Tech blog by Alexander Mikroyannidis
June 23, 2011 Leave a Comment
The ROLE project (Responsive Open Learning Environments) is organising a Widget Enchantment Contest. Build a widget using ROLE technologies, make it available through the ROLE widget store and win a prize worth 500EUR 
The contest will run till July 15th and the winner will be announced on July 31st.
UPDATE: The contest has been extended till August 31st.
July 26, 2010 Leave a Comment
If you’re one of the bloggers that love to blog but never seem to find the time to do it properly (it all sounds so familiar!), then the Semantic Web may have a treat for you. The Evri semantic web service claims to be able to help bloggers follow trends and developments and deliver curated content to their readers:
The idea is to put into play more elements of its technology, such as its notion of collections that lets users follow entities around topics they’re interested in, so that bloggers can become better curators for their sites. They then get better, that is, at pinpointing streams around their specialty and letting information about that flow to their base.
Of course, as the article claims, curated content is not supposed to be a replacement for original content produced by the blogger. Instead, it can be used more like starting material, on top of which the blogger will add an editorial layer. Sweet! 
March 24, 2010 Leave a Comment
Gordon Brown announced yesterday the establishment of a UK Institute of Web Science, aiming to promote “cutting edge” web technologies. Mr Brown outlined this vision:
This will help place the UK at the cutting edge of research on the semantic web and other emerging web and internet technologies, and ensure that government is taking the right funding decisions to position the UK as a world leader. And we will invite universities and private sector web developers and companies to join this collaborative project.
Good news indeed, in light of the recent developments in the Linked Data initiative in the UK.
January 31, 2010 Leave a Comment
So the new iPad was finally unveiled this week, giving an end to loads of speculations and high hopes… The device is essentially just a large iPod Touch, lacking basic features someone would expect from a tablet, like multitasking, a usb port, or even a camera. Criticism has been ruthless so far, from mocking the device’s unfortunate name to comparing it with… a stone 
January 21, 2010 2 Comments
In anticipation of the big announcement of the new tablet / e-reader by Apple next week, Jason Bradbury of the Gadget Show wrote a very passionate piece in his blog:
Let me place my neck squarely on the block and predict the most important dimension of the next Wednesday’s launch: it will change publishing, forever.
I’ll just say I hope even half of what Jason believes comes true (and judging from Apple’s history this might just happen!).
December 31, 2009 3 Comments
A year ago, I was starting this blog, after taking a break from loads of christmas food… just like today!
Here’s to another year of blogging! Cheers!!
October 26, 2009 Leave a Comment
As of today, GeoCities belongs to the past. After almost 15 years of offering free web space to anyone with “creative” ideas, GeoCities is no more. Yahoo! has decided to permanently terminate the service, as it was surpassed by the booming blogging and social networking sites.
Like many other internet users of my age, my very first web page was hosted on GeoCities. Half-coded in HTML and half in Frontpage, with lots of GIFs and different colours, my page was not very different from the rest of the GeoCities world!
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for your eyes!), I haven’t kept any of the early versions of my GeoCities page. I only managed to retrieve the last version, which is not too dreadful! Here’s what the home page used to look like:
Note: The monkey was “evolving” into a human sitting in front of a PC, through a home-made GIF
Goodbye GeoCities! We sure had a lot of fun together!
