Posts tagged as:

web 3.0

If we are about Web 3.0 - we are about SPARQL

by alex on October 3, 2008

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.

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.

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New era in browsing the Web - meet Google Chrome’s introduction

by alex on September 2, 2008

As Mozilla have introduced their invention Firefox 3 with tons of new features they have concluded what end-user might need to make life easier to browse through the web.

What to expect more? How to create even more comfortable and intelligent browser?

Google rethought the question and decided to build completely new browser, from scratch. The main reason is that we spend so much time online that it would be ideal to do everything only in browser - “search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser.”

“What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.”

What it looks like Google is building a new browsing platform to support their Javascript-rich applications - such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, Notebook and so on.

Even if they build super-performance Javascript rendering engine, the question still remains - how it looks like, how comfortable and how customizable (add-ons, themes) it is.

The only advantage Google has revealed is a “sand-box” for every tab - if a tab crashes it won’t crash the whole application.

A short comic on advantages is here.

Hot screenshots (or just mock-ups?) are here.

So, what are we expecting?

Optimized for browsing complex ajax-rich web applications, customizable, high performance browser - as efficient and safe as Firefox is.

The beta of the browser is to be released on 3rd of September. Wait for updates and overviews.

Some features:

  1. Personalized view: opening a new tab pops up the fast access page for navigation through most visited sites
  2. “Incognito” tab - everything in this tab is not written into history, doesn’t contain cookies and 100% private.
  3. Each tab is different process - good for performance - consumes less memory, secure when a tab crashes, application stays.

What do you think of new approach of browsing the web? What is missing in today’s browsers?

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Social activities. What Web2.0 provided us with.

by alex on July 21, 2008

By meaning 2.0 I am not talking about long-lasting review of all the web 2.0 features as Wikipedia, Digg and other boring well-known stuff. Some people are smart and every day they come up with a new idea how to fill their pocket with coins or how to make fun out of the internet community.

Number one: Trading. Kyle MacDonald had one red paperclip on July 12th year 2005 - he came out with the idea to trade this red paperclip for other stuff. By July of 2006 he had a huge bad-ass house! Sounds insane - but it is true (no one would trade a house for a red paperclip of course, there were lots of different trading things before the house). If you are interested in reading about each trade and the whole story - follow here.

Number two: Onemilliondollar idea. One smart-ass student decided to create an ‘internet history’ by selling each pixel on his homepage for $1. As you could have already guessed, he created 1,000,000 pixels. If you had came with the idea, I would have never made a thing out of it - who would by a damn pixel for $1? Not me, definitely. But thousands of others thought differently - the student is a millionaire. The main motivation of his is paying his studying expenses. By now there are dozens websites with exactly the same idea - clones. Not as popular - but still making huge amount of money out of this.

According to Warren Buffet’s theory there are three types of enterpreneurship steams:

  1. Idea creators
  2. Imitators
  3. Idiots

First ones make something up, advertise it and sell it. Imitators see the idea, create a clone, advertise it, sell it and still making money out of it. Idiots see the idea, invest into it, advertise it and can’t sell it, so they are only ones who lose money.

Propositions is to be the first ones and not the last from the list :)

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