SVN is now up and running again. ApacheMap and MonoBackup are on google code:
ApacheMap: https://code.google.com/p/apachegeomap/source/checkout
Mono-backup: https://code.google.com/p/m0n0-backup/source/checkout
wp-rdfa and wp-dephorm are hosted by wordpress:
wp-rdfa: http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-rdfa/
wp-dephorm: http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-dephorm/
Feel free to download alter and suggest changes again.
I’m doing some work on the dev server here at SquareCows to improve performance. This however means the local SVN is not currently working. I’m planning to migrate all the SVN repositories over to google code and will be pushing lots of new software patches at the same time. Hopefully I’ll get some time over the holidays to do this. For those of you interested in what I’m doing with the server I’m trialling lighttpd to see what kind of performance boost can be achieved.
I’ve just confirmed wp-RDFa and wp-dephorm are both compatible with Wordpress 2.9-RC1. So your free to test the new release without breaking your semantic web presence or leaving your readers vulnerable to the prying eyes of phorm.
If you spot any problems just drop me a mail via the contact form and I’ll look into it.
Just tweaking with my theme to add my logo back on my blog finally.
Here’s a little file to drop into your cowsay to get your very own Square Cow!
If you dont have cowsay installed:
apt-get install cowsay (on any debian/ubuntu system)
Then copy this file you can download to
sudo cp sqcow.cow /usr/share/cowsay/cows/
then simply run:
cowsay -f /usr/share/cowsay/cows/sqcow.cow YOUR-MESSAGE
Your very own SquareCow!
Enjoy!
For those of you who are fans of identi.ca the open version of twitter, you’ve probably been waiting for a decent app that allows you to post updates from your iPhone. Twitter has had plenty of very good apps and my favourite was tweetie. The latest release of this software (tweetie 2) lets you edit the server API info, which means you can connect and post to identi.ca and or status.net.
So here is a quick howto:
1. First add a new account and enter your username and password.
Add Account
2. Now tap the cog symbol to enter advance settings.
3. You should bow be able to update the details with the following URL’s:
Edit API
API Root: https://identi.ca/api
Search API: http://identi.ca/api
*Note: API Root is HTTPS and Search API is HTTP
4. Save your settings and enjoy!
Canonical has just announced Landscape 1.4. This allows you to manage and monitor groups of servers in your business. They also now offer a dedicated landscape server for inside your organisation. <original here>
Cloud management dominates the theme for Landscape 1.4 with new features that allow you to manage your private Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) as easily as you manage your instances on Amazon EC2. Also released are new features that help system administrators be more efficient including time based package updates and role based access. These new features will be available this week on both the Hosted and Dedicated Server Editions of Landscape.
Cloud Computing: UEC Support
Building upon our support for Amazon’s EC2 Cloud, users can now start, stop and manage their private Ubuntu instances on their UEC from within Landscape. Users simply enter their credentials directly through Landscape to start, stop and manage an instance. We’ve designed Landscape to work directly with both Amazon and Eucalyptus console pages so you can manage your instances without having to use any other tools. Landscape securely stores your security credentials making is easy to spin up new instances on UEC or EC2 at anytime. Once the instances are initiated, they all display on the same page allowing you manage all your physical, virtuali and Cloud instances in one place.
New Timed Package Updates
Users can now schedule package updates, system reboots and shutdowns in the future with minute increments. This gives System Administrators the flexibility to schedule activities for systems to occur during planned maintenance windows or low use periods to minimise the impact on the network. Now that we have developed the time / scheduling function, look for us to add this to other areas of Landscape where it it makes sense, like scheduling scripts in the future.
Administrator Roles
As Landscape is deployed in larger enterprises the need to delegate and limit access to systems has become a key need. Now, in addition to having a master admin who can manage all systems within a Landscape account, you can delegate access to systems to other administrators. This builds on our tags function (which allows you to tag computers performing the same function and update them with a single command) to allocate full access to systems by admin. Typically this means sys admins in different areas can be given full access to their local systems, but not to those in another area or country. Like tags, assigning systems to other administrators is completely flexible so you can use what ever criteria you need.
The Landscape 1.4 client is available today and is included with Ubuntu 9.10 server edition. Details are at www.canonical.com/landscape
Ken Drachnik, Landscape Manager
Well worth a look!
For those of you currently using Dropbox, an online storage drive for your personal files, and wanting to upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 you may hit some problems if you try and install the 9.04 deb file. The program may start but never prompt you for a username and password and just crash out. However all is not lost, there is a away round it as Dropbox offer a source download for the non proprietary bits and will download the other required parts itself. Heres how to get it all working again.
1. First lets get some required software packages.
sudo apt-get install wget build-essential libnautilus-extension-dev libnotify-dev python-docutils
2. Now lets get the source.
sudo su -p
cd /usr/src/
wget https://www.getdropbox.com/download?dl=packages/nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1.tar.bz2
3. Unpack
tar xvfj nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1.tar.bz2
4. Compile
cd nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1
./configure
make
make install
5. Your now ready to run Dropbox from Applications > Internet > Dropbox
Hope that helps a few people. Enjoy!
Well I’ve not posted for a while as I’ve been working on some new code and packages for RDFa and linux. I’ll get round to releasing them pretty soon and hopefully they’ll get put to some good use.
However I’m very distracted at the moment with my latest toy! A 1974 VW Type 2 Camper van!!!!! Lots of work to do on it so please forgive my lack of posting. I’ll post some photos very soon!
Why open data?
Why should you use open data on your site? Data is what drives commerce on the internet, its also what helps us all search and find what we are looking for. Finding relevant data presented to in a useful way to your needs is however becoming harder due to the shear volume of data on the internet. This is why open data and open standards are gathering support from such organisations as w3c. Open data has the potential to solve many problems of finding and sharing information on the web for both humans and machines.
Linked and Open Data!
Open Data is a philosophy and practice requiring that certain data is freely available to everyone, without restrictions from copyrights, patents or other mechanisms of control. It has a similar ethos to a number of other “Open” movements and communities such as open source. However open data on its own needs a framework to make that data useful. This is know as the semantic web, or as Tim Berners-Lee puts it “next web”. Linked data and the semantic is a way of using data in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of humans and machines to use the web content. In layman’s terms its a way using the web as a universal medium for data, information and knowledge exchange.
The Purpose of Semantic Data.
Humans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as finding the Finnish word for “monkey”, reserving a library book, and searching for a low price for a DVD. However, a computer cannot accomplish the same tasks without human direction because web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines. The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing, and combining information on the web.
Gains from Linked and Open Data.
Opening your data and using standards can bring significant gains to usefulness of the data you are already publishing on your web site. The data is already there but in human form, using mark-up designed to be interpreted by computers frees that data for use in other applications or mash-ups. The main concern of most organisations will be “Why should I give this data away? Isn’t it worth money?”. The main answer is your already giving this data away but only for humans! Allowing computers and programs to analyse this data can open up your data to new concepts and ideas and ultimately new revenue streams. For example you product data may get included in a new application for a mobile phone platform, or the data on your website could be used to plot events happening in the local area on Google maps. There are of course thousands more examples and potentially millions of people who could use your data in new and exciting ways. The possibilities are endless, and open data allows development of the way your business works without huge investments in R&D teams. Your data could be used in ways you’ve never imagined. Because this data is linked it will also allow people to find out further information about the data set, because it can all be analysed by machines, this could lead to new markets finding your products via other data sets and that can mean new customers!
How to share your data?
There are multiple ways to share your data and depending upon your data set this can influence your choice. The wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web provides more in depth technical information should you wish to learn more. Using RDF and N-Triples is an incredibly powerful way of parsing your data however if your looking for details on humans the FOAF vocabulary may be the correct method for you. The data can either be embedded in the HTML of your site or accessed via RESTful API using SPARQL or XML. Of course you can use a multitude of methods and link the data sets together making the data you already own far more useful on the “next web”. At the very least I recommend that people start to look at this technology and keep an eye on developments.
Further Reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_Data
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html
