Mind & Cognition

MindRaider meets MindForger

2011-12-06T02:46:00.001-10:00

Announcing new release of MindForger that brings integration with MindRaider. MindRaider is a desktop outliner that enables off-line and sharing of your outlines. MindForger is an online companion of MindRaider. With MindForger you can upload your outlines on the web and easily access them from any device. Check MindForger - your Outlines on the Web for more details.

Google App Engine SDK: HttpClient authentication on localhost

2011-12-03T20:17:00.000-10:00

public class AppEngineLocalhostClient {

 public String authenticateAtLocalhost(
     String username, 
     boolean asAdmin, 
     String redirectUrl) throws Exception {
  HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
  httpClient.getParams().setBooleanParameter(
    ClientPNames.HANDLE_REDIRECTS, false);
  
  HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost("http://localhost:8888/_ah/login");
  httpPost.setHeader("Content-Type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
  String email = URLEncoder.encode(username, "UTF-8");
  httpPost.setEntity(
    new StringEntity(
      "email=" + email + 
      "&continue=" + redirectUrl + 
      (asAdmin?"&isAdmin=on":"")));
  HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
  
  String authenticationCookie 
   = response.getFirstHeader("Set-Cookie").getValue();
  httpClient.getConnectionManager().shutdown();
  
  return authenticationCookie;
 }

 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
  AppEngineLocalhostClient client = new AppEngineLocalhostClient();
  
  String username="test@example.com";
  boolean iWantToBeAdmin = true;
  String afterLoginGetMeToThisUrl 
   = URLEncoder.encode("http://localhost:8888", "UTF-8");
  String authenticationCookie = client.authenticateAtLocalhost(
    username,
    iWantToBeAdmin, 
    afterLoginGetMeToThisUrl);
  
  // ... access the REST interface authenticated
  
  HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost:8888/rest");
  httpget.addHeader("Cookie", authenticationCookie);
  
  // ...  
 }
}

When developing a Google App Engine application using SDK on localhost you sometimes need to authenticate programatically. For example in case that your application has a REST-style interface like MindForger. It took me a bit of time to determine how exactly to do that - lets save it for you.

Google App Engine: Deployment Ensuring Sustainable Evolution

2011-05-30T11:08:00.000-10:00

I use Google App Engine for Java since it was relased. I did a few smaller projects like Facebook application for behej.com backed by AppEngine in the past. Recently I started to use AppEngine more seriously. Therefore I had to define environments and procedures that are closer to these that are commonly used in the enterprise environment.

I defined 3 environments:

Development

This is where I do actual development of the application apart to localhost. There are no restrictions on changing the code and data. Data might be screwed (even intentionally) and/or deleted. The purpose of this environment is to enjoy the freedom of development and testing AppEngine features and APIs online.
It is separate AppEngine application deployed at the URL like http://foo-development.appspot.com

Pre-production

I use pre-production instance to verify that new version of the application (that I plan to release) works with the production data and that the upgrade will be smooth and easy. The data are replicated from production to pre-production only from time to time. Therefore there is always a slight difference which is perfectly OK, because this instances is not supposed to be backup. For the replication of the data I use REST interface of my application.
Alternatively you may consider for example incremental pull-style (replica is pulling data from the master) replication of the data using TX backed Tasks (copy only if TX succeeds).
This is also separate AppEngine application deployed at the URL like http://projectname-preproduction.appspot.com

Production

This is where the production version of the application runs and where real users are working with the real data.
This is obviously separate AppEngine application deployed at the URL like http://projectname.appspot.com

There are a couple of AppEngine features that could be used to define these environments. For example namespaces. After I compared different pros and cons I decided to go with the option described above. It gives me the highest level of isolation and data separation. Therefore it seems to be the most robust and safe solution. I also defined upgrade procedures that differ based on the type of the change and its impact:

Presumption

AppEngine supports multiple versions of the applications to be deployed. Note that these applications share the same storage. Let me presume that the production application is deployed as version 1 and this version is made default.

New version upload

Upload new version of the application - version 2.

Test upload

Make the final check that the application works as expected by accessing and testing it at http://2.foo.appspot.com

Release

Make the version 2 the default.

This is zero downtime upgrade. You don't have to define new version each time you deploy a new application version - I rotate just 3 versions as shown in the diagram above.

In case of a major release, that includes data model change (find the definition of the major release in the best practices paragraph below), there might have to be a scheduled maintenance window:

Presumptions

The same as above.

Disable the access

Disable the access to the application and display maintenance info page to users.
AppEngine storage can be also switched to read-only mode from the administration console.

Backup

AppEngine provides no backup. Fortunately there are a couple of doable options:

Copy data using Datastore Admin (experimental)

With Datastore Admin tool You can safely copy data between different applications. This tool can be used to migrate from Master/Slave to HRD datastore, but also for a backup.

Export the repository using:

Bulk loader tool (yes, it works with Java).
Alternatively with your own backup service (for example REST-based) and tool - as I do.

Snapshots

Although AppEngine doesn't support snapshots (yet ;-) you can easily implement them yourself. For example by creating set of "snapshot" variants of your persistence beans. By adding 'snapshot' field to these beans you can even maintain multiple snapshots. Again you can use namespaces in this case.
This is in place (scope of single application) backup and/or transformation.

The backup can include only entities (and entity instances) impacted by data model changes. Typically there is no need to dump whole storage.

Transform (if needed)

Based on the size of the repository transformation to the new data model schema can be performed:

Offline on the exported image which requires subsequent drop of the all affected datastore tables and import of the new image.
In-place transformation that is realized by running a set of statements (export/drop/import not required).

Deploy new application code

The same steps as above - new version upload, test and release.

Enable the access

Switch off the maintenance info page and enable the access to application again.

The procedure described above is pretty expensive as the amount of the data grows. You have to basically pay for re-imaging the application (requests, bandwidth, read and write operations). Such approach obviously becomes unusable once your storage size is bigger than small.

Zero downtime could be achieved for example using 2 isolated applications, data replication and DNS reconfiguration. I'm not that far yet.

Let me also mention data model change best practices. They enable in place upgrades and work with any size of the storage. It might be obvious, but it is worth to remind. The motivation is to minimize the impact of changes you do (e.g. avoid maintenance windows):

Do not change field names

If there is really need for such a change, rather create a field with new name, deprecate the old one and define an administrative task that will copy the data from the old field to new field and/or default value.

Do not change fields data types

Use deprecation in the same way as above.

Do not delete fields

Simply deprecate them.

Make the fields optional (if possible)

This guideline might be translated to - allow null values on the persistence tier, because it can make your upgrades doable on top of AppEngine repository. For example consider that you want to introduce a new field and compare boolean vs. Boolean. The datastore upgrade will fail in the first case.

Use major releases to purge your data model

Major application release is opportunity to remove all deprecated fields, polish your data model and do the transformation of the data.

My application is opened to users for several months and I'm still in learning new tricks and improving the procedures described above. The obvious motivation is to make sure that the application will run without any problems and outages .

MindForger: Problem Solver & Coaching Notebook

2011-05-29T02:53:00.007-10:00

MindForger is a free problem solver and coaching notebook. Learn more about G.R.O.W. model, S.M.A.R.T. goals, action plans, S.W.O.T. analysis and Eisenhower matrix at mindfoger.com!

pipni.cz: konfigurace DNS pro App Engine via Google Apps

2011-01-20T22:10:00.000-10:00

V tomto česky psaném příspěvku bych rád popsal konfiguraci DNS na hostingu pipni.cz pro uživatele Google App Engine, kteří chtějí zpřístupnit svou aplikaci na vlastní doméně. Pokud tedy máte Google App Engine aplikaci moje-aplikace-123.appspot.com a vlastníte doménu moje-domena.cz, kterou vám společně s webem hostuje pipni.cz, tak postup je následující:

Prvním krokem je vytvoření Google Apps pro vaši doménu moje-domena.cz, bez něhož to bohužel nejde.
Po založení účtu je s ním nejdříve nutné doménu svázat - v menu Domain settings, záložce Domain names je akce Add a domain or a domain alias. Vše je detailně a srozumitelně popsáno v dokumentaci Google Apps.
Součástí svázání domény je i konfigurace DNS - viz obrázek v záhlaví příspěvku (CNAME a MX záznamy).
Záhy přijdete na to, že některé vaše emaily jsou filtrovány jako spam resp. phishing, proto je nutné navíc přidat SPF záznam, což se v dokumentaci nikde nezdůrazňuje. Jak SPF nastavit ale popsáno je a na obrázku výše je opět vidět, jak a co přesně je třeba přidat (TXT záznam).
Konečně je možné přejít ke konfiguraci applikace hostované na Google App Engine. Jak na to je opět dobře zdokumentováno.

Nyní je vaše aplikace dostupná např. na app.moje-doména.cz, nebo na jiné doméně třetího řádu.

MindRaider: GPL > Apache 2.0

2010-12-08T19:46:00.005-10:00

Today is an important day for MindRaider project. In the hope that it makes MR more open and usable I decided to change its license from GPL to Apache 2.0. New distributions were not released yet, but all the formal steps and source code changes has been already made. As a consequence of this decision sketches were removed, because their rendering was based on the library that is released under GPL. However existing sketches are still accessible in your document repository and you can edit them with Jarnal.

It is also indication that I'm going to invest most of my spare time from now on to the new project. But don't be affraid - I still use MindRaider on daily basis. I also don't foreclose possibility that they will exist the upgrade path from MindRaider to that new project.

Feel free to drop me an email in case that you would be interested in maintaining MR ;-)

HTC Blackstone Flaws

2009-09-17T12:01:00.007-10:00

Nah·det Masr asked me to explain why I was not satisfied with HTC Blackstone. Before I will answer, let me share with you a suggestion for HTC:

If you want to test your product, find somebody who has never had Pocket PC before.

Why? When you see a "feature" for the first time, you cannot believe it. But after some time you think that flaws I will be describing are normal (at least you can live with them) and after some time you even think that these are normal features (this is where I'm).

There are flaws related to HW/drivers, to Windows and to TF3D:

One of the reasons why I decided to buy Blackstone and not iPhone was Bluetooth A2DP. I do several hours of confcalls every week. The most comfortable setup for me is cell phone + Bluetooth heaphones. My handsfree/heaphones work perfectly for example with Nokia phones, but there are several problems with Blackstone. It might be that there is a way how to reconfigure the whole thing, but I was not able to do that. Also I believe that the behavior described below is the default:

After you pair phone and handsfree, phone should discover and connect to handsfree automatically whenever I switch them on. With Blackstone I have to do that manually (Nokia does that for you).
Presume that I'm expecting a call, both phone and handsfree are on and linked. It takes several seconds before sound/mic functionality is routed to handsfree. With Blackstone it works like this: you pick up the call, you use the phone normally (as without handsfree), after several seconds the sound is finally redirected from phones's speaker to the handsfree.
After you pick up the call/call to somebody, display is sometimes automatically turned off for a couple of seconds and this "feature" can not fixed. Obviously there is a light sensor that should take care of this, but the display is turned off even if the phone lies on the table in front of you. What I typically do is that I call to the conference and than want to go on mute - but you the display is black and you can not use Mute button to do that.

Screen rotation is switched off for all the applications except photos album and Opera. There is now way how to mark an application that it is capable of handling that. This problem can be partially fixed by Gyrator (rotation is allowed for all the applications).
The official name of Blackstone is HTC Touch HD, therefore you would expect that you can use your fingers to use it, but you get a hybrid instead (this is why this "touch" phone has stylus).

Keyboard (phone/compact/full) shows keys you press under your finger, therefore you don't know which key was actually pressed (compare with iPhone).
Transition from TF3D to Windows and back is unbelievable. It is schizophrenia. From finger friendly environment to stylus environment and back. You may try to use nails :) in Windows, but sometimes you simply have to use stylus (the best test of your skills is alarm setup using fingers).

Applications/task switching use also pretty unusable. The suggested way how to do that is to use the Programs panel (because at most one instance of the application can be run). Of course this doesn't work - for example Opera opens new tab. Therefore what you must do is to click Home hardware button, move to the Programs panel and click the target application icon. Fortunately there is a fix for this - TaskFacade (pattern that used for example by HTC Hero/Android).
No battery status indication. To determine the status of battery go to Start, Settings menu item, System tab, Power icon. I fixed this using dciBattery.
I also don't like Windows alarm system. There is no list of missed/snoozed alarms as you know it from Outlook or SonyEricsson. To find a missed alarm, you have to start with a balloon next to the Start menu, you click the ballon, then you get to the status screen, click alarms icon, and finally you can see alarms one by one (no list). Pretty complicated.
If you download an (opensource) application, that is just extracted to the card, it cannot be added programs in the Start menu or Programs panel. Shortcut must be created first (otherwise it is impossible). But there is no way how to create a shortcut in Windows. You have to download an opensource tool that is capable of doing that. In my opinion this should be one of the basic utilities shipped with Windows.
Order of favorite contacts in TF3D's People tab cannot be changed. It also disappear whenever you need to resync with the contacts with Outlook.
... and more ;)

This is what I still remember. I fixed several problems already and some of the flaws became features ;) Hopefully somebody will find this list useful.

HTC Blackstone: PocketCM Keyboard

2009-08-11T20:14:00.006-10:00

Blackstone has finger unfriendly keyboard - it was designed for stylus and thus it is almost unusable with touch display. As usually there is a fix - PocketCM keyboard ;)

GoogleWave Sandbox Account

2009-07-30T09:37:00.001-10:00

I'm there ;) martin.dvorak at wavesandbox.com

HTC Blackstone

2009-07-30T09:08:00.005-10:00

HTC Touch HD is my first pocket PC. I never had smartphone or pocket PC before. Obviously I had to decide what to buy, the selection was - iPhone 3G (3GS was not released yet at that time), G1, Nokia 5800 and HTC Touch HD. Obviously the final choice was subjective :)

Day 1: I understood what is the difference between ergonomicity of iPhone and WM6.1+TouchFLO3D shizophrenia.
Day 2: I decided to sell that damn thing!
Day 3: I discovered XDA Developers, did a couple of customizations and decided to give Blackstone a chance.

A couple of links and applications you may find useful:

HTC Blackstone @ XDA developers
OZI Explorer
dciBattery
Jeyo Mobile Extender (not free)
RSS Reader
MS ActiveSync (Windows XP)
Support/patches/fixes @ HTC
Advanced Config
Calcolatrice
Facebook
Google Maps
Gyrator 2
HD Soft Reset
HD Tweak
Iris Browser
PHM RegEdit
Shortcut Maker
Task Facade
ceTwit
Fring
T9 14 languages update
Paul's must have free software

Stay tuned ;)

A Dose of DnB

2009-07-21T21:29:00.002-10:00

Best DnB buy 2008 is As far As we Go and Back Again (SpearHead). I bought this CD because I wanted to get Lomax's BrainFreeze track, but I keep listening the whole CD again and again and again...

I rediscovered DnB old dogs and I listen to various tracks of Omnitrio, Seba and LTJ's Earth CD series - back to the roots :)

For some time, I was not amazed by anything new - I mean a track that would be comparable to the smashing Commix debut. A couple of weeks ago I have finally heard something very special - Chase & Status remix of TopCat Ruffest Gun Ark that was played by Fabio in his show. The link above is unfortunately to the live version of the tune. It is also comming on new TopCat and Friction (Shogun) albums. There are several other remixes (even dubstep one), but Chase & Status did the best job. I like these old school/new sound track. Actually TopCat was the first jungle CD I bought back in 2000 :-P

There are several other tunes and albums (both old and new) that are also on my radar screen: The Trip, Toy Down, Cosmonaut, PJANOO by Logistics (Hospital), new Subfocus (Ram) album and Gold Rush, From bath with love by Danny Byrd (Hospital).

JAlbum to Picasa

2009-05-17T02:55:00.003-10:00

JAlbum2Picasa - my new OSS project ;-)

Filip Ospaly @ ITU WCS Promo Video

2009-04-28T09:12:00.006-10:00

Filip Ospaly spotted on ITU World Championship promo video. Click the button with national flags below the video player and enjoy Filip who is passing two of his competitors ;)

MR to Hit 10.000 Downloads This Month

2009-04-27T22:04:00.005-10:00

Thanks to lifehacker.com and several other sites, my spare time project MindRaider will hit 10.000 downloads this month only at sf.net (April 2009). Despite the fact that there is no doc, UI is a bit chaotic and I work on it just for my personal pleasure it seems that the result is not that bad :)

SLS3 Dilemma

2009-04-27T22:03:00.003-10:00

After being injured twice this month (left and right carf, tentacle's tendons), I bought SLS3 compression socks. I was skeptic, but because I was in trouble I decided to give them a shot. The arguments sound reasonable and Paula Radcliffe (my woman runner idol) wears them several seasons - so they must be good, right? ;)

I did tempo workouts and a long run (>20 miles) and I'm pretty sure that it works. I feel much better, especially the recovery is significantly faster. The socks are designed properly, so I do not afraid of blisters even in the marathon. I look funny when I wear them, but at least I do not have to shave my legs :)

The problem is that I have a dilemma right now - should I wear them in my next race or not? Will see...

1/2 marathon PB: 1:29:27 > 1:23:16 > 1:21:59

2009-04-27T22:02:00.008-10:00

I have improved my half-marathon best two times this year. PIM - first I cut more than 6 minutes. Check very nice race simulator (Google maps mashup). Pardubice - I was injured week before the race, I got a wrong number due to organizers fault, I had to make Jeff Galloway's walking break intermezzo... despite of that, I set my new personal best and cut more than minute to 1:21:59 ;)

Kubik also finished his first big race in Pardubice. He was riding tuned Specialized hotwalk and obviously had his personal pacemaker.

Prague International Marathon: half marathon, 1:23.17, 125th place/4537 runners.

Pardubice Half-marathon (Czech championship): half marathon, 1:21:59, 87th place/826 runners.

Kara did not win, but...

2009-04-24T10:03:00.005-10:00

This is not a fake ;) Can be seen at Universal Sports (2:44.25).

MindRaider 7.6 Released

2009-03-18T12:00:00.005-10:00

After several months of development here comes new MindRaider. The main feature of this release is sharing. You may import or export any outline you want and share it with your colleagues or friends. In addition to that Note templates for various types of meeting and auto coaching templates are provided. Check also new shortcuts and visual linking feature.

You may download distro for Windows, Linux or Java from SourceForge.

Enjoy!

10k PB: 37:25.68

2009-03-17T12:49:00.004-10:00

After fighting a sickness for 2 weeks I unexpectedly improved my 10k personal best. Great race, unexpected meeting with my "one glove" friend and beautiful weather. Pececka desitka: 10km, 37:25.68, 68th place/436 finishers.

In addition to that I did nice run to ruin of Baba the very next day. What a running weekend ;-)

DnB Awards 2009

2009-03-09T12:32:00.003-10:00

Fab&Groove "standard", best track and best album is big surprise for me, Danny almost did it ;-) All results.

MindRaider in Top 10 Free Mind Mappers

2009-02-09T09:36:00.004-10:00

MindRaider spotted on open-tube.com - listed between Top 12+ FREE mind mapping tools ;-)

Marathon PB: 3:05:05.26

2008-11-06T13:08:00.006-10:00

October 12 (6 days to go):

October 16 (3 days to go):

October 18 (race day): Changed course (fire and sunken tunnel), improvisation, a lot of curves, ... cool weather, great atmosphere, personal best, free hot soup & fruits & beer & nice dressing room & refreshing shower for finishers (19th/201 marathoners).

What a great event ;-)

10k PB: 37:58.76

2008-09-13T11:51:00.005-10:00

I run just for my personal pleasure and therefore I race occasionally. Today it was a special day - I improved my 10 years old 10 kilometers personal best. Although results are not the reason why I run, this one made me really happy ;-)

PIM Night Grand Prix: 10k, 37:58.76, 65th place/1624 finishers.

Grooverider Free

2008-09-05T10:26:00.008-10:00

I listen to Fab&Groove show @ Radio 1 almost every week since 2003. Grooverider, long-time DJ partner to fellow dnb pioneer, Fabio, was arrested for possession of 2.16 grams of cannabis at Dubai airport in November last year.

Over the years I liked Fabio's sessions more than Grooverider Radio, but after Grooverider was arrested, I found out, that I really miss the harder face of dnb. There was yang, but no yin - balance dissapeared.

Fortunately Grooverider has been freed from jail in Dubai earlier this week. Now he is back home. Originally he was sentenced to four years in prison. He was released as part of the 700 pardons for the religious festival of Ramadan.

Welcome back Groove!

Trip to Boston MA

2008-04-24T21:35:00.014-10:00

Lately I returned Boston MA where I attended HP Tech Con 08. As usually even to get there was an adventure - no seat from Prague to London (but booked seat from London to Boston), delayed flight and missing stand in London and less then 2 hours to connect the flight at ESB powered Heathrow Terminal 5. Roman scared me enough, but finally everything went OK and I safely arrived to Boston on time.

HP Tech Con is prestigious HP technology conference. You have to earn your way there by writing a paper that is judged against more than 1200 of other papers written by the best technologists in the company - like the one on memristor. There are only about 120 papers accepted and therefore I was very honored to get an invitation. Actually I was the only Czech attendee :)

Presentations were excellent, I met a lot of interesting people and definitely I will strive to attend the next year again.

It was my 3rd time in Boston, I visited Harward and MIT Museum. After the conference ended I also did 10 mile workout from the hotel to Charles River. And also I met my ex-Systinet colleague.

Nice trip ;-)

Yahoo! Started The Semantic Web Era

2008-03-15T09:47:00.011-10:00

For several years I'm annotating my web pages with various microformats in order to make them comprehensible both for humans and machines. This is what the Semantic Web is about. Until the day before yesterday it was just funny academic exercise - my FOAF profile, DC annotation of HTML pages, DOAP for MR, ...

Yahoo! finally gave to everybody purposeful reason why to annotate their pages. Thus started the era of the real semantic web. And others will follow for sure as it is not just about SEO.

Yahoo! guys proved that they are real innovators. Looking forward to new adventure - it's time to improve our webs ;-)

My Weekend Runs

2008-03-08T11:24:00.003-10:00

Weekend run is my bonus for week hours spent on treadmill. Recently I discovered very nice Google Maps based mashup application where I can map my runs. Especially I like to search for other people who run the same trails as I do...

Mikuláš

2008-02-02T12:00:00.000-10:00

There are no words to express how happy I am!

TC + MC Jakes @ Pete Tong's Essential Mix

2008-02-02T11:43:00.000-10:00

Yet another excellent mix by TC. I still cannot forget the live act he did for Fab in December 07. TC and his Bristol squad (Hanna and MC Jakes) impressed me both with their live presentation of dnb and as personalities, very strong.

Enjoy!

MR7

2008-01-27T12:49:00.001-10:00

Busy, sleepy and tired gathering minutes and hours while slowly summoning MR 7...

Tag navigation and clouds, labels, sketches, incremental FTS indices, sub-pixel antialiasing, cross notebook concept linking and more...

Check it!

Finishing Baby Training

2008-01-26T09:24:00.000-10:00

I want to share with you extremely enlightening training materials I came across while I'm getting ready for the baby ;-)

Enjoy!

[HowTo] Google Docs Backup

2008-01-13T11:38:00.001-10:00

I like Google Docs service very much. At the same time I don't trust anyone... here come two unofficial ways how to backup Google Docs documents:

http://1st-soft.net/gdd/

and:

http://code.google.com/p/gdatacopier/

Enjoy!

Update:
Checkout also Gladinet Cloud Desktop at http://www.gladinet.com. Its free and makes it easy to Backup Google Docs. You can mount your Google Docs folder as a local drive in explorer and move files back and forth between Google Docs and your desktop. You can also create scheduled backups to Google Docs or to a Redundant Array of Cloud Storage.

drum 'n' sub-base

2007-12-22T05:56:00.000-10:00

As Fab described in one of his shows '07 was heavy year with high number of extremely good tunes. Release by release we were supplied with extraordinary things. Personally I see the main reason in the spin of the dubstep and its influence to dnb. Dubstep added a new axis to the dnb tunes - the sub-base - and thus a brand new vibe.

Last year I heard an interview with Goldie, he was talking about Commix as his favorite Metalheadz crew. This year I got it - Call to Mind is the album of the year for me. Commix became member of my very special selection of dnb warriors. Tunes like Belleview or Be True clearly confirm the trend I have described above.

No retreat, no surrender by my big dogs! High Contrast dropped definite tune of the year If we ever (Tough Guys Don't Dance @ Hospital). There is everything - check old school jungle drums, beautiful vocal by Diane Charlemagne and sub-base vibe. Lomax attacked with Brain Freeze (Brain Freeze @ Spearhead). Klute got me again with with his standardly outstanding release and 174 BPM (The Emperor's New Clothes @ Commercial Suicide) - is it liquid funk, dubstep or what? ;-)

Looking forward to '08!

RESTafarian's Weapons

2007-12-20T12:00:00.000-10:00

Web Dev toolkit

Mozilla

HTTP Debugging

Proxy

Fiddler

CmdLine

cURL
wGET (windows)

Validator

Rearmed!

2007-12-01T11:00:00.000-10:00

... & ready for two babies.

My SaaS Microcosmos

2007-11-25T01:07:00.000-10:00

I actively use several computers - laptops (3) and workstation. In the past I have been fighting hardware failures, replication inconsistencies and was unable to do anything when on business trip/holidays. As former internet bubble promises are becoming reality, I'm striving to have as much as possible of my data in the internet. Here comes my selection...

emails

GMail

video

YouTube

~~photo~~

JAlbum + web hosting

blog

Blogger

feeds

GReader

bookmarks

del.icio.us

friends

Facebook

office

GDocs

presentations

SlideShare

calendar & address book

Plaxo (<- Exchange -> mobile)

open source

SourceForge

money

eBanka

~~backup~~

(IDrive)

~~password~~

(PassPack)

~~mind map~~

Mind mapping is one of the gaps I have to close... and it is really difficult. Although I like it, I do not want to use a traditional mind mapping service (fancy spiders that do not scale) like Mindomo - I prefer productivity, quick navigation and powerful search. Still did not found what I'm looking for.

Computers Need To Forget

2007-11-16T11:26:00.000-10:00

A Harvard professor argues that too much information is being retained by computers, and the machines need to learn how to forget things as humans always have. "If whatever we do can be held against us years later, if all our impulsive comments are preserved, they can easily be combined into a composite picture of ourselves," he writes in the paper.

This is exactly the idea I have in my mind for some time. Having installed the same system for three years and looking to my desktop, downloaded documents, mailbox and mind maps I can see how it is spoiled and contaminated by zombie items.

The purpose of computers is to remember everything. Actually I think that human brain remembers every single piece of information as well (cognition, experience, perception). Human beings just differ in ability to look up the particular "thing" - it's there, but an appropriate stimulus that triggers the association queue is needed (scent, sensual perception, event).

The right question to ask is "What does it mean to forget?"

In my opinion it is a function of the mind that protects it from madness. Presume that your memory is a graph - "things" are nodes and associations are edges (pretty common model). There is an entry node. A new stimulus is put right behind the entry node. As the stimulus get older and older it dives deeper and deeper. If there are no fresh associations which would keep it near enough to the entry node, it is forgot. Say that the distance is defined as number of hops from entry node to the stimulus node and there is some threshold (let me call it Rubicon). The piece of information is forgot once the distance from the entry is is bigger then Rubicon.

The same approach could be applied to computers...

Imagine that there is hades - an underground where old bookmarks, applications, emails and mind maps stay.
Once the application is not used for some time, it gets across Rubicon and ends in hades, the same applies to emails and comments which are not read, etc.
The important thing is that e.g. icons @ desktop are not deleted (like windows icon sweep offers), but just moved to hades, and might be rescued later.
If you search "live" part of the system, hades is searched as well. You might ask system to union live and hades icons on your desktop, etc.
If you use GMail, you know I mean ;-)

In other words I just wanted to say: "to forget doesn't mean to delete". Does it make sense?

Build MindRaider with Maven 2

2007-11-11T12:47:00.001-10:00

Get access to the latest features! Contribute! Tweak MR!
Prerequisities to build MR distribution:

Method:

Log in to SourceForge CVS:
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@mindraider.cvs.sourceforge.net:\
/cvsroot/mindraider login
When prompted for a password for anonymous, simply press the Enter key.
Checkout MindRaider7 CVS module (to a directory e.g. CVS):
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@mindraider.cvs.sourceforge.net:\
/cvsroot/mindraider co -P mindraider7
Build MindRaider distribution:
cd CVS/mindraider7 && mvn install
Find the distribution in the directory:
CVS/mindraider7/mr7-release/target
Unpack the distribution (in a directory e.g. MR)
Change to directory:
MR/mindraider-7.1
Run MindRaider:
java -jar run.jar

To start development in Eclipse:

Create Eclipse project:
cd CVS/mindraider7/mr7 && mvn eclipse:eclipse
Import the created project to Eclipse and open the mr7 project.
Open class MindRaiderApplication and run it as Java Application

And that's it.

MR & Google Notebook Integration

2007-11-07T06:50:00.000-10:00

Being RESTafarian for couple of years I thought that the integration of MindRaider with Google Notebook will be a piece of cake... well, it wont be that easy, more precisely it will be very interesting challenge.

The first integration use case I would like to implement is synchronization of GNotebooks to MR. I have downloaded GData client, shared a GNotebook, downloaded the Atom feed for that notebook, and created MrNotebook for it. Then I wanted to authenticate, but I determined that GData API for the Notebook is read-only.

I'm going to start where others ended - integrations are not about public APIs only ;-) Actually I think that the Google doesn't allow to post items to notebooks intentionally - legal, spam, timing? That's why I believe that the private API will be relatively stable. Having reasonable knowledge of HTTP (proxy) and Google Notebook FireFox plug-in installed (open source code communicating with private API) I'm pretty confident to be able to publish MrNotebooks.

Stay tuned...

7/12 - 7/15 @ London: DnB/DubStep party?

2007-06-28T21:12:00.000-10:00

Going to London (my first visit) in the middle of July and looking for DnB/Dubstep party. Fabric is must on Friday. Micky Finn act would be cool on Saturday, unfortunately Birmingham is too far. Can you suggest something? ;-)

Update - final choice:

MR & Google Presentations @ SlideShare

2007-05-17T11:10:00.000-10:00

Today I discovered SlideShare, cool presentation sharing service. Enjoy two of my older presentations ;-)

Apparat :: Walls @ ShitKatapult

2007-05-15T21:56:00.000-10:00

"Alternative happens in Europe!"

...this is what I have been listening to for a long time from my fine arts addicted friends and relatives. Frankly I'm not that sure... anyway, I think that Europe (eastern europe in particular) has a great potential!

To see Apparat live @ Live Electronic Session (also featuring AGF) was extraordinary experience. One of the events I will never forget...

...Duplex is must have! Three years later Sascha Ring is going to release his new album - Walls. And that is not enough, August 18 // Czech Republic // Summer of Love // Apparat live. Will be there!

Spring RCP: The Answer Is Yes!

2007-05-10T22:18:00.000-10:00

I spend a few days with Spring RCP. I was amazed, disappointed, surprised, lost and resigned... but in the end I decided to use the Spring RCP for the next generation of the MindRaider (and also my new OSS project to be released later this year) despite all the threats.

Let me start with the risks I see:

The project is poorly documented.
There is no official stable release.
There are (almost) no OSS applications build on top of the RCP (which I could use as samples).
From what I read in the discussions and mailing list, I got feeling that there is not strong lead (although there is a lead developer). I mean a though-lead having long term roadmap in his head.
I feel that the RCP is still in its puberty - there are too many heterogeneous and conflicting plans.
Positioning against Eclipse RCP and Netbeans RCP as lightweight, (not that)rich client (the exact meaning of this word) oriented platform which fits Spring.

...which is not that bad ;-) And why am I attracted by Spring RPC?

I love Spring Framework.
I'm admired by declarative, straightforward and concise way in which Spring RPC applications are built. Incomparable to Swing!
I appreciate integration of popular libraries (JGoodies, VLDocking, ...) for all important parts of the UI application - commands, views, docking, forms, validation, ... and precise technical design (components, localization, resource bundle support, ...).
The good sign is the will of both commercial and non-commercial library vendors to deliver integrated solutions e.g. JIDE, L2FProd, ...
There are rumors saying that several (internal) commercial projects are built on top of Spring RCP.

Looking forward to share more details, experiences and findings in the future ;-)

Spring Rich Client Platform: PetClinic

2007-05-04T22:23:00.000-10:00

I'm already decided to use Spring IoC in MR7. What I'm considering is Spring RCP. The motivation is to build the UI tier faster and also Spring RCP provisions - components and included/integrated libraries like JGoodies.

Althought here and there you can find some blog post describing how to start with Spring RCP, it took me some time to run PetClinic, so you might find this description useful...

Prerequisite: Subversion client
Download Tortoise Subversion Client for windows (or your favorite one).
Checkout Spring RCP from the Sourceforge repository

Create a directory e.g. c:\spring-rcp
While in the directory you have just created, click right button, get Explorer menu and choose SVN Checkout.
Set SVN repository URL:
https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/spring-rich-c/trunk/spring-richclient/
and directory where to checkout.
Proceed to the checkout by clicking OK.

Build the project

Download and install Maven 2 (configure your PATH environment variable to run mvn from anywhere).
Change to the root directory of the Spring RCP checkout (in our example it is c:\spring-rcp)
Run mvn install
...now you may get a cup of coffee ;-)
If a repository item is not available (might happen), run mvn install again and again until it successfully finishes.

Run PetClinic (standalone)

Presuming that you are Eclipse developer...
Finish Maven2 installation by defining Eclipse classpath variable M2_REPO.
Go to Eclipse menu/Window/Preferences.../Classpath Variables. Select New... and create M2_REPO variable. It will point to the directory like C:/Documents and Settings/[user name]/.m2/repository
Let Maven2 create Eclipse projects by running mvn eclipse:eclipse in the root of the project (c:\spring-rcp).
Import projects to the Eclipse. Go to menu/File/Import.../Existing Project Into Workspace/ and select root directory (c:\spring-rcp). Eclipse will find several projects - import them all.
In package explorer open spring-richclient-petclinic-standalone project, find the package src/main/java/org.springframework.richclient.samples.petclinic.
Run PetClinicStandalone class by right click and Run as/Java Application
When you will be asked for username/passwd, just click Cancel.
And that's it ;-)

Documentation:

AndyC @ Roxy Prague

2007-05-03T19:19:00.000-10:00

Big shot to AndyC! I'm looking forward to this event for more than two months... and as usually - anytime I bought a ticket / rearrange my schedule / the action is not spontaneous... I'm down (fighting angina) :-Z

Anyway, I will be there because I can not help myself. I have seen Andy live several times - I still remember the set he used to smash Roxy 2 years ago. I really like RAM stuff (although sometimes it is a too hard for me), so Saturday is going to be BIG.

And that's not enough, Andy will return two months later and I guess that he will play something completely different, not too much RAM, expecting set similar to the One Nation 12/31/06.

Now let me finish my nano fight ;-)

Mindraider7: Complete Rewrite

2007-05-02T19:48:00.000-10:00

As I described in my former start over post, the pause in the MR development was very useful for me. In the meantime I flirted with several technologies/specs (Spring, Hibernate, XML Beans; ASF/APP, SKOS) and finished couple of projects . Finally I found distance and determined that further improvements of existing code would be inefficient. Therefore I decided to completely rewrite MR in order to achieve remarkable improvement. There are two aspects of this decisions...

Functional architecture: MR is about cognition gathering and correlation in a way that enables you to find what your are looking for extremely efficiently (following SW and brain paradigms). As my personal mind map grows (hundreds of concepts), I see lack of features allowing to efficiently navigate and search the map. Although I know what I'm missing, it would be problematic to implement these new features on top of the existing MR technical infrastructure.

Technicall architecture: former MR releases (up to version 0.512) primary purpose was SW technology trainer. I didn't pay enough attention to the architecture - it was monolith with extremely complex dependencies (and initialization) that have large memory footprint and big portion of dead+undead code.

I fall in love with Spring (dependency injection container in particular). I hope the create nice declaratively described component architecture (avoiding singleton and factory patterns). I want to design independent presentation and repository tiers. Thus I would like to get filesystem, but also RDBMS and remote repository variants enabling to perform complex searches and views of the mind map maintained by MR.

The source code is mostly 1.4 (obsolete), I want to incorporate most of the 1.5 features in order to make it concise and efficient. And much more :-P

It's also your turn...

It's the right time for new ideas, features and also technical architecture proposals and suggestions. I'm looking forward to your feedback and criticism.

And last, but not least... if you want to join me and you are coder (java 1.5 developer, familiar with Spring (ideally RC), Swing and SW specs (RDF & comp)) or graphic freak, I'm looking forward to mail from you ;-)

Klute @ FabGroove Show // BBC Radio 1

2007-05-01T22:46:00.000-10:00

I'm listenning to the Fabio/Grooverider Radio every week for about 3 years (having log of that ;-). For me this is cool opportunity to determine what is going on in dnb. New releases, even white labels, interviews with the artists by guys who live in the scene.

This week Fab invited one of my favorite artists. Klute is dropping great tunes for quite a long time. I discovered his music when Klute founded his label Commercial Suicide. I already have both Lie Cheat & Steal and No One's Listening Anymore releases (double CDs). His sound is like... soft... liquid funk stuff which (sometimes @ the last album) sounds even like dub step. I have been already listening to The Emperor's New Clothes and like it much. Looking forward to get it - London 2 Prague, will take it few weeks...

Let Me Start Over...

2007-04-30T21:15:00.000-10:00

MindRaider project seems to be dead, this blog seems to be dead, ... and what about me?

Sometimes it's time to work hard... sometimes it's time to take breath... sometimes it's better to let blogs, projects and ideas asleep in order to get your head out of the swamp, look around and make your mind... sometimes it's time to start over.

This blog wont be no longer focused on the technology only. While seeking balance in life, I'm going to ramble innovation, gadgets, corporate life, music, running, technology, society, and more...

The time is now!

My Architectonic Masterpiece

2006-09-07T22:18:00.000-10:00

You had probably noticed that the MR project slowed down and also there are almost no posts to this blog for a very long time. I'm happy to announce the most important release of my life - in April 06 was born my son, prodigy governor Kubík.

...do not be afraid I'm working on MR and looking forward to the next release!

MR KEG Edition: Linux edition

2006-02-11T23:59:00.000-10:00

... is out! You may download it from EAP section at sourceforge.net

EAP: MR KEG Edition

2006-01-28T22:56:00.000-10:00

It's the time to prove that MindRaider still lives on SW planet! After more that 9 months here comes its new and improved version which is released via Early Access Program. Don't hold back - try it, test it, check new features!

You may download Windows distribution from the EAP section. Stay tuned, Linux/Unix distro come soon!

Big shot to Francesco for his contribution to this release!

Disclaimer:
Please do note that the EAP release is intended just for your review and it has been unleashed in order to gather feedback before the regular release. Do not use it for creation of mind maps containing important and/or personal data, because there will be no upgrade support.

Thank you KEG!

2005-12-31T04:32:00.000-10:00

I had a great chance to present MindRaider at KEG seminar on November 24.

It was a cool session - nice people, interesting discussion and thoughtful questions. Below you can find slides of the presentation MindRaider: Outlining & Mind Mapping for the Semantic Web:

I'm also considering an early access release of MindRaider distribution used at seminar.

MR @ LtU

2005-12-31T04:20:00.000-10:00

MindRaider spotted on LtU ;-)

Nice post in which Mark puts MR into the context of desktop applications and SW technologies. Let me point to two quotes. The first of them hits one of the MR challenges - I mean human mind driven information correlation:

"There are dozens of little programs for narrow data types - address books, internet bookmark apps, password managers, photo albums, etc. How do you tell the address book that the photo album has pictures of the guy, and that his web link lives in the bookmark manager? Right now, you don't. And programs never organize data just the way you want. Besides, exceptions to the common format always arise. So the problem is not just searching documents and email, nice as that is, but organizing human details in useful ways."

In this context I would like to highlight importance of MR's integration with Gnowsis. In the second quote Mark proves that he understands importance of the RDF leveraged in transparent manner and added value of the ontology-based mind maps:

"Raw RDF may not be the ideal presentation but still seems a likely candidate for the underlying data model. Each individual develops a personal ontology (aka "working style" if you will) over years of time. RDF can capture that, but it will take friendly programs like Mind Raider."

Update: KEG seminar on MindRaider

2005-11-16T23:13:00.000-10:00

Just want to inform you, that seminar has been moved to Rajska building. Updated invitation:

When:
November 24, start at 10:30am
Where:
University of Economics (Rajska building, room 336), W. Churchill square, Prague

Looking forward to see you there ;-)

KEG: MR Presentation & Live Demo!

2005-10-29T21:36:00.000-10:00

I'm pleased to announce, that I will present MindRaider at Knowledge Engeneering Group seminar that is opened to the public. Abstract:

MindRaider: Outlining & Mind Mapping for the Semantic Web

The Semantic Web promises to open innumerable opportunities for automation and information retrieval by standardizing the protocols for metadata exchange. However, unfolding of the Semantic Web vision depends on users getting powerful but easy-to-use tools for building, visualizing and managing their information. Only thus can be enabled quick creation of semanticaly enriched web resources comprehensible for both humans and machines.

MindRaider is the Semantic Web outliner. It aims to connect the tradition of outline editors with emerging technologies. MindRaider mission is to organize not only the content of your hard drive and favorite areas of web, but also your cognitive base and social relationships in a way that enables quick navigation, concise representation and inferencing.

This presentation will start with brief introduction to outlining and mind mapping. Motivation behind e-mentality effort, MR architecture description and long-term vision will be introduced as well as MR synergy with other SW projects like Gnowsis Semantic Desktop and Knobot. A demo will be also given.

When:
November 24, start at 10:30am
Where:
University of Economics (new building, 4th floor, room 403), W. Churchill square, Prague

Looking forward to see you there ;-)

Open Source Definition

2005-10-29T07:51:00.000-10:00

A few months ago I found phenomenal definition of open source (translation from Czech):

Open source is will to abnegate a part of your profit and possibilities in order to let others benefit from it and to invest the future. Open source raises from profusion and conciousness of your profusion (intellectual or material), it is privilege not duty. Open source is life-style realized via conciousness, that you are able to produce more than you need. It is opinion that some resources must be shared not only in their creation, but also in their usage and that payoff doesn't have to be immediate, but it is future foundation. Open source doesn't mean neither software for free nor free software - it is sharing of sources, and that source can be software, but it doesn't have to be. It can be also castle.

Cool, don't you think ;-)

Francesco Tinti

2005-09-04T19:04:00.000-10:00

I'm pleased to announce that Francesco Tinti joined MindRaider squad last week.

Francesco is founder of a small web company called Active Mind and web admin of www.scripting.it - an Italian IT site news. In the past he worked as freelance developer for various companies.

Francesco entered the project in big style and contributed the following features:

source transition to Java 1.5
huge source code refactoring & facelifting
maven based building
localization support
...and more ;-)

Now Francesco contribution and new MR features are being merged by me. Fair progress, don't you think? MR 0.512 is going to be the big release!

Enhanced Annotations

2005-08-28T19:45:00.000-10:00

One of the key features of the incomming MR release will be enhanced annotations.

Currently it is possible to write any text annotation. If MR detects that it is a TWiki annotation, it attempts to preview that. Unfortunately this approach is neither user friendly nor extensible. A lot of users complaint that they do not know/like TWiki, that some kind of WYSIWYG should be better, that concepts interlinking is needed, etc. - and they are definitely right ;-)

That's why I started investigation of howto provide various types of annotations and with which open source projects to integrate. If I will be successful, you will be able to choose type of the annotation using which particular idea should be described in the future versions of MR. There will be available:

WYSIWYG for:

OneNote-like descriptions

Textual descriptions

Preview of:

TWiki description

HTML description

Other types of annotations are created without WYSIWYG and preview i.e. these are manipulated as plain text

Would you like to see a preview? Check screenshot above ;-) - now it is possible to choose type of the annotation, Jarnal (which is "Java OneNote") is already integrated, also it is possible to choose prefered MindRaider perspective (bottom-left corner).

More details will follow - stay tuned!

OWL Model 2 Java Beans

2005-08-12T07:37:00.000-10:00

Since there is big portion of code that manages ontologies in MR, I have been considering implementation of some OWL 2 Java generator for some time. This week I read Leo's post on this topic. There are two Jena-related generators that I really like:

After some investigation I'm going to incorporate them into innards of MR.

Hope that these tools can be useful also for you ;-)

EU Patents: Battle continues...

2005-07-10T07:10:00.000-10:00

EU parliament finally rejected proposal of the law act that should legalize SW patents! It is important win...

...but battle continues. Patent danger is waiting in the dark and looking for another chance. There still exists theoretical possibility, that patent legalization will be injected to some "off-topic" directive - like when it was passed to Council of Agriculture and Fisheries. Fortunately it was blocked by Poland.

Legalization of patents is now left in jurisdiction of member states. E.g. in case of Czech Republic it wont be easy - between a few representatives that vote for SW patents were Czechs. Also influential goverment consultants are connected with world leading SW vendors.

I still hope that commons sense will succeed ;-)

Check also my previous post...

Google Cluster Innards

2005-07-10T07:07:00.000-10:00

As a part of my personal research related to Vodyanoi, I created a presentation describing Google cluster internals - SW, HW and programming methodology. There is also a few "old school" photos ;-)

Enjoy!

Slowing Down...

2005-05-27T21:05:00.000-10:00

... as you probably noticed. But do not be affraid, MR still lives on the SW planet.

There are multiple reasons why MR development is less intensive:

I was able to release relatively stable version.
Also release of the product that is being developed by the team in the company where I work is approaching and (believe or not) big portion of the responsibility for the technical design is up to me. So I need to concentrate on it, to think about it days and nights, ... while capturing my thoughts using MR :-)
Running is more fun than the destination... I'm European - living in the northerm hemisphere and it's almost summer. Every winter I fatten - 13 kilograms from last august. And every spring I'm starting over in order to become (ultra)marathoner again. It's tough this year - only 6 kilograms behind me.

Be sure that I'm working on the MR - you may await brand new features that will make it more usable. Also a lot of things is happening these days:

There is brand new release of the Gnowsis for some time.
Contrats Leo ;-)
I visited a few "SW happenings" like KEG seminar on Semantic Management of Web Services presented by Steffen Staab.
Kaon stuff - you probably know that. Presentation was interesting, project seems to be promissing... unfortunately imho it's too academic and burden by WS related biases - understanding of the key specs would help to make that project "real-world acceptable".
Today I had a chance to visit meeting with Daniela Florescu and Donald Kossman - smart XQuery evangelists (and (co)authors of the spec).
Presentation pronounced by Daniela was technical and extremely interesting - explaining LISP background, declarative programming lessons learned, XSLT vs XQuery relationship, XQuery infoset and formal semantics, etc. Also it was very informative to see what people like Daniela and Donald think about RDF, OWL and SPARQL that is "...being made by these open source people..." :-)

That's all for today, next time I will be more technical again ;-) Keep enjoying MR!

On Internationalization

2005-05-03T20:31:00.000-10:00

For some time I'm working on/experimenting with MR internationalization. It is complex task since MR is build on top of various components and I need to integrate them properly.

Despite the fact that I'm Czech (written form of our language uses diacritics) I was encouraged to implement internationalization support by Japanese MR user Molnar Pal aka Patya.

There are still some glitches, but you may check the first screenshot with English, Hungarian and Japanese sent to me:

Thank you Patya!

EU: Software Patents

2005-05-01T20:33:00.000-10:00

If you are EU citizen, then you probably know that software patent related directives are currently processed by European commision. It's obvious that software patens are bad, that they threaten open software, obstruct computer science & SW evolution and are abused to make money. Please read more at NoSoftwarePatents.com.

Also MindRaider can be threatened - for example by the United States Patent 6,031,537 on Graphical Interface for Linked Information. Just the short quote from the press release:

"... Its issuance creates a significant barrier to entry for companies considering developing similar technology and solidifies TheBrain.com's position as the leading provider of visual information environments..."

It is typical example of the broadly defined patent that describes something that is being used for example in SW/AI area for decades. If applied, it can be used to crush also wide range of amazing tools like Freemind.

Therefore say NO to the SW patents!

For more details on how you may help please read homepage of one of the most popular open source applications - MPlayer that is being developed by hungarian Alex Beregszaszi.

MR 0.511 Unleashed!

2005-04-25T22:39:00.000-10:00

Today's MindRaider release brings internationalization support, one way Gnowsis integration, new refactoring primitives and rewritten fulltext search. Also it fixes various bugs. As usually you may download from:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mindraider/

Enjoy :-D

Vodyanoi Foundation: KnoBot

2005-04-19T01:01:00.000-10:00

Today I got mail from Reto Bachmann-Gmür, who is the action man behind KnoBot. Reno grasped Vodyanoi idea and found out that KnoBot can be the right piece of software to use - and I think so ;-)

Immediately without tiring discussions (and my assistance) he started to hack KnoBot and MR together - check this and understand it:

KnoBot instance in MindRaider

'Support for MindRaider Notebook Ontology' POC

It's always pleasure to get in touch with hacker like Reno. Respect!

Floex's 5 Cents

2005-04-18T23:50:00.000-10:00

My brother, respectable new media artist and musician, prepared a few informal sketches of MR graph navigator. This design aims to make rendered graph synoptic, light and neat ;-) Check his proposals:

Enjoy!

Attach Your Friend

2005-04-18T23:33:00.000-10:00

In case that it would not be obvious...

Similarly as Wikipedia common semantics ontology, FOAF will serve as identity resource for MindRaider. So whenever you will refer to a person, you will be able to associate its name with FOAF identity or to attach its URI to concept.

Thus creation of social networks, genealogies, but also common mind maps will be more accurate.

Wikipedia as MR Ontology

2005-04-18T23:30:00.000-10:00

It's clear that Wikipedia is one of the best common semantics ontologies currently available. It's not artifical stuff created by a distinguished professor at some university Sematic Web department. In fact live & real world data maintained by Wikipedia has associated both URI (ok, it's URL - but who cares, nobody's perfect :-), rdfs:label (topic title) and annotation (rdfs:comment) of the concept.

So Wikipedia's "common semantics" vocabulary ideally completes personal mind maps created with MindRaider. Following up to the previous post I would like to incorporate Wikipedia auto-complete functionality to Concept's annotation.

Stay tuned!

SW Enabled Website Builder

2005-04-10T00:00:00.000-10:00

Definition snippet:

"...Semantic web will be formed by web pages comprehensible for both humans and machines...

You can be curious why semantic annotation of web pages is so important. There is number of reasons - mainly powerful and precise searches, advanced (predicate-based) hyper navigation or ultimate integration. Simply it is about using information in a way that is incomparably more efficient to how we use it today.

Consider this:

There are bilions of pages that are not semanticaly annotated in the Internet today.

There are several proposals describing howto annotate web pages with semantic information.

Regretably (almost) nobody builds SW enabled web sites - mainly because there are no widely used tools enabling semantic annotation...

... but the time is now! Start building of the SW today!

Currently we are in "transitional phase". Research teams all around the world are trying to improve existing/invent new methods used to get semantic information out of the common web pages (documents). There are various data mining algorithms and applications on top of them like Grokker. Their effort is meritious since they enable processing of bilions web pages that are already in place - unfortunately only into some extend. Simply since there is no explicit semantic hint, they may just guess what is going on.

In this post I would like to describe another aspect of this - what should contain semanticaly enriched pages and how should look like the tools suitable for such purpose. Every day there are created thousands of pages that could be semanticaly encriched - if there would be convenient tools in place. Unfortunately there is nothing major...

For example imagine SW enabled DreamWeaver that would work like this:

On creation of the new page, both its embedded and external Dublin Core annotation would be created.

On creation of the link, it would be annotated in two ways. As usually you would specify URL, but also URN of the resource (object) whose representation is referenced by target URL and also predicate which such link represents.

Since DreamWeaver is WYSIWYG, you would be allowed to use (e.g Eclipse like) Ctrl-Enter to use auto-complete. Auto-complete would be able to suggest appropriate resource using your personal as well as common sematics ontologies. Resources' labels (RDFS label) and comments (RDFS comment) would be used to build WYSIWYG's search index.

As you would write the name of the resource, it would be compared with known labels/comments of known resources so in the end there would be only a few resources to be selected.

Thus everybody would be able to build web pages with semantically enriched links.

The same applies for abbreviations, images, emphasized text snippets, etc.

Every embedded page component (like image, applet or video) should also have Dublin Core annotation.

... and more ;-)

Now I'm working on the XHTML & RDF Symbiosis post where will be described technical details of this feature and a few examples. You may await it soon.

An important part of the Vodyanoi's analysis describes creation of such semantically enriched pages from the MindRaider's notebooks. If you are curious how it will work, then check this:

In MR you are building your mind map, which is in fact a bunch of URI identified Concepts.

Each concept is identifed by (globally) unique URI.

Every URI has associated both Label (rdfs:label) and (rdfs:comment).

Vodyanoi serve will then serve XHTML pages enriched with RDF in it, so every link will be annotated with URI of the resource (e.g. Concept it refers) and corresponding predicate.

MindRaider Concept's annotation editor functionality will be improved. While you will be writing Concept annotation and there will occur match of the text with label of some Concept, matching concept will be linked directly to the annotation. Also you will be allowed to reference URI identified entities explicitely e.g. I plan to integrate there FOAF, that will server as social map/identity resource.

Lot of work ahead, but that is what e-mentality project is about - original ideas validated by prototypes that are able to work even in the environment of existing Internet, SW applications and associated technologies.

e-mentality Squad @ SW

2005-04-09T23:56:00.000-10:00

Check the figure below that sketches how e-mentality squad will assimilate existing Semantic Web applications and technologies...

PDF version

Content-oriented Navigation II: URI

2005-04-09T23:15:00.000-10:00

I'm one of the SW mailing list readers tired of never ending URI discussions. Definitely I do not want to contribute to these discussions. But I need to describe how it is going to be solved in Vodyanoi and also to reference this description from the other posts building on top of this feature.

So just a few insights...

URI = URN u URL.

While URN identifies resource, URL describes (temporal) location of its representations.

Do not mix URN semantics with URLs.

URN can be (temporarily) resolved to multiple URLs - per (REST) representation.

Once defined, URN never perish and never should be reused for another entity. In case of resource is no longer interesting or it is obsolete, you may mark it as "discarded".

You should define unique URNs - you may ensure that it will be unambiquous using pattern like:
  urn:[your domain]:[project]:[{your ID}]:[resource]
for example:
  urn:com:e-mental:mindraider:dvorka:refactoring-review
or
  urn:com:e-mental:dvorka:family

Avoid usage of URLs in the meaning of URNs i.e. SW identification of the resource should not start with a specific scheme like http:// - use rather some URN like shown above. Only thus you will avoid confusion URNs with URLs. In other words urn:com:e-mental:mindraider:dvorka:refactoring-review resource you may get using various protocols (http:// ftp://) in various representations ((X)HTML, TXT, etc.).

Although human readable URNs should be treaten as opaque! I.e. you should not for example parse URN in order to get name of the resource author or domain.

See also Content based navigation post.

...and that's it. No flamewar please :-)

Gnowsis & MindRaider Synergy

2005-04-03T09:23:00.000-10:00

For some time I'm in touch with Leo Sauermann - head of the Gnowsis project. Gnowsis semantic desktop is unique supa cool piece of software allowing you to interchange information among key applications you are using - like Firefox, Thunderbird and Outlook.

In fact, Leo discovered MindRaider and asked me whether I would like to integrate MR with Gnowsis project - I was surprised & delighted. Integration with Gnowsis will enable MindRaider to attach any resource (like email, bookmark, link, etc) that will be known to Gnowsis to arbitrary Concept ;-) On the other hand, via Gnowsis it will be possible to associate thoughts & ideas created in MindRaider with your homepage, blog or interesting mail you received from your friend.

Integration effort as at the beginning - stay tuned...

MR 0.509

2005-04-03T08:52:00.000-10:00

Today I released new version of MindRaider. This release brings two major features - experimental version of URIQA browser and Drag&Drop support for Concept attachments. Also I improved searching, Folder/Notebook refactoring and made a few minor fixes. As usually you may download from:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mindraider/

Enjoy :-D

Think Different & Enjoy Raider Style

2005-04-03T08:35:00.000-10:00

In order to use MindRaider efficiently you have to change your stereotypes. Instead of making a dozens of text/doc/sxd files and notes that are spread across the file system, write all your thoughts directly to MindRaider and represent them as Concepts. Thus you will have all your thoughts organized into one complex mindmap, that will enable you to navigate, search, combine and reuse your ideas quickly.

Of course, there is a lot of other (meta)data related to particular thought. MindRaider is here to help you with correlation of all of these resources (like documents, links, images, etc.) that are relevant to that thought.

Check also Drag&Drop section of MR documentation for further details.

Do Not Hold Back...

2005-03-10T02:53:00.000-10:00

...especially if you are Windows user! Today's 0.508 maintenance release brings (among other features and bug fixes) cool installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System. As usually you may download from:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mindraider/

Enjoy!

MR 0.507 Released!

2005-03-06T09:23:00.000-10:00

Today's maintenance release fixes various 0.506 bugs and brings classification of Concepts as a new feature.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mindraider/

Enjoy :-D

MR 0.506 is Out!

2005-03-01T20:13:00.000-10:00

This major MR release is important step towards Vodyanoi. It brings greatly improved data model, tight (Mozex based) TWiki integration (check tutorial), Lucene powered search and a lot of UI improvements.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mindraider/

Enjoy :-D

Content-oriented Navigation

2005-02-20T20:11:00.000-10:00

This post aims to point out on one of the most important features of the cognitive base representation in Vodyanoi.

Consider this:

URL vs URN

Web vs Wiki navigation

Link vs Wiki word

Access to the same resource using:

Resources identification:
- http://tasmania/~mindraider/attic#savant
- ftp://tasmania.wb.com/~mindraider/attic#savant
vs
- urn:com:wb:tasmania:mindraider:attic:savant

<href a="..."> vs <span rdf:resource="...">

permalink vs location independence

At the beginning, web was formed by a few web pages. Early search engines were born. They examined pages innards and enabled users to find them using keywords like child. Search engines were able to serve all the pages containing particular keyword ... unfortunately it was the nightmare for their users. Programmers were reading about pregnancy, pacifiers and playsuits, while mothers were studying DOM data model, OS process hierarchy and red-black trees operations complexity...

Then Google era started. Altavista/All the web/... and all blind garrulous crawlers were forgotten. Sophisticated relevance heuristics helped to differentiate pearls from the garbage. Google became the first reasonable step towards to content-orinted web and location independence. Imagine the Internet where you will get what you want just by clicking the proper concept - no more doggie-cats. Pages can be without problems migrated from site to site without breaking links in your browser. But that was not still enough - mothers and programmers were still forced to study "off topic" text...

To rescue these wretches - Grokker came in hurry to help. Trying to guess what user wants to find, it finally enabled users to browse within the proper thematical domain once it was identified. It made mothers and programmers almost happy...

... you have probably already read similar story while browsing some Sematic Web site. To continue with, let me compare current state of the information representation on the web with the world according to Vodyanoi rulez.

In the Vodyanoi network are concept URNs that matters. URL serves as immediate location of the resource that was just resolved. URLs are for URNs, what is IP address for hostname in the Internet. URN oriented RDF models and resource content is resolved on demand and used for navigation and searching.

MindRaider users intentionally represent they thoughts as URN identified concepts that are in turn released to the semantic oriented world to be annotated, reused and searched.

Perhaps one day there will be such content-oriented (semantic) web born and MR will fit that world... I still hope ;-)

MR 0.502b5 Released

2005-02-13T18:15:00.000-10:00

Today's maintenance release brings closer TWiki integration and fixes various bugs - check release notes for further details:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mindraider/

Enjoy :-D

On Open Source

2005-02-12T09:40:00.000-10:00

Despite the fact, that I build commercial SW for several years (in my job), I really like OS. I identified many differences between these two worlds since now I have experiences from both of them. And IMHO this is not about whether you have to/don't have pay for your SW...

Release early, release often!
Basic OS principle that obviously doesn't fit the world of the commercial SW. And it's clear why - while commercial product must be trustworthy, stable and polished; OS is motivated by improvements and progress. It implies that the lenght of the release cycle reasonably differs.

Open source developers deliver features early (even in poor quality) in order to test them on the users and to get feedback. This approach allows them to make it properly next time in the worst case. Also OS teams are loosely-coupled, there are no hobbling processes, no politics and formal analytical/doc requirements - only concise communication used for coordination. It enables OS community to be flexible and to create SW on proof of concept basis.

Reuse here, reuse there,reuse everywhere...
In the world of commercial SW you have two options - either build everything on your own or to make some partnership/OEM/agreement/etc. Always you have to be very careful. You may become hostage of components you have incorporated into your product - these can be buggy, you may discover serious performance issues too late, you may get unsufficient support/doc, etc. and since it's closed source world, you are unable to fix it - you always loose.

OS community enables you to build your SW quickly and let you focus on what you want to achive. There are so many possibilities for reuse - you always find what you need. An only obligation you have, is to allow others to do that with your product as well. And that's the synergy that leads to the rapid evolution of the software...

Well, I know that there is a lot of serious analyses on this topic, and these observations doesn't apply to SW gigants. In this post I just wanted to describe my fresh OS experience. Since I would like to make MR to fit this world, I aspire to understand it :-D

Summoning Vodyanoi

2005-02-12T08:23:00.000-10:00

I promised a high-level roadmap of future releases - here it is...

As I stated many times ago, my primary goal is to drive MR prototype forward with strong focus on my vision - which is in fact distributed layer on top of MR codenamed Vodyanoi. So here are the - goals/objectives of the major releases:

Interoperability
The first goal is to provide resource representation that will enable users to freely transfer they thoughts to/from MindRaider in some interoperable form. Unfortunately it is very complicated to choose proper outline representation...

OPML is designed to prevent interoperability (possibly intentionally). Simply it allows you to do anything you want using very unusual pattern. In addition it's license can be a trap.

OML seems to be promising and I like it, but there is almost no progress for a long time.

PML is in its early draft stage.

HEML is supplementary standards to be used for timelines visualization.

The last release includes experimental OPML and TWiki shorthand export. But this is just a beginning :-) in the future I plan to provide import/export for each of the specs listed above (order matters).

Data Model Finalization
Although MR data model is designed, it is not implemented at all - (low-level technical issues).

There is still missing RDF model for Folders which will enable creation of recursive thematical domains, Attachments are not represented in resources and categorization is not used at all (in spite of the fact that ontologies are already prepared).

In order to minimize changes of the data model (backward compatibility), I would like to solve all this stuff before Vodyanoi will be released for the first time.

Vodyanoi Foundation
After the interoperability and model stabilization milestones will be reached, I plan to deliver the Vodyanoi prototype. Again, analysis is already finished - I will just need some spare time to implement it ;-)

Vodyanoi will allow you to surf your Folders/Notebooks/Concepts using browser. XHTML representation of these resources will follow state of the art RDF/XHTML symbiosis following the SW ideas. You will be allowed to subscribe for Notebooks of you friends and to annotate their Concepts with your thoughts. Thus the Vodyanoi empire will be spawn...

OPML/TWiki Export Released

2005-02-06T10:33:00.000-10:00

Brand new MR release brings export of Notebooks to TWiki shorthand
and OPML. Also it fixes bugs related to Graph navigator and streams.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mindraider/

Enjoy ;-)

On the way towards SW

2005-02-02T21:12:00.000-10:00

After exchanging a few emails with Danny Ayers (who forced me to formulate some MR related thoughts - thanks Danny ;-) I decided to describe in more details e-mentality future, and how MR fits to this jigsaw.

To start with, be sure that MR is just beginning. Both in terms of technical implementation and functionality. As you probably determined, released MR version is in fact a prototype. A lot of work have to be done to make it work properly.
But purpose of this (and future) MR releases is to establish basic building block of e-mentality. I.e. MR accomplished its mission. Currently I simply don't want to take care of technical details - I just want to show the direction.

As far as the future of MR is concerned, I want to go after my primary goal - Sematic Web enabled user agent allowing you to practice mapping of your mind that can be shared with others.

In other words I want to enable MR users to:

"Materialize" their thoughts in a way that is comprehensible both for humans and machines.

Categorize their own concepts using convenient taxonomies in order to let machines suspect what is going on.

Annotate thoughts of others and navigate through them using "human mind friendly" views/representations.

What I DON'T want to do is semantics inferencing engine, ToDo list,
time organizer, RDF editor, cool graphics navigator, etc.
I DON'T believe in AI driven agents solving complex tasks, reliable expert system frameworks or semantic inferencing engines emulating human mind - your mind is unique and cann't be replaced. Understand it!

I prefer to keep things simple - therefore (after a few "wrong way" attempts coping with general graphs & RDF) I decided to build on top of traditional outliners approach that is proven by time.

Note that MR is ready for vision stated above - "behind the scene" is REST-wise data model, flexible resource representation and extensible metadata layer describing underlaying resources.

You may await feature-release roadmap corresponding to this vision soon. Stay tuned :-)

Conclusion: Focus matters, features suck.

MR Goes to The Public

2005-01-30T22:31:00.000-10:00

The first public release of the MindRaider is here! It aims to introduce key features of SW style outlining/mind mapping. Initially it includes typical outliner refactoring primitives, configurable rendering and search. You may download distributions from:

http://mindraider.sourceforge.net/download.html

Enjoy!

Model Intro

2005-01-11T23:03:00.000-10:00

As you already know, MindRaider mission is to organize not only your hard drive content but also your cognitive base (toughts, ideas) and social relationships in a way that enables quick navigation, concise representation and inferencing.

Your resources (files, links, thoughts, friends, etc.) are represented as Concepts that are organized to Notebooks. On top of the Concepts within a Notebook is built (RDF based) metadata layer that enables MindRaider to provide various Notebook's Facets (flat/hierarchical/graph-oriented views). Notebooks are further organized to Folders allowing users to build custom thematical domains.

Data model follows the REST style. Concept/Notebook/Folder resources are represented in open formats - XML/XHTML (optionaly) rendered via XSLT (processing instruction) + CSS and RDF. Also it is intended to provide OPML export.

Sourceforge Infiltrated by MR

2005-01-11T21:56:00.000-10:00

Yesterday MindRaider passed sourceforge.net verification process so it is now available at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mindraider/

You may await the first α release soon ;-)

Christmas Progress

2005-01-05T23:55:00.000-10:00

During the Christmas there was a time to drive Mind Raider prototype forward. You may be interested in some screen shots ;-)

Btw, the logo was created by me :-D. I also prepared a number of posts related to MR technical details, but currently I'am not able finish any of these - so stay tuned!

e-past

2004-12-02T23:18:00.000-10:00

In fact e-mentality is my spare time project since my college studies (late 90's). At the beginning there were just vague ideas. Since that time I met several people that have something similar on their mind, spent many nights writing informal analyses. Lately I determined that I finally know how e-mentality should look like :-) - how it fits SW and its ontologies, annotations, inference engines and agents...

Seriously I started development of e-mentality in 2002. Since that time I have created two prototypes and now I'm going to start implementation of the third one - codenames follow:

CognOr
Cognition Organizer era started by months of analytical work. I suspected what I want to create, but didn't know how it should look like and how it can be implemented. I considered various languages and platforms. Finally I decided to create Java application based on Melnik's RDF API and Touchgraph library. The first prototype brough a convenient abstract model for cognition outlining.

MindRider
After analytical review of CognOr, I changed my mind regarding to the most important technical topics mainly related to REST-wise resource design, metadata vs. data, RDF incorporation and outline rendering functionality (main UI level features). In fact, I created the second prototype almost from scratch. It was based on Jena and significatly improved Touchgraph library.

Vodyanoi
During the implementaion of MindRider I learnt that rendering of a general graph in Touchgraph manner can be cool, but it's confusing and in some cases even unusable (hugo models). I considered various approaches e.g. Grokker like or Personal Brain like, but finally I decided to use very simple and fixed form that would be very close to some textual representation (its design is still in progress). Also I changed my mind on architecture of the e-mentality - mainly regarding to location of the user data (cognition) - Google desktop release was the final impulsion.

Now I'm analysing Vodyanoi - the third e-mentality prototype. Apparently it will be realized as a server/thin client framework (ensuring that cognition will be accessible anywhere from any (even small) device and accessible using current web browsers - rendering of stored cognition in very simple and almost textual synoptic form; providing a customizable way allowing to acquire convenient representations of resources (cognition entities) via XHTML & CSS (& XSLT) combination. Resource type system and templates will make using it efficient; and the overall architecture will enable e-mentality riders to share their cognition bases in a collaborative environment.

MindRaider

Although I'am analysing Vodyanoi, I'am building MindRaider :-) In order to prepare Vodyanoi release I abused MindRider - it is now renamed to MindRaider. In fact Vodyanoi will be built on top of MindRaider kernel - MR as server providing REST style HTTP access to resources. Screenshots and kernel details are comming soon...

e-future

2004-12-02T21:52:00.000-10:00

e-mentality aims to be outline editor that fits the environment of Semantic Web. In order to design e-mentality properly I'm looking for answers to the following questions:

Is there any 'real world' use case for Semantic Web? Which is it?

How fit REST and Semantic Web?

How to conveniently design abstractions used to outline human cognition?

How would be defined REST resource and API over such abstract model?

Is there any convenient/human friendly visualization of a general graph?

How to use RDF/RDFS/OWL properly? Which are non-use cases?

How to differ data and metadata?

How to name (URI) resources properly?

Location of the data aka is server/thin client the right way?

... and many others

I will use this blog to describe e-mentality step by step - basic motivation, design + analytical decisions and particular feature realization. Also prototypes that were already implemented by me will be introduced.

There is a lot of work that must be done in order to make e-mentality what I want it would be, but looking forward to this challenge.

Intro

2004-11-28T23:59:00.000-10:00

For me, e-mentality project is kind of 'technology trainer'. I'm fascinated by REST, cognition visualization, outline editors, Semantic Web, Wiki, blog related protocols and many other emerging technologies.

I started to work on e-mentality since I missed an application allowing me to organize my data - mostly research and analytical documents - in a convenient way. In order to force myself to formulate thoughts and verify various ideas I decided to enter the blogosphere.