So all you library-land XQuery hackers start your (XQuery) engines, here is the official story that came across the XQuery-Talk mailing list:

Elsevier Labs is inviting creative individuals who have wanted the opportunity to view and work with scientific journal article content on the web to enter the Elsevier Article 2.0 Contest. Each contestant will be provided online access to approximately 7,500 full-text XML articles from Elsevier journals, including the associated images, and the Elsevier Article 2.0 API to develop a unique yet useful web-based journal article rendering application.  The sample apps (including source code) we have provided on the Article 2.0 Contest web site were developed in XQuery.  While the contest does not mandate the use of XQuery, our experience has shown the technology is a natural fit for building these types of applications.

If you are interested in the contest, please visit the web site (http://article20.elsevier.com) and apply for an Article 2.0 API Key.

If you have any questions about the contest, drop us an email at info-article20@elsevier.com.

Very cool… Oh, did I mention first prize is $4000, second prize is $2000, and third prize is $1000?  Not too shabby!

If you’ve been reading this weblog for any amount of time at all, you know I tend to ramble on and on. I’ve semi-recently started using Twitter and I find it very interesting (because I’m limited to 140 characters — it’s not so easy for me to confine myself to that amount of space, but I find it works well for some topics (more newsy)).

The 12 second videos seem to be the video equivalent of a tweet. It’s an interesting space. I don’t know if anyone else is doing it (most of the stuff on YouTube is longer (and not that interesting to me)). I know Flickr has recently introduced short videos, but I’m not sure they’re tackling the same space. It seems like 12 Seconds is much more intentionally trying to be a video Twitter, whereas Flickr is just adding short videos as a (cool) afterthought.

I have to admit I’m more of a printed text boy. I don’t follow podcasts and I don’t look at YouTube very often. Yes, I listen to music, but when I want to digest something in a form other than music, I prefer to read about it. Tweets work well for me for this reason, but I’m not sure 12 second videos would. Still, there is something about it that interests me. I’ve signed up to get an invite (I have no idea how long this will take).

I don’t know what I’d be able to do with 12 seconds since I’m a rather slow thinker, but it might be fun to try. If I do give it a shot, I’ll post something here with a link. Perhaps I’m interested, in part, because of the strict time limitation. It seems like a spontaneous haiku… a stream of consciousness haiku? I guess it would be possible to give a great deal of thought to your 12 seconds and to produce a very polished video (some folks on the site seem to be doing this). I don’t think that’s how I’d use it though.

Though I’m not really that interested in video blogging, I might give it a try if/when I get an invite. Unrelated, I find the whole “invite” thing interesting (psychologically speaking), but that’s probably fodder for another post.

I’m not a huge fan of credit cards, but I like this level of customization. I’d like it even more if my bank card did this. Maybe, though, with a picture of my kids on my credit card, I’ll be less likely to use it (reminded I should be saving for college or something else less frivolous than most of my credit card expenditures).

I’m testing out this service at the moment and it seems to be struggling to get some of my Flickr images. Since the email just arrived perhaps they’re experiencing a lot of traffic at the moment. For those interested in experimenting (I don’t think you already need to have a card to see one of your Flickr images transposed), you might want to wait a bit.

I’ve always been of the mind that Code4Lib is an experiment… that it shouldn’t be centralized, organized, etc., and it’s colored my thoughts on other Code4Lib-ish issues (conferences, projects, etc.) I’ve ranted on at times that all these Code4Lib-ish things should be as Code4Lib is. I don’t think so anymore. In fact, I think thinking in this way was sort of putting the cart before the horse. I think thinking like that was actually trying to see Code4Lib in a centralized way — see it as a single thing.

My new approach to Code4Lib is that, if I don’t have a strong enough preference about something to actually get involved with it, I’m going to refrain from commenting unless, of course, opinions are solicited. Then I’ll just offer an opinion and go on my way. Take, for instance, the Code4Lib Planet. Sure, I have opinions but, no, it’s not something I really want to take up at this time. For that reason, I should just let the editors do what they want (which is what Ed said in his post basically).

In a way, this is approaching activities in the same way that I would an open source project. So what if the editors do something I don’t find useful. There is nothing stopping me from setting up my own Planet of Code4Lib authors for my own use if I feel so strongly about an issue. If I find an open source project that is close to what I want, but not quite there, it makes more sense to use it as I need to, modifying it as needed (rather than to try and sway the project’s owners away from their well-considered path).

This doesn’t mean I shouldn’t offer suggestions if solicited, or provide feedback about how something might be more useful to me as a random user, but there’s no need to feel some sort of distributed ownership over anything just because it’s Code4Lib-related. That just gets in the way of those who are already doing great work. If there is a project related to Code4Lib that I want to work on, I can work out the sticky issues with those who also want to put in the time.

As with most epiphanies, this isn’t really a big revelation. Most people were probably already thinking this way. I guess when you realize you’ve been deluded, though, it seems like a burst of light, voices on high, or something like that.

[warning... stereotyping ahead]

This is an argument on a continuum of evolutionism vs. creationism… Evolutionist say, establish the smallest possible set of laws to enforce on a system and see what emergent behavior arises… while the Creationist say, define the entire mechanism, top to bottom, written in stone, and damn all who do not comply. Seems to me, folks that come from the RDF World ascribe to the former and those from XML Schema world tend to the later, both could stand to learn a little from each other.

It’s an interesting quote (other than I bristled a bit about being cast into the ‘creationist’ camp)…

I wonder if a third alternative might be the relativist. The relativist looks at the world from a particular local perspective and codifies it. Unlike the creationist, she does not seek to enforce her structure on everyone else, but sees it as the solution to a particular problem. Unlike the evolutionist, she does believe there is a need to validate her data and confirm that it fits with her worldview.

She’s a relativist because she looks beyond her particular assumptions and perspectives and realizes there are lots of other communities out there (like hers) that have a perceived need for valid data. Rather than say her schema is the one to rule them all she looks at ways to “trade” (share/crosswalk) information with other like communities. It doesn’t mean she wants to share with them all, but just that there are some with which she wants to have a relationship.

Bruce: Let’s turn the question around and ask: if not RDF, then what? You definitely need some model on which to base it, it seems to me, and things like GRDDL, microformats, etc. leave a lot of flexibility on the encoding end. The key for linked data is really the URI, of course, which becomes kind of like a key for a global database.

Me: Does it need a single data model? It does if machines are doing all the work automagically, but if there are people involved does it? The key to me seems to be the “linked” part. I really like Dan’s coining of “Linked Description” — this doesn’t seem to be splitting hairs to me, like Bruce suggests, but more of a recognition of a component in the process which isn’t considered necessary in the Linked Data perspective.