peace on the web, too

For a different top, did you knew what were the most used Wikipedia entries this year?

Top 10 Cited Wikipedia Entries - 2006
1 Web 2.0
2 Steve Irvin
3 Mark Foley Scandal
4 Blog
5 Ajax
6 World War II
7 Snakes on a Plane
8 Meme
9 Wiki
10 RSS

Via the BBC pods&blogs.

• cclair.nl - Blog » ModernCaptcha - when captcha meets usability
  “ModernCaptcha” is a simple script in order to prevent spam in a very user friendly way. In a few words, your visitors don’t have to type some characters as you see on the most websites, the verification is made by choosing the company name belongin
  (tags: usability web_development captcha security Tools free)

And now, for a different top, check out the iA website:

The 50 loudest websites in 2006 and why they’re so successful

Marketing, Content, Usability, Design and Behavior are the main factors that make a website work.

1. Internet Marketing is a combination of Presence (how well is it pushed? How known is it?) and Self Dynamic (how well does it market itself as a product?).
2. Interactive Content is a combination of Constructivity (is
   the content/service productively usable? Are the texts authentic? Do
   they incite to write? Are they leading to positive action?) and Uniqueness (are they genuine? Are they special?)
3. Usability is a combination of Structure/IA (Are the contents organized in an understandable way? Where am I? Where can I go?) and the organisation of the User Interface (Do I understand where is what and why? Do I understand how it works? Does it do what I expect it to do?)
4. Web Design is a combination of Typography (Is the text easy to read? Is the typography web adequate?) and Attention to detail (does the website care about the little things? Is it characteristic and delicate or just bold?)
5. Online Behavior is a combination of Interactive Ethics (do the authors/owners have a positive open-minded attitude? Do they follow the basic rules of good manners?) and Democracy (Are they working towards a democratic open web or do they work only for their own pocket?)

Wanna see what these criteria do to a classic websites top? Full article here.

The well-known Read/Write Web website released their predictions for the web trends to follow in 2007. Full article here.

I made a concise summary hereafter, grouping some related categories and excluding some very niche products (like online real estate):

• Structure: Semantic Web, RSS, Structured Data, Microformats, Widgets
• Enterprises: Enterprise web-based applications
• Web applications: Rich Internet Applications, Web desktop, Web office applications
• Publicity: evolution of the online ad model
• Search: Web search evolution, search verticals, semantic web integration
• Browsers evolution (aka war)
• Multimedia: VoIP, Internet TV, P2P, Virtual “spaces”
• Social networks, communities
• Internationalization - China, broadband expansion
• Mobile web - applications, integration with RSS, Social networks, ads

• Thesis: Interoperability in heterogeneus medical information systems using smart mobile agents and HL7 (EMAGS)
  A master thesis on “Interoperability in heterogeneus medical information systems using smart mobile agents and HL7 (EMAGS)”
  (tags: semantic_web hl7 smart mobile agents medical healthcare)
• Bhavna Orgun - HL7 resources
  HL7 related resources - Protégé ontologies
  (tags: tools hl7 ontology semantic)

• Aptana: The Web IDE
  Aptana is a robust, JavaScript-focused IDE for building dynamic web applications. Highlights include the following features: * Code Assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, including your own JavaScript functions * Outliner that gives a snapshot vie
  (tags: javascript ide css editor software html Programming webdesign web eclipse open-source free development)
• Firebug - Web Development Evolved
  Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
  (tags: firefox javascript development css programming webdev software free IDE opensource tool)

I recently discovered Jimmy Nilsson’s weblog, I think that it was by searching the web on Eric Evans, Domain Driven Design etc. I am trying to understand how to begin a Delphi implementation of Specification domain pattern (Martin Fowler and Eric Evans).

Anyway, Jimmy Nilsson’s recent blog post, Post-agile struck a chord with me, as he grouped in the same article the things that interested me the most in the last year, year and a half or so: Domain Driven Design, Ruby and Rails, Behavior-Driven Development and Domain-Specific Languages. He also mentioned Intentional software, but I will leave that for the next year :)

What I really, really wanted to say is that I feel that the semantic (web or not) approach to the software development or domain design if you like is at least as important as the other items on the list. Maybe it isn’t or doesn’t seem as “agile” as the other ones, but I think that we’ll see more and more the influence the ontologies and their use on the development process itself.

If after a couple of years and projects what you accomplish is a semantic representation of your domain or domain patterns, collaboratively built, shared with customers and on which your working software is built (through BDD and DDD), you do follow the Agile manifesto, so building it starting today should be called agile too, right?

If you don’t believe me, read on to Danny Ayers’ Raw and then search “semantic agile” on Google.

Other links:

• Semantically-Enabled Knowledge Technologies
• Semantic Web starting points
• SAKE project

Weblog maintenance message:
Due to a problem with the performancing.com/metrics script, the weblog was apparently down for the last 3-4 days. It is fixed now, my apologies to all the (3) readers.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - source)

Via O’Reilly Radar.