Até que enfim saiu o primeiro pôster do novo filme da série Star Trek dirigido por J.J Abrams, com novos atores intepretando os personagens clássicos da série. Na foto o novo vilão Nero e a versão jovem de Uhura, Spock, Capitão Kirk, todos com as cores originais do seu uniforme, juntando as quatros fotos forma-se o símbolo da Frota Estrelar. Aproveito para comentar cada foto e a versão jovem dos personagens clássico da série.

Pela ordem o primeiro é o vilão Nero interpretado por Eric Bana, incorrencível com tanta maquiagem, muito mistêrio cerca a história do personagem, mas o visual lembra bastante as séries e filmes dos anos 80 e 90.

A versão jovem da personagem Uhura intepretada pela atriz Zoe Saldana que parece ter tentado copiar o olhar da atriz original Nichelle Nichols, fisícamente pelo menos ela se parecem.

Fiquei arrepiado ao ver o ator Zachary Quinto, conhecido por ser o Sylar em Heroes como Spock, o olhar, as sombracelhas, claro a orelha Lembra muito Leonard Nimoy como o Spock original.

A minha maior e infelizmente decepção ficou por conta do ator Chris Pane como o Capitão Kirk, não entendi o que ele quis passar com esse olhar, comparado com o ator William Shatner os dois não se parecem nada, talvez com uma boa atuação ele consiga ultrapassar essas diferenças.

Star Trek estréia no dia 8 de maio de 2009 e até lá aguarde muitas novidades!

I’m not just talking about blogs and social networks, but the recent explosion of social search.  New search technologies that provide interactivity, personalisation and dynamism offer a remarkable alternative to mainstream search engines.  It’s time we look beyond Google because it doesn’t have all the answers.

Search 0.0 – 3.0
Search 2.0 developer Ebrahim Ezzy’s explanation of the three generations of search technology helps to understand how search has evolved:

Traditional Search Engines work to retrieve information using Boolean queries, link analysis and text relevance. These first generation search engines, like Alta Vista, rank sites according to page content.
Second generation search (eg. Google) uses link analysis for ranking search results.
Third generation search engines combine the functions of the “old” search engines with new models that take into account “user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialised capabilities that make information more productive”.

I’ve compiled a list (by no means comprehensive) of third generation/social search engines that will make you think twice about declaring Google King of the Search Wars.

Scour is a social search engine aggregator that allows users to vote and rank search results using their own criteria.  It delivers search results from the top 3 search engines  (Google, Yahoo and MSN) after taking into account  user feedback.  Users earn points for each search, vote and comment they make, which can be redeemed for Visa gift cards.

Rollyo is a community-driven search engine that allows users to create their own personalised search engines based on sites they add to their SearchRoll.  Given the information overload that we have to endure on the web, these search engines conveniently allow users to filter and control the amount and quality of their searches.  Swicki works in a similar way to Rollyo, but returns comprehensive text or multimedia searches on a specific topic/theme chosen by the user. 

While Google is great for searching pages, it’s less handy when searching for people.  That’s where Sightix comes in.  This unique service provides users with personalised searches based on their social networks, friends and connections.   While traditional search engines will return the same results to different users, Sightix takes into account the identity of each user and returns unique, personalised and relevant results based on that user’s social graph.    Whozat, SpocK and Zoominfo are other people search engines that are worth a visit, especially if you want concise information on an individual.

A major shortcoming of Google is that it doesn’t index multimedia content and Flash files, but now there are search engines dedicated exclusively to this.  Mediawombat is a search engine for multimedia and Flash files only.  Snipp.tv is another valuable multimedia search engine that can be used for finding video and audio files.

My favourite of the lot is Clusty, which organises search results into folders, making it easier and faster to navigate.  So while a Google search of Nelson Mandela will return millions of page results that you’ll have to wade through to find specific information on his 90th birthday celebration, Clusty returns this impressive, organized  collection of folders ranging from Biography, 90th Birthday Celebration, Nobel Peace Prize, etc. 

Another search engine that will speed up your research is Cluuz, because it goes beyond providing mere links as search results.  It peers into the Web, extracts information, images and tags relating to your search word and presents them to the user so that relevant information can be found faster.

Niche search engines are also on the increase: 5tvs is an Internet TV search aggregator, Metaverselink can be used to search within virtual worlds, Gogooligans is an educational search engine for kids, and Codase and Krugle are every programmer’s dream as they index only source code (Java, CSS etc) and technical information.

Traditional vs. Social Search
Social search may be more innovative and intuitive than traditional search, but it cannot replace traditional search engines.  When used together with mainstream search engines, they can yield powerful search results that can be more productive and valuable for the user. 

One of the problems with community-driven search engines like Scour is that they depend on the participation of users to stay afloat , and are also susceptible to spammers.

While many new Search 2.0 tools are aspiring to be the next Google, it’s not about competition but collaboration.  As Ezzy points out, even the mainstream search giants have realised the potential of social search and implemented some of its features.  Yahoo! has introduced My Web 2.0 and Google offers bookmarking and tagging of search history for users. 

The future of search- and the web at large - is definitely leaning more towards man, not machine.

*********************************

Using a similar framework to O'Reilly's Web 2.0 definition, let's first define what Mobile 2.0 is all about. Once we define what is is, we can discuss applications for social network over mobile.

Mobile 1.0 vs. Mobile 2.0
ringtones, ringbacks <---> Vringo (video caller ID)
reading <---> publishing/participating
pull <--> push
connected to PC environment <--> connected to my web environment
411 <--> Google411
GPS <--> Google Maps
p2p <--> p2community
Dodgeball <--> facebook, android
casual gaming <--> networked gaming

Social Networking's Dirty Secret: Socially-accepted voyeurism
As Benchmark Capital's Michael Eisenberg, is fond of saying: the secret to successful social networks is how well they leverage voyeurism. People have an innate need to see what others (especially people they know) are doing.

Facebook's overwhelming success points to this. From a business user's perspective, Facebook came out of nowhere and trounced LinkedIn . I have stopped paying for a LinkedIn subscription and migrated my network over to Facebook. I attribute this to one thing and one thing only: Facebook's News Feed. There, I can see all the activity in my network and decide daily whether to participate in what's going on around me. This has major privacy implications as I've written in another insight, but these will abate with time, much like In-Text Advertising has become (almost) entirely acceptable. Google's Open Social platform will also publish such activity streams. As Dave McClure put it succinctly, "people who are going bananas over Beacon should understand that most people on Facebook are used to the default being opt-out (ie, lifestyle transparency), not opt-in (selective sharing)." This is exactly why we've signed up for Facebook.

Covestor and its brethren allow me to subscribe to others' trading portfolios, allowing me a clear view into their decision making process and their performance. This works extremely well because there are large financial incentives involved.

Spock allows people to track what friends and colleagues are doing online. It's what we care about. Effective social networking tools are not just about providing cool javascript tools, it's about lifestyle transparency. An effective mobile version will need a way to address this.

Virality: Doing the heavy lifting for users
Marketers focus on how viral applications are the holy grail for their job function. The truth is for a social network to be accessible to most users, it needs to make my job of recruiting/connecting with my connections easy and palatable. Facebook is a no-brainer. There is critical mass to the user base and now, users outside the network are beginning to feel left out, compelling them to join. But what about smaller, more niche-oriented networks?

Meetup is an amazing network. I recently ran an investment seminar on hedging exposure to the US dollar for American expatriates living abroad. Within minutes of setting up on Meetup, I had over 15 people sign up for my group and RSVP! Meetup has essentially created a network of affinity groups that share nothing other than certain predilections and the desire to meet in person. Once I've joined a group, I'm introduced gently to 1) other groups in my geographic area that 2) share my interests. I didn't need to 'spam' my address book (although that functionality exists). Meetup worked for me because it allowed me to connect with people with whom I share interests immediately, without having to work at it. I'm hooked now.

Collective Wisdom: Harnessing the Wisdom of the Crowds
Social networks allows a user to tap into he collective brain of his/her network. Or as Tim Oreilly puts it, "If an essential part of Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence, turning the web into a kind of global brain, the blogosphere is the equivalent of constant mental chatter in the forebrain, the voice we hear in all of our heads. It may not reflect the deep structure of the brain, which is often unconscious, but is instead the equivalent of conscious thought. And as a reflection of conscious thought and attention, the blogosphere has begun to have a powerful effect."

Techdirt's Insight Community is a great example of one of the ways for networks to tap into the collective experience/knowledge of its members. This is a pretty explicit example but social networks, if used and built effectively, make every node that much more intelligent and knowledgable. The collective intelligence acts as a type of filter and this overarching knowledge helps to make sense of all the noise in the world.

________________________________________

So, let's look at ways of translating/porting these salient features of a web-based social network to the hardware/usage limitations of the mobile device.

Voyeurism
The current generation of mobile devices, including Blackberry-type PDAs, are still used primarily for reading, not writing. So whatever level of voyeurism exists on mobile networks, it's going to focus on phone activity, not publishing activity.

Call log activity: sharing my call list, when, how long I spoke to that person would be very interesting for my connections. Also, seeing a brief profile of the person on the other end of the call could be pretty engaging. SMS/email activity can be added to a sort of Facebook-esque News Feed. And clearly, any browsing or web activity can be shared out as well.

Geotracking: Wouldn't it be interesting to know where my friends are at a certain time. If they're using their phones, it could be possible to design a system to provide geographic fingerprinting to be shared with the network.

Convergent device usage: If I'm listening to 50 Cent's new album, my network wants to know and I want them to know. Rudimentary tatings systems can be implemented and if licensing issues can be addressed (good luck), you could find a way to share music with the network.

Conferencing my people in with your people: A technological challenge, but why not work to find a way to conference people in (maybe by calling in to a specific #) so that different network members all hop on a shared line to chat spontaneously or with advanced planning. So, instead of learning about what my friends are up to via a news feed, I can speak to them directly.

Virality:
Creating soft sales: Spamming my friends doesn't work. I've avoided joining new networks that will require me to send out (yet another) email inviting my whole address book in. I don't want that and it's getting harder and harder to convince my friends to join. Instead, on every SMS I send to my friends, a simple footer would suffice with some compelling reason for them to join my network: data could lure them in or perhaps, a part of my news feed.

Spontaneous get-togethers: Meetup (as mentioned above) has a great system for connecting people with the same affinities and giving them the tools to meet up. Functionality to get my friends to meet me at the local Burger King via a quick conference call or via an SMS round would be compelling. What about other people in my locality? Would they like to join? Do I want them to know about it?

Media can make it jiggy: A song or SMS that I've sent someone can certainly take flight and become viral. Music could be the key element in creating a compelling mobile social network. This is rife with legal issues but if solved, music is one of the most cohesive factors in putting together affinity groups. People who like the same music generally have other shared interests, tastes, backgrounds.

Collective Knowledge:
Share stats out to the network: Making me more informed about what my friends are up to helps me filter out the noise. Call logs play into this while so does music activity. Help me discover new things and new people.

Hierarchy settings: Help users figure out a way to define who are the connectors in my network, who are the idea generators, who are the leaders and who are the followers. Given where people fit in, their knowledge should influence friends differently. This should be accounted for in the network -- it is in real life.

I haven't focused on the concept of mobile network as extension of a web-based network. I think the device used in a mobile network is still so different from a PC that the interaction on a mobile network will require structural differences. Facebook will make a better mobile version but I think there is an opportunity to create a stand-alone mobile social network.

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That’s why when faced with self-doubt or a mild existential crisis it is best to look no further than Google. Yes, I unashamedly Googled myself. It took only 0.27 seconds and produced 2, 280 results for “Nicole Hyman” – aren’t I lucky? And some of the results were just too amusing, like this one:

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Ask the Magic 8 Ball

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Well, it seems that neither I nor the magic 8 ball are certain whether Nicole Hyman will go out with Dillon Campbell. I have never heard of a Dillon Campbell and the Magic 8 ball had this to say when I clicked on the link: You were very bad and the Ball is mad at you.

------------------

While this is very amusing a part of me wishes I could copyright my name. I can see it now, with one simple symbol © I would be safe from the empty riff-raff intent on hi-jacking my brand. I would own my own identity.

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Impractical, I know. But you must understand, it feels as though someone has stolen my identity. For I am not 21 years old , don’t live in Virginia and have no interest in Wicca and yet these individuals all go by the name Nicole Hyman, or at least Google says they do.

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And before you jump to conclusions, the two month break from this blog has not muddled my mind and I haven’t forgotten the topic of my blog. Identity theft and your online behaviour can severely impact on your ability to get a job.

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Think about it. You apply for your dream job with what you think is a flawless CV. You go for an interview. And while that may go well, your future employer may want to know a little more about you. About the ‘real’ you.

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And so they turn to one of the many search engines. And be afraid, because there are search engines designed specifically to search for people like Wink , Pipl and Spock. This doesn’t only lend itself to your identity being stolen but also means that you can be defamed. Last year, blogger John Aravosis was accidentally tagged on Spock as being a paedophile because of a blog post he wrote about Congressman Mark Foley.

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But it doesn’t end there. Have you ever thought that your future employers might decide to look you up on Facebook? That is, after all a perfect way to do a quick background check on a person and their online lives. For a second ignore any questionable photos or messages you have been meaning to delete from your profile page.

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Imagine that someone registered on Facebook under your name. That they then went to the trouble of finding a picture of you somewhere online , oh believe me these are available , and then used this picture as their profile picture. Is there anything to stop them?

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This actually happed to a to Mirror writer, Samer Elatrash. The fake profile which was set up under Elatrash’s name made all sorts of false and potentially damaging claims about him including adding a Facebook status which read: Samer is in hiding because Yoni Petel has sent the Israeli Mossad to terminate him. Facebook eventually did shut this imposter’s profile down. But the damage had already been down with the imposter Elatrash adding many people as ‘friends’ on Facebook.

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Then there is the case of a top Yale Law graduate who struggled to get a job because of defamatory comments posted about her on an online forum called AutoAdmit. Another Yale graduate discovered that the forum featured her name and a discussion of her breasts. According to a December survey by the Ponemon Institute,

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Roughly half of U.S. hiring officials use the Internet in vetting job applications. About one-third of the searches yielded content used to deny a job.

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So, as I have discovered online identity is such a precarious thing. And while there are services to help protect it, like Reputation Defender , it never really belongs to you. There is nothing to stop someone commenting on a forum or blog using your name and tarnishing your reputation in the process. That’s why you should Google yourself as habitually as you brush your teeth. Or at the very least, do so before you go for a job interview.

Ms. Anderson used to find the whole idea [of Mulder & Scully pursuing a romantic relationship] ridiculous. “There was always part of me that thought, ‘What’s so special about these two, and will everybody not shut up about it?’ ” she said. “And then, while we were doing this movie, somebody sent me a link to a YouTube montage that a fan had put together of Mulder and Scully. Clips of our growing intimacy through the series. One, it was really moving, and two, I couldn’t believe how many times we held hands and actually kissed. And I was left with my very first understanding of what the fans were on about. I finally kind of got it.

Here's the Spock v. Kirk vid:

And here's my favorite vid of all time, Scully and Mulder, in love:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="180" caption="Dr. Spock famous hand gesture"][/caption]

Hand gestures research:

New research at the University of Alberta suggests that gesturing while you talk may improve your access to language. Can't find the right word? You might want to start moving your hands. "What we think is going on here," Nicoladis said, "is that the very fact of moving your hands around helps you recall parts of the story--the gestures help you access memory and language so that you can tell more of the story."

de teaser trailer is al een tijdje uit...

leuk leuk...maar I want more!

hier zijn wat character posters met Chris Pine als Captain Kirk

Zachary Quinto van Heroes als Spock!

De dominicaan Zoe Saldana als Uhuru

en als laatste Eric Bana (van Hulk, Chopper en Munich) als de schurk Nero...(een Romulan?)

waarom dit voor mij zo intriguing is, ligt in het feit dat het geregisseerd wordt door J.J. Abrams, de regisseur van MI-3, bedenker van Alias en Lost en het feit dat her een grote hype om heen zit!
Ik kan echt niet wachten op meer van dit...maar alles is zo hush hush.
Mn homeboy Simon Pegg gaat ook nog es als Scotty spelen!

Het wordt trouwens een soortige prequel..en heeft een mogelijkheid om gruwe te worden (ik hou van innercity slang!)...let's wait it out!

The pics, which are the same as the posters that will be given out at Comic-Con, can be downloaded at StarTrekMovie.com. Also, the fantastic TrekMovie.com website has put them together into one image here.

So the whole world is gushing about the Dark Knight and what do I do?

I post a pic of the new Star Trek Movie Poster.

Why?

Because this blog nonsense is all about keeping ahead of the curve. Dark Knights been out for like 48 hours now - I'm moving forward . . . and this is the new hotness.

Wait - I'm sorry who is directing this thing? The LOST guy . . . Same guy who made that Cloverfield debacle . . .  I see.

Okay nevermind.

Go back about your business. . .

Here's a composite picture of all four:

Zachary Quinto looks perfect as Spock, so very logical with that touch of smug arrogance. Chris Pine is looking nicely cocksure. Zoë Saldaña looks hot in operations red. Nero is supposedly a Romulan, although J.J. Abrams seems to have substituted tatoos for any sort of head ridge.

Thanks to TrekMovie.com and startrekmovie.com for these images.

If you combine them together you get:

Source

I got word about the new posters from SliceofScifi.com which led me to TrekMovie.com and then to the official site for the movie StarTrekMovie.com. There are 4 posters but I really Zachary Quinto's look of Spock which is dead on perfect. Chris Pines as Kirk is my least favorite. Zoe Saldana as Uhura is nicely done. Eric Bana as Nero looks menacing like a Hell's Angel biker but I'm not sure what race he is supposed to represent. Is he an F.F.T.K - Flat faced tattooed Kligon???

Confira ao lado o pôster reunindo Eric Bana, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto e Chris Pine. Além da primeira imagem de Bana como o vilão alienígena do filme Nero, os três tripulantes da Enterprise - respectivamente as versões jovens de Uhura, Spock e Kirk - aparecem com as cores originais de seus uniformes da Frota Estelar.

Star Trek chega aos cinemas em 8 de maio de 2009.

ACTUALIZADO

Poster que na realidade é composto por quatro posters, nos quais se destacam os quatro protagonistas da aventura.

O poster prima por aludir às cores dos uniformes originais usados por William Shatner (Capitão Kirk, amarelo), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock, azul) e Nichelle Nichols (Uhura, vermelho). Aqui, o trio é substituído por Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto e Zoe Saldana, respectivamente. A estes junta-se ainda o vilão Nero, uma nova personagem da franquia, interpretada pelo conhecido protagonista de Munique e Tróia, Eric Bana.

Saliente-se ainda a forma do poster, numa óbvia alusão ao logotipo da federação Starfleet.

ACTUALIZAÇÃO

Realizado por J.J. Abrams (Alias - A Vingadora; Perdidos), o filme promete conquistar Trekkies e vulgares espectadores já a partir de 8 de Maio de 2009.

Obs. - Não há para já data de estreia no nosso país.

Fonte: EW

What do you think, is this film going to be any good, whilst not a fan of Star Trek myself the signs all seem good, maybe this will be the Star Trek film to win non fans over?

When their powers combine, you get...

From the look of the posters, it looks like this movie is set to ooze all sorts of sweaty, tatooed sex come May. Get ready for it.

Que de chemin parcouru depuis que Tim Berners-Lee créa le Web en 1991. Année qui a aussi vu l'apparition de la première génération des outils dédiés à la recherche de sites Web. Ces sites ont connu une évolution quantitative exponentielle entraînant de fait, une surproduction d'information (infobésité), ce qui implique aujourd'hui, la nécessité d'avoir des mécanismes et outils de recherche qui permettent une recherche efficace (rapidité et pertinence) de l'information ainsi publiée. Cette nécessité a été levier de l'évolution technologique des moteurs de recherche, mais aussi de l'apparition du « nouveau » concept qu'est le Web sémantique, dont je me propose de faire l'exposé dans ce billet.

Qu'en est-il ?

Brièvement expliqué, ce concept a pour objet de faciliter l'accès aux informations disponibles sur le Web. La vision de Tim Berners-Lee est de rendre la sémantique des ressources du Web explicite, de manière que les programmes puissent l'exploiter comme nous autres humains. Cela grâce à l'interopérabilité des métadonnées qui va permettre aux moteurs de trouver et de mettre en relation des données jusqu'alors confinées dans leurs sites (ou leurs bases de données, une grande partie du Web invisible est confinée dans des bases de données). Le but est de permettre aux robots (fureteurs du Web) de "comprendre" le contenu des sites, grâce à l'emploi de langages adéquats (le RDF ou Resource Description Framework pour les métadonnées ; le OWL : Web Ontology Language pour les ontologies).

Pour  illustrer ce qu'est le Web sémantique, prenons un exemple tout simple : on choisit de faire une recherche sur « Abdou Diouf ». Un moteur classique comme Google va afficher des milliers de pages où figure le nom Abdou Diouf, mais un moteur estampillé Web sémantique va orienter la recherche en proposant le nom « Abdou Diouf » selon des qualificatifs (fonction, profession,...plus précisément pour cet exemple : président du Sénégal, secrétaire général de la francophonie, etc.). Donc il faut arriver à ce que les moteurs de recherche puissent "saisir le sens" des ressources du Web qu'ils indexent (expression qui a une autre signification ici et qui est différente d'une quelconque compréhension du langage naturel par les machines). Ceci implique, dans l' « idéologie » du Web sémantique de rendre cette information disponible à  ces programmes sous forme d'ontologies (voir ci-dessus). Le bénéfice principal que l'on obtient avec pareille chose, est l'abrègement considérable du temps de recherche et qui rime avec réduction importante du bruit (informations superflues non désirées).

La philosophie du Web sémantique est aussi d'exprimer les métadonnées dans un modèle entité-relation (voir les FRBR) et d'identifier toutes les entités à l'aide d'URI (Uniform Resource Identifier, « identifiant uniforme de ressource »). Pour nous bibliothécaires et assimilés, les enjeux que nous devons saisir concernent : l'exposition des données structurées dont nous disposons par l'émiettement de la connaissance en proposant une description bibliographique au niveau le plus élémentaire. Cet enrichissement des données nécessite la reconnaissance d'entités nommées (de façon à ce que les moteurs reconnaissent les noms de personne, les lieux, les manifestations., etc.), leur catégorisation et leur localisation géographique.

Dans le prochain billet je me propose d'approfondir l'argumentation ainsi introduite et qui vise à monter que les bibliothèques sont très bien placées pour réaliser ce travail et doivent être des acteurs sûrs et "incontournables" du Web des données (autre appellation du Web sémantique).

Pour ce qui est des outils, je vous propose trois moteurs estampillés Web sémantique :

• Hakia : (2006) Le défi d'Hakia est de construire un moteur de recherche sémantique, c'est-à-dire, destiné à rendre les résultats des recherches basés plus particulièrement sur le sens des mots clés. Le principe étant de faire la relation entre les mots, à la manière du cerveau humain. C'est une nouveauté par rapport aux moteurs de recherche classiques qui utilisent la popularité et les occurrences par indexation conventionnelle. 
• Spock : moteur pour recherche d'individus (fonctionnement depuis août 2007). La fonction de recherche y est accessible à tous les internautes, sans inscription préalable. Il suffit de renseigner le nom d'un individu et éventuellement d'affiner la requête avec son âge, son sexe et son origine géographique. Spock offre aussi la possibilité de rechercher des individus à partir de mots-clés comme «Senegalese musician», qui remonte alors une liste de musiciens sénégalais (je vous laisse deviner ceux qui sont les premiers cités ou bien faites l'expérience). Chaque profil apparaît sous forme de fiche renseignée d'une photo, de tags (mots-clés) censés décrire l'individu, et d'une liste de proches. Si l'accès à la recherche de base est accessible à tous, Spock invite les utilisateurs à s'inscrire afin de profiter de fonctions supplémentaires. Cela leur permet d'affiner leur propre profil mais aussi de participer à l'amélioration du service en ajoutant des tags aux individus pour mieux les qualifier (par exemple, journaliste, musicien...), l'objectif étant d'améliorer la pertinence du moteur.
• Swoogle : (développé depuis 2004 par Ebiquity group à l'Université du Maryland) moteur de recherche sur les ontologies.

Ce Web sémantique, selon certains spécialistes, est la future évolution du Web (3.0 ?), raison de plus de demeurer éveillé et/ou veilleur pour ne pas rester en rade.

Merci à Pani Zuza Wiorogorska pour ta précieuse collaboration

Prochainement la suite au même port d'escale.

PS : pensée pieuse pour madame Rose Dieng (éteinte ce 30 juin 2008 à Nice), spécialiste d'Intelligence Artificielle à l'INRIA et travaillant ces dernières années sur la gestion des connaissances et le web sémantique. Cette compatriote s'était vue décerner par le Ministère de la Recherche (France) et le groupe EADS le prix Irène Joliot-Curie 2005 distinguant ainsi une femme qui s'est affirmée par son parcours et sa contribution à la science. Je vous propose une de ses interventions concernant le web du futur où elle parle entre autres du Web sémantique.

Ce document est mis en ligne sous Licence Creative Commons.

]]> http://gregorus.wordpress.com/?p=242 Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:12:26 +0000 gregorus http://gregorus.wordpress.com/?p=242 Heh.  Indeed.

A classic blogging construction, oft put down in jest, which is owed to the Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds (I never read him).  And yet it makes me feel strange, because one of the words is among my most favorite and the other is one of my worst pet peeves.

We'll give you the bad news first.  Heh.  I hate heh.  I usually tell people this whenever they use it, and most people are polite enough to stop using it when I tell them.

Why do I hate it?

It's patronizing and more than a little rude.  Basically what it's saying when someone uses it online is "what you said is supposed to be funny, I understand that, but it really wasn't and I have nothing worth saying about it."  Am I wrong?  And that sentiment just seems rude.  I much prefer "hehe" or "hee" or just "yeah."

Indeed, on the other hand.  Indeed.  I've loved this word for a long time.  One of the greats in the pantheon of television, Mr. Spock, had this as his catchphrase.  All you need to do is raise one eyebrow and say this word and you are the most logical and cool, calm, collected dude there ever was.  I thought Spock made this word as awesome as it could be.

Then, Omar started using it.  Omar Little, the character from The Wire is even more cool, calm, and collected, and when he says indeed you take notice.  He is another member of the pantheon, but he doesn't say it anything like Spock did in my youth.  He says "Oh, In-DayEEED" in that Ballmorr accent.  So awesome.

So, my least favorite word and my favorite word are paired up on the internet.  These things happen.  What words are on your list of pet peeves or must-haves and why?

Onsdag kveld ankom jeg i hvertfall arvika. Det var det liv og røre, mye folk altså. Fikk heldigvis plass på den store campingen da. Første dagen med festival, altså Torsdag så jeg familjen. Det var ikke SÅ bra som alle skal ha det til, men det var litt fett. Etter det så jeg slagsmålsklubben. Laise for et liv! Og faen så bra det var! Jeg kjøpte meg en DEILIG Håkan-skjorte og hadde den på meg når jeg så han live. Det var helt fantastisk å se han. Jeg sto med klump i halsen når han spilte favorittsangen min, og alt var bare helt fantastisk!Etter Håkan sprang jeg til Apollo for å se Kate Nash, det var fett, men det plaget meg litt at hun speeda opp låtene så mye, spesielt når det gjelder Skeleton Song, fordi det er en sang jeg liker veldig veldig godt. Men fett var det, speeda opp eller ikke. Etter Kate Nash gikk jeg for å se The Kooks, og det var her en plass jeg klarte å miste / få frastjålet kameraet mitt. PLutselig var det uansett vekk, men The Kooks var digg.

Og t-skjorta ser forresten slik ut:

Fiiin!

Fredag så jeg et helt band. Jeg var litt for nervøs over tanken på å se Kent så jeg satt på campen og chilla mens jeg var på festivalområdet en liten stund og så noen minutter av noen band. Fabulous! Kent var uansett noe av det mest fantastiske jeg har vært med på. Jeg sang, jeg lo, jeg gråt, jeg var rett og slett bare helt jævla lykkelig. Så dro jeg til campen, satt oppe og snakka før det var kveld.

Lørdag sov jeg til to på dagen, utrolig nok med tanke på hvordan temperaturen de dagene jeg var der var. Jeg er sikker på at temperaturen inne i teltet var på 30-40 grader når jeg våkna om morgenen. Lørdagen starta jeg altså med å bli utsatt for tidenes monsun. HERREGUD så gøy det var. Helt plutselig blåste det opp til storm og jeg som ikke hadde ekstra jakke med og som hadde mistet den ene jakken jeg hadde med meg måtte stå i t-skjorte fordi jeg måtte spare den ene jakken jeg hadde til jeg skulle reise dagen etter. HERREGUD så kaldt det var. Etter at stormen ga seg så jeg Combichrist, Totalt Jävla Mörker, Looptroop Rockers (kan du tro at jeg ditcha The Go! Team til fordel for de? Vel, nå ble TGT forsinka fordi Combichrist ble det så jeg hadde ikke rukket å se de før jeg skulle se Yelle, som var driiiiitfett!) Før jeg avslutta kvelden med Death Cab For Cutie som brakte fram tårer og S.P.O.C.K som var fett men som ble ødelagt av at jeg sto og frøs.

Ellers har jeg hatt det fett. Tok tidenes lengste dusj etter at jeg kom fram til hotellet i går, og spiste en fantastisk frokost som inneholdt grovbrød med appelsinsyltetøy.

Deilig å være der, men deilig å komme hjem igjen!

A few weeks ago, I ran across a term I hadn't heard of in the one-star Amazon.com reviews of Twilight, a term used to describe Bella Swan, the heroine of the series: "Mary Sue." Okay, bias alert time: because the series is notable for its chaste longing (and absence of sex), I assumed wrongly that the term "Mary Sue" meant something like, "Prissy, nonsexual, goodie-two-shoes heroine who is a perfect exemplar of 1950's-era femininity."

Wrongo. Damn those preconceptions, anyway.

The term "Mary Sue," according to Wikipedia, source of all wisdom (well, all of MY very dubious wisdom, anyway), is vastly more entertaining and useful than my original misunderstanding:

Mary Sue, sometimes shortened simply to Sue, is a pejorative term used to describe a fictional character who plays a major role in the plot on such a scale that suspension of disbelief fails due to the character's traits, skills and abilities being tenuously or inadequately justified. Such a character is particularly characterized by overly idealized and clichéd mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors.

I admit, I had never heard that term before, although it's apparently been floating around for, oh, the last twenty years or so, give or take. The problem is, it's been floating around in the weird and often wonderful (or sometimes freakish in a sex-at-the-car-accident kinda way) world of fan fiction, a world with which I'm only passingly familiar, and mostly because of my friend Michelle, who was the kind of person who would go to the Star Trek convention dressed in a custom-made outfit.  HARD CORE.

For those of you who are basically clueless, like me, fan fiction is the writing of noncanonical stories or longer works of fiction starring the characters from a television series, film, or book. The great green granddaddy greatspawn of fanfic is probably Star Trek, but X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, and a host of others have engendered their own sources of fan-written fiction, some of which is awesome and some of which is positively dreadful. The virtue of fan fiction is that it allows fans to explore possibilities inherent in the characters or the basic setup of the story that the writers themselves didn't choose to explore, didn't think of, or just plain couldn't explore given the limitations of television or film censorship.  Of those, my personal favorite is surely the fanfic exploration of this eternal question: What would happen if Kirk and Spock were abandoned by the Enterprise on an alien planet and Spock went into Pon Farr, the Vulcan urge to mate that must end in sexual satisfaction or death?

Um...interesting question. If you were Kirk, what would you do?

And therein lies the problem, at least for many people, with fan fiction: in asking the question "If you were in the Star Trek (or Buffy or X-Files or Lost or Vampire Chronicles) universe, what would you do?" the answer is too often, "Create a placeholder character in which I can insert myself!"

Enter Mary Sue.

From the Wikipedia article, I stumbled upon the delightful essay, "150 Years of Mary Sue" by Pat Pflieger in which Pflieger sets out the essence of what makes a Mary Sue character so incredibly annoying:

She's amazingly intelligent, outrageously beautiful, adored by all around her -- and absolutely detested by most reading her adventures. She's Mary Sue, the most reviled character type in media fan fiction. Basically, she's a character representing the author of the story, an avatar, the writer's projection into an interesting world full of interesting people whom she watches weekly and thinks about daily. Sometimes the projections get processed into interesting characters, themselves. Usually, though, they don't.

Many hate her, but she is alive in every fandom. She fences with Methos and Duncan MacLeod; she saves the Enterprise, the Voyager, or the fabric of time and space; she fights with Jim Ellison in defense of Cascade; she battles evil in Sunnydale alongside Buffy Sommers. She impresses the heroes of both The Girl and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; she makes Ben Stone and Mike Logan of Law & Order go weak at the knees; Ham Tyler of V marvels at her strength; Jasper Jax of General Hospital is captivated by her; Benton Fraser of Due South palpitates when she is near; she rules the night of the Vampire Chronicles.

Though she doesn't mention Bella Swan -- the essay was written long before Twilight -- Pflieger's description not only fits Meyer's heroine precisely, but encapsulates so neatly a quality that I've found grating for years.

(At this point, I can hear some Gentle Readers banging their heads on the keyboard, thinking I'm about to excoriate young adult fiction again and hold up Pride and Prejudice as the symbol of All That Is Better, but I swear I'm not.  Oh, FWIW, I'm sure there's Pride and Prejudice fanfic out there too.  Naturally, I'm sure that otherwise straitlaced Austen fans indulge their fantasies involving some -- ahem -- persuasion between Darcy and Elizabeth, or, more entertainingly, between Darcy and Mr. Bingley.  The one I really, REALLY want to read, though, is Collins and Lady Catherine.)

I was just amused as heck with the Pflieger essay because as I read her description, I kept thinking of all the Mary Sues I've encountered in "mainstream" fiction over the years. Here are some of my favorites:

1. "I am Ayla, Hear Me Roar"

Okay, I loved Clan of the Cave Bear, and seriously, I must have read that book a zillion times from adolescence until a few years ago. Rich in its research, unpredictable in its plot, and haunting in its ending, it's a book that keeps grabbing me even now...and I cannot say earnestly enough that Jean M. Auel should have STOPPED THERE and never written one single word more.

It's not enough that Ayla learns survival on her own (in the first book) and teaches herself to hunt with the sling (in the first book), but Auel goes on (and on and on) in the subsequent books to have Ayla do all of the following:

• Invent the domestication of the horse, wolf, and feline
• Invent the medical practice of stitching a detached muscle
• Be co-inventor of the atlatl
• Invent rapid firestarting using iron pyrite and flint
• See into the future

2. Jennet, the Brilliant Female Scientist

This heroine of James Morrow's The Last Witchfinder is a brilliant young scientist in the late 1600s to early 1700s, and despite the fact that she's a girl, her equally brilliant, rich, and accomplished Aunt Isobel teaches her all about science, including how to read Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica in the original Latin. Additionally, Jennet...

• Lives with the Native Americans, whom she (of course) regards from a modern politically correct perspective before she escapes from them
• Meets a group of escaped slaves on a desert island, whom she (of course) regards them from a modern politically correct perspective before she leaves the island
• Seduces the young Ben Franklin and has a child with him
• Writes a monumental scientific treatise

Unfortunately, the book owes more than a little debt to the far more entertaining (and far funnier) novel Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones, by Erica Jong. Note: This book is...ah, well, suffice to say it's written by Erica Jong. Don't expect it to be a read-aloud at storytime unless your family storytime is a lot more interesting than ours is. Contains the best (and laugh-aloud funniest) catalogue of 18th-century terms for the pudenda ever written.

I know I kvetch too much about fiction, but bottom line, I guess some of my kvetching comes from the fact that I often feel cheated. I don't have a hell of a lot of free time, so when I do, I don't want to spend it reading about how delightfully charming someone is (when she's not being adorably klutzy and adored by all the men -- and some of the women -- around her). I don't really need my protagonists to be bland inserts for the reader or stand-ins for the author unless the author is prepared to deal with him- or herself honestly (or at least uniquely), not as an idealized tabula rasa on which both s/he and the reader write themselves.  Hell, I suspect that Philip Roth and John Irving have been doing little more than that for the entirety of their careers, and you can throw in J.D. Salinger on top of that pile as well, but what's different about these characters is you could never call Alex Portnoy an idealized anything, nor would you confuse him with Irving's Garp or Holden Caulfield.

Mostly, I feel deprived of a character's unique voice in a Mary Sue story, you know? Has anyone else noticed that all too often, these characters speak with a cocky know-it-all bravado that even Will Smith would be embarrassed to read aloud? Pflieger comes up with some great examples here:

Mary Sue is the toughest character who ever lived -- when she doesn't exude whimsy. Janaris has delicate hands, but Methos has "seen deadly accurate knives thrown with this hand, necks broken with this hand, and dozens of Immortals lose their heads to a sleek, savagely swift blade gripped in this hand. ... Jana was more than capable of taking care of herself." And she has, killing "one of the best -- and most treacherous -- Immortals in the Game." In Florida, Callisto has slain worse vampires than Buffy Sommers does in California: "Miami has it's share of vampires, but they tend to be more evil.'" Rowan Michaels twice slams her dislocated shoulder back into place, each time staggering and swearing like 15 drunken sailors; she almost emasculates Methos when he calls her "girl": "'Never.' she whispered in the silence of the room, as she slowly released her grip on his crotch. 'Never call me *girl* again.'" She is all-too-familiar with "that icy cold spot she always felt just before the shit hit the fan". Fearing that she's "becoming terribly predictable," she is reminded by a little nagging voice in her head that, "Predictable CAN get you dead." Her mere presence bodes ill: seeing Rowan come into his bar, Joe Dawson cringes: "'Ah, shit.' he moaned under his breath and waited for her. *This is gonna be bad.* he thought."

This is almost as wretched as the incredibly talented, born-on-a-battlefield-and-undiscovered-queen-of-the-planet Athyn Blackmantle in Blackmantle, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison's disastrous sci-fantasy roman a clef, a heroine who declared something to the effect of, "In my culture, we don't turn the other cheek -- we snatch off both of yours."

Reading that, I'm painfully reminded of a story told by one of my friends in the Society for Creative Anachronism.  We were sitting around one day when she told me that one of her friends had been returning from fighter practice when she was assaulted in a park. I now realize this was a Mary Sue story in the guise of an Amusing Anecdote. "Little did he know," my SCA friend said -- and I think she really did say "Little did he know" -- "that this mugger was assaulting a Grand Edgemistress of the Seventh Level, a Knight of the Realm..." or whatever title she mentioned (I don't really remember what it was; for all I know, it could be Knight of the Hollow Coconuts), "...and so Mary Sue fearlessly unsheathed her two-handed Claymore, which of course weighs something like thirty pounds, and said, 'Have at thee, varlet!' and he was SO AFRAID to see a Claymore -- what amounts to thirty pounds of a sharpened steel bar -- pointed at his chest that he ran away screaming..."

Blah, blah, blah...Your balls clank much?

I could go on, but I'd rather hear from other people. Whom should I add to this list? Who are some other notable Mary Sues in "mainstream" fiction?

Oh, and because I couldn't resist, enjoy this picture:

A twisting ribbon of glowing gas marks the point where the expanding blast wave
from a stellar explosion known as SN 1006 is sweeping through.
When I spotted this supernova remnant the Trekker within me cried out KIRK. It looks like the Nexus energy ribbon that had trapped a couple of ships around the turn of the 24th Century. The Enterprise-B arrived and managed to rescue some of the ship's crew members when the ribbon struck out and blasted a hole in the hull of the Enterprise-B, pulling Captain Kirk into the Nexus. 78 years later Kirk left the Nexus to help Picard stop a madman from destroying a world. Or did he? Maybe it was an incarnation of Kirk that helped Picard. Maybe the part of him that is real is still there, possibly chopping wood for another 78 years. Picard owes it to him to find Spock and try to recover Kirk from the Nexus. In a novel by William Shatner Kirk was resurrected by Borg nanoprobes to turn Kirk into a weapon but that ended with Kirk dying. Again. Something that Shatner never should have allowed TPTB to do with the character. Seeing that Ribbon on the MSNBC website made me think of Kirk and how important he is to the Star Trek franchise and I really hope Kirk is restored in a future project. We've killed him off enough - We owe it to him to bring him back while Shatner's alive.

]]> http://5.203.249.173/wp3/?p=6610 Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:21:37 +0000 Karina Longworth http://5.203.249.173/wp3/?p=6610 Yeah, alright...that William Shatner "Common/People" Star Trek mashup spoof thing has a few things in it to make it worth recommending. It is, for the most part, edited with enough proficiency that the voice of William Shatner speak/singing the 1995 Pulp anthem occasionally seems to be coming organically from the animated Captain Kirk's mouth. Formally and in terms of choreography, there's a sort of inverse symmetry between this and the original Pulp video: Where Jarvis Cocker's arms and hips flail in complex patterns as if divorced from his generally blasé face, the animated Kirk and Spock's limbs remain stiff and controlled, while their eyes and eyebrows provide implicit color commentary. Also, recast here as the backup singer on Spock and Kirk's mating song, Uhura is totally fierce.

But it's not as good as could/probably should be. Maybe it's so inevitable that any kind of Star Trek fanfic will involve Kirk and Spock pledging love that we don't actually need to see it play out, we can fill in the gaps between an opening hint and a closing one. But that doesn't justify the fact that when this vid gives up the courtship plot halfway through –– and despite an explosion of spectacle –– it just gets kind of boring until the tacked-on pledge of manly respect coded as expression of repressed romance.

And really: How many videos based on this simple equation do we need to see? We get it: 1+1 = gay, and gay = comedy gold. Aren't we supposed to be demanding more, or is it naive to hold on to hope that media made outside of mainstream corporate mandates could possible transcend easy formula? Why are we so content to allow the agenda for the supposed counterculture of web video to be determined by the comic crutches of people like Andy Samberg?

]]> http://raynay76.wordpress.com/?p=285 Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:32:16 +0000 raynay76 http://raynay76.wordpress.com/?p=285 als das perfekte Video zu einem, ja, schon wieder, NIN, Song ( Sorry, aber momentan nimmt der Mann viel Platz in diesem Blog ein ). Fantastisch, wie Bild und Ton / Text harmonieren.

Ray.

(direkt) (via)

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