Ontologies

Here's two introductions to ontologies:

Ontologies Come of Age

Smarter Content Publishing: Creating a Semantic Content Management System

(VLombardi)

IA Research

PMerholz says: I've found Kevin Crowston's work on genres of web communications to be essential in how I'm thinking about IA:

http://crowston.syr.edu/papers/index.php

GIS: upcoming meetings

I just posted a bunch of upcoming meetings to the GISMO website. Additional details are in the GISMO calendar.

Events through May:

Thursday, April 29, 5:00pm: GGSA Spring Lecture Series
Hunter College, North Building in room 1022, New York, NY
"Lost Geographies and Failed Globalization: From Versailles to Iraq"
Neil Smith, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center

Wed, May 5, 5:00pm: GGSA Spring Lecture Series
Hunter College, North Building in room 1022, New York, NY
"Tips and Tools for Color Symbolization for Mapping and Visualization"
Cynthia Brewer, Associate Professor of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University

Tuesday, May 6 at 9:00am: LIGIS: Long Island GIS Spring Meeting
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Brookhaven, NY
See www.ligis.org for details.

Tuesday, May 11 at 12:00pm: GISMO General Meeting
Fund for the City of New York
Michael Schill, NYU Furman (Real Estate) Center will discuss the NY Times 2/6 Exposure of New Web site www.nychanis.com

Friday, May 21, 2004 at 3:30 PM: Landmarks Preservation Commission
Public Hearing Room, Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street (at the corner of Centre Street and Chambers Street), 9th Floor, New York, NY.
The Archaeology Department will be hosting a guest lecture titled, "Recreating the Historical Topography of Manhattan Island." Use the north entrance. Please bring photo ID for entrance to the Municipal Building.

More CMS Tutorials

The new CMS Wiki has a definition of a Content Management System.
http://www.cmswiki.com/tiki-index.php?page=ContentManagementSystem.

It also has a discussion of the confusing term portal.
http://www.cmswiki.com/tiki-editpage.php?page=Portal

And something on Workflow.
http://www.cmswiki.com/tiki-index.php?page=WorkFlow

CMS Review has references to all the great books on Content Managemant.
http://www.cmsreview.com/Resources/Books.html.

City Council Hearing on 311 and Community Boards

Today, I went to a NYC City Council Public Hearing of the Committee on Technology in Government, on the role of the City's 59 Community Boards in the 311 system. 311 is the new number that New Yorkers dial to ask questions about New York City services, make complaints and to get information, such as library hours, bus and trash pickup schedules, etc. Community boards act as local advocates to their district constituents, recording complaints, alerting service organizations to district needs, issuing liquor licenses and making recommendations to the city planning agencies.

I arrived late and did not hear the testimony Dept of Information Technology & Telecommunications, who oversees the 311 system. A representative of the city of Hampton, VA was also present to give testimony on the sucess of their 311 system, which was implemented in 1999. I did hear the testimony of 6 Community Boards, representing three boroughs. I gathered from their testimony that DoITT was not providing the level of access to the system that the CBs require to do their jobs.

A handout of the DoITT testimony, which I read later on the train home, confirmed that they did not address the more specific information needs that the CBs require to effectively act as an advocate for their constituents. DoITT said that they offer aggregate data to CBs, in order to protect the privacy of citizens making the calls. CBs countered that they need specific incident data in order to respond to constituents on the status of complaints. Additionally, while CBs have received the computers, software, internet hookup, training and technical support visits from DoITT staff, many indicated that they do not have access to the data at all. (One CB District Manager joked that the computer support technicians had visited their office several times, but only to upgrade security on the system).

All testifiers from CBs said they strongly support the 311 system as a way to aggregate data and ease the volume of non-critical calls received on a daily basis, but required more involvement, i.e., access to data, in order to record and act on specific complaints in their community and handle more complex problems involving more than a single agency (which 311 is not currently equipped to do effectively - when the call is recorded and forwarded to an agency to handle, the incident is closed. If the wrong agency gets the call, or if another agency is required to handle a portion of the call, there is no process for feedback to the original complainer, or to 311 for that matter, that further action is required). Aggregate data, in the case of pothole complaints, for example, does not show where potholes occur, nor could it show that 20% of potholes in a given district are on a single street, which would indicate an infrastructure problem that the CB would want to address in its planning recommendations.

The CB representatives agreed that detailed incident data and geolocation information could be made accessible from the system, while still protecting the privacy of individual complainants. Still, some CBs suggested that it could be useful in identifying frequent complainers (CBs already know who they are in their districts) and that certain CB staff people who have been calling in complaints from district offices should be identified as such in incident logs rather than treated as citizen complainers.

311 is a great tool for gathering and handling complaints efficiently in a city as large as New York City. It would be a shame if citizens' primary local advocate were left out of the process. I am heartened that the City Council is taking the issue seriously.

Visio stencils

Visio stencils

- Henrik Olsen's web prototyping stencils and template
uses: prototyping, wireframes
http://www.guuui.com/issues/02_03_02.php

- Michael Angeles's wireframe stencils
uses: prototyping, wireframes
http://studioid.com/pg/visio_wireframe_stencil.php

- Jesse James Garrett's stencils
uses: flow
http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/

- Peter Van Dijk's stencils (four of them here)
uses: sitemaps, isometric sitemaps, prototyping, wireframes, flow
http://iabook.com/template.htm

- Peter Van Dijck's older stencils
uses: prototyping, wireframes
http://poorbuthappy.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$51

Personas and Roles

Personas and Roles

Some Persona URLS:
http://www.cooper.com/content/insights/newsletters_personas.asp
http://iawiki.net/PersonaDesign
http://foruse.com/newsletter/foruse15.htm#3

Sometimes Personas is the right sentiment but not the right approach,
because they assume you have quite distinguishably different user
archetypes. In this case it may be better to adopt a role-based approach, whereby you define
different 'hats' or roles that a user may take in order to fulfil a kind of
task or set of tasks.

Roles URLs:
http://edp5285-01.sp01.fsu.edu/Guide4.html

Constantine and Lockwood's 'Software For Use'
http://foruse.com/questions/index.htm#5

More on Site Maps & Indices

All of the following resources came from a discussion list (not my compilation). Apologies to whomever compiled this listing - I've forgotten so I can't give credit.... :(


Site Index examples:
Good:
http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/indices/site_index.jsp
http://www.w3.org/Help/siteindex
http://www.montaguelab.com/Public/indexes.htm
http://www.census.gov/main/www/subjects.html
http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv2.jsp?CONTENT<>cnt_id=3171&FOLDER
<>folder_id=3167
http://www.writersblock.ca/common/index.htm

Not so good:
http://www.asindexing.org/site/backndx.htm
Different style / purpose:
http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/index/index.html

Product Index examples:
Good:
http://www.ibm.com/products/az/
http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/indices/prod_index.jsp

Not so good:
http://www.3m.com/product/index.jhtml

Sitemap examples:
Good:
http://www.apple.com/find/sitemap.html
http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
http://pages.ebay.com/sitemap.html?ssPageName=h:h:smap:US
http://www.multimap.com/static/sitemap.htm
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/sitemap/

Not so good:
http://www.novuspetroleum.com/cmsaxs/site/1/5.asp?secID=18
http://www.miami.muohio.edu/sitemap/

Bad:
http://www.chaminade.edu/sitemap/content/sitemap.html (bad visual
representation)
http://www.chaminade.edu/sitemap/index.php (not much better - text w/
visuals once you click on a high-level section)
http://www.tamu.edu/00/sitemap.html?mode=d (too detailed, bad layout, no
logical order) http://www.raffed75.isgreat.tv/Sitemap.htm (yuck!)

The IBM Site Map Gallery:

Fascinating study of a big company dealing with lack of standards...map, map, who's got THE site map?

http://www-1.ibm.com/businesscenter/us/sitemap/ (simple)
http://www.ibm.com/investor/tools/iritsm.phtml (good use of bullets &
indention)
http://www-5.ibm.com/de/mittelstand/sitemap/ (interesting layout)
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/sitemap.html (jump nav at top good,
indention and level of detail bad) http://www.ibm.com/ar/sitemap/ (bad
windows explorer style layout) http://www.almaden.ibm.com/st/sitemap.shtml
(what's a link?)
http://www-306.ibm.com/e-business/doc/content/sitemap/sitemap.html (too
detailed)

Related Articles & Info:
http://taxonomist.tripod.com/indexing/design_checklist.html
http://www.asindexing.org/site/checklist.shtml
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/sitemaps_and_site_indexes_what_they_a
re_and_why_you_should_have_them.php
http://davidcrow.ca/2003/01/20/trends_in_sitemap_design.html
http://www.iaslash.org/node.php?id=2535#comment
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020106.html
http://www.evolt.org/article/evolt/4090/710/

Tools:
http://www.brown-inc.com/indexer/FAQ.htm

Site Map vs Site Index

http://www.aussi.org/indexer.htm
http://www.asindexing.org/site/backndx.htm
http://www.sun.com/siteindex/
http://my.webmd.com/medical_information/condition_centers/default.htm
http://www.adobe.com/products/main.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/all-stores.html/104-3468701-819
5133
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/508510/104-3468701-8195133

Accessibility Report

The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in Great Britain just released an in-depth study on the accessibility of 1000 websites, with recommendations to improve the W3C WAI guidelines on accessibility. Thanks to Jim on the SIGIA-L listserv for finding this.

http://www.drc-gb.org/publicationsandreports/report.asp

For a response from the WAI read on:

http://www.w3.org/2004/04/wai-drc-statement.html

Summer Vacation

I am planning a trip with the family to Lake George in August and getting sidetracked by dreams of Montreal, Quebec City, Montana, skiing. Why must we have to plan so far in advance? No availability. We are definitely available the week you want, except were fully booked on Tuesday night, but we can accommodate those other days! We don't take children under 12. Sorry, we're booked. Sigh. Back to my phone calls.

Geographic Information Systems at the WTC

I recently wrote in my blog welcome message about a book project on the use of mapping technology in 9/11 rescue & recovery efforts. I'm moving this off the welcome message because I am going to start to write it. There are a lot of great resources on the mapping efforts at Pier 92 in New York City available at the GISMO website:

Yahoo! Groups : gismonyc Links

Directions Magazine has a great map gallery at their site:

Directions Magazine: Map Gallery of GIS Community Response to 9/11

Even National Geographics Magazine picked up the story, interviewing some of the members of GISMO:

National Geographic Magazine: Geographica: Mapping Disaster: Cartographers Aid Workers at Ground Zero

Costa Rica

We just got back from Costa Rica late Sunday night. We left New York on a snowy March 18th and were briefly delayed to de-ice the wings. Four hours later we were in San Jose, met our San Jose guide, who gave us a brief tour orientation while being driven to and dropped at the hotel. After an easy four and a half hour flight, we weren't too tired, but there wasn't much to do at the first hotel. We simply hung out in the back yard, overlooking coffee fields with San Jose in the distance, excited about our upcoming week and a half of adventure.

The next day our naturalist guide and driver arrived. We were to visit Sarapiqui, Arenal Volcano & Tamarindo Beach, with a plane ride back to San Jose for the last night.

Our first stop was the La Paz Waterfall Gardens and was our first taste of the local bird-life, plant-life, butterfly-life and food. La Paz is just a couple years old and has trails that go past five waterfalls. It also has an enclosed butterfly garden (boasted as the world's largest) and an unenclosed hummingbird garden. It was raining, of course. It is a rainforest after all. We hiked up and down trails that at points had metal staircases hung from the side of the ravines. We saw so many different kinds of birds, it is hard to name them all, and were happy at the end to sample the food at the buffet-style cafeteria.

It was clear from the beginning that Karla, our guide, and Mauricio, our driver knew each other well. They kept up a sibling-like banter that was half biting, half joking, but always funny and light-hearted. By the end of the second day, Karla had our girls coming up with schemes for tricking Mauricio or getting him back for the day's antics. They were overall good guides. Karla was clearly very well versed in the geology, biodiversity, history and cultural makeup of Costa Rica. And Mauricio was quick to stop the van at any interesting animal or plant life we passed (including coatimundi, Blue Morpho butterflies and the ubiquitous Impatiens, or "China" flowers that lined the roadways.)

Our next two nights were in Sarapiqui. The La Quinta of Sarapiqui hotel was in a jungle area tucked between pineapple farms. The property was small, but had a few trails around a frog garden, butterfly aviary, fruit garden and a couple of fish ponds. We saw lots of tiny "blue jean" frogs: little strawberry, poison-dart frogs only as big as your thumbnail. We did some fishing but the fish were too smart to get caught.

The following day, we toured La Selva Biological Station, which is an international research station. Sloths were too shy to appear but we saw just about everything else you could hope to see: coati, bats, lizards, howlers, capuchins, tiger rat snakes, pit vipers, peccaries, poisonous caterpillars, all sorts of birds. We also went on a river raft tour on the last day and saw a lot more creatures and stopped for a snack at a 90-year old farmer's home near a fork in the river.

Next day, on to Arenal Volcano. We saw shiny, smokey black stuff sliding down the volcano on our first day there, but no fire-show. We stayed at a hotel called Montana de Fuego at the base of the volcano, but the mountain was covered with fog for the rest of the trip. We visited a really nice, secluded hot springs & had some of our better meals there. I have to say I was a bit nervous staying so close to an active volcano and was glad when it was time to leave!

We had some excitement on the drive out to the Pacific coast. Josie was bitten by a capuchin monkey at the jaguar rehab center. The facility houses animals that were taken from illegal traders and that were injured in the wild. The capuchin was formerly kept as a domestic pet under rather cruel conditions. Josie is healing well. Emergency services are pretty good in CR, when you can find them.

Tamarindo Beach was nice, but very smoky from the sugar cane farms (they have to burn the field to remove spines from the stalks before cutting them down, since it is mostly done by hand). There is a huge surfer community at the beach, mostly Coloradoans on vacation & Californian drifters. Our hotel had a beautiful new pool across the street that we found after two days which was a great find, but frustrating not to have learned of it earlier.

We stayed our last night at Xandari Plantation in Alajuela--Very Nice! It is part of a coffee plantation with a river & jungle hiking trails to explore. After our scare earlier in the week, you'd be surprised to hear Brett was already planning a Christmas trip back there! I brought back some coffee.