DITA+ALG+DISCUS = VAST contest entry

DITA and ALG at NCSA have joined forces with the DISCUS team to enter the 2007 VAST contest. You can find a podcast of the entry to the contest here, and a description of the VAST contest below. Visual Analytics is the science of analytical reasoning supported by highly interactive visual interfaces. People use visual analytics tools and techniques to synthesize information into knowledge; derive insight from massive, dynamic, and often conflicting data; detect the expected and discover the unexpected; provide timely, defensible, and understandable assessments; and communicate assessments effectively for action. The issues stimulating this body of research provide a grand challenge in science: turning information overload into the opportunity of the decade. ...

Jul 29, 2007 · 1 min · 161 words · Xavier Llorà

Loading RDF/XML files into Virtuoso’s metadata store

Bernie just put together this beauty to load small RDF/XML files into Virtuoso’s metadata store (We are using testing the open source version). DB.DBA.RDF_LOAD_RDFXML(http_get ('URI to the RDF/XML file'),'','Name of the graph in the store'); We have tested loading a 5 Million triple RDF/XML and results are pretty nice (It took around 6 minutes to load into a dual Pentium 4 extreme edition at 3GHz with 4GB of RAM on a slow 7500rpm ext3fs). When pushing to larger files, the stream version of this is a must to reduce memory consumption. ...

Jul 20, 2007 · 1 min · 91 words · Xavier Llorà

Crawlers on the loose

Recently, our lab web server has been experiencing a great increase of bot visits. Besides the usual Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. bots a new one caught my attention. It is visiting pretty frequently: Cuill. From the few information they have on their site, one of the co-founders is a former UIUC CS alumni Anna Patterson. Cuill Inc. (pronounced [kool]) is a startup company that is pioneering a new approach to Search. The company was founded by Anna, Russell, and Tom. Our offices are located on a quiet street in Menlo Park, CA. If you’d like to learn more about Cuill or the people behind it, please get in touch. ...

Jul 20, 2007 · 1 min · 109 words · Xavier Llorà

Google Notebook

Google Notebook has a pretty cool add-on for Firefox. It allows you to clip, and organize information from across the web in a single online location that’s accessible from any computer.

Jul 18, 2007 · 1 min · 31 words · Xavier Llorà

Back in town and a Virtuoso

Vacations and GECCO were great. I am still trying to catch up. Hope everything gets up to speed soon. Just a quick note to jump start: Dealing with relational databases, metadata stores, DAV servers? If so, take a look at Virtuoso, you won’t be disappointed ;)

Jul 18, 2007 · 1 min · 46 words · Xavier Llorà