Dr. Thiti Vacharasintopchai, ATSI-DX, CISA

Ubuntu - Development tools I spent many hours figuring out why my freshly installed Ubuntu Linux 5.10 virtual machine doesn't compile a very simple C program, even after I use "apt-get install gcc" to install the GNU C compiler. Ubuntu keeps on saying it can't even find the header file "stdio.h". Finally I found the answer at Ubuntu FAQ page here . The site says that C and C++ development were deliberatedly excluded from the typical installation and we need to use apt-get install build-essential to install all the neccessary compilers, headers and libraries. In other words, installing only the gcc package isn't enough. Keywords: ubuntu-linux , c , programming

I was practicing MPI-2 dynamic process creation on Windows XP, using MPI_Comm_spawn() function call as an alternative to process execution by "mpiexec", but so far haven't been successful. During a search for the previous MPI post, I came across the following Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) on Argonne Website and felt discouraged: MPICH Frequently Asked Questions Q: On Windows, I get an error when I attempt to call MPI_Comm_spawn. A: On Windows, you need to start the program with mpiexec for any of the MPI-2 dynamic process functions to work. I will give up the attempt for the time being and go on the "mpiexec" way. Keywords: windows-xp , mpi , parallel-computing , mpich2

I had a problem executing a parallel program built with MPICH2 from Argonne National Laboratory. I had been able to use "mpiexec" to execute example codes and my test codes but the followings happened yesterday when I tried to run my "Practice.exe" parallel Hello World code: The current directory is "t:\", which is a subst drive that maps to "c:\Briefcase\Tmp". $mpiexec -np 4 "Practice.exe" launch failed: CreateProcess(Practice.exe) on 'tvs-laptop' failed, error 2 - The system cannot find the file specified. launch failed: CreateProcess(Practice.exe) on 'tvs-laptop' failed, error 2 - The system cannot find the file specified. launch failed: CreateProcess(Practice.exe) on 'tvs-laptop' failed, error 2 - The system cannot find the file specified. launch failed: CreateProcess(Practice.exe) on 'tvs-laptop' failed, error 2 - The system cannot find the file specified. I spent many hours yesterday trying to fin

Computing.Net - norton protected recycle bin I was trying Norton SystemWorks 2006 and didn't like its too-smart Protected Recycle Bin. It always keep the files that I don't want to keep and I don't feel like putting all those file extensions that I don't want it to "protect" in the exclusion list. Today I went ahead uninstalling it but my hard drive is still not clean. While defraging the hard drive, I notice that the defragmenter was still moving around fragmented files in the "Norton Protected Recycle Bin" folder in the hidden "Recycler" folder of the hard drive. I felt like I want to completely remove everything left over by Norton. I went ahead googling for a while and realized from this Computing.net site that we can actually "delete" a recycle bin (of course, also everything in it) in case it's corrupted. We can simply tell Windows Explorer or any favorite file manager to show the hidden files and simply "Shift-Del

AITAA Thailand Chapter (link updated on Dec 15, 05) I have been involved in the activities of the Thai Chapter of the AIT Alumni Association for a few months. The Thai Chapter plans to launch a full-featured website http://www.aitthai.or.th soon. In the mean time, we have launched an interim site to inform the public about upcoming news and events as well as other useful information. For those AIT friends, please visit the interim AITAA Thailand Chapter site at http://aitthai.blogspot.com . Keywords: ait , alumni , thailand Update: Dec 15, 05: The AITAA Thailand Chapter website is now launched at www.aitthai.or.th . Comments and suggestions are welcome.

I want to link a Java code with the parallel program I wrote five years ago in C. The program utilizes the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library from Argonne National Laboratory of the United States. As far as I can imagine, there seems to be two alternative solutions for me so far. The first one is to use Java Native Interface (JNI) technique to create a C header file the act as a stub linking a Java class to a native library -- in my case, I'm using Windows and Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 and the library will have to be a Dynamically Linked Library (DLL). The second one, maybe, is to link the Java module and the C module by XML Web Services technology by using software tools such as Apache's Axis C++ or Microsoft's dot-Net technology plus SOAP messaging over the HTTP protocol. Microsoft .NET seems to be a whole new world for me and I don't think I have enough time and patience to learn it right now. The solutions left are either to use JNI + C (a Java-wrapper solution

I am downloading Windows plaform SDK CD image from Microsoft website. Microsoft says I am downloading an ISO image file but the extension of the file is .IMG and I wonder if I could mount it as a virtual drive in DAEMON Tools . I went ahead Googling for "daemon 4 img" and "img iso rename" . Both search results suggest me that I can simply rename the IMG file to an ISO file and mount the file as a virtual drive in DAEMON Tools or burn it as a CD with Nero. I'll try this once I finish downloading this 400MB+ image file. Keywords: cd-burning , daemon-tools , virtual-drives

iTunes 6.0 on my Windows XP laptop stopped playing my purchased music and required me to enter a user name and password to reauthorize the computer. It can connect to Apple server but "error -208" screen pops up just after it says authorization completed. iTunes still wouldn't play my purchased music. I search around and found the following two postings relevant: GadgetGuy: October 18, 2005 PrayToTheMachine.com: October 18, 2005 . What a coincidence they are both posted on October 18, 2005. Basically here's what they say: 1. Close iTunes and QuickTime 2. Remove the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\SC Info" I guess error 208 happens because of a corrupted authorization information, which could likely be stored in the "SC Info" folder. I followed the advice to remove "SC Info" and everything is back to normal now. Keywords: itunes , errors , authorization , digital-rights-management

While looking for a CD-R/DVD-R emulator in Windows, I came across this thread with a posting related to my audio CD copy protection issue . One of the posters said: It is perfectly legal under copyright (proven in court) to convert music you have purchased to different formats for your own personal use for things like mp3 players. I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if this is actually true or not. But it is interesting enought to post it here. Keywords: legal , copyrights , music

I've been busy reading the "Cultivating Communities of Practice" book and haven't updated this blog for a while. The book is yet to be finished but something came up last night and I recall a morale quote my middle-school English teacher at Assumption College, Master Assawin Maneerat, taught me back in 1990: Behavior is before knowledge. Be honest to our duties. Be grateful to our benefactors. Abide by virtues forever. Keywords: quotes , life , morality

While browsing thru books on Amazon.com directed from a Google search on " community knowledge sharing ", I found my current research interest to resemble a management research area "Community of Practice." Here are the three books that interest me and I would find a chance to look into them: Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier , by E. Wenger and W. M. Snyder. Harvard Business Review (January 1, 2000). 12 pages. Cultivating Communities of Practice , by E. Wenger et al. Harvard Business School Press (March 15, 2002). 352 pages. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , by E. Wenger et al. Cambridge University Press (December 1, 1999). 336 pages. All books link to Dr. Etienne C. Wenger so I looked up Google and got this link to him. Happy researching! Keywords: books , community-of-practice Update: Nov 3, 05: Here is Dr. Wenger's introductory article to the Community of Practice (CoP): Communities of Practice: A Brief Introdu

Two interesting pages I got from Blind Rapture during a Blogger.com browse/search on "phd students." I will try to read them some time later. John Perry's "Structured Procrastination" Phil Agre's "Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students" Keywords: phd

iLounge.com: Sony BMG, EMI offer iPod-incompatible CDs Thru a discussion on iLounge.com I was aware of copy-protected audio CDs not being compatible with iPods and iTunes for a while. This kind of protection is targeted at Microsoft Windows-based computers (and perhaps Apple Macs, but I don't know since I don't have a Mac). When inserted a copy-protected audio CDs on a computer, it won't recognize the CD as an audio CD. We need to use a special software located on the CD to play it. Since Windows won't recognize the CD as an audio CD, iTunes won't be able to "import" it for playbacks on an iPod. Also, duplication or backup of CDs won't be difficult, if not possible, because the copy-protection technique creates a number of tracks that CD copying software thinks as bad tracks and simply skips them. Duplicated CDs will give extremely skipping playbacks. I thought these kind of protection is only used CDs produced by the U.S. records giants, like Sony BM

J. Mgmt in Engrg: Knowledge Management in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Consulting: A Case Study This article by Mezher et al. (2005) reiterates the key bases that would be useful for researches in engineering knowledge management: The goal of knowledge management as a process is to improve the organization’s ability to execute its core business functions more efficiently and effectively. The key to knowledge management is capturing intellectual assets for the tangible benefit of the organization. ...the aim of any design engineering consulting firm is to produce projects with high quality and in less time. Keywords: engineering-knowledge-management , quotes , journal-papers

From Locke et al. (1999) on reviewing the literature: In writin a research proposal, the author is obligated to place the (research) question or hypothesis in the context of previous work in such a way as to explain and justify the decisions made. That alone is required. Nothing more is apprepriate, and nothing more should be attempted (page 68). ...sound proposals devote most of the literature review to explaining (a) exactly "how and why the research question or hypothesis was formulated in the proposed form" and (b) exactly "why the proposed research strategy was selected." What is required...is a step-by-step explanation of decisions, punctuated by reference to studies that support the ongoing argument (page 68). ...there is no place for the "Smith says this..." and "Jones says that..." paragraph-by-paragraph recital...This is the place to answer the reader's most immediate questions: What is it the author wants to know, and why has thi

I have a lot of music files, take a lot of digital pictures and save a lot of webpages locally on my computers and have had trouble looking for a right file or folder when hundreds or thousands of them are accumulated on the hard drive. Apple iTunes has helped me a lot on music and PDF files and I have had less trouble looking for a right one when I need it. iTunes is now my favorite tools to manage my music library and the PDF-based research papers. I don't prefer to use software like ACDSee , which I believe use the same principle as the "iTunes Music Library", to manage my picture library because it's not practical to store all pictures locally on a hard drive as I normally take pictures in RAW format, the size of which is typically 6 megabyte each. I need to archive them to DVD discs from time to time to free up the space of my hard drive, even though now it's 200GB in size. What I usually do with my files or folders naming convention is that I try to put a

Multiple Homepage Windows in Firefox I want to have Mozilla Firefox open two homepages at the same time when it starts up and I remember that I saw an extension that could do this. I did a search on Google and, to my surprise, came across this tip by Sam Holton : To have multiple tabs loaded each time you start Firefox or when you press the home button, you can simply pipe delimit them in the options...if you wanted to open both Google and Digg when you open your browser, simply enter http://www.google.com/ig | http://www.digg.com Click on the picture for enlargement Keywords: firefox , tips Update: Nov 20, 05: jon114k gave us another tip in the comment of this post: we can in fact use Tools -> Options -> General -> Home Page -> Use current "pages" to create the multiple homepages! I just notice this plural form. I tried it and it works!

Locke et al. (1999) on pilot studies: When it comes to convincing the scholarly skeptic (sometimes your own advisor), no argument can be so effective as to write, "I tried it and here is how it worked" (page 74). It is difficult to imagine any proposal that could not be improved by the reporting of actual preliminary work. Whether it is to demonstrate the reliability..., the practicality of procedures, ...the modest pilot study is the best possible basis for making wise decisions in designing research (page 74). Keywords: experiments , pilot-studies , research-methodology , quotes

Literally, "original" means "initial, first, never having existed or occurred before." But this is not the case for research and this is a serious misinterpretation of the word as it is used in science. Another inspiring thoughts from Locke et al. (1999) : In research, the word "original" clearly includes all studies deliberately employed to test the accuracy of results or the applicability of conclusions developed in previous studies (page 58). What is not included...are studies that proceed " mindlessly " to repeat an existing work either in ignorance of its existence or without appropriate attention to its defects or limitations (page 58). One consequence...is that misguided students and advisors are led to ignore one of the most important areas of research activity and one of the most useful forms of training for the novice researcher -- replication (page 58). ...replication can involve challenging problems that demand creative resolution

On finding a research question from Locke et al. (1999) : All research emerges from a perceived problem...Sometimes the difficulty rests simply in the fact that we don't understand how things work and have the human itch to know. At other times, we are confronted by decisions or the need for action when the alternatives or consequences are unclear (page 45). Keywords: research-methodology , quotes

Another nice quotes from Locke et al. (1999) : If scholars did not have..."the habit of truth", there could be no accumulation of reliable knowledge, and thus so science (page 25). The rules...are absolute: no compromises, no evasions, no shortcuts, no excuses, and no saving faces (page 25). Planning, conducting, and reporting research make sense only so long as the social contract among scholars is honored -- everyone tells the truth as well as he or she can know it (page 25). Keywords: morality , research-methodology , quotes

Proposals That Work : A Guide for Planning Dissertations and Grant Proposals I've been reading this book by Locke et al. (1999) to improve my research skill and found the following quotes useful. Introducing a study: Proposals...are best introduced by a short, meticulously devised statement that establishes the overall area of concern, arouses interest, and communicates information essential to the reader's comprehension of what follows (page 9). ...avoids both tedious length and the shock of technical detail or abstruse argument... (page 9) Providing a rationale: ...it often is helpful to diagram factors and relationships that support your formulation of the problem (page 10). A sound rationale...convinces the reader that you are rasing the right question -- and that the answer is worth finding (page 10). ...justifying the proposed study should be limited to the basic matters of defining what is to be studied and why it is worth so doing (page 11). Formulating questions: ...t

PhD: Piled Higher and Deeper A friend of mine recommended this Ph.D. comics site to ease my stress. I went to the home page and it looks fun. I'm gonna check on it soon. Keywords: fun , phd

Libweb - Directory of Libraries in Thailand U.S. Embassy, Bangkok: Academic/Research Institutions By chance, I saw an advertisement which links to a list of libraries in Thailand while I was posting an email from my Gmail account. A follow-up search on Google also pointed me to a list by the American Embassy in Thailand and I think it might be useful for my researcher and graduate student folks. Happy researching! Keywords: libraries , directories , thailand

Michael Hyatt: Working Smart I am having a problem with my research work. I've worked a lot but the way I did wasn't smart enough. By chance, during a Google search on a way to improve my research skill -- to work smart rather than simply work hard -- I came across this blog by Michael Hyatt. There are at least two categories in his postings that are relevant to self-improvement: the Getting Things done section and the Workflow section. Check these out and you might as well find them useful as I do! Keywords: self-improvement , working-smart , business

Books: The Rule of Four Something came up today and I recall this quote from The Rule of Four , which I had finished reading a few weeks earlier and liked very much. From Chapter 8: ...while we have a lot in common, good fences still make a good neighbors. We all need privacy. Good friends would respect this and wouldn't stick their noses into our personal lives. I hope you all agree on this! Keywords: quotes , friendship

CE Resources I have started a new blog since last night to store useful resources for civil engineers, especially structural engineers. Each blog entry will contain a link to a resource plus some brief description of what it is useful for. Technorati tags and an RDF metadata will also be embedded in each entry. Keywords: civil-engineering , structural-engineering , resources , portfolios

In Java programming, how do we check whether the following text contains a piece of information encoded in an <ns1:Elmt> XML element? This is a preamble #@&%)#*#)$ <ns1:Elmt ns1="uri:ns1" ns2="uri:ns2">   <ns1:SubElmt attr1="value_1">     <ns2:elmt>value_2</ns2:elmt>   </ns1:SubElmt> </ns1:Elmt> Here is a little bit more text 3254832 3249028 ~#)*@()(84)_$- An answer: Use the string. matches() method and the following regular expression [\s\S]*<ns1:Elmt[\s\S]*</ns1:Elmt>[\s\S]* Check the following websites and you'll learn how regular expression can ease our programming problems! Wikipedia : Regular Expression java.util.regex.Pattern (Java 2 Platform SE 5.0) Regular-Expressions.info Tutorial Keywords: java , regular-expressions

Hot dog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Hot dog history, legends and trivia One day on a grocery shopping at a supermarket near campus, I and a friend of mine looked at tasty sausages and wondered about the history of the term hot dog . I visited the Hot Dog Wikipedia today and was directed to an interesting website on the history and legends of hot dogs. Wikipedia said that "hot dog" was likely invented in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri but the other source suggested many more legends believed to have coined the term "hot dog." Among these were the 1895 invention by The Yale Record , the humor magazine published by undergrad students at Yale University, and the 1902 invention during a Giants baseball game at the New York Polo grounds. Despite the so many legends on invention of the term, it was agreed that Hot Dog was born in America and that today hot dogs are the most widely consumed form of sausage in America!! Keywords: fo

Apple Discussions: 261 error while burning MP3 CD. I usually put an aphostrophe (') in the name of playlists and was having error 261 burning CD/DVD data discs since iTunes 5.1. Upgrading to iTunes 6.0 for Windows doesn't help. I was burning a music DVD this morning and had Error 261 again. So I went to Apple iTunes Discussions site and look for a thread on this. Viola! There are many people having the same problem as mine. The thread ends at a point where someone removing ampersands, the '&' symbols, from their playlists and could avoid this error. I tried removing aphostrophes from the name of my playlist because aphostrophe falls into the kind of non-alphabet characters that needs escaping in some programming languages. It works!! Keywords: itunes , windows

I stopped for a sight-seeing at the Cabbage and Condom Resort and Restaurant in Pattaya which is run under a charitable theme. This exercise in the garden is clever and interesting! Keywords: bicycles , exercises , machinery , travel , trips , pattaya , thailand

Stefano's Linotype ~ Folksologies: de-idealizing ontologies Stefano Mazzocchi's blog: ...Well, nobody ever said that inferencing on RDF statements should always follow description logics... This is a useful reminder for us on the separation between representation and computation of information on Web. Keywords: reminders , reasoning , logics , semantic-web Update: Oct 12, 05: I found another quote on the same blog that I think is thought-provoking and useful: ...There is nothing in semantic web technologies that states that ontologies cannot be created by individuals for their own benefits and shared and mapped according to their invidifual or group tastes. There is nothing that states that the only way to make data interoperate is thru uber conceptual models (CIDOC CRM) or thru common denominator sets (Dublin Core)...

Today's Quote ...thank you - your time is valuable, and your answers are highly valued. I was browsing thru a HaloScan forum and I found this message by a poster mdcom which I like very much. In my opinion, when we post questions, it is highly desirable that we show our appreciation to everyone contributing to the answers, regardless of applicability to our cases. Keywords: quotes , netiquette , etiquette

October 8-9, 2005: Weekend Trip to Pattaya I haven't visited Pattaya for ten years and I just had a chance to visit it on a family trip last weekend. Things have changed a lot. We left Bangkok in the afternoon of Saturday, took Highway #7 (the Motor Way) and arrived at the Horseshoe Point Resort around 6 pm. We checked in and left the hotel for a fine German dinner at Bruno's Restaurant. The food, the decoration, and the food was extremely impressive. It was as if we were having dinner at a fine restaurant in Paris. Anyway, the price was extremely expensive as well. After the dinner, we went for a little walk at the Royal Garden Plaza and finally went back to the hotel. We started Sunday seeing things around the resort, then visited an outlet mall in Pattaya and went straight to Bang Phra for a Thai-style seafood lunch. We left there around 2 pm and arrived in Bangkok around 4 pm. Here is my little photojournalism from my Nikon D70 and palmOne Treo 600 cameras. Hope you like it

Google Desktop 2.0 I used to give Google Desktop a try when it was released last year but didn't like it much and finally uninstalled it from my computer. I was trying to get my Outlook emails more organized and thought about the email search feature, which I think Google Desktop is superior to Outlook find feature. So I give Google Desktop another chance. I went to the download site and found that there is a beta 2.0 version available. The screenshots look good so I gave it a try and right now have been enjoying this 2.0 Beta very much. Try it!! Keywords: google Update: Oct 10, 05: Google Desktop basically indexes everything on our computers, from emails in Outlook, Outlook Express, PDF files, text files, chat logs, etc. It also has a plug-in modules that notify us of new emails, randomly display pictures on our computers and subscribed web sites thru RSS feeds.

Oct 6, 05: Today is my 29th Birthday and it's full of surprises! My mom left me a Happy Birthday cellphone voicemail yesterday's evening. Got a surprise birthday cake from my dear sweetheart who lives thousands miles apart, with an extremely surprising delivery! Got unusually many "happy birthday" messages, thru both MSN and cellphone calls, from friends who have never done this before, especially from my highschool and undergrad friends. I'd like to thank everyone for a wonderful day they have made!! I donated some money to the Siriraj Hospital Foundation today and I wish to share all of them the merit from this good deed. Keywords: birthdays , family , friends , friendship , surprises Update: Oct 7, 05: Last night I and my friends on campus went to have a mini-party. It was at a BBQ restaurant at Future Park , the only mall nearby campus. I came to work this morning and got another surprise! A wrapped gift was placed on my desk. Found on that it

Following the recommendation from Steve Cayzer's Blog , I was reading a research paper on collaborative tagging systems by Scott A. Golder and Bernardo A. Huberman at HP Labs and found this interesting quote that I like very much: searching for employment at Apple may be problematic because of conflicts with the CEO’s surname. Without ontologies search formulation like this would be quite complicated. Keywords: semantic-web , ontologies Update: Oct 5, 05: Without mentioning about ontologies, the authors suggested that for collaborative taggings the semantic ambiguity problem will be less significant once a critical mass is reached, the state at which a large number of tags are widely agreed upon by the community. The opportunity to learn from one another [e.g. through "suggested tags" and "popular tags" on del.icio.us ] is also suggested to be an influential factor.

I just finished embedding RDF metadata to all of my previous postings. These metadata contain the similar keywords intended for Technorati but converted into equivalent ones in RDF + Dublin Core vocaburary format. I'll see how I can programmatically process these encoded information. Keywords: rdf , metadata , semantic-blog , semantic-web

3 ways to use del.icio.us for categories in blogger - Freshblog Some time last week, I found this article from FreshBlog that teaches us how to make Technorati tagging and del.icio.us bookmarking tightly work together for a blog. I just have a chance to work on it this afternoon and right now my blog is 100% tagged and tightly integrated with del.icio.us . It's been working great so far and my next plan is to embed RDF metadata into all of my postings for research purposes. I'd like to thank John at FreshBlog for sharing us this great technique! Keywords: tagging , del.icio.us

I am begining to be a fan of bookmarklets , the JavaScript codes that can be embedded in web browser bookmarks. I use a bookmarklet almost everytime I post to this blog and when I add an entry to my del.icio.us portfolio. I am right now interested in creating bookmarklets for my personal uses and here are some useful links that I got from a preliminary search: jalarie: BookMarklet Editor HTML URL-encoding Reference | W3 Schools More useful resources on bookmarkletting will be populated in my del.icio.us portfolio here . Keywords: javascripts , bookmarklets , programming

A relative of mine has a hearing problem and today we and her mom went to see an audiologist for a free hearing check. The process began by the audiologist interviewing her about personal background, e.g. when the hearing problem started, whether she has ever had any accident, etc. We then proceed to the audiometer lab where she was asked to stay in an acoustically isolated sound booth for an audio responsiveness test. My relative was asked to put on a headphone and the audiologist used an audiology workstation (a Pentium personal computer with hardware interfaces to audiology instrumentations, such as the audiometer ). The workstation was used to generate the sounds of various frequencies and various loudnesses separatedly for the left ear and the right ear. I remember the frequency range was logarithmically spaced from 250 Hz to 15,000 Hz, in various increments. For each frequency point, the audiologist started with a typical loudness, such as 60 dB, and increased/decreased the loudn

Today's Research Question: How is a Trackback Link Generated? What is the Role of RDF in Trackbacks? Can the Trackback mechanism be used to embed other RDF metadata elements to a blog entry? This Wikipedia link here could be a starting point. Keywords: blogging , rdf , metadata

Browsing through an article on PlanetRDF.com made me learn a new geek word. I just know that there is also a proper word for the "word verification" techniques to prevent automated operation of Web software by computer codes (see image below). As pointed by the Planet RDF article, according to Wikipedia , this proper word is "captcha", an acronym for " c ompletely a utomated p ublic t uring test to tell c omputers and h umans a part." Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human, a common type of which requires that the user type the letters of a distorted and/or obscured sequence of letters or digits that appears on the screen. Keywords: languages

This is interesting and worth considering: Reuters News quoted by Planet RDF : Reuters, London: Proponents of the latest Web trends were warned on Tuesday that the rest of the world may not have a clue what they are talking about... When I asked the panel whether people were talking about blogging, they thought I meant dogging. A blog, short for Web log, is an online journal, while podcasting is a method of publishing audio programs over the Internet -- a name derived from combining iPod, Apple's popular digital music player, with broadcasting, even though portable devices are not necessary to listen to a podcast. Keywords: news , languages

Today's Research Question How do we extract metadata (RSS, FOAF, RDF) from webpages and web objects (such as PDF files, JPEG images, PowerPoint slides) and store them somewhere to build a personal portfolio some part of which could be shared to the others by means of the social web? This could enhance personal knowledge management experience and, from the social effect, could also expand individuals' knowledge by sharing parts of their portfolios with the group of people having the same interests. There are a number of interesting projects that could somehow be integrated and developed to achieve this. To me, given the popularity and content-richness of del.icio.us and the innovative browser integration of Piggy Bank , these projects are currently two outstanding candidates. Keywords: social-effect , semantic-web , social-web , metadata