ISO står stilla efter omstridd formatkupp - Computer Sweden

ISO står stilla efter omstridd formatkupp - Computer Sweden Holy Crap! In english: OOXML Payback Time as Global Standards Work in SC 34 "Grinds to a Halt" Well done Microsoft (and ISO itself gets to share the blame).

Time for interoperability!

Two important meetings announced (that's important for me ...) First: Dublin Core Architecture teleconference on October 26 This is going to be heavy on RDF/HTML/XML stuff for Dublin Core Then: Joint IEEE LTSC/DCMI Task Force teleconference on October 31. If you're interested in LOM-DC interoperability, this is where it happens.

PRESSMEDDELANDE: IT-utredning stänger öppna standarder

Säg nej till standarder som inte går att använda utan att betala "tull". Från ffii: PRESSMEDDELANDE: IT-utredning stänger öppna standarder

Boycotting MS Office documents

I've officially started my Microsoft office document format boycott. Why? Because of two things: 1. the unavailability of open documentation of the old document formats (.doc, .ppt, etc) 2. the behavior of Microsoft in the ISO process, in particular in Sweden, but elsewhere too, when voting on OOXML, the new, so-called "open" document formats for MS Office. Being engaged myself in standardization processes, I know how this hurts the standardization community. So, I'm not accepting files in Word or Powerpoint format, and I'm only sending ODF and PDF. What about everybody else? Well, either use an office application that supports the ISO standard for office documents, such as Openoffice.org, or use the following plugin for MS Office: http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/

OpenDisc - open source for windows

The OpenDisc OpenDisc is a free (open source and gratis) CD image that contains a lot of software that I use when I'm windows (from time to time). A great, cheap, gift to friends and family, and a possible first step to Linux.

"A short update on Metadata specs"

Phil Barker of CETIS has just posted A short update on Metadata specs Sadly lacking from the summary is any mention of ISO MLR. Not that Phil is to blame - the MLR work is proceeding at quite a distance from the community. It's encouraging to note that KMR is involved in several of the mentioned items - LOM-DC, Harmony and the DCMI Abstract Model... There's more out there that we're involved in - the Description Set Profile work, including the wiki syntax, and the DC-in-RDF expressions come to mind as important.

Description Set Profiles

I'm currently working on Dublin Core Description Profiles. The hope is to have a machine-readable constraint language for the DCMI Abstract Model - this is something currently lacking in the DCMI taskgroups. At the same time, there's discussion about what Application Profiles are really intended to convey. Are they just recommendations or can they be seen as constraints on a Description Set (DCAM terminology). The current thinking is that they are actually constraints and that recommendations belong in other forms of documentation. Alistair got really excited about the notion of constraint languages for graph metadata - see his post for details. Expect interesting results coming out of this work. Oh, and Alistair - drop the "Son of DC" name before the DC community hears about it :-)