Each SPARQL query is pre-defined with strict ontology or what pattern to use.

Query example from Wikpedia:

PREFIX abc: <http://example.com/exampleOntology#>
SELECT ?capital ?country
WHERE {
  ?x abc:cityname ?capital ;
     abc:isCapitalOf ?y .
  ?y abc:countryname ?country ;
     abc:isInContinent abc:Africa .
}

The query will return all capital cities in Africa.

Primarly there are no released implementations of SPARQL still, but few projects are in development.

• http://wiki.foaf-project.org/SparqlPress - Wordpress + SPARQL based project
• Friend of a friend - OWL and RDF based project to describe relations between people

This is about vision. Of course it’s still very subjection and the form of the concept called Web 3.0 is about to change completely. But the direction is impressive - we are very close to create A.I. as we’ve seen it in movies - the machine walks, the machine thinks, the machine feels.

Something wrong happened between Google and Mozilla and suddenly friends became competitors - the true reasons why Google is developing it’s own browser are still unclear and very fuzzy. Sergei Brin says we need to re-think our browser experience and move it to the next level - make everything you do on a computer through the browser. Maybe it’s the new Google’s vision on modern internet technology development, who knows.

But in case of browsers war which has already began I stand for Firefox. And here are 8 simple reasons Why.

1. Customization.
   Google Chrome’s comes with a default “skin” without the ability to customize it - what the hell, guys, let me change the default color! Firefox allows to change theme and even modify it with CSS files and I am not talking about the tons of freeware Firefox skins on the net.
2. Add-ons.
   Extending your browser with different add-ons became essential for me as I started blogging. For example, with Digg extension I can easily submit my article. Delicious add-on synchronizes all my bookmarks with my delicious account and PicLens gives me a great opportunity to browse through Youtube videos and Flickr pictures in animated 3-D mode. According to Google, Add-ons are non-efficient because they should be re-written after any major browser’s update.
3. Ads.
   One of the simplest reasons why there would never be AdBlock addon or ability to block ads in Chrome just because 99% of Google’s revenue comes from such services as Adwords and Adsense. That’s why you’ll never be able to bypass tones of internet ad areas with Chrome.
4. Development progress.
   I love to follow the developing progress by using alpha and beta versions of a product. I also enjoy reading the developer’s conversations about how this or that feature should be made and what icon set to use. This is developing transparency. I know what to expect - none of features are hidden from the eye. That’s why I always test Firefox’ nightly builds and enjoy new features the developers have implemented recently. None of this is in Chrome.
5. Bookmarks organizer.
   Google’s Bookmarking mechanism looks exactly like Firefox’ one, but organizing the bookmarks place could have been better and maybe tagging ability will come in next versions, but now I feel like the absence of it is critical for me.
6. Independence.
   What is Mozilla’s major development? A browser. I know the developers can freely join the team and spend their forces on building a better browser. Google has tons of applications and some of them were really forgotten many times ago and deprecated.
7. Default search engine.
   Have you seen searching in Chrome? You type in address bar search engine’s name and then press tab so you can FINALLY type in search term. You can’t manage search engines, only typing.
8. Awesome bar.
   Awesome bar functionality completely lives up it’s name. It’s intelligent, it really does open the website I want as soon as I type 2 letters in and shows me the most relevant results. In Google Chrome we have the most visited websites and no arrow at address bar, that shows the most visited sites or different options for searching and accessing website I want.

May be it’s all the part of Google’s new vision but we can’t see radical changes and improvements so far, maybe they should have waited with their very first beta release. And if we are talking about new features of Google’s Chrome - we can easily Enable Chrome’s Best Features in Firefox.

Which do you think browser is better and why?

Usually people that spend very much time on the internet are divided into two categories: one is always looking for new tools, instruments and features to “tweak” their computer experience and the other is for stability.

I am in the first category and here is why. I love new applications and new stuff even if it’s not ready to be released, that’s why when something is released I’m already introduced into it and know what is hype about.

For example, when Firefox 3 was in the beta I was already a happy user and completely enjoyed my time and there were absolutely no crashes or glitches - everything worked just well, the developing team was playing with icons and so on - just some eye-candy customizations. Nonetheless sometimes I was disappointed even with a final release - we all remember KDE 4 in it’s early so-called “release”.

Today I would like to introduce you 5 beta versions of software you really would be surprised if tried out and maybe if you are a stability lover nothing stops you from testing.

1. The list is opened by OpenOffice 3 mainly because it has native Microsoft Office 2007 file support. The Mac version is about to come simultaneously with Windows and Linux as well as constant updates. A lot of new features and improvements in upcoming version of free office platform. Also OpenOffice includes start-up page where you can easily choose what type of file you want to create.
   

   OpenOffice 3 beta Dashboard

2. Looks like Firefox developing policy is to eliminate amount of Add-Ons and include the most of features by default. So happened with Ctrl+tab add-on that adds fancy way of switching the tabs. Although it’s current state pre-beta Ctrl+tab feature seems to be completely functional.
   

   Ctrl+Tab feature in Firefox 3.1 pre-beta

3. Skype is a widely used application for businesses (why pay when it’s free?) and common users. Developers are currently working on version 4 and it’s in Beta stage now. What differs it from previous version is complete redesign of the application. Peter Parkes on new features:
   

   • Totally new interface, designed to give plenty of space for video calls.

   • Chatting and calling integrated into the same window, so no more playing hunt-the-chat window.
   • Better hardware detection - you can switch headset halfway through a call and Skype deal with it.
   • A single directory screen - find people and businesses all in one place.

   

   Skype sign-in window

   

   Skype beta main window

4. As has been talked recently A LOT about Google’s new child - Chrome. “New era in browsing the Web - meet Google Chrome’s introduction”, “Google Chrome first impressions”. And this one is definitely worth trying.
   
5. What application would you add to the list?

Although I found out about Google Chrome only on 2nd of September many events have occured. In about an hour after the discovery the screenshots got leaked and I posted an article introducing the Google Chrome - a revolutionery web browser. In twelve hours the first beta was released.

First of all - it’s beta, it has to be glitchy. What disturbs me is that I have seen a very few Google’s technologies turning from beta into final release. Most of them are still beta, although developed very well.

The main view of the browser:

Browser's main view

It automatically fills the Quick Access window with the most visited sites, just as Opera does.

Also, you can move tab anywhere you want - even outside the window and make it separate.

Moving the history tab

As I’ve already mentioned in the previous post about Google Chrome, the processes table contains process for each tab of Google Chrome, which means you can kill it without crashing the application. Google Chrome has it’s own processes viewer from which you can kill any tab that bothers you.

Process view

Although nothing stopped me from killing a random process. What I got was…

A view produced by Chrome after killing a random process

Which is really brilliant and clever. Something is wrong, that’s for sure. I hope they will provide a tab name for each process in future releases.

What I liked a lot was a View source function. The highlighting is brilliant and very efficient.

View source function

What I like about the Google applications is that everything is shown into separate window / tab.

Separate tab for downloads and history is a very good decision. So, opening the downloads window shows up with the next screen.

Download window caption

Also some minor features, like highlighting the domain name to prevent phishing and search the site right in the address bar.

Highlighting the domain name

Search this site

The most annoying glitch is that my scroll-up function doesn’t work in the browser. Plus there are some rendering issues while switching between the tabs, crashes after opening e-mails in Gmail.

Chrome is completely open-source project and uses WebKit engine for rendering web pages. And what I have noticed is that rendering is much more faster than in any browser I have tried.

Although it has some bugs and glitches - but overall it’s great for the very first beta version. I think that giants as Mozilla and Opera should be awared - because design is very simple, clever and simply beautiful and outstanding. Chrome has “Incognito” tab option which doesn’t store ANY information on your computer while you’re browsing - not introduced feature before.

Of course the address bar with default search options does not replace the Awesome bar in firefox and Bookmarks organizing feature is far from perfectness - it doesn’t have tags.

Who might have thought that after the boom of Firefox 3 the next one will happen that fast.

Recently I’ve read an article about what is driving people to use Linux and is it really Windows Vista that constraints people to run Linux?

What I think is that it’s not the performance or anything in Vista that anti-PRs itself - it’s the media and rumors. Lack of performance? Well, Vista starting-up takes a little longer than XP, well, it consumes 200 megabytes more than XP, maybe there are a few network bugs and annoying User Account Control notifications unless it’s Service Pack 1. But what I think is that Vista is really bad-rumored.

And these days, you can ask for XP instead of Vista if you wish - as many businesses do.

Let’s throw an example. My boss was getting a brand-new Lenovo X61 - he had a choice between Vista which was 30% more expensive than Windows XP that was the second choice. What he chose was XP because:

1. “XP is faster”
2. It’s more stable (which is true, because it’s supported much longer)
3. It’s cheaper
4. It’s more comfortable

Why is he wrong? Because he never tried it - he hasn’t discovered Start search with which you can easily navigate through your file system, programmes, tags and so on with just one click and typing.

He never tried out the new Virtual Folders technology which dinamically generates folder content depending on search criteria.

And these are only a few advantages of Windows Vista over Windows XP. The fact is that who really cares about extra 200 megabytes of physical memory when it’s about needless gigabytes of memory in nowadays PC’s.

That’s about businesses switching default Vista to native XP.

Even if you did not want Windows on that PC, there is no way that the average retailer would have the skill or the patience to install GNU/Linux on it

Installing Fedora Core or Ubuntu from scratch takes about 30 minutes without updates, installing Vista takes approximately the same time. Anyway with current distributions installing Linux is much more easier than Vista - it really doesn’t require you to be an expert.

…we need some statistics showing that a sizeable number of people are asking their retailers to install the free operating systems on their new PCs in preference to Vista. In the absence of any numbers - and I doubt whether you’ll ever get them - such claims remain just anecdotal claims.

When I was buying my Hewlett-Packard 6910p with Windows Vista on-board I asked if I could buy it without software installed - one reason is that it’s much more expensive and the second one is that I, as a student, have a lot of priveleges from Microsoft (free software)

My request was denied since a lot of hardware shops have an agreement to sell the computers only with OS installed, so even if I ask to remove the OS on it - anyway I pay for it.

If we lived in a world where the better technology won out, then no doubt everybody and their aunt Fanny would be using GNU/Linux.

That’s what I really doubt - I tried tons of different distributions and nothing has fulfilled my expectations except for Vista. Even though consumes more memory and overhelms the CPU - overall it’s very effective and looking towards future OS which is being developed more than any Linux distro because of one simple reason - it gains more investments.

It’s not a secret that Apple has developed a new selling strategy for it’s sensational genius - iPhone. In a few words the new strategy means that not a single shop can sell iPhones with “no strings attached”, there’s always a mobile operator behind.

The trick is that mobile operator negotiates with Apple (or through third party operators) and Apple gets revenue from each sold iPhone. It leaded to absence of fixed price for the gadget and a lot of tricky contracts with operators appeared. In this post I’ll try to cover all the most unfriendly contracts and ways how to get your iPhone.

Estonia got iPhones 3G on August 22, 2008 through TeliaSonera and local operator - EMT. The price of the gadget is $250. For the money you get iPhone and 2 year contract which monthly price is $55. Simple calculations show us that the actual price is $55 per month * 24 months+ $250 for the phone = $1,570.

Who are the contracts targeted to? If you can count a bit and not sticked with the the number on a label and are able to see the asterix behind it - you easily notice the gadget doesn’t cost the money that is asked for it.

In comparsion in the UK you can get an iPhone in O2 for $70 per month of 1,5 year contract ($1260 + $230 for the gadget = $1,490).

For example in Russia “the black market” offers unlocked iPhone for about $2,500 with no warranty and no boundaries to a single operator, what makes the contract more preferrable. Officially iPhone is not available in the country.

So the marketing goes well - kiddies beg their parents to buy the gadget, the price itself is not that high and contracts are signed.