Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

 
RFP: Content Management System for Office of Citizen Serices and Communications (OCSC) FirstGov
OCSC is now the name for the former Office of FirstGov and the Federal Consumer Information Center (FCIC). There are a number of Federal eGovernment initiatives, and this is part of it. The desire is to implement a Web Content Management System (CMS). The time for qualification statements from offerors is past.

This OCSC/FirstGov solicitation is part of the administration's EGov initiatives, "designed to increase the focus on citizen-centric provision of government services." This involves, in some way, over 25 million pages of Web content that is already supported by US Federal Government Web sites. The GSA is looking for a set of solutions to support the cross-coordination of the different sites and to provide for a more effective citizen-centric experience for access to any and all of the material. This procurment is, I presume, the first stage of such an initiative. There are examples of how FirstGov serves as the portal, and typical aggregation via FirstGov. There are other sites to be convered by this procurement, which has four cases of sites to be integrated.

Written technical proposals are due on November 26 and, it is interesting to note, these are in the form of an original, twelve copies, and one electronic copy in Microsoft Word on disk. The four RFP documents are in Microsoft Word format. The four Microsoft Word documents of the RFP package are downloadable individually or in a Zip file.

The "Delivery Environment" is to consist of dual-processor Sun Solaris systems running J2EE and using a BEA WebLogic application server.

I started reading the RFP proper because it is a 2.5MB file. But it is only 9 pages, about 19,000 characters, and compresses to 68k or so.

The Statement of Work has more beef (and it is just under 1 MB with many diagrams and more pages!), including a statement of priorites that includes

- personalization

- Spanish language localization

- Migration from HTML to XML

- Inegrated document and Web content management

- Distribution of the Web publishing environment to non-technical users

The shopping list for these systems involves a set of checklists in which the respondent indicates whether a particular capability is provided out of the box, available with customization, available with integration, or is not provided.

With regard to managed documents, my area of interest, there are 10 items on metadata management, including support for Dublin Core [see notes on GILS earlier this week], and more features around arbitrary metadata, pulling metadata from databases, posting metadata in databases, and so on. There's also interest in native support for XML, XML syndication services, workflow and search integration. Interoperability methodology must also be described.

There are interesting scalability and security considerations, including AAA.

Standards compliance consists of GILS, DoD 5015.2 (records management) and GPEA, as well as what is called 508 support (accessibility under section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act as ammended in 1998).
posted by Dennis at Saturday, November 02, 2002

 

Trolling for Blogger Tips

It may not seem that these links are about that, but I was tracing the front page archive of Blogger.com itself. These are some of the snapshots.

I so want one of those nice calendars for the right edge of my blog.
posted by Dennis at Saturday, November 02, 2002

 
A List Apart: How to Write a Better Weblog
posted by Dennis at Saturday, November 02, 2002

 
Weblog central MSNBC Column on Blogspotting, updated regularly.
posted by Dennis at Saturday, November 02, 2002

 
Ed Yourdon's Home Page With a blog as one of the sections.
posted by Dennis at Saturday, November 02, 2002

 
Dan Bricklin Log A nicely personal blog from a famous person.
posted by Dennis at Saturday, November 02, 2002

 
Scripting News Dave Winer's site with useful links to scripting technology.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
blogdex - add a weblog I am not sure what this is, but it seems to provide stats about blogging. I added my site. We'll see what that has to do with anything.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
anil dash - mobile Hmm, some blogs have two forms, a text edition and one that uses all the style sheets, tables, and other structures. Hmm, Hmm.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
anil dash - about anil Still collecting info on the movers and shakers of blogland.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
magazine: Microsoft's Weblog Software Short note on the history and a parody introduction of Microsoft's entry into Weblog Software.

The suggestion is that Microsoft has all the parts it needs to do that, using Sharepoint Server and the like.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
EVHEAD: very, very lucky The -ev on Blogger.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
Amazon.com Listmania - Publishing the Bones with Weblogs A list of available books on the topic
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
Amazon.com: Books: We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs
Well, I didn't like it very much that the link from Meg's page put this in my shopping cart rather than take me to this page, where I can find out about the book.

It is nice that the book is also available in a bundle with Rebecca Blood's book too.

And there are five other books beside these two that people seem to be interested in. I will search on.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
megnut.com - a weblog by meg hourihan
Finding some of the early creators of blog.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
the weblog handbook, rebecca blood :: excerpt :: weblog ethics
This is a valuable topic. I had been admiring the time-travel aspects of blog editing, but there are difficulties with this. Rebecca Blood comments on the need for indelibility, linking to sources, checking sources, and more. Something ot think about.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
what's in rebecca's pocket?
Hmm, a site used by Steven Levy in his illustration of blogging. Interesting. I am becoming jealous of all the wonderful formats and appearance innovations people have been making.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
jjg.net: the elements of user experience
A book I want a look into. My associate Bill Anderson and I talk a lot about designing customer experiences and, in fact, designing all sorts of experiences. I like that the book is promoted not for providing answers but for seeing the right questions to ask.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
Jonathan Davis' Usenet Commentary Style Sheets for Citing Internet & Electronic Resources:

Humanities (MLA & Chicago), Scientific (APA & CBE), and History (Turabian)
UC Berkeley - Teaching Library Internet Workshops

posted by Jonathan Davis at 6:43:20 PM | Permanent link | comment

Just to give credit where credit is due.

I did a terrible thing. I found a tip on adding a link to my browser toolbar that would take me to a random Blog. So, naturally, I am trying out all of these interesting places. A guy with a made-up (I think it is made-up) interview with Peter Drucker, one in Arabic (how would I know for sure) that used a nice font, and one in some Baltic or other Eastern European language (maybe) and like that. Basically all very nicely formatted and interesting. [I took another look and the European language I noticed was Scandinavian. Didn't check which one.]

Well, this is not what I need to be doing. So I am going to do that. But hey, I'm checking out the technology. I stop now, but it would be interesting to go through the archive of Blogger front pages and see what other goodies they have left just lying around for us unwary blogaholics in the making.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
Style Sheets for Citing Internet & Electronic Sources: Humanities (MLA & Chicago styles), Scientific (APA & CBE), and History (Turabian) The following basic guidelines for formatting citations from a variety of electronic resources was created by Janice R. Walker and is adapted from the Columbia Guide to Online Style, one of the most thorough guides to citing electronic resources available. The complete book is available in the Library Information Center and several other campus libraries at the call number PN171.F56 W35 1998.

Hmm, well I was somewhere else and the right-mouse-button Blog This didn't work there. So I followed some other advice and put the Blog This shortcut up in my links section of the toolbar and it works just fine there. And it also will include any highlighted text (why wasn't this on the quiz?) that is selected before I do the "Blog This" clicky thingy. Hmphh, maybe I have to find out how all this neato stuff works. The Blogger folk seem to be really on top of it.

And I think I will just have to take the right-mouse-button menu option out of my registry, once I figure out how to safely do that. I would like to be lazy about it.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
BLOGGER - News Archive November 1999 If you use Internet Explorer 4 or 5 for Windows, here's an even quicker way to update your blog: Right-click on any page on the web, select "Blog this!" from the context menu, and instantly bring up a Blogger form, populated with a link to the current page and any text you have selected. You can add a menu entry for each of your blogs by clicking on the Add to Browser Menu link on the right of your blog edit view.
� Ev. [11/18/1999 11:30:22 AM]

Well, thanks Ev. Why did I do this. Oh, I was tidying up my desktop and putting the Blog This favorite and the Bloger site links where they would be more useful. Then I was drawn into this news archive link which seems to provide a by-the-month history of Blogger page posts (? - I guess it is all just one big happy Blogger, huh).

But this is here because I found instructions for using the Blog This right button menu item, which hadn't worked for me before. And now, here it is because I selected something off of that page to include. So, I was mistaken when I said the right mouse button selection was there but not working. Hmm, then I don't have to worry so much about where the Favorite for Bog This is on my desktop. I have my mouse button to help out. Hmm, Hmm.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 

Open Hypertext and the Unfinished Revolution

Boy, I would love to spend the afternoon putting material together about this, and other duties call.

I have also been getting a picture of how I would like a Bloggified Wiki or Wikified Blogger to work, and how it looks like using a browser as a shell is perfect either way. Tempting, tempting, tempting ...

Way too many interesting items erupting in my in-basket today.

Later ...
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
An Ideagraph Specification
[I've got to find a better place to put my "Blog This" shortcut. In a fit of organization, I buried it in a folder among my favorites and, although it is early in the alphabet, it is now too much work. I want the shortcut on my task bar (didn't work there) or in my Microsoft Office Bar. I may have to come up with a button on my browser menu (now wouldn't that be nice!).]

So a lot of OHS discussants are into IBIS and coding of duscussions and working problem solutions based on ratings and such. I've not gotten into that, but this is more context on the OHS subject and what a lot of the discussants are particularly interested in.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
Ideagraph Development
Here's more about the kind of technologies that people promote in the context of an OHS and other technologies (mind mapping, concept graphs, knowledge management, etc., etc.).
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 

On-Line M.Sc in Information Technology from the University of Liverpool

Brookshear - Computer Science: An Overview - amazon.com
Oh boy. I just found out that this is the textbook for my first course in the University of Liverpool on-line M.Sc in Information Technology program. I am very keen about the program. [I am not quite old enough to be a poster child for life-long learning, but I am working on it.]

Naturally I read the reviews. It is interesting how many people cite this book as good for examination preparation and those who don't like the book think it is too elementary. There is also something in here about how the editions have been changing and perhaps simplifying in some way.

As a practitioner, I find the table of contents of this book to be interesting. I have ordered it in any case, because it is a requirement for my course, which is the first course that everyone takes in this program. Since this is also the "gatekeeper course" in which people from all over the planet calibrate themselves and choose to continue in the program or not, I suspect that the way English is used in this book is also important for accessibility to non-native-speakers.

My "test" of this book is going to be by examination of the Appendix on the equivalence of iterative and recursive programs. My experience is that the interative solutions that are constructed from recursive programs are pretty awful and inpenetrable in the general case, and recursive solutions are pretty transparent but often costly. There are weird time-space trade-offs, since the state of the computation is carried quite differently in the two techniques (albeit equivalent). [Afterthought. Constructing a recursive form can often show how ill-conceived an iterative solution may be, and can provide ideas for a refined recursive formulation that is easily translated back to an interative form or hybrid form. I remember using examples by Bill Burge that way at one time.] Enough of that. I expect that when the book arrives there will be more interesting things to ponder.

One reason for participating in an M.Sc program, after 44 years in the field, is to upgrade my working knowledge and look at being able to teach and write for computer science. I am not concerned with coverage being too elementary. It looks like this book provides enough room for expanding ones interests in what is surveyed and also, going further in more-technical treatments. This author has what appears to be some more-technical and focused materials of his own.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 

Open Hypertext Systems - something is brewing

ba-unrev-talk Mailing List Archives
OK, this is the Unrev Discussion list where I have learned the most about OHS and the community around and impinging on it.

This, and its predecessor list is something for me to review and do some blogging over as part of gathering together what I see as a convergence opportunity.

This marker is to help me find what I need. There are a couple of other archived mailing lists that I need to do that with in support of my Miser Theory work, but this is what I am hot about just this moment.

Something is brewing here. I sense the convergence of something that would be very useful to have and to be able to use. Something maybe as easy as blogging. I need to come back and capture more.

OK, now other chores beckon ..
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 
Claimaker, Knowledge Modeling, and Visualizing Argumentation
Oh boy, I have been missing something. The work on creation of an Open Hypertext System (OHS) is following ideas of Douglas Englebart and his Bootstrap Alliance. There are lots of ideas percolating around this concept, including allied, independent, and loosely-coupled developments of one kind and another at hot spots around the globe.

The Bootstrap Alliance (which I will bog in here at some point real soon now) has some lively discussion lists and lots of pointers and discussions surface in these e-mail discussions. Sometimes what we talk about is global context and things about humanity and also about being human, about how we deal with each other (on the list and in the world), and so on.

Meanwhile, there is another of level of effort around visualization, mind-mapping, various ideas about knowledge and knowledge management, and still more on having this work in an open, sustainable way over long terms without getting snarled up in property issues.

I am giving my spin on this.

OK, so I follow this, and I notice that there are some key neutral ideas that work without forcing something like a particular ontology (also a matter of discusssion) and doing simple things like "purple numbres," marking up e-mails so they can be found, topicalized, referenced, etc., Wiki-ing with visualizations, and more.

I don't do much other than build an e-mail folder of about 1700 items and also save pages and links that are suggested on the Bootstrap Alliance lists.

Now, Blogger Posts have purple numbers, and they work just great though people aren't particularly aware of the numbers. On the Orcmid's Lair blog, each post gets a unique number, and if you follow the link in the dateline at the bottom of any post, you will be taken to the top of that post in the blog's archive file and the URL that you see in your browser window is the correct thing to use if you want to blog that post or otherwise link to it in something you are doing.

There are lots of things to look at with regard to OHS, which requires quite a bit more than this.

Why this note?

Well, today, Simon Buckingham Shum commented on some related work that was identified on the Bootstrap Alliance discussions, and he said something that stopped me in my tracks.

A prototype deployment of a prototypical umm, collaborative discussion and knowledge building system that Simon and compatriots have put out there uses Instant Messenger technology to coordinate among bases. In the case that Simon illustrates, the IM technique is used to coordinate with people who are not at a meeting but who are contributing to the conceptualization and analysis work that is going on in the discussion.

But, of course, it doesn't have to be a person there. I don't mean as in the Turing Test sort of thing. I mean that Instant Messenger technology can be used as an interesting device for coordinating communications between, umm, knowledge frameworks or conceptual whatnots. (I want to stay out of the lingo of knowledge management, so I am fumbling here.)

This is a step up from the use of an e-mail processor to do certain kinds of work. I think an e-mail processor is also a good idea (though having to put up with having it be spammed could be pretty funny).

So this note is inspired by that observation in material that just popped up in the Bootstrap Alliance discussions. I want to capture the link somewhere and start building more.

I am also strongly aware that if Blogger Posts were Wikki-fied, the work of editing in the links to all my other stuff already on some of these themes, and the more-to-be-gathered would not take so much work. It would be a matter of cleaning up and not medium-heavy-lifting finding links and inserting them.

OK, there is a lot coming up for me right now, including a problem case I have that I call the Feuding Lexicographers problem, about coordinated discussion and cross-annotation as part of a collaborative effort. And I see that it may be coming together and be more relevant to the OHS work in the way it is unfolding in these instances.

And I have just been called to breakfast. Back later with some sort of minimal structure on next steps.
posted by Dennis at Friday, November 01, 2002

 

Touch-Up of ODMA 2.0 Specification HTML Editions

ODMA 2.0 Specification 2.0
I made the repairs that I saw needed when this document showed up unexpectedly in some blogging of web sites that cover metadata practices.

Then I couldn't figure out why the changes didn't show up. It is because I repaired the version-specific copy, ODMA 2.0-2 edition and forgot to roll up the separate "current" copy.

They are both repaired now.

Pending Actions: 1. Log incident report on the damaged link. 2. Log incident report on the shortcuts and links in the HTML versions that were out of date. The second incident doubtless applies to the ODMA errata and the draft for edition ODMA 2.0-3 too.
posted by Dennis at Thursday, October 31, 2002

 
Open Forum 2003 on Metadata Registries
Ahah! Dan also provided this link. I have been waiting for registration and other information to be posted about this activity. It turns out I have been watching the wrong link!

I can tell my contacts that their site really isn't broken, I have been going to the wrong one!
posted by Dennis at Thursday, October 31, 2002

 
EPA SoR: System of Registries
Dan Schneider points to this for those of us interested in metadata, its description, registration, and interchange. Very interesting.
posted by Dennis at Thursday, October 31, 2002

 

Just one more little change

I've made all of the changes that I said I wanted to make.  That's done and everything is working great.

My last little change is to put a construction history block at the bottom of the blog page, just like the one that I use on other pages that are major entries into Orcmid's Lair and environs. You know how it goes, just one tiny little change and then I can stop. I confess. I tweaked it three times (all right, four times) before I was happy with the result, but at least I didn't make a new post about it each time.
posted by Dennis at Thursday, October 31, 2002

 
Dennis, you silly boy.

All right, I realized that I really do need to change the name of the archive set to be based on the file name lair-chive.asp, rather than lair-chive.htm. So I went into my settings just now and I made the change. Then I published my blog again, because I guess Blogger is designed to assume publication is needed after that kind of change (makes sense to me).

Then, naturally, the way I tested that the links are preserved was by clicking on links I inserted in the posting just below, my #83845060.

What, it's not working? Oh no! Oh, wait!? The link I tested was one of the ones I created, the one to "Anderson - Infrastructure: The Things We Take for Granted - ACM Ubiquity." But it took me to 2002_10_27_lair-chive.htm, not 2002_10_27_lair-chive.asp. Of course it did, silly. When you copied and pasted the links into that post (my #83845060), that is the file that was named in those links, and Blogger has no idea what those are -- they are not built using $Blogger$ code -- and leaves them alone.

And it was to avoid that future problem that I made the sudden change from .htm to .asp in the first place, blissfully not expecting to catch myself in my own trap!

So, I am not going to make any repairs below. I am going to leave the "bug" in. That commits me to preserving enough of the original .htm archive page, the only one built so far, so that the posting below (my #83845060), will continue to demonstrate what this posting (my #83845800) is talking about. It provides a demonstration of my experience.


posted by Dennis at Thursday, October 31, 2002

 
This short article is designed to test the permanence of bookmarks on the pages here. I have been talking about enterprise architecture at a number of places.

The most recent place is here, my comment on Anderson - Infrastructure: The Things We Take for Granted - ACM Ubiquity.

That is my posting #83813614 (allowing me feel way more prolific than I already am.)

This was just after I posted #83813429:
Enterprise Models, Strategic Transformations and Possible Solutions.

In a way, my next snippet with any bearing on enterprise architecture is #83812845: Andersen - The Answer is Out There - ACM Ubiquity because it raises the issue of where the enterprise is situated (if that is even an appropriate term for enterprise) in the customer's world, although Andersen does not refer to the enterprise architecture. I would take this little fable as looking at bigger fish, such as the purpose of the enterprise, not for itself, but as a contribution in the world.

Before that, as I was making my first gleanings from the ACM Ubiquity archive, I posted #83811708: Delic - Architecting Durable Things - ACM Ubiquity.

Then there are some other wanderings following my marker #83785811: AIIM 2003 - The Enterprise Content Management Event, where the word "Enterprise" is actually invisible to me and I just carry it around as a kind of lip service. Not very powerful that. I think I will take this extension of AIIM's reach to heart and see what I can provide from that context.

Before that, I coughed up #83731379">: SAWG - Solution Architects as part of a fly-by blogging on Federal Enterprise Architecture (#83730573).

There's more, but this is just a test and that's already a lot of work to see whether or not posting numbers are durable enough to use in cross-referencing and mutual inter- extra- self- thread- linking.



posted by Dennis at Thursday, October 31, 2002

 
Wonderful. Now I don't have to put that target option in all of my links by hand.

Better yet, the links (in the dates) will take a shortcut to the article that the timestamp applies to. And, marvels of marvels, the link is to the archived copy, not the current page that is impermanently at the lair.

This is perfect. It takes people (including me) who blog a particular post to the archive version of that post, even if they are looking at the current page.

The only odd characteristic is that the archive tends to be one post or more behind the current published page, so those date stamps just go to the top of the archive page and not to the specific article.

Now, the one last thing to check is whether or not the bookmarks on post remain unchanged even as new posts are added. That is, these links are basically permanent unless I manually delete a posting.

[Oh oh, I just realized I should have made the archive pages be .asp pages too, not just .htm pages. That's because I want to be able to do redirection and other things in the future. Well, that isn't all thought out, so I will leave it for now. That is a change that can always be made later.]
posted by Dennis at Thursday, October 31, 2002

 
Let's change the body options for how links will take us outside of any framing that holds the blogger page, whether for cloaking or any other purpose.

In the section of the template, right below the