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"... There is much to be said about open government. While there are many different open government movements, I've not yet seen a "platform" that is available for local governments to use. There is a company called OpenGov which does address local government financial transparency, and that is a start, but falls woefully short if you want a fully transparent local government. ..."

" Andy on June 21, 2015 C: 0 Breaking Downloading torrents can be a game of Russian roulette, with copyright holders monitoring networks for infringement and some demanding cash to make lawsuits go away. In its early days of development, TorrentTags aims to help people torrent safely while assisting copyright holders to reduce piracy."

Sign up (email address) for updates on a monumental lobbying effort coming up in the next few days when Congress comes back into session and the legislation to "Fast Track" the TPP *and all future trade agrerements* is introduced. From leaked draft portions, we know that the TPP brings us internet censorship and a mass of copyright law changes that have the giant intellectual property corproate folk drooling at the mouth, because they helped write it while the public was excluded. This is your chance to help end secret trade agreements that the public doesn't even get to see until they have already been made into law.

While the candidate Media Queries specification is interesting and a step in the right direction, W3C continues to butcher the meaning of "interoperability." In this latest sleight of hand, we now have "interoperable" *user agents*, a term of art used by W3C for implementations that only receive and cannot return data, e.g., web browsers.  But under competition law, "interoperability" requires implementations that can exchange data and *mutually* use data that has been exchanged. See e.g., European Commission v. Microsoft, European Community Court of First Instance (Grand Chamber Judgment of 17 September, 2007), para. 230, 374, 421, http://tinyurl.com/23md42c (rejecting Microsoft's argument that "interoperability" has a 1-way rather than 2-way meaning; "Directive 91/250 defines interoperability as 'the ability to exchange information and *mutually* to use the information which has been exchanged'") (emphasis added). W3C, the World Wide Web Conspiracy, continues down its rut of broadcasting information whilst denying the world the power to round-trip the data received. 

Excellent review of the Freebase project that includes a video of the Parralax Browser in action. Incredible stuff! Great video Google is essentially a media company - as Tom Foremski succinctly points out here - logging your actions for Ad Word generation like a supermarket rewards card program while leveraging brute force search of the indexed web as you search for your keywords and phrases. Wikipedia is essentially a single destination site, which means lots of laborious single issue searching. 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.

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This is too funny. While Neelie Kroes is banging the open source - open standards drum, the head of the EU Commissions IT dept is buying Microsoft! The money quote: "Ellinides said in an interview arranged by a spokeswoman for Commissioner Siim Callas, who oversees procurement, that studies showed the costs of moving to open source outweighed the benefits. He said it may be time for a new study.

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The story of Javascript and the browser as a RiA competitor continues to unfold. This lengthy summation from roughlydrafed is perhaps the best discussion 'i've ever seen of technologies that will drive the Future of the Open Web. Roughly believes that Apple and Google are fighting for an Open Web Future, with Adobe and Microsoft RiA jousting for a broken web where they dominate the application development. For usre the web is moving to become an application platform. The question is one of who will own the dominant API, and be in position to impose a global platform tax. This is a great summary demanding a careful read. It also confirms my belief that the WebKit layout and document model is the way forward. It's by far and away the best (X)HTML-CSS-DOM-JavaScript model out there. The W3C alternatives do not include JavaScript, and that pretty much seals their fate. And while there are many JavaScript libraries and frameworks to chose from, i would pay close attention to three initiatives: WebKit SproutCore, Gecko jQuery, and Google GWT. ~ge~

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Ben O'Steen has put up some thoughts on what he refers to as 'compound' documents and how to store them in repositories and allow for referencing of parts of a document, such as a table, a graph or even a paragraph. Why did I add the scare quotes to compound? While to a computer scientist a research paper with its graphs and tables and paragraphs might be compound, I suspect most authors tend to think of a research article as a single entity. Until we start giving them access to services that make it clear that it's not monolithic, that is. As background, Ben gives four rules: Note that the four rules of the web (well, of Linked Data technically) are in essence: * give everything a name, * make that name a URL … * which results in data about that thing, * and have it link to other related things.

First of all, I modified the approach by replacing # with ¶ per the suggestion of another Simon. Whereas # suggests Web anchors, it only suggests that to Web hacks, while ¶ has a long typographical history as a paragraph marker. Plus, it's kind of pretty and it's officially called a Pilcrow, which you gotta love. Now that the anchor is so evanescent, I wonder if it might work in a shade slightly less ethereally pale. ¶

Adobe vs. Microsoft Gartner analyst Ray Valdes said 90 percent of the top global 1,000 companies have yet to deploy any sort of RIA, while 90 percent of the top 100 consumer Web sites have already done so using the nonproprietary and more simple AJAX format. That opportunity has Microsoft eyeing current leader Adobe for business that extends beyond Silverlight and into the sale of design tools along with server and database software to enable these new applications.

the Palm Pre WebOS is based on Linux, and is in some way an extension of what they've been crafting for a while now, but on top of that Linux core is a display layer that is basically WebKit: all of the apps, including Palms own, are built in HTML, CSS and Javascript, and can make calls deeper into the OS for certain functionalities. That means almost any web developer can build an app for the phone, but there are limitations; like no 3D in this first release. .... excellent review! The Palm Pre is a huge win for the WebKit layout and sugarplum document model (highly advanced, graphical and interactive HTML-CSS-SVG-JS)

Apple has posted an interesting page describing Safari technologies. Innovations and support for existing standards as well as the ACID3 test are covered.

Many people think that the Apple WebKit-Safari-iPhone innovations are pushing Open Web Standards beyond beyond the limits of "Open", and deep into the verboten realm of vendor specific extensions. Others, myself included, believe that the WebKit community has to do this if Open Web technologies are to be anyway competitive with Microsoft's RiA (XAML-Silverlight-WPF).

Adobe RiA (AiR-Flex-Flash) is also an alternative to WebKit and Microsoft RiA; kind of half Open Web, half proprietary though. Adobe Flash is of course proprietary. While Adobe AiR implements the WebKit layout engine and visual document model. I suspect that as Adobe RiA loses ground to Microsoft Silverlight, they will open up Flash. But that's not something the Open Web can afford to wait for.

In many ways, WebKit is at the cutting edge of Ajax Open Web technologies. The problems of Ajax not scaling well are being solved as shared JavaScript libraries continue to amaze, and the JavaScript engines roar with horsepower. Innovations in WebKit, even the vendor-device specific ones, are being picked up by the JS Libraries, Firefox, and the other Open Web browsers.

At the end of the day though, it is the balance between the ACiD3 test on one side and the incredible market surge of WebKit smartphones, countertops, and netbook devices at the edge of the Web that seem to hold things together.

The surge at the edge is washing back over the greater Web, as cross-browser frustrated Web designers and developers roll out the iPhone welcome. Let's hope the ACiD3 test holds. So far it's proving to be a far more important consideration for maintaining Open Web interop, without sacrificing innovation, than anything going on at the stalled W3C.

"..... Safari continues to lead the way, implementing

The computer desktop - as was the case with newspapers before there was radio and radio before there was television - has become the high ground from which empires are built. While dominance of the desktop has been maintained for the last decade or more by Microsoft, which at one point represented 95% of the desktops used by all consumers, the future is less certain.it will not be a single operating system that prevails. In the end it will be desktop runtimes that become the most important platforms A desktop runtime is a platform that provides a consistent runtime environment regardless of the underlying operating system. Desktop runtimes are already extending beyond their primary target platform, the desktop, to the Fourth Screen - smart phones.

Well well well. The experts are finally starting to get it. WebKit is extraordinary, not as a browser, but as the "Open Web" foundation for web application (RiA) development that spans device and desktop.

The vastly improved hardware and network throughput are not the primary drivers of this sea change. "The biggest jolt to the mobile Web development experience, in my view, has been the iPhone. Its implementation of mobile Safari, while imperfect, has given handsets the real Internet, rather than a hobbled, niched version that was typical in devices that preceded it." What that means for the future, according to O'Grady, is that the mobile application space "will mirror the development on the client, honestly. It will evolve into a platform barely distinguishable, in many respects, from the traditional desktop browser experience."

While every blog and media has been covering native mobile applications, there's one thing: Android's web browser is based on WebKit, the same engine used in the iPhone, Safari 3 (avalaible both on Windows and Mac), the Google Chrome web browser, Adobe AIR, plus other mobile phones such as Nokia's N60 and E series. For me, the Google Phone hails the supremacy of WebKit, and means that Web Developers should from now on add it to their skills. WebKit has many advantages as both a browser engine and, a converged desktop-mobile device- web server application development platform.

Matt Assay has posted an interesting article arguing the point of view that Google Chrome will have a difficult time catching up Microsoft SharePoint. While everyone is moving to the Web, many will be surprised ot find that Microsoft is already there. Very surprised.

Good article from Matt Assay

Good analysis by Stephen Vaughan-Nichols. He gets it right. Sort of. Stephen believes that Chrome is desinged to kill MSOffice. Maybe, but i think it's way too late for that. IMHO, Chrome is designed to keep Google and the Open Web in the game. A game that Microsoft is likely to run away with. Microsoft has built an easy to use transiton bridge form MSOffice desktop centric "client/server" computing model to a Web centirc but proprietary RiA-WebStack-Cloud model. In short, there is an on going great transtion of traditional client/server apps to an emerging model we might call client/ WebStack-Cloud-RiA /server computing model. As the world shifts from a Web document model to one driven by Web Applications, there is i believe a complimentary shift towards the advantage Micorsoft holds via the desktop "client/server" monopoly. For Microsoft, this is just a transtion. Painful from a monopolist profitability view point - but unavoidably necessary. The transition is no doubt helped by the OOXML <> XAML "Fixed/flow" Silverlight ready conversion component. MS also has a WebStack-Cloud (Mesh) story that has become an unstoppable juggernaut (Exchange/SharePoint/SQL Server as the WebSTack). WebKit based RiA challengers like Adobe Apollo, Google Chrome, and Apple SproutCore-Cocoa have to figure out how to crack into the great transition. MS has succeeded in protecting their MSOffice monopoly until such time as they had all the transtion pieces in place. They have a decided advantage here. It's also painfully obvious that the while the WebKit guys have incredible innovation on their side, they are still years behind the complete desktop to WebStack-RiA-Cloud to device to legacy servers application story Microsoft is now selling into the marketplace. They also are seriously lacking in developer tools. Still, the future of the Open Web hangs in the balance. Rather than trying to kill MSOffice, i would think a better approach would be that of trying to

There are five reasons why Google is doing this, and, if you read the comic book closely - yes, I'm serious - and you know technology you can see the reasons for yourself. These, in turn, lead to what I think is Google's real goal for Chrome.

I'm still keeping the door open on a suspicion that Microsoft may have planned to end the life of MS Office after the new fortress on the server side is ready. The code base is simply too brittle to have a competitive future in the feature wars. I can't get past my belief that if Microsoft saw any future in the traditional client-side office suite, it would have been building a new one a decade ago. Too many serious bugs too deeply buried in spaghetti code to fix; it's far easier to rebuild from the ground up. Word dates to 1984, Excel to 1985, Powerpoint to 1987, All were developed for the Mac, ported years later to Windows. At least Word is still running a deeply flawed 16-bit page layout engine. E.g., page breaks across subdocuments have been broken since Word 1.0. Technology designed to replace yet still largely defined by its predecessor, the IBM Correcting Selectric electro-mechanical typewriter. Mid-80s stand-alone, non-networked computer technology in the World Wide Web era? Where's the future in software architecture developed two decades ago, before the Connected World? I suspect Office's end is near. Microsoft's problem is migrating their locked-in customers to the new fortress on the server side. The bridge is OOXML. In other words, Google doesn't have to kill Office; Microsoft will do that itself. Giving the old cash cow a face lift and fresh coat of lipstick? That's the surest sign that the old cow's owner is keeping a close eye on prices in the commodity hamburger market while squeezing out the last few buckets of milk.

ZOHO Speaks about Chrome: "The biggest losers in Google's announcement are not really competing browsers, but competing rich client engines like Flash and Silverlight. As Javascript advances rapidly, it inevitably encroaches on the territory currently held by Flash. Native browser video is likely the last nail in the coffin - and Google needs native browser based video for its own YouTube, so we can be confident Google Chrome and Firefox will both have native video support, with Javascript-accessible VOM (video object model) APIs for web applications to manipuate video. As for Silverlight, let me just say that if Silverlight is the future of web computing, companies like us might as well find another line of work - and I suspect Google and Yahoo probably see it the same way too. More speculatively, I believe we will witness the emergence of Javascript as the dominant language of computing, as it sweeps the client side and starts encroaching on the server. The server landscape today is split between "enterprise" platforms like Java and .NET on the one side (we ourselves are in the Java camp on the server side), and "scripting" languages like PHP, Python, Ruby on the other, with Javascript firmly entrenched on the client. Languages like Ruby promise tremendous dynamism and flexibility to the developer, but their relatively weak execution environments have held them back. It is telling that both Java and .NET come with state of the art just-in-time compilers, while none of the major scripting languages do......" Interestingly, ZOHO already has a prototype running on Chrome! Solves tons of performance problems for them, as well as givign them an on-line / off-line story (Gears). The success of Chrome depends on Chrome "killer apps"; Not browser surfing features! And we already have a number of killer apps that will immediately take advantage of Chrome: gMail, gReader, gMaps and Google Docs! ZOHO will no doubt use Chrome to put themselves squarely i

One new feature I'm particularly excited about is process affinity. The online comic describes each tab as a separate running process. Why is this important? The short answer is robustness. A web application running in your browser, is a lot like an application running on your operating system, with one important distinction: Modern operating systems[1] run applications in their own separate process space, while modern browsers[2] run web applications in the same process space. By running applications in separate processes, the OS can terminate a malicious (or poorly written) application without affecting the rest of the OS. The browser, on the other hand, can't do this. Consequently a single rogue application can suck up mountains of memory and eventually crash your entire browser session, along with every other web application you were using at the time.

Good discussion on why Chrome is a great web application foundation