BBC News - Government IT projects: UK adopts open technology standards

This BBC technology article discusses a UK Government plan to ensure it's department uses open standards :-

Government IT projects: UK adopts open technology standards - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20178175 - 2 November 2012 -

"The UK government is drawing up a set of open technology standards all future IT projects must comply with.


The standards will dictate how data should be formatted and the ways that software should interoperate.

The push for open standards builds on earlier work to standardise the hardware on which government services are built.

The decision to mandate the open standards follows a four-month consultation exercise."

Green Unconference - Long Ashton (near Bristol), 27th Oct

Event - Green Unconference - This is an interesting event. I can't make it, but here's the home page -http://allsaintsla.org.uk/greenunconference2012/ - Saturday 27th Oct 10am - 6pm.

'Where - All Saints Church, Church Lane, Long Ashton, North Somerset. BS41 9LU


When - Saturday 27th October 2012 between 10am and 6pm (BST) Chief Organiser - Daniel Lewis (Email: danieljohnlewis@gmail.com ) Assistant Organiser - Beki Lewis Category - Unconference, Green, Environmentalism, Conservation, Sustainability   What is an Unconference?

An unconference is an informal meeting that is driven by its participants. Unconferences are always free to attend, they will try to form themselves without much funding and so are driven by the passion of a topic rather than money. They will often have talks & how-to's, stalls and a chance to do a little bit of new-contact meeting. They aren't attached to any particular organisations, and are usually not related to each other.'"

Journal Paper - Driven Modelling: Visualisation and Systematic Interaction for end-user programming

A paper is being published on my PhD research, I'm lead author - Hale, P., Solomonides, A., Beeson, I., 2012. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing Volume 23 Issue 6 December 2012 354–379 - 'User-Driven Modelling: Visualisation and Systematic Interaction for end-user programming'.

The paper is online today - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045926X12000572.

The abstract and figures are available to all. Access to the full text depends on your personal or institutional entitlements.

I've submitted my version of this paper to the University of the West of England Research Repository and will include the link to it in this post when it's available.

Web access problems for unemployed and mentally ill

Over time as an activist in this aspect of health and computing I've noticed that the level of access of unemployed people of all ages, especially those that are unemployed or underemployed is very poor.

Both unemployed and mentally ill are at risk of having poor levels of web and technology access and use. The combination of both issues maximises this problems.

Charities do run schemes to try to tackle this issue but are overstretched for funding. Work programmes also look at these issue but only from the point of view of getting people ready for work. There are likely to be large numbers of mentally ill people (and those with other disabilities) that are not ready for work focused training. This group should not be left out of having training and assistance in getting and using technologies to access the web.

Isolation can make many mental health conditions worse. Web access would not solve this issue on it's own, what it does do however is to enable the sufferer to access websites of geoups that provide support and group based activities which can assist in tackling lonliness and depression.

Without more effort on the above solutions the at risk groups described above will be left as an isolated underclass.

Tim Berners-Lee Interview - My Web course homework

This is an interesting interview by the BBC as part of their Virtual Revolution programme with Tim Berners-Lee - the inventor of the Web.

Video Clip - from The Virtual Revolution - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005cbgp - The Digital Revolution - Duration 12mins 13 secs - 27th Nov 2009.

"Tim Berners-Lee invented the web, 20 years ago. Since then he's been at the forefront of efforts to create web standards that mean we have one web worldwide. He's also a Director of the World Wide Web Foundation, which strives for more widespread use of the web globally. Here he discusses how people think when using the web, and the 'spirit of the web'."

Research Highlights for Journal of Visual Languages & Computing

These are the Research Highlights I've provided for the Journal of Visual Languages & Computing - User-Driven Modelling: Visualisation and Systematic Interaction for end-user programming - paper.

These research highlights sum up my research so far.

Research Highlights

•       The research question is the extent to which diagrammatic programming is possible.
•    The technique investigated is User Driven Modelling. 
•       A survey provides feedback for this technique. 
•      The technique is illustrated with examples.
•      The technique is most suitable to tree-based problems.

Journal Paper Accepted - Journal of Visual Languages & Computing

The paper - User-Driven Modelling: Visualisation and Systematic Interaction for end-user programming - has been accepted for - Journal of Visual Languages & Computing - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/1045926X.

I'm the lead author on this paper and it's based on my PhD research, the other authors are my supervision team from University of the West of England - Tony Solomonides and Ian Beeson.

I'll post a link to this paper when it's published.

Olympic Ceremony, Tim Berners-Lee, CNET

This article from CNET discusses the representation of British innovation in the Olympic opening Ceremony, including that Tim Berners-Lee made an appearance. -

Olympic opening ceremony made tech history for me - By Rich Trenholm on 30 July 2012 - http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/olympic-opening-ceremony-made-tech-history-for-me-50008746/

UK science to be freely available

This post summarizes a BBC article about funding of journal publishing -

"Under new proposals the government will pay publishers a fee each time a paper is published."

UK science to be freely available - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18860276 - By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News - 16 July 2012.

"The government is to develop plans to make publicly funded research results freely available to all.

Currently, scientists and members of the public have to pay the leading scientific journals to see research that has already been paid for from the public purse.

Under new proposals the government will pay publishers a fee each time a paper is published.

In return the research will be available to those who wish to see it.

The total cost of the subsidy is estimated to be £50m a year which will be taken from funds that would otherwise have been spent on research."

Related article - Berkeley signs up online with Harvard and MIT - By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent - 24 July 2012 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18972376.

UK university joins US online partnership

I studied one of these courses, this was from Stanford University -

This is an interesting article about the first British university to join the online university project.

"Edinburgh University is to be the first UK institution to join an influential US-based online university project. Edinburgh is part of a major expansion in the Coursera project - which is going to see 12 more universities providing online courses. The online platform was set up this year with content from US institutions including Stanford and Princeton."

UK university joins US online partnership - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18857999 - By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent - 17 July 2012.

"An important part of this online development is its global reach - and the Coursera project is announcing three partners outside the US - Toronto in Canada and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, as well as Edinburgh."

"In terms of profile-raising, it means that Edinburgh's online courses will be available alongside some of the biggest names in US higher education."

BBC News - Top US universities put their reputations online

This is an interesting story about the latest developments in US online provision of education. These courses aren't just available in America. I've studied one of them, Stanford University - Databases.

20 June 2012

Top US universities put their reputations online
By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent

"This autumn more than a million students are going to take part in an experiment that could re-invent the landscape of higher education.

Some of the biggest powerhouses in US higher education are offering online courses - testing how their expertise and scholarship can be brought to a global audience.

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have formed a $60m (£38m) alliance to launch edX, a platform to deliver courses online - with the modest ambition of "revolutionising education around the world".

Sounding like a piece of secret military hardware, edX will provide online interactive courses which can be studied by anyone, anywhere, with no admission requirements and, at least at present, without charge.

With roots in Silicon Valley, Stanford academics have set up another online platform, Coursera, which will provide courses from Stanford and Princeton and other leading US institutions."

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18191589

Survey - Usability Evaluation

This usability evaluation survey was published in my PhD. At that date there were 91 responses. Now there are 97. The 6 extra responses will also contribute because the updated survey will be published in a journal paper - Journal of Visual Languages and Computing - http://ees.elsevier.com/jvlc/. I've completed minor changes to the paper today which is called - User-Driven Modelling: Visualisation and Systematic Interaction for end-user programming. I'm the main author on that paper - much of which is based on my PhD.

The survey can be accessed at - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=A8Z1u2o5WlIphAPdzNCoeA_3d_3d

The survey is based on 2 user interface examples - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration1.htm and

http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration2.htm

The summary of the results that has been submitted to the Journal is below :-

A survey of 97 people was conducted focused on the prototype implementations. This supplemented the feedback obtained from Airbus and Rolls-Royce. This survey was conducted in order to determine what kind of diagrammatic interface might be most appropriate. Extensive consultation with engineers at Airbus and Rolls-Royce helped establish the possible interfaces that needed evaluating, as these interfaces were useful to and understood by these engineers. These possible interfaces were taxonomy, CAD style diagrammatic, flow chart (or activity diagram), UML style (entity relationship). Which was preferred depended partly on the skills and type of work of the engineers, and others surveyed, and on the type of problem to be modelled/programmed :-

Which would you consider yourself to be?

answered question 93

skipped question 4

An End-User (anyone else, familiar with computers but not in categories below) - 29.0% - 27

An Experienced Developer - 28.0% - 26

A Researcher - 32.3% - 30

Other (please specify) - 10.8% - 10

What type of visualisation is best for enabling end-user programming?

answered question 78

skipped question 19

Taxonomy (tree view) - 26.9% - 21

Diagrammatic - 37.2% - 29

Flow Chart - 37.2% - 29

Unified Modeling Language (UML) - 14.1% - 11

Other (please specify) - 12.8% - 10

Which example Program have you used?

answered question 81

skipped question 16

Taxonomy viewer -  http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration1.htm

- 17.3% - 14

Diagrammatic Viewer -  http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration2.htm

- 17.3% - 14

Neither - 43.2% - 35

Both - 22.2% - 18

Which example interface do you prefer?

answered question 75

skipped question 22

Taxonomy (tree) viewer - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration1.htm - 26.7% - 20

Diagrammatic Viewer - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration2.htm

- 17.3% - 13

Neither - 9.3% - 7                                                 

Both - 13.3%- 10

No opinion - 33.3% - 25

As a result of all the feedback from engineers and others, the main problem needing to be tackled is provision of a system that moves this theoretical and prototyped work on to a fully fledged end-user modelling system, available and usable by a wide range of people.

Bristol IT MegaMeet - UWE - British Computer Society (BCS)

This is a BCS event on Saturday 19th May at University of the West of England (UWE). These are the details and web link -

http://www.itmegameet.co.uk/

"All of the major IT & Developer community groups in and around Bristol are coming together for an event at the UWE. Essentially the event is one big meet up, open to the public. Each group will be doing a presentation on themselves, what they are about, and what they offer the local community. Several groups will be putting on a technical presentation in their chosen area. How-to workshops will be running alongside the main presentations. The event concludes with 5 minute lightning talks on a variety of subjects.

Attendee places are limited, so registration is required. Register early so as not to miss your space, and notify us if you can't make it so as to free up the space for someone else."

BBC News - Coding the future: HTML5 takes the internet by storm

This is a very interesting technology and business article about HTML 5 an important development for the Semantic Web and Web 3.0 -

Coding the future: HTML5 takes the internet by storm
By Ian Hardy BBC News, New York - 8 May 2012 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17931814.

"The BBC's Ian Hardy looks at why companies have been rushing to embrace HTML5 - and the innovative ways it is being used

It's hard to imagine now, but original sites on the world wide web, written in HTML code or hypertext mark-up language, were made up of little more than text.

Corporate web designers were well aware that most of their customers had slow connections and would not tolerate much of a wait. 

Even a simple black and white image could irritate a user, as it gradually appeared on the screen revealing itself one painful line at a time.

That began to change as modem speeds gradually crept up and content makers used more sophisticated methods to encode their multimedia content.

Macromedia's Flash, now an Adobe product, made all the difference when it arrived in the mid-nineties. Animations, video sequences and graphics became more sophisticated.

But since its invention in the early 1990s HTML has not supported video natively.

That is why HTML5 is being received so enthusiastically by businesses in particular. The latest version can perform all kinds of dynamic tasks and visual tricks. The web is progressing faster now than it has in a long time."

Nasa sets challenges for citizen scientists

This BBC article I'm linking to is a about very interesting idea from NASA covered by the BBC article.

Nasa sets challenges for citizen scientists - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17791091 - 21 April 2012 -

'US space agency Nasa has launched a competition to find "space apps" to aid space exploration and education.

The two-day event will bring programmers together on seven continents to see how creative they can be with Nasa's store of space data.
Problems Nasa wants solved include improving data sharing after disasters and spotting good lunar landing sites.
Coders on the International Space Station and at McMurdo base in Antarctica will join in.
The event runs from 21-22 April at more than 25 venues around the world. Hundreds of people have registered to go along and take part in the various challenges.'

I include other useful links here about this - 

NASA International Space Apps Challenge
12 March 2012 - On 21 and 22 April, NASA, along with the Met Office is convening an International Space Apps Challenge in Exeter. - 
www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/space-apps

International Space Apps Challenge
21-22 April 2012 -
http://spaceappschallenge.org/ - This has a world map with clickable links to locations of events.

International Space Apps Challenge
21-22 April 2012 - Oxford, United Kingdom
International Space Innovtion Centre - http://spaceappschallenge.org/location/isic

Publication of my PhD

When all admin of my PhD publication is complete and it's published in the UWE library it will also be published on the UWE repository. When this is done I'll post the link and add this also to the blog template. I want to make the PhD is available as possible.

In the meantime I'm also making final ammendments to a journal paper.

BBC News - Campaign calls for new teacher-training 'infrastructure'

This is an interesting article about shifting the focus of Computing teaching to include Computer Science and Programming

Campaign calls for new teacher-training 'infrastructure' - BBC News - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17190910 - 28 February 2012.

"The UK needs a new 'infrastructure' to support the teaching of computing in schools, the chancellor has been told.
Leading education and industry groups have signed a letter asking George Osborne to fund new computer training for teachers.
Next Gen Skills, which organised the call, said teachers would need support ahead of possible curriculum changes.
The government is consulting on a new flexible curriculum more focused on computer science and programming."

Digital Researcher Online 2012 - 20 February 2012

Digital Researcher Online 2012 - 20 February 2012 - http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/346891/Digital-Researcher-online.html.

This is an event organised by Vitae who provide support to researchers, and which is being run online as well as the meeting itself which is oversubscribed.

This is from Vitae's description -

"Designed for both postgraduate researchers and research staff within any UK institution, Digital Researcher Online is the online programme of the oversubscribed Vitae Digital Researcher event, offering all those who could not physically attend the event the opportunity to tune in and get involved with the day's activity.
Digital Researcher Online will explore how new technologies and tools (microblogging, RSS feeds, social networking and social citation sharing) can be used to enhance your research and raise your professional profile."

"What to expect as an online participant...
10:00 - Introduction
•A short interview with Dr Tristram Hooley on Digital Researcher 2012 and the current digital landscape.10:30 - 11:15 - Morning plenary
•Join us online and tune-in to the opening plenary of Digital Researcher. During this session we'll be covering academic practice, the role of social media and intellectual property.
15:45 - 16:30 - Keynote speaker

•Prof Martin Weller, Open University - 'Digital Scholarship'."

MIT launches free online 'fully automated' course - BBC News

This is a BBC article about a free MIT course that is part of an overall plan of theirs for in depth online learning. The first course to be made available is in Electronics.

This is a very interesting article and as with Stanford University's courses (http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2011/10/stanford-university-free-computer.html) also MIT course this provides a good opportunity for online learning.

MIT launches free online 'fully automated' course - By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent - 13 February 2012.

"Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the world's top-rated universities, has announced its first free course which can be studied and assessed completely online.
An electronics course, beginning in March, will be the first prototype of an online project, known as MITx.
The interactive course is designed to be fully automated, with successful students receiving a certificate."

MP calls for pardon for computer pioneer Alan Turing - BBC News

This pardoning of Alan Turing is way overdue -

MP calls for pardon for computer pioneer Alan Turing - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-16833621 - 1 February 2012.

"A Liberal Democrat MP has tabled a motion calling for 'national hero' Alan Turing to be posthumously pardoned.
Manchester Withington's John Leech submitted the Early Day Motion and said people should sign an online petition protesting against Turing's conviction.
The gay computer pioneer was convicted for gross indecency in 1952, when homosexual acts were illegal in the UK.
Mr Leech said his persecution 'by the state for being gay is a scandal that shouldn't be allowed to stand'."