+++ DADEN LIMITED NEWSLETTER SEP 05. ++Contents. Section one: Editorial. Section two: Information 2.0 Section three: Lillian and Library 2.0 Section four: We've also ... Section five: Tech Watch Section six: SIMILE Timeline. Section seven: Daden in the Press. Section eight: Contacting Us. Section nine: About Us. Section ten: Subscribing. Section eleven: About TEN. [End of contents]. ++ Section one: Editorial. +01:During the summer we've taken the opportunity to have a bit of a spring-clean of our web sites and branding. In particular we have decided to discontinue the Advanced Chatbot Solutions brand, and use Daden Chatbots for our conversational agent activity instead. The Daden Chatbots web site (which is still at www.chatbots.co.uk ) is now closely integrated with the rest of the Daden site, sharing common pages, news and other features. +02:One reason for the change was an increasing realisation of just how connected our activities all are. Code we developed for chatbots was finding its way into NewsGlobe and ReaderBot. RSS and triples were everywhere, and we're even coming up with novel ways to use ReaderBot's parsing engine. +03:What also became more and more apparent was that the linking idea in everything we do was information – what it is, how you get it, how best to analyse it, and how to communicate it. Information 2.0 we call it. David Burden Managing Director [Section one ends]. ++ Section two: Information 2.0 +04:Internet 2.0, Web 2.0, Library 2.0 (see overleaf). Everybody appears to have a pet 2.0 at the moment. So why not Information 2.0? +05:We often have a problem explaining what we do. “Stuff” just doesn't seem to convey enough information. Doing the redesign of the web site it became clear to us that what Daden is about is information, whether we're helping companies use and communicate it in a marketing or business management sense, or designing chatbots to communicate it in new ways, or building things like NewsGlobe to mash up information from multiple sources. This led us to think of ourselves as an information company, and particularly an “information technology” company. +06:The problem is that if you say “information technology” people think IT, and PCs, and servers and all that stuff they've been fighting with for years. “No, not that sort of IT”, we'd say, “real information technology, web services, semantic web, data visualisation, topic maps. Information 2.0” +07:By Information 2.0 we mean information that has a sense of context and connectedness. Information which is part of a wider structure, not stuck in silos caused by technological incompatibility, coding difficulty or ownership issues. Information 2.0 can be accessed in many forms, combined with other data and displayed and communicated in hundreds of different ways. +08:RSS is probably the simplest example. Once you have some information in an RSS feed you can use stylesheets to create web pages of it, you can pass it to a conversational agent to have a conversation about it, you can plot it on Google Earth or Timeline, and you can even merge it with other RSS feeds. At a lower (and more complex level) you can do the same with RDF triples, only more so. +09:Information 2.0 is also accessible to everybody, everywhere. This covers not only “accessibility” by those with disabilities, but also employees using mobile phones or PDAs and customers who want to mash up your data with that of others. Yes, you may need to do it securely, and yes you need to be able to cope with what you competitors may do with it, but information combined is usually far more powerful than information alone. Daden – The Information 2.0 Company. [Section two ends]. ++ Section three: Lillian and Library 2.0 +10:For some reason this has been a summer of library related stuff for us. It started with an approach from UKOLN about doing a seminar on chatbots and libraries at their annual web workshop. We built a demo for them, called Brian, but having a quick look at some library sites it didn't look like there was an easy way to integrate Brian to a library service. Then we bumped into Talis who supply cataloging systems to over 25% of the UK's libraries. They have been promoting the idea of Library 2.0, what happens when you start combining library data with web data and applications and user generated content. Putting their money where their mouth was they also launched a “mashing up the library” competition focussed around their new APIs. +11:So we created Lillian. Lillian is a true virtual librarian. She provides a conversational interface to not only the library holdings on the Talis system but also book reviews and recommendations from Amazon, and collect related ISBN via OCLC, a US web service. The important thing though is that Lillian shows how conversational agents can unify multiple web services into a single, consistent, easy to use system. +12:You can talk to Lillian at: www.daden.co.uk/chatbots/livebots/lillian/. [Section three ends]. ++ Section four: We've also ... +13: - Continued working with the LSC on the new ITQ IT qualification - Explored ambient communications ideas using Nabaztag – a WiFi connected rabbit (picture right) - Helped design a web accessible case management system for a leading law firm - Chaired the UK launch of the Digital Business Ecosystem at iCentrum for the University of Central England [Section four ends]. ++ Section five: Tech Watch +14:Download a Tech Brief from the web site for more details of these and other new technologies, and learn how they could help your business. +15:Info URIs: Linked to the semantic web (see last issue), Info URIs are the emerging way to label “things” in a unique and discrete way. The simplest (although flawed) analogy is ISBN numbers for books. Once I know a book's ISBN number I can look it up on any system (Amazon, LibraryThing, Talis) and know I'm looking at the same book. This is one reason why books worked so well in the early days of e-commerce, and why there is now a lot of mash-up activity around libraries. Now imagine having an ISBN for everything (and everyone). When I'm talking about Birmingham do I mean Birmingham England or Birmingham Alabama? Give it an Info URI and I (and more importantly a computer programme) will know which I'm talking about and can start linking in to information about it across the web. +16:We're more than happy to come and give you a FREE briefing on Info URIs, the semantic web or other emerging technologies to see if they can be of benefit to you. Just give us a call. [Section five ends]. ++ Section six: SIMILE Timeline. +17:When Google Earth first came out one of our thoughts was about how great it would be to have a similar system for browsing time. We were too busy to do anything about it, but luckily MIT's SIMILE project was't. During the summer they released a beta of Timeline – a Google Earth for time. Using time-scales from milliseconds to millennia you can plot almost any event data onto it. You can see our demo for BBC Backstage showing TV programme schedule information at www.daden.co.uk/timeline.html. [Section six ends]. ++ Section seven: Daden in the Press. +18:Here's the things we've been sounding off about in the Birmingham Post: - Skype - Nabaztag – the WiFi rabbit - PAS 78 and Accessibility You can read the articles on our web site at www.daden.co.uk/articles. [Section seven ends]. ++ Section eight: Contacting Us. +19:On the web: www.daden.co.uk By Email: info@daden.co.uk By post: 103 Oxford Rd, Moseley, Birmingham, B13 9SG By phone: 0121 247 3628 +20:We’re always keen to have a chat about life, business, technology, or even how we can help your business grow. [Section eight ends]. ++ Section nine: About Us. +21:Daden Limited is an information (2.0) company focused on using emerging technologies to better identify, analyse, and communicate information. We use models and meta-models to provide a powerful approach to our analysis, and develop leading-edge technology ranging from games and wireless to Artificial Intelligence to manage information in original ways. [Section nine ends]. ++ Section ten: Subscribing. +22:Our Newsletter is sent out two to four times a year to customers, prospects and friends of Daden Limited. To subscribe email: subscribe@daden.co.uk To unsubscribe email: unsubscribe@daden.co.uk [Section ten ends]. ++ Section eleven: About TEN. +23: Written using the Text Electronic Newsletter Standard: http://www.headstar.com/ten [Section eleven ends]. [Newsletter Ends]