Pixelated Dreams has moved!

Just a short note for anyone wondering about the prolonged silence. I'm moving the best content from here over to my new tech home, TechWhimsy.

Please pop over and take a look and let me know what you think.

Thank you.

Google hearts Jaiku

The Google acquisition train just keeps on rolling down the tracks.

I logged on to Jaiku this morning to be greeted with the information that it has become yet another member of the Googleplex.  The acquisition seems to have created quite a stir across the tech news blogosphere (for example here, here and here).  There seems to be two common themes:

1. Jaiku isn't nearly as good as Twitter, so why didn't Google buy that service instead? (rubbish by the way, I grew to hate Twitter very quickly as an unreliable, US-centric elitist self-congratulatory club, but that's just me)
2. It's all got something to do with the rumoured GPhone and competing with Facebook

My money is on the latter of the points, regardless of my own personal opinion of the Twitter service.

What I find most disappointing is that finally I was enjoying using a service that wasn't a Google owned one, which meant that at least some of my online presence wasn't being absorbed by the 'Plex at Mountain View.  Every time I try and break away, they just suck me right back in *sigh*

On the other hand, I'm very happy for the Jaiku crew who have all acted like a bunch of upright gentleman (and one of the co-founders is a sociologist by training, which is even cooler - I love finding fellow sociologists!) so I feel this is a well deserved break for them.

Recycling information: the innovation behind the mashups

Business Pundit is currently featuring an article that frustrates and annoys me yet leaves me in semi-agreement, which only serves to frustrate and annoy me all over again ("The dangers of re-use: how mashups can stifle innovation").  The premise of the item appears to be that unless you know a technology to its deepest level, you are doing little more than playing make-believe, pretending you are doing something new when instead you are drowning the world in your own mediocrity.  The argument has a distinct Keensian elitist tone, inferring that unless you understand your tools you have no right to be using them.

I felt somewhat mislead about the article in general.  It's not until the very end that I discovered (hence my annoyance) that the core assertion was not that mashups were mediocre and boring (they can be) but instead was that mashups need to be kept in perspective (which I agree with) and urges the reader not to confuse "imitation with innovation" (which I didn't think I was, but there you go).

Like the author, a lot of mashups leave me cold.  After all, I don't really care if I can geo-tag a photo on Flickr and locate it in Google Earth so I can see exactly where on this planet an out-of-focus photo of a bee was taken.  However, that is not the point.  It is not the mashup that is the innovation, rather what makes the mashup possible.  RSS feeds, open APIs, enabling services like Pipes - the ability to mine and manipulate vast quantities of previously unavailable data has enormous potential.

I see this as a classic forest/trees, baby/bath water confusion.  Just because the results don't inspire you (and are used indiscriminately by the great unwashed) doesn't automatically diminish the value and importance and potential of the underlying framework.

Now if you will excuse me, I think I will go off and see if I can combine my low quality cameraphone photos of my son with Google Maps.  Spite is such a wonderful motivational technique after all.

OOXML from the open source perspective

So then Microsoft decided they were going to do an open standard too, and guess what: it is a .zip file and it's got XML streams inside it. But, having said that, it has been difficult in the past to do binary file format interoperability. You can make many good arguments that it is not a benefit to have one company totally dominating the market. You need some sort of file format interoperability.

and

Isn't one file format (such as ODF) better than two? Surely the weakness of having many is the confusion it creates?
Well, yes, and it should be ODF. In an ideal world... yes, a single file format that was a superset of features and so on would be ideal, but it is very difficult to even conceive of that happening. There is just such a lot of vested business interest in this sphere. It is just very difficult to do anything technical. I just can't see anything like that happening.

Michael Meeks (part of the OpenOffice.org team at Novell)

in conversation with ZDNet.co.uk

ODT and DOCX - are they human readable?

[Note: a revised version of this post can now be found on techwhimsy.com]

One of the supposed benefits of XML is that documents produced in this format are able to be opened as a text file and read by normal people, allowing the content to be recovered, even if the formatting was unavailable After discussing the various merits of the Open Document Format (ODF) and Office Open XML (OOXML) formats (click here to read the earlier post), I was left wondering just how human readable either format was.

I created a simple document in both Open Office as .odt (Open Document Text) and in MS Office 2007 as .docx that had a heading, some paragraphs, an unordered list and an ordered list. I used the Loren Ipsum generator that can be found at Lipsum.

(click on images for larger versions)











.odt is on the left and .docx on the right

To start off with, I opened both documents up in Wordpad to see what they looked like. Not at all human readable.

.odt on the left and .docx on the right

A quick trawl through a Google search revealed that .odt is a container format that compresses all the relevant file parts in to one file. I changed the file extension from .odt to .zip and opened it up to have a look.

What worked for one format might work for the other. I took a punt, changed the file extension from .docx to .zip, held my breath, crossed my fingers, closed my eyes and double-clicked...








...and discovered that in .docx, the goodies are there, albeit buried a little deeper.

Both .odt and .docx are human readable, after a fashion. If for some reason in the distant (or not-so-distant) future either format is unreadable in its container form, with some effort the data could be extracted. It may even be possible to extract large parts of the formatting, but that's beyond my ability to assess.

In my assessment, .odt comes out ahead slightly in the human readable stakes: it isn't buried quite so deep and comes with less additional XML-related formatting and overhead. As to which is the better format overall, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader (although I wish I could create .odt inside of Office 2007 - I do love the new Office user interface).

Open Warfare: OOXML stumbles while ODF continues to rise

Google Trends ODF vs OOXML for 2007

While Microsoft Office is the undisputed king of the office suite marketplace, the open source OpenOffice.org (OOo) has been worrying at its heels for some time. In recent months controversy has arisen over the accessibility of the XML-based file formats of the competing products - OOo's Open Document Format (ODF) and Microsofts Office Open XML (OOXML).

ODF was accepted as an international standard (click here for my earlier post on the issue) by ISO back in late 2006, giving it much needed credibity as a leading open format for documents. OOXML has also sought ISO approval but was unsuccessful in its attempt earlier this month, amidst suspicion of questionable activities of Microsoft representatives.

Why are open formats necessary?

Open formats perform an important function in the preservation of the information in documents, particularly for archival purposes. An archive is useless if it is stored in a file format that nothing read in 100 or 50 or even 20 years time. Readability is especially important for the storage of public records where there is a need for government activities to be publicly accessible in future years to future generations.

Although Microsoft's .doc Word format is nearly ubiquitous, it is far from a perfect solution. It is not uncommon for the format to become broken, unreadable and not backwards compatible between major releases of Office.

Is this the end for Office?

Defeating Microsoft should not be the main focus for OOo and the ODF, although clawing back some market share is an admirable goal and a worthy one to strive for. the user interface for Office is still a long way ahead of the its open source alternative, and in my opinion the gulf between the two has become wider with the revamped interface used in Office 2007. The differences between the two interfaces reflects the benefits that the support of a large corporation backed by massive reserves of cash and talent can bring.

ODF vs OOXML should not be an ideological battle between free and libre open source software and Microsoft. The best outcome for users is for ODF to be accepted by Microsoft as the international standard that it is and be introduced as a file export option within Office itself. Such an outcome would enable users to enjoy the best of both worlds - an excellent and time-tested user interface that also enables them to produce documents in an open and future-proof file format.

It would be a win-win situation for all consumers and ultimately, isn't that what this should be all about?

Emails a danger in the workplace. Apparently.

A senior representative of leading IT consultancy BearingPoint, Robert Hilliard, has declared that email is a "terrible way to do the majority of business". BearingPoint recommend businesses adopt "collaboration technologies". The core of the argument appears to be that person-to-person communication does not have enough visibility, while a collaborative process is more open and transparent.

I'm not convinced.

The issue of visibility and transparency appears to be driven by legal coverage issues and not underlying issues with the technology itself. Collaboration shifts the focus on to "group communication", maximising the number of people who can see the information development process and spreading the points of blame in turn reducing individual levels of risk. It's not improving communication, it's improving arse coverage.

Mr Hilliard does have a good point when he says:

A person-to-person piece of communication is not visible to anybody else. It is a legal document. You would never consider writing a letter between two organisations without having an appropriately authorised person reviewing it but you don't hesitate to have two junior members of two companies write an informal email to each other that would expose both organisations.

The problem is not one of the tools but of the processes of the operating environment. The solution isn't "collaboration tools" (which he doesn't define but I'm assuming it's things like MediaWiki, Google Docs and Basecamp as examples) which add extra layers of complexity to what should be a simple process of communication. The solution is greater education and simple, clearly defined guidelines on appropriate levels of interaction at an officer-to-officer level.

After all, it's not as if BearingPoint would have a vested interest in promoting introducing collaborative models in favour of existing email infrastructure, now is it?

Just another IT consultancy selflessly promoting more technology as the answer.

envelope originally uploaded to Flickr by timothymorgan. Used under a Creative Commons By Attribution 2.0 licence.