What You Need to Know About the Semantic Web

See What You Need to Know About the Semantic Web at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

The February 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review has an article in their Breakthrough Ideas for 2009 series that addresses What You Need to Know About the Semantic Web. I was happy to see the semantic web being talked about seriously in a business magazine. I think the author is right when he says that many business will be caught off guard by the semantic web. However, I took issue with the author's implication that the only semantic web technology that mattered was the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and his neglect of other technologies, such as microformats, that may make the semantic web a reality before the RDF vision is complete. Below is a letter I sent to the editor addressing this issue.

Dear Editor:

Tom Ilube is correct when he says that the semantic web is "likely to catch much of the world off guard." He implies that the technology that will first bring about this change is the Resource Description Framework (RDF). A combination of simpler technologies may make the semantic web a mainstream reality before the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) RDF vision is complete. On the web, simple approaches to solving problems often gain traction before more complex ones. In this case these simpler technologies include Representational State Transfer (REST) and microformats. REST is a concept that was introduced by Roy Fielding in 2000. It is an often overlooked, yet fundamental, building block of the web that has gained more recognition in recent years. Microformats are an incremental "pave the cowpaths" approach to adding richer semantic data to the existing web based on established open standards. Granted, microformats don't have the same scope as the W3C's RDF specification and their goals are only somewhat overlapping. However, it is important for readers to be cautious about placing all of their bets on one technology when there is not yet a consensus as to what technology (or combination of technologies) will make the semantic web revolution a reality.

Bradley Holt
Technical Director & Co-Founder
Found Line
Burlington, Vermont

Found Line Capabilities

See Found Line Capabilities at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

Our meetings with potential clients tend to be pretty informal. We've never done a "pitch" presentation to a prospective client. Taking care of our existing clients is more important to us than putting tons of effort into wooing new clients. This has worked well for us since the vast majority of our business has come through word of mouth. However, our business has matured a lot since we started four years ago. Our capabilities are constantly evolving and growing. Because of this, people that we've built and maintained long term relationships with may not be aware of our current capabilities in web, print & strategy. So, Jason and Liz (with a little help from me) have put together the embedded Found Line Capabilities presentation. Enjoy!

Found Line Capabilities

View more presentations from jason.pelletier. (tags: strategy marketing)

The Browser

See The Browser at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

A new radio show, The Browser, will be debuting on Burlington, Vermont's airwaves tonight. The show is about "all things online" from a local perspective. The host is Jonathan Butler and his first guest is Ed Shepard, Marketing & Design Manager for Small Dog Electronics. You can listen to the show at 6:00pm on our local noncommercial low power FM radio station, WOMM-LP 105.9 FM The Radiator. If you're out of range, you can listen online or catch the podcast once it's published.

The (not so well thought out) case against Web apps

See The (not so well thought out) case against Web apps at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

I just read Neil McAllister's post: The case against Web apps. I couldn't resist sharing my thoughts on what he had to say (and I wonder now if his article was intended as a troll).

"1. It's client-server all over again... Scaling small server farms to meet demand can be a real challenge -- just ask Twitter."

Twitter is a bad example, Neil. By its nature Twitter requires a client-server architecture. Unless, of course, he's suggesting re-architecting Twitter as peer-to-peer application. Interesting idea, but probably more complicated than scaling server farms.

"Furthermore, security vulnerabilities abound in networked applications, and the complexity of the browser itself seemingly makes bugs inevitable. Why saddle your apps with that much baggage?"

The first part of that statement is mostly meaningless. Sure, unplug most applications from the network and you'll instantly have less security vulnerabilities! Is Neil suggesting that developers will have less bugs if they build the whole stack themselves? Doubtful. Having a large part of the stack maintained separately is a nice benefit of web applications. Developers can focus on getting their part right, and let other people worry about getting the other parts right.

"2. Web UIs are a mess... Buttons, controls, and widgets vary from app to app. Sometimes the menus are along the top, other times they're off to the side. Sometimes they pop down when you roll over them, and sometimes you have to click. That inconsistency hurts your development budget, but it hurts usability more."

Desktop applications are just as guilty of having inconsitent UIs. Programmers break the rules all the time regardless of the platform. We need more UI experts and we need to stop making programmers responsible for the UI.

"3. Browser technologies are too limiting."

So? The web has its own advantages that I will not enumerate here as they are (mostly) well known. It's a different platform. People need to stop trying to build web applications as if they were desktop applications (hint: REST).

"4. The big vendors call the shots... Increasingly, the evolution of Web standards is being driven by major browser vendors -- new features are implemented first and standardized later. Independent developers have little genuine input into the future direction of the Web. And that's to say nothing of the ongoing bickering between the various vendors. Does it make sense to rely on client-side software that's such a moving target?"

No one's claiming the standardization process is perfect. But, at least it happens mostly in the open. All it takes to solve this problem is for more people to step up and get involved in promoting web standards. Stop complaining and get involved!

"5. Should every employee have a browser? ... You could make a case that it's unwise to allow employees unfettered access to the Web if your company values productivity, particularly in high-turnover environments such as help desks and call centers. But if your internal applications are Web-based, you'll need to either host them onsite or maintain careful router or firewall rules to prevent abuse of your Internet services."

I'm not even sure what Neil's point is here. This is a company-by-company decision. If it's important for a company to block web access, then surely they can figure out how to write the appropriate firewall rules to allow their own web apps to work? Overall I thought this piece was not very well researched and had some major logic gaps. If its goal was to be flamebait then it did a good job.

CSS for Web Developers

See CSS for Web Developers at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

The Burlington, VT PHP Users Group will be meeting Thursday January 22nd from from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm. Since we (Found Line) recently had some demolition - I mean renovations - done we've got a bit more space so thought we'd finally host the meeting. Here's a description of the presentation, "CSS for Web Developers", that Jason will be giving:

Most web developers don't consider themselves designers—and shouldn't. The reality of working on a website or web app, however, is that developers must either wear the designer hat or must interface with a designer/design team. Having a solid understanding of design best practices makes for a more efficient process and a higher quality product. Come hear more about web design and CSS from a designer's perspective. We'll cover semantic markup and its influence on CSS implementation, reset and debug stylesheets, tools for creating and debugging CSS, coding standards, and maybe even microformats if time allows. The goal isn't to convert developers into design experts, but rather to give an overview of an effective design process that works for designers and developers alike.

Jason Pelletier is Creative Director and Web Designer for Found Line. The Burlington-based creative firm develops standards-based websites, product packaging and marketing strategies for growing businesses. Clients include Seventh Generation, Vermont Public Radio, EatingWell and True Body Products. Prior to co-founding Found Line, he managed creative resources for Seventh Generation, and was a designer for Stonyfield Farm.

More details here. Please pass this on to others you think might be interested. Pizza will be provided and we will be giving away a "please don't hurt the web - use open standards" t-shirt as well as a copy of Jeffrey Zeldman's book "Designing With Web Standards". Hope to see you there!

Happy Holidays

See Happy Holidays at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

I want to wish everyone a happy holidays and a great new year! I don't know about you, but this has been a very busy month for me. Hopefully you will have some time to relax and enjoy the holidays and prepare for a great 2009!

On a side note, Found Line is looking to hire a designer here in Burlington, Vermont. Please pass this along if you happen to know anyone who might be a fit for the job.

PHP Users Group Meeting Tonight

See PHP Users Group Meeting Tonight at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

Tonight the Burlington, VT PHP Users Group is meeting at the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies (VCET) from 6pm to 8pm. Josh Sled of MySQL/Sun Microsystems will be presenting on database optimization and tuning. As Matthew Weier O'Phinney pointed out, this meeting will be our one year anniversary of regular meetings. There will be pizza so I hope to see you there!