Interesting article on the Library of Congress plans for using metadata to improve the accessibility of content.

“To address the challenges in this area, the “Metadata for Digital Content” group was formed at the Library in March 2009. This internal, cross-Library group is working towards new solutions, aligning with a goal in the Library’s overall strategic plan to provide better access to digital materials. The group is co-chaired by Rebecca Guenther and Ann Della Porta from the Technology Policy Directorate of the Library.”

“Jane Mandelbaum, manager in the Library’s Information Technology directorate and a founder of the group, said the group is focusing on “how we build standardized metadata that works across the spectrum of digital objects.”

That is a great opportunity for using XMP as a standardize way of embedding metadata information into a number of different digital objects.  Standardization leads to efficiency and lower costs of maintenance and ownership.  It also creates a standard platform that the industry can build upon for interoperability in metadata based transactions.

“In support of the Library’s goal for increased access, the group hopes to accomplish three objectives. First, recommend a common set of metadata elements for current and future uses. Second, provide more consistent metadata for access and use of the digital objects and recommend how it should be managed. And third, develop recommendations for providing metadata for digital objects that currently have none or little metadata.”

Great thing about XMP is that it is schema neutral – which means that you can create any namespace to represent your data and have it preserved in the file.  A namespace is simple a list of properties that you are interested in within a specific scope or domain – that latter is critical in understanding the value of namespaces.  Often the semantics of a property are slightly different across different domains – for example the property “color” may be defined as human perceived values “red, green, blue” or web based values “CC6633″ or thermal temperature.

Consistent ways in managing and using metadata is factor of managing complexity since there will always be multiple sources of metadata.  Again XMP has a great advantage in that it simplifies one dimension of the problem – namely providing a consistent way to access metadata across multiple digital media files. This is a big deal because each file format has it’s own way of storing data and metadata.  Provide a standardized way of doing this is like adding barcodes to replace a myriad of pricing stickers on physical goods.  The analogy extends to downstream processes such as check out – since the meta information is accessible in a standardized way, the goods move faster, and are tracked more easily across the supply chain or wherever the media is made accessible.

Managing media with no metadata is a result of the media not being “sticky” to the information that is around it.  One should take the Katamari Damancy approach to developing a strategy. Katamari Damancy is Japanese video game in which a magical ball allows anything smaller than it to stick to it and make it grow – a digital tumbleweed.  The player then navigates the ball picking everything in it’s path.  Similarly for digital media, one needs to ensure that the media has a unique way of identifying itself and an infrastructure to capture related information.  XMP has a number of internal unique ids that it uses, primarily with Adobe products – one can also create their own ids.  As for the information that is captured, it can either be “stuck” inside the file as XMP or referenced to an external source or both.  Managing that balance is really the core of the strategy.

Technorati Tags: xmp, metadata, asset management, digital media, library

Recently I had to implement dynamic data in 1 of my project. It is a excellent way to quickly create fully featured Admin form which have Insert, delete, update all function with built in field validation. But changing database column name or Hiding some column was not easy what I thought when I started working, but once you have understand the following class you can do anything you want using the power of  Partial data and metadatatype  attribute.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.DynamicData;

/// <summary>
/// Summary description for Product
/// </summary>
[MetadataType(typeof(BranchMetadata))]
public partial class Branch
{

}

[TableName("Create Branches")]
public class BranchMetadata
{

[DisplayName("Branch Description")]
public object BranchDesc { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(CityMetadata))]
public partial class City
{

}

[TableName("Create Cities")]
public class CityMetadata
{

[DisplayName("City Description")]
public object CityDesc { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(HRM_Document_CategoryMetadata))]
public partial class HRM_Document_Category
{

}

[TableName("Create Document Category")]
public class HRM_Document_CategoryMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Category Name")]
public object CategoryName { get; set; }

[ScaffoldColumn(false)]
public object CreatedBy { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(HRM_TB_PrmDepartmentMetadata))]
public partial class HRM_TB_PrmDepartment
{

}

[TableName("Create Department")]
public class HRM_TB_PrmDepartmentMetadata
{

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(HRM_TB_PrmDesignationMetadata))]
public partial class HRM_TB_PrmDesignation
{

}

[TableName("Create Designation")]
public class HRM_TB_PrmDesignationMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Designation")]
public object DesignationDesc { get; set; }

}

//

[MetadataType(typeof(HRM_TB_PrmDivisionMetadata))]
public partial class HRM_TB_PrmDivision
{

}

[TableName("Create Division")]
public class HRM_TB_PrmDivisionMetadata
{

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(Medical_AdvertismentMetadata))]
public partial class Medical_Advertisment
{

}

[TableName("Advertisment Source")]
public class Medical_AdvertismentMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Advertisment Source")]
public object AdvertismentDesc { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(Medical_BloodGroupMetadata))]
public partial class Medical_BloodGroup
{

}

[TableName("Blood Group")]
public class Medical_BloodGroupMetadata
{
[DisplayName("BloodGroup")]
public object BloodGroupDesc { get; set; }

}

//

[MetadataType(typeof(Medical_Generic_PreparationMetadata))]
public partial class Medical_Generic_Preparation
{

}

[TableName("Generic Preparation")]
public class Medical_Generic_PreparationMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Generic Preparation")]
public object GenericPreparationDesc { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(Medical_Machine_CategoryMetadata))]
public partial class Medical_Machine_Category
{

}

[TableName("Create Machine Category")]
public class Medical_Machine_CategoryMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Machine Category")]
public object MachineCategoryDesc { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(Medical_Machine_ParameterMetadata))]
public partial class Medical_Machine_Parameter
{

}

[TableName("Create Medical Machine Parameter")]
public class Medical_Machine_ParameterMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Machine Parameter")]
public object ParaMeterName{ get; set; }

[ScaffoldColumn(false)]
public object createdby { get; set; }

[ScaffoldColumn(false)]
public object createddate { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(Medical_Medicine_CategoryMetadata))]
public partial class Medical_Medicine_Category
{

}

[TableName("Create Medical Medicine Category")]
public class Medical_Medicine_CategoryMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Medicine Category")]
public object MedicineCategoryDesc { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(Medical_Medicine_CompanyMetadata))]
public partial class Medical_Medicine_Company
{

}

[TableName("Create Medicine Manufacturer")]
public class Medical_Medicine_CompanyMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Medicine Manufacturer")]
public object MedicineCompanyName { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(Medical_Patient_Docment_CategoryMetadata))]
public partial class Medical_Patient_Docment_Category
{

}

[TableName("Create Patient Docment Category")]
public class Medical_Patient_Docment_CategoryMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Category Name")]
public object CategoryName{ get; set; }

[ScaffoldColumn(false)]
public object CreatedBy { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(Medical_Service_CategoryMetadata))]
public partial class Medical_Service_Category
{

}

[TableName("Create Service Category")]
public class Medical_Service_CategoryMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Category Name")]
public object ServiceCategoryDesc { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(TB_AreaMetadata))]
public partial class TB_Area
{

}

[TableName("Create Area")]
public class TB_AreaMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Area Name")]
public object AreaName { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(TB_CountryListMetadata))]
public partial class TB_CountryList
{

}

[TableName("Create Country List")]
public class TB_CountryListMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Country Name")]
public object COUNTRY_NAME { get; set; }

[DisplayName("Country Code")]
public object COUNTRY_CODE { get; set; }

}

//
[MetadataType(typeof(TB_Measurement_UnitMetadata))]
public partial class TB_Measurement_Unit
{

}

[TableName("Create Measurement Unit")]
public class TB_Measurement_UnitMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Measurement Unit")]
public object MeasurementUnitName { get; set; }

[ScaffoldColumn(false)]
public object MeasurementUnitDecimalLength { get; set; }

}
//
[MetadataType(typeof(TB_OccupationMetadata))]
public partial class TB_Occupation
{

}

[TableName("Create Occupation")]
public class TB_OccupationMetadata
{
[DisplayName("Occupation")]
public object OccupationDesc { get; set; }

}

For more detail and  description follow the link on Matt

http://mattberseth.com/blog/2008/08/dynamic_data_and_custom_metada.html

Thank you…

Ashfaq

Metadata is one of those things that is much misunderstood. The literal translation of the word is “data about data”, as essentially what metadata is giving us is an overview of the content of a particular page. In the olden days (about 10 years ago), metadata was one of the ways you could ensure your site achieved a top listing, as the main search engines then weighted the metadata description and keywords tags quite heavily.

Since then, of course, things have changed. The only piece of metadata that is especially useful for search engine rankings now is the tag. It is known that Google utilises the phrases in the tag for ranking purposes – though, of course, there is some debate as to what you should actually put in there.

In my experience, what you want to do is put your main keyword phrase near to the front of the tag. For example:

Christmas Golf Gifts and Presents – 118Golf.co.uk

which targets the phrase “Christmas golf gifts” (http://www.118golf.co.uk/Christmas-Golf-Gifts-and-Presents/catlist_fnct200.htm).

As well as this, I always recommend a suitable tag be used, ie:

118 Golf is the perfect place to buy a golf gift or Christmas present for a friend or loved one.

The reason the tag is useful is it can often be used as the snippet of info underneath the heading in your search engine rankings, which can lead more people to click through if it’s attractive enough. It isn’t the case that the tag carries much weight for actual rankings anymore, but it is thought that Google might decide to boost those sites that attract higher click throughs, so an attractive can help with this.

Hulu took a step toward crowdsourcing its classification and discovery capabilities this morning, adding the ability for users to add tags to videos.

The online video site added a “Tags” tab alongside its “Reviews” and “Discussion” sections, which will allow users to classify video clips by checking a box next to any existing tag, or they can add their own tags through the “Add Tags” box. People who have added tags will be able to edit or update them at any time, through the Tags tab in their profile pages.

Perhaps more importantly, users can search Hulu’s video catalog based on tags that have been added by other people, which could enable more relevant results than what the site’s search engine provides. By crowdsourcing this information, the site is relying on users to fill in information where the metadata provided by its content partners falls short.

Hulu isn’t the only video aggregator to attempt to solve its search and classification system this way; Metacafe has long relied on its user base to classify, rate and determine whether videos are appropriate for the site. Metacafe is also crowdsourcing the way it sells ads, by enabling users to place videos into different categories that advertisers can then target.

While sites like Hulu and Metacafe are relying on their user base to solve a search and discovery problem based on incomplete or just plain bad metadata, others are relying on technology from companies like Digitalsmiths to create more relevant classifications of video content.

Longest EAD comic ever, I think. Goes all the way up to <ead>!

De afgelopen tijd bezocht ik met collega’s Erik en Raymond een aantal bibliotheken. Tijdens die bezoekjes hadden wij onze blik vooral gericht op de fysieke inrichting. Dat lag ook wel voor de hand. Een beeld krijgen van de digitale dienstverlening is minder gemakkelijk. Daar kom ik op een ander moment nog wel op terug. Ter afwisseling nu eerst een theoretisch uitstapje, aan de hand van David Weinbergers boek Everything is miscellaneous.

Wayfinding

In zijn proloog -Information in Space- legt Weinberger de nadruk op het begrip wayfinding. Mensen hebben bepaalde gewoontes en voorkeuren om zich in een fysieke ruimte te oriënteren en zich van plaats naar plaats te begeven, te navigeren. Dat komt vooral naar voren als zij nog niet bekend zijn met de omgeving. Om aan die oriëntatiebehoefte te voldoen moeten ruimtes worden georganiseerd en geordend. En die ordening, die organisatie is in wezen een informatievraagstuk. Of het nou gaat om winkels of bibliotheken, om bedrijven, scholen of nog heel andere zaken.

‘From management structures to encyclopedias […] to the way we decide what’s worth believing, we have organized our ideas with principles designed for use in a world limited by the laws of physics.’  (p.6-7)

In het daaropvolgende hoofdstuk 1 -The New Order of Order- stelt Weinberger nog een paar andere kwesties aan de orde.

Browsen

Browsen – rondsnuffelen, grasduinen etc- is minstens zo belangrijk als zoeken en vinden. Winkels, maar ook bibliotheken, moeten rekening houden met verschillende soorten klanten. Sommige klanten komen binnen met een doelgerichte vraag. Ze weten vrij precies wat ze zoeken, hebben daar ook al informatie over. Maar er zijn ook klanten die pas ter plekke in iets geïnteresseerd raken. Zij hebben geen duidelijke vraag – misschien slechts een vaag idee -, maar reageren spontaan op wat zij om zich heen ontdekken. Winkels maken er veel werk van om juist die laatste categorie bezoekers tot kopen te verleiden. Om de aandacht te trekken wordt een heel scala van presentatietechnieken ingezet: tijdelijke aanbiedingen, kassakoopjes, productdemonstraties, etc.

Ook (openbare) bibliotheken die het retailconcept omarmen nemen dergelijke presentatietechnieken over. De gelijkenis met een boekwinkel is een bewust nagestreefd effect. Ik sprak hierover met een bevriende boekhandelaar. Volgens hem heeft bijvoorbeeld frontale presentatie slechts beperkte betekenis . Boekhandels hebben hun beschikbare winkelruimte nodig voor voorraadplaatsing. Het meest efficiënt is nog steeds een opstelling in afdelingen of rubrieken. Presentatie, marketing zeggen niet alles. Belangrijker is warenkennis (wat wordt er gepubliceerd op specifieke vakgebieden) en kennis van klanteninteresses.

Ondanks allerlei manier om tegemoet te komen aan snuffelaars, lijkt de manier waarop boekhandels en bibliotheken hun voorraden hebben uitgestald vooral in het voordeel te zijn van bezoekers die vrij goed weten wat ze zoeken. Het blijft moeilijk om beide principes –browsen en zoeken- te verenigen.

‘If only there were a way to arrange stuff in stores so that every interest could be captured. When we know what we want we would find it immediately. When we want to browse, the store would rearrange itself based on our needs and interests, even when we aren’t quite sure what those are’. (p. 9)

In de digitale wereld is dat probleem er niet meer. Weinberger noemt als voorbeeld Itunes, de muziekwinkel van Apple. Het is eigenlijk één grote berg muziekstukjes, die zijn losgemaakt uit hun oorspronkelijke context (album, cd). Klanten hebben de vrijheid om die losse nummers zelf te sorteren, hun eigen playlists samen te stellen, de keuzes van anderen te beoordelen en van commentaar te voorzien. De les die we moeten leren is: 

 ’To get as good at browsing as we are at finding –and to take full advantage of the digital opportunity- we have to get rid of the idea that there’s a best way of organizing the world.’ (p. 10)

Going through things and putting them away

Een volgend principe gaat over de manier waarop wij ons dagelijks leven ordenen. Weinberger komt met voorbeelden dicht bij huis: het opbergen van servies, keukengereedschap of andere spullen. Neem de tas met supermarktboodschappen. Binnen een paar minuten staan al die inkopen op hun plek. Zonder er bij stil te staan hanteren we elke dag diverse ordeningsprincipes. Als het om fysieke dingen gaat zijn we daar heel geroutineerd in.
‘Knowing where things are and where things go is essential to feeling at home.’

Maar dan een ander voorbeeld: digitale foto’s. Die hebben we in enorme aantallen, in onze mobieltjes, camera’s, pc’s of op internetsites als Flickr en Google’ s Picasa Web Albums). Er is geen vaste plek voor. Het zijn er zóveel dat we er niet of nauwelijks toe komen om ze te vergelijken, te selecteren of te sorteren. De meeste van die foto’s hebben bovendien alleen maar een volgnummer als DSC00165.jpg of een datum. Als we in die berg ooit nog kiekjes willen terugvinden moeten we er zinvolle namen of beschrijvingen voor bedenken. Het lijkt een tegenstrijdige constatering: waar teveel informatie een probleem wordt, is de oplossing nóg meer informatie toevoegen.

Het bijzondere is dat dingen in de digitale wereld op elke denkbare manier kunnen worden benoemd. Er zijn geen beperkingen. Een fotoafdruk op papier kunnen we maar op één plek in één album plakken. Digitale foto’s kunnen we in ontelbare albums stoppen. En we kunnen die foto’s alle gewenste etiketten, namen of beschrijvingen meegeven.

‘The digital World thereby allows us to transcend the most fundamental rule of ordering in the real world: instead of everything having its place, it’s better if things can get assigned multiple places simultaneously. ‘ (p. 14)

In plaats van foto’s had Weinberger het ook kunnen hebben over het afhandelen en bewaren van e-mails. Van mijn collega’s hoor ik regelmatig dat zij worstelen met dichtgeslibde mailboxen of met een waslijst van archiefmappen. Zelf ben ik er ook nog niet uit wat de beste aanpak is. Maar waarschijnlijk is er niet zoiets als een ‘beste’ strategie. En hangt het allemaal heel erg af van persoonlijke voorkeuren. Op dit verschil tussen ‘filers’ (opbergers) en ‘pilers’ (stapelaars) kom ik in een volgend stukje nog terug. 

Drie niveaus van ordening

De organisatie van fotoarchieven, zoals Bettman,  Corbis en Flickr brengt Weinberger tot het onderscheid in drie types of niveaus van ordening.
Op het eerste niveau gaat het om het verzamelen, opbergen en ordenen van foto’s, films en negatieven als fysieke objecten. Op het tweede niveau worden fotobeschrijvingen geordend in inventarislijsten of in (kaart!)catalogi.
Deze indeling herkennen we als het traditionele onderscheid tussen primaire en secundaire bronnen, zoals onderzoekers en informatiespecialisten dat hanteren. Op beide niveaus gaat het om fysieke ordeningen (bijv. het Bettmanarchief). Daar zitten verschillende problemen aan vast. Het beheer is kostbaar, de gebruiksmogelijkheden en de informatiewaarde zijn beperkt.

Heel anders ligt dat bij digitale archieven (Corbis en Flickr). Een ordening van fysieke objecten – atomen- maakt plaats voor een ordening van digitale informatie –bits-. Die informatie omvat zowel de content (de digitale foto’s zelf), als ook alle labels en beschrijvingen (metadata) die aan die content zijn toegevoegd. Weinberger noemt dit het derde niveau van ordening. Daarmee bedoelt hij dan wel iets heel anders dan een tertiaire bron in de bibliografische context. (*)

(*) Het onderscheid in primair, secundaire bronnen kan overigens ook nog andere betekenissen hebben, zoals ik ontdekte bij deze OCLC richtlijnen voor de beschrijving van bewegend beeld. 

‘Content is digitized into bits, and the information about that content consists of bits as well. This is the third order of order and it’s hitting us […] like a ton of bricks. The third order removes the limitations we’ve assumed were inevitable in how we organize information.’ (p. 19)

Vooral het voorbeeld van Flickr laat zien hoe die ordening op het derde niveau werkt. Het archief is een gigantische berg digitaal foto- en videomateriaal (volgens Wikipedia op dit moment ca. 4 miljard afbeeldingen). Er zijn geen catalogusexperts die metadata beheren en toevoegen. De ordening berust vrijwel geheel op labels (tags) die gebruikers zelf toekennen. Weinbergers stelling is dat in deze digitale ordening veel informatieprocessen nu voor ieder vrij toegankelijk worden. En dat met name de rol van informatiespecialisten op het tweede niveau steeds vaker wordt doorbroken.

‘Second-order organization, it turns out, is often as much about authority as about making things easier to find.[…] But now we –the customer, the employee, anyone – can route around the second order. ‘ (p. 22)

Nog meer fotoarchieven

De Volkskrant (20 aug. 2009) berichtte deze zomer, naar aanleiding van een artikel in de New York Times, dat de National Geographic Society voor de eerste keer materiaal uit zijn fotoarchief toegankelijk zou maken voor het grote publiek. Van 17 september tot 17 oktober mocht de Steven Kasher Callery in New York een verkoopexpositie organiseren, onder de titel: The World in black and white: Vintage Prints from the National Geographic Archive. Nu de Society is begonnen met het digitaliseren van zijn archieven zullen meer tentoonstellingen volgen.

Artikel Volkskrant

Artikel New York Times

Vorig jaar was er het nieuws dat het Nationaal Archief vanaf 21 oktober 2008 als eerste Nederlandse erfgoedinstelling een deel van zijn fotocollectie wereldwijd beschikbaar maakte via Flickr The Commons. (bron: Nationaal Archief)

…………………

De cataloguskaart op deze pagina is gemaakt met de Catalog Card Generator. Een leuke tool om ouderwetse cataloguskaarten te produceren, op basis van zelf aangeleverde gegevens. Bedacht door John Blyberg, Head of Technology and Digital Initiatives at Darien Library, Connecticut.

.

Di questo servizio abbiamo già parlato ma mi fa piacere riprenderlo attraverso il capitolo 11 di Library Mashups (come sapete, nell’esplorazione dei vari capitoli, non procederemo con ordine , intitolato Mashing Up Open Data with biblios.net Web Sevices e scritto da Joshua Ferraro di LibLime.

All’inizio del 2009 la società che vende servizi per software open source, LibLime, ha rilasciato un servizio di catalogazione gratuito, web based e che poggia su una base di milioni di record bibliografici liberamente adoperabili (openly licensed): biblios.net. In particolare, il capitolo si focalizza sui servizi web (web services) offerti da LibLime insieme al software di catalogazione e alla base dati di record.

I biblios.net Web Services (BWS) poggiano su una conquista fondamentale: gli Open (Bibliographic and not) Data, che a loro volta consentono la libertà e gratuità di intervenire sui record bibliografici, sui metadati prodotti dalle biblioteche e rilasciati/messi a disposizione di tutti attraverso licenze dedicate. Questo dei dati è sempre stato un grosso ostacolo nel mondo bibliotecario – e chi frequenta questo blog da un po’ lo sa bene. Spesso i molti e ricchi e riccamente strutturati metadati che i bibliotecari con grande fatica e sudore di fronte creano quando catalogano i libri, rimangono poi confinati entro ILS (software di automazione e catalogazione) proprietari o comunque chiusi alla possibilità del rilascio libero e del riutilizzo (al netto delle esperienze di catalogazione cooperativa, che però sono un’altra cosa).

Joshua Ferraro, invece, mette subito in rilievo lo slancio che la nascita di licenze come la PDDL (Open Data Commons Public Domain and Dedication Lincese) e di iniziative di apertura dei forzieri dei propri metadati prese da biblioteche come la Library of Congress o la Open Library di Brewster Kahle, ha dato all’impresa di LibLime, di rilasciare nel pubblico dominio così grandi quantità di record bibliografici a disposizione di tutti (di nuovo, se n’era parlato qualche tempo fa). Recod bibliografici che sono stati poi utilizzati dalla stessa LibLime per i suoi servizi e in particolare per la creazione di un livello di accesso e di interrogazione (le famose API, Application Programming Interface) concreto e usabile da tutti gli utenti.

I BWS sono infatti proprio un set di API create per consentire ai programmatori o geek librarian che dir si voglia, di scrivere applicazioni che interagiscano con il database di biblios.net e creare quindi mashup con i dati e i servizi ritornati da questo provider. I web services disponibili sono attualmente:

• Searching for bibliographic and authority records (OpenSearch, SRU/W and Z39.50)
• Retrieving single records (UnAPI)
• Harvesting with OAI-PMH
• Sending data to ‡biblios.net

Verranno invece presto attivati i seguenti:

• Download the ‡biblios.net Dataset (BitTorrent) (coming soon)
• Programming Guide (coming soon)
• API Reference (coming soon)

Uno degli interessanti esempi mostrati nel capitolo, è il mashup creato grazie al SRU target service, che restituisce i dati delle liste di autorità contenute nella base dati di biblios: il catalogatore che stia inserendo nella scheda catalografica di un volume una cosiddetta voce controllata (potrebbe essere quella del nome dell’autore oppure del soggetto/topic con cui si classifica il volume), può attingere on the fly alle voci controllate conservate e messe a disposizione da biblios, attraverso un semplice ed efficace menu ad auto-complete – in questo modo non solo potendo attingere a dati uniformi, controllati e di qualità, ma anche evitando di perdere tempo nell’andare a interrogare separatamente un altro database.

L’altro esempio che Ferraro propone è quello relativo agli strumenti per facilitare la catalogazione cooperativa delle biblioteche, sempre usufruendo dei web services messi a disposizione da biblios. In questo caso si sfrutta la potenza del protocollo OAI-PMH, dei feed RSS e del buon vecchio Z39.50, per costruire un mashup di notifica e aggiornamento delle modifiche avvenute su un record: le biblioteche in una rete cooperativa possono così venire a conoscenza dei cambiamenti intervenuti su una scheda che è stata già acquisita dal catalogo e, se del caso, anche decidere di accogliere quei cambiamenti, sovrapponendo la scheda catalografica modificata con quella del proprio OPAC, in maniera del tutto rapida e automatizzata.

Forse questo capitolo è il più interessante di tutti almeno sotto un profilo: mostra come il catalogo e la catalogazione non solo non sono esclusi, in quanto ambiti di attività tradizionali, dalla creazione di servizi innovativi e mashup, ma possono con la loro ineludibile centralità venire impattati pesantemente dalla creazione di servizi agili, in grado di eliminare le parti più ripetitive e meccaniche di certe attività e aprire la strada alla creatività nell’utilizzo delle informazioni e dei dati contenuti negli OPAC, frutto di anni e anni di lavoro delle migliori menti bibliotecarie…

I had the honor of being a panelist on the Art Buyer’s Panel of the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) Annual Conference, held in New York City in October of 2008.

Hosted by Maggie Hunt of StockShop, I was joined by Brian Bobinski (freelance designer), Darrell B. Perry (Wall Street Journal), and Marc Sirinsky (formerly of Rodale, currently at The Teaching Company). It was an interesting and lively discussion, with questions from the audience comprised primarily of professional photo sellers. Topics ranged from metadata, licensing models, marketing tools, and upcoming trends.

For a photo and a brief description of the panel, visit the StockShop blog.

For a nice recap and notes by Mark Ippolito, visit his blog at http://shabustation.com/. Look for the October 25, 2008 post.

Collection Space is another digital repository project supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, like JSTOR and ARTstor, but with very important differences. CollectionSpace emerged from scholarly institutional collaboration “with the common goal of developing and deploying an open-source, web-based software application for the description, management, and dissemination of museum collections information.” Which is to say – It’s an open-source software that will allow for museum collection management and dissemination but with many Web 2.0 twists. This is not your regular museum registrar database. CollectionSpace’s project team currently includes web-developers, designers, and architects from Cambridge, Museum for the Moving Image, UC Berkeley School of Information and the University of Toronto.

This venture was inspired by the large information gap that existed for 1/3 to 1/2 of collecting institutions in the U.S. (historical societies, archeological repositories, museums and others) having neither their collections online or in many cases even catalog records. CollectionSpace addresses these needs through working to develop open-source software solutions providing stable, authoritative but flexible collection architecture “from which interpretive materials and experiences – from printed catalogs to mobile gallery guides – may be efficiently developed, and that can serve as a cost-effective alternative to proprietary collections management systems for museums in need, regardless of size or scope.” Think perhaps ARTstor for museums owning, managing (and publicizing) their own rotating collections.

The project began as a series of collaborative workshops with museum, archival and library professionals followed by a two-year period of software development complete by beta-testing by the same communities that helped advise its design.

CollectionSpace Release 0.2, debuted October 6, 2009. This version allows storing “multiple record types with flexible schemas.” They have an extensive Project Wiki filled with a variety of documentation, handouts and powerpoint presentation.

Funding is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Program in Research in Information Technology which “supports the creation of “enterprise” administrative and infrastructural software by means of distributed, collaborative open-source development projects.”

It aims to support registrars, curators, educators, collections managers, and administrators. It seeks to change earlier system models which seem to be digital representations of paper models. CollectionSpace promises to bring processes like cataloging, loans, media handling, location tracking “into the Web 2.0+ era.” It seeks to move from “records-based navigation” to “action-based navigation.”

‡biblios.net is a free browser-based cataloging service with a data store containing over thirty-million records.  It grants the user a “nonexclusive right to use Data under the terms of the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence.”

I searched for Cluetrain Manifesto and came up with ten MARC records, including this one:

Typically when a library obtains a book, they go to OCLC to obtain the record.  Then the cataloger might add data specific to their library – for example an 099 local call number if it doesn’t use Dewey or LC.  OCLC is not free, however.  Also, the library cannot edit OCLC records.  It is not a collaborative effort, but a hierarchal procedure.

‡biblios.net, however, makes it possible to have collaborative records.  In the case of Cluetrain Manifesto, for example, there were 10 records from which to choose.  The library could choose whichever record suited its needs, and in fact submit a different record if it so chooses.  This is harnessing the collective intelligence – the “wisdom of crowds.”

Even a source seen as “authoritative” is not necessarily always correct.  Back in the 1960s when my husband was a teenager he was clamming in the bay near Westhampton with his father.  A small airplane caught its pontoons on some electric lines and crashed in the bay.  There was no one else around, so he and his father rowed over to the airplane and rescued the occupants, leaving them on the shore.   In the next issue of the local paper in the fire department blotter was a story about how the fire department had rescued the occupants of that plane!  This is just one example of why one cannot rely on any resource by itself as “the truth.”

Collective cataloging (like what is beginning to happen on ‡biblios.net) and moving away from a system where one source is seen as canonical, is perhaps a path to greater overall accuracy than the current dependence on traditional cataloging procedures and systems.

I would encourage you to listen to the podcast produced by the Library 2.0 Gang entitled The Cataloging Services Landscape, where they discuss this issue and the ramifications of a more competitive cataloging landscape to libraries.

Just thought I’d introduce you to a usefull music tool… www.discogs.com! Discogs can be thought of as the Wikipedia of music project liner notes, lyrics, album-label-disc art, songs, session-label-artist info, etc. Go ahead… throw in your favorite disc or album and take it for a spin!

(Notes frm the presentation as it happens)

Knowledge is not uni or bivariate, but we think of it as such: this leads to information loss.

Naming things: showing example of a trivial name, an IUPAC systematic name and an InChI and points out that these have different information content.

Points out scaling problem: drug discovery is multivariate and happens in a space of approx 10¹⁶ molecules (all molecules that are feasible and thought to be drug-like). Information loss occurs as you traverse this space backwards and forwards.

Now talks about molecular information in RDF: http://rdf.openmolecules.net for the provision of derefernceable URIs for molecules….and plugging the Chemistry Development Kit (CDK) as a means for cnverting between multiple representations of a molecule. Now moves on to Bioclipse as an integrating tool that allows chemical data transformations and the tracking of vwhy these transformations occur (version-controllable scripts to drive Bioclipse).

RDF extension to bioclipse: local RDF storage, read/write RDF, run SPARQL queries and extract RDF from XHTTML/RDFa.

Now shows an example of the expression of the CDK data model using ontologies but no details. Brief mention of his recent descriptor ontology.

(Again, these are live notes as bullet points.)

Problems with the Specification of Clinical Trials

• Development of trial protocol
• Preparation of study centres
• Registration of patients etc…..
• Case report Forms capture data at different time points (lab results, therapy outcomes, treatment history etc..) relevant for answering clinical questions
• Misconceptions and misinterpretations of data occur frequently either through underspecification or lack of metadata

Benefits of Detailing and Reusing Items

• Efficiency
• Data Quality
• Metaanalysis

Requirements for an Item Data Model

• Expressiveness – Items consist of subitems
• Adaptable system of rules – validity and consistency checking
• Supporting context
• Providing views – facests. Different information requirements for different types ofusers.
• Exploiting conceptual relations
• Mapping to terminologies

Architecture of Trial Item Manager

• Application behaviour is ontology driven…
• working data stored as rdf in separate model
• multiple rdf models (combined, raw, inferred)

Showing the specification of various trial items in rdf…..and examples of the ontology driving the app…

Advantage of th Semantic Approach

• open linked data, referencability
• extensible rules
• user guidence using semantics but invisible to user
• rapid response to change
• import external item sets
• personalisation on a per-user/user type basis
• navigation
• semantic search

Caveats:

• Open world reasoning sometimes gives unexpected results…..;-)
• No unique name assumption
• Performance

Locating information quickly and efficiently is the goal for any successful organization. SharePoint 2010 handles this task brilliantly with its metadata service, refinement searches, tags, etc. On top of that, I believe this nice little addition of configuring navigation hierarchies for lists and documents libraries will be one of the first things utilized out of the gates. Think about a library with thousands of items and being only a few clicks away from the document you need! Here is a walkthrough on how to configure navigation hierarchies:

Limitations:

• Navigation hierarchies can only be based off of the following column types: content type, single-value choice field, or managed metadata field

What we have to start with:

• A document library storing companywide policies and standards
• A single-value choice field column called Division for each branch or department in my company

   

Now, let’s configure the navigation hierarchy:

From the ribbon UI, click Library Settings under the Library tab

Select Metadata navigation settings

Under Configure Navigation Hierarchies, add the column over to the Selected Hierarchy Fields and click Ok

Go back to your list or document library and you will see on the left hand side a tree view listing your field

Click the field to expand its values

Click on one of the metadata values to filter the list view!

And within five minutes you have a list or library that can be filtered!

Introduction

What are these metadata things anyway?  A friend once told us in a meeting that there was a cool name for those fields we associate with documents in our document management system.  He said, this data is called metadata.  Naturally, we had used the term for many years in R&D and QA, so we knew what metadata were…metadata are data that describe data; until that point however, I had always associated the word metadata with XML schema or the attributes that define columns in tables in databases.

If you accept the WikiPedia definition of metadata, or what appears to be the socially and legally accepted definition, then here are some examples of metadata:

• Properties of Microsoft Office documents, such as Author, Title, Subject, Keywords, Category, Status, and Comments.
• Original creation dates and times for documents.
• Change history of Microsoft Office documents, including history in the non-visible text as well as visible.
• Change history of documents on file systems.
• Change history of documents in document management systems.
• Headers in email messages, including both visible and non-visible text.
• Visible and non-visible field values associated with documents in document management systems.

This is a very incomplete list, because there is likely a plethora of examples of information that we could consider metadata.  And, when we talk about document retention policies, the subject of metadata rarely comes up.  There appears to be a legal trend abounding, though, making your metadata part of the discovery process.  Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP Rule 26) state that materials required for discovery must be delivered within fourteen days of the Rule 26 conference, and within thirty days for those that enter into litigation following the conference.  (Naturally, these timeframes may be adjusted by the courts, but … gasp!)

Wow, if you’re sitting out there without some kind of document management or records management system, and you’ve got a warehouse full of paper, imagine the cost associated with a single discovery!  Referring back to FRCP Rule 26, discovery involves producing any information that may be relevant to either side of litigation, with only a handful of exceptions.

On the other hand, if you have a document management or records management system, and document retention policies that don’t include indexing information, then you might want to rethink your strategy.

News and Opinions

Here are some links regarding retention management and metadata.  While there is some dissention among the ranks, such as New York, Florida, Alabama, and the District of Columbia, metadata appears discoverable for the most part.

American Bar Association

http://www.lctjournal.washington.edu/Vol4/a13Reznikov.html

In 2006, the American Bar Association rules that searching metadata for information regarding comments, history, etc, is ethical.  The ABA’s decision contradictions the ethical decisions made by states like New York, Florida, and Alabama, as well as the District of Columbia.

Arizona Supreme Court

http://aiimknowledgecenter.typepad.com/weblog/2009/11/do-you-know-where-your-metadata-is.html

Arizona Supreme Court overrules lower courts by agreeing that metadata is subject to discovery.  The state of Washington has rules stating that metadata is discoverable, as do many other states.

Vermont Bar Assocation

http://69.39.146.6/Upload%20Files/WebPages/Attorney%20Resources/aeopinions/Advisory%20Ethics%20Opinions/Electronic%20Documents/09-01.pdf

Vermont Bar Association concludes that lawyers can search the metadata of documents supplied by opposing counsel.  They conclude, however, that attorneys must disclose accidental exposure of confidential information included in metadata.  (Some document formats track changes and the dates and times those changes were made.  In addition, some document formats include user comments in metadata.)  Metadata is also included as discoverable information in litigation.

Alabama Bar Assocation

http://www.alabar.org/ogc/fopDisplay.cfm?oneId=412

Alabama Bar Association is of the opinion that the searching of metadata is not ethical because it may violate attorney-client privilege.  They go on to warn, though, that certain types of metadata may be considered discoverable by the courts.

Retention Strategies

So, what should your retention policies look like?  Maybe that is the subject for further research and follow-up articles specific to certain industries.  In the meantime, you should research the document retention requirements for your particular industry and make sure that you are a) mitigating your risk, while b) complying with associated regulatory legislation and guidelines, and c) managing the effective lifetime of your documents and metadata to keep your workers efficient.  As well, any document retention policies that you create should include your backup media!

PaperWise Features

For those of you who are PaperWise customers, there are a few tools available that can help you manage discoverability and your document retention policies.

Archive

Archive gives you the ability purge documents, as well as index values or metadata, as they meet lifetime criteria.  You can do this based upon the document types of your documents.  For example, you might want to delete bank statements older than seven years, provided that they have not been accessed within the past ninety days.  Set up as many archive jobs as you need to in order to support your document retention policies.

Container Compression (TCK Compression)

Unless you’re storing your documents in database volumes, they are stored securely in container files.  They are compressed and possibly encrypted using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard.)  We do that in order to protect them from unauthorized access.  As documents are deleted from containers, Archive can destroy them in such a way that they are not retrievable.  The space is left occupied, however, in the containers.  You can gain that space back and further ensure the non-recoverability of your documents using the TCK Compression, or container compression.

Full-text Search

While Archive and TCK Compression can help you with document retention policies, and information lifecycle, what happens if you are the subject of litigation?  Naturally, you can search for relevant documents using the index values, or metadata, associated with your documents.  There could be discoverable information included in the actual documents in PaperWise, as well.  Full-text Search can help you with this problem!  Using full-text search, you can find relevant information in the text of Microsoft Office documents, emails, PDF files, and images that have been OCR’d (Optical Character Recognition.)  As well, PaperWise scrapes the textual data from less common file formats.

Conclusion

In conclusion, you should research the regulatory requirements regarding document retention and discovery for your industry.  If you do not already have some sort of document management system in place, even if it’s a series of folders on a file system, then you should get one or create one.  Make sure that whatever system you employ is easily searchable, so that you can comply with the discovery process.  Chances are very good that you will be the subject of some kind of litigation at some point, so create document retention policies for your documents and make sure your employees follow them consistently!

–Markus Pope, MCSD

Hello World.

Yes, the standard geek greeting for new endeavors.  Having left Adobe just last week, this is my new blog that continues on from my old one.  I am still very much passionate about metadata and new ways to communicate.

My experience at Adobe has been fantastic, it has been a great run. But… as with any big company, it is becomes harder and harder to get your ideas implemented when the machine is focused on optimization of what it knows best.  I have always said that Adobe is a big ship that is hard to course correct quickly but also realizes that it can build an ecosystem of little ships that can speed ahead and define new pathways.  I’m looking forward to speeding out ahead of the big ship and defining a new course .

Standards play a significant role in supporting the process detailed in an earlier post; specifically, allowing metadata records (retrieved from Web of Science) to be transformed and deposited into the Leeds Met institutional repository (intraLibrary).

The method of depositing into intraLibrary is SWORD (see http://www.swordapp.org). SWORD is a profile of the Atom Publishing Protocol which was developed as part of a JISC funded project. Simply put, SWORD allows for content packages or metadata records to be deposited into a repository from outside of that repository. Previous to SWORD there was not a standard way of doing this.

Leeds Metropolitan University uses intraLibrary 3.1 which uses version 1.2 of SWORD.

IntraLibrary 3.2, due for release sometime in the new year will support SWORD 1.3. A SWORD 1.3 reference implementation of intraLibrary can be found at http://www.swordapp.org/sword/demonstrators. Note that while intraLibrary is being used in Bibliosight, there are other repositories which use SWORD – see http://www.swordapp.org for more information.

For Bibliosight we are depositing metadata records and, again, this relies on standards. The format of the metadata record being deposited is LOM (Learning Object Metadata – see http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/What_is_IEEE_LOM/IMS_LRM for a good overview of LOM) with bibliographic citation extensions. From  version 3.0 onwards, intraLibrary provides extensions of the LOM Identifier fields for describing bibliographic citation data about a resource.  The metadata fields used in this extension conform to DCMI’s Guidelines for Encoding Bibliographic Citation Information in Dublin Core Metadata – see http://www.dublincore.org/documents/dc-citation-guidelines/.

An example of a metadata record including bibliographic citation metadata can be seen at the end of this article. This shows the format of a metadata record which can be deposited into intraLibrary using SWORD. The Bibliosight project will be taking the XML record which WoS returns and converting this to the format shown below using XSLT. The Bibliosight team are currently working on a crosswalk between the WoS-formatted metadata and the LOM record we require for deposit (see Nick’s post on Nov 16th).

Note that the following example also includes XCRI (course information) extensions and CLA reporting extensions but those are not required in the Bibliosight project.

MetadataService metadataService = GetMetadataService(“contoso”);

RetrieveEntityRequest request = new RetrieveEntityRequest();
request.EntityItems = EntityItems.All;

request.RetrieveAsIfPublished = true;

request.LogicalName = “account”;
RetrieveEntityResponse response = (RetrieveEntityResponse)metadataService.Execute(request);
http://www.dynamicsexchange.com/Technology%20Resources/#Workflow go to section devloper tutorial for crm tutorials

BOA (Bicocca Open Archive), il repository istituzionale dell’Università di Milano-Bicocca ha rilasciato nuove, importanti funzionalità. Dopo cinque mesi di lavoro, presentiamo agli utenti in questi giorni le seguenti innovazioni:

• Deposito delle tesi di dottorato in formato elettronico
• Export delle citazioni delle pubblicazioni nei principali formati bibliografici
• Aumento dell’utenza potenziale e dell’inserimento pubblicazioni
• Servizio di verifica delle policy editoriali
• Miglioramento del sistema di notifica
• Miglioramento del sistema di alerting
• Miglioramento di alcuni aspetti del layout

In realtà, per alcune funzionalità sono stati necessari ben più di cinque mesi di lavoro (es.: tesi di dottorato) così come su altre lavoriamo all’incirca dall’entrata in produzione dell’archivio (es.: il servizio di verifica delle policy editoriali). Se volete saperne di più, potete consultare la news dedicata sul sito della Biblioteca.

Searching for new music can be a daunting task. Services like Apple’s iTunes or the website last.fm make it relatively easy to find music similar to songs or artists you already listen to. But type in “instrumentals for yoga class” and you probably won’t get very far.

Luke Barrington, a PhD student at the University of California San Diego, plans to change that with the beta version of his music search engine, Herd It, which he launched last week. His goal is to find and recommend music based on natural-language searches, providing users with both familiar and new songs that share acoustic qualities.

When he recently pitted his recommendation software against Apple’s music recommendation system, Genius, he found that users were equally satisfied with playlists suggested by both methods.

Genius is what Barrington labels a “metadata-based” system. The software associates music with information not necessarily related to the audio content, such as the name of the song, artist and album, and then averages statistics about how many users purchase and play each track. In other words, Genius is just telling you, “the people that listen to this song also listen to that song,” and suggests you do the same.

Barrington’s approach is more similar to the Pandora Radio model, or what he calls a content-based system, which builds playlists with songs that have similar sounds. Humans assign semantic descriptors to each of Pandora’s more than one million songs based on genre, emotion, instruments or vocals. For example, typing “Kings of Leon” into the search box produces a playlist featuring “electric rock instrumentation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, major key tonality and electric rhythm guitars.”

Herd It builds upon both Apple’s crowdsourcing mentality and Pandora’s natural-language song characterization, but incorporates machine learning to go beyond the capabilities of either system. Barrington created an algorithm to identify acoustic patterns in a song that predict a semantic tag. It then finds similar patterns in other songs and applies the tag automatically, eliminating the need to tag every song separately.

To this end, Barrington created a game on Facebook that allows users to ascribe qualities to thirty-second long clips of popular songs in a variety of genres. There are nearly 150 tags related to instrumentation, vocals, style, emotion, and even where you would prefer to listen to a song (relaxing at the beach, dancing at a party, while driving, etc.). When enough people independently agree on the same tag for a song, the algorithm learns to assign that tag to songs with similar acoustic patterns.

“Your definition of why a song is cool or why it goes well with another song may be quite different from mine,” Barrington said. “We’re hoping that the demographic information that we get from Facebook will help us to use Herd It data to learn demographic-specific representations of tags, like ‘teenage girls from San Diego think that this song rocks’ or ‘middleaged housewives from Europe would find this tune romantic’.” As the algorithm evolves, Herd It could one day provide personalized recommendations.

The machine gets smarter as more people play the game and as more music is available. Herd It’s current database is relatively small (about 10,000 songs) but Barrington hopes to partner with a major license holder for access to a more comprehensive collection. Since the algorithm is trained to read only acoustic qualities, it can be compatible with any music service. So while existing music recommendation engines build playlists around a specific song or artist, Herd It, in theory, should be able to create a playlist based on the query, “jazz trumpet melodies for a romantic dinner.”

There is even an option on Herd It for artists to upload their own music, which automatically receives relevant tags and is just as likely to appear on a playlist as any popular song with the same tags – an attribute not available through Genius, which requires that any new song they wish to add to their collection must first be listened to by a large number of users.

Barrington’s ultimate music recommendation engine would incorporate aspects of Genius’ collaborative filtering that leverage huge amounts of user ratings and information that is hard to extract from just listening to the audio (e.g., popularity, release data, artist similarity, etc.), into Herd It so that any new song can immediately be added and recommended in the same context as older or more popular tunes. “Our system doesn’t know anything that the average music fan is aware of,” said Barrington. “Once we add that information in, we think we can build something that is really smarter than Genius.”

Play the Herd It game on Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/herd-it/ or request to try out the Herd It music discovery engine here.

I have been asked numerous times about how to encode purchased DVDs into the video equivalent of MP3. For me, and many others, this is MP4.

The below steps will explain how to convert a DVD into a MP4 format, complete with metadata and artwork. (The process is nearly identical on Windows and Mac – Sorry Linux fans, I have yet to dabble with this on that platform, but I’m sure it’s almost the same too)

Even though you own the DVD, the act of ripping it and converting to another format is still very much a legal grey area. (I hope this guide doesn’t get pulled because of this!)

You will need a few applications;
MacTheRipper (Mac) or DVDShrink (Windows)
Handbrake (Mac & Windows)
MetaX (Mac & Windows) or Subler (Mac)

And a few sites to help with obtaining the metadata;
IMDb (General Data)
Netflix (Genre and Outline)
Barnes & Noble (Chapters)
tagChimp (General Data and Chapters)
Wikipedia (General Data)
Get Video Artwork (High resolution artwork)
Blockbuster (UK Ratings)
Internet Movie Poster Database (Last resort if you cannot find decent artwork)

Ripping the DVD

Handbrake can convert straight form the physical disk itself, but I prefer to rip it to my Hard Drive first.

With MacTheRipper, it’s easier to insert the disk and click “Go!”. This will rip the entire contents of the DVD, allowing you to pick out the parts you need later. Ripping a specific Title can be a bit fiddly.

DVDShrink can do the same thing via the “Entire Disk” button. But it is much easier to rip just the Title of the Main Feature using the Re-Author option.

To save getting into unnecessary detail, for the purpose of this guide, rip the whole Disk.

Encoding the Movie

1. Launch Handbrake. You should be prompted for the Source File(s). If not, select File>Open.

2. Handbrake will scan the Contents. Once finished, open the Preset tray and select Universal.

3. In the main screen pick the Title you want to encode. This is usually the longest one for the main feature. Play the DVD elsewhere and take note of the Title number to be sure.

4. Type in the location and name of your desired output file (for the Windows version, all special characters must be removed. You can change the filename after).

The default setup here should be fine for most people, so it is safe to skip onto the Audio and Subtitles Step – you will be left with a perfectly acceptable video file. If you’re interested in some of the finer points, read on…

5. In the Video tab click Picture Settings.

5a. Set Anamorphic to Strict – this will force Handbrake to keep a pixel-for-pixel resolution of the original (no scaling like with the loose option)

Because of this, you have to adjust the Cropping to keep the video the correct shape;

5b. Set the crop to Custom and adjust the numbers so that they are multiples of 16 (this is to do with macroblocks – there are numerous post online explaining this, but for now trust me, 16 is the magic number) and even numbers (e.g. if you find you have 71 and 73 for the top and bottom, you should change them to 72 and 72 – this is to do with efficient encoding).

Keep note of how much of the video you are cutting away or adding back. adding too much back may leave more black edges than you would have liked. Cutting too much away may take away too much of the film. The last one is highly unlikely as, when overscan on CRT TVs was an issue, the extreme edges of the film were cut off anyway.

5c. If your source is interlaced or Telecined (again, plenty of posts about this elsewhere) select the relevant Filters. Decomb can be left on if you are unsure, as this is like a ’safe’ de-interlacer that will only be brought into effect if needed.

5d. Now check your Source, Output and Anamorphic numbers;

The Output should be the source minus your crop values, exactly. The Anamorphic should with the same height as the Output. This can be ignored if you have chosen “Loose Anamorphic”. I prefer strict as you are left with an exact pixel-for-pixel copy of the original without any scaling.

6. Onto the Audio and Subtitles Tab.

6a. The default here is for track 1 to be an AAC Pro Logic II mix-down of the 5.1 AC3 source, with Tack 2 being a passthru of the source. This is fine in nearly every case.

The two tracks are for compatibility. The Apple TV and Media Players can pick off the AC3 5.1 track (Amplifier friendly) whereas the iPhone and iPods can use the Pro Logic II track, as it’s just stereo. The ProLogic II allows those with PLII amps to playback the pseudo-5.1 from the portable devices too.

Ideally you would do away with both of these and choose the 6-Channel discrete AAC, as this is the ideal equivalent to AC3 5.1. But due to a slow uptake on this standard we are forced to use the 2-Track method above, breaking the MP4 standards. Plex and XBMC can down-sample 6-Channel discrete AAC to AC3 5.1, but they are the only ones, leaving you with a file un-playable on the iPods and iPhone and a mix-down to something non-AC3 from the Apple TV. A real shame, but what can you do?

You can set the 2nd Track to None if the source is only Stereo or Dolby Surround (no point have two sets of 2-Channel tracks).

6b. Choose any subtitles you would like hard-encoded to the movie file. These will be ‘burnt’ onto the video itself so be sure before you choose any (such as Forces Subtitles where some Movies may have translated scenes). I will post another guide for adding soft-subs to your files once I have found a bullet-proof method.

7. The Chapters Tab.

7a. Fill in the chapters via whichever method suites you (copy and pasting from one of the sites listed above, manually from the DVD box, or choose your own by watching the movie).

The Advanced Tab can be left alone, as this is really reserved for the hard-core tinkeres.

8. Click Add To Queue or Start depending on how many DVDs you are encoding. Depending on your Computer, the encoding process can take anywhere from 1 hour to 1 day (yes my 8 year old PC used to take a whole day to do this!).

Adding the Metadata, or ‘tags’

If you’re only interested in a file to playback the Movie, indifferent to cataloguing your collection, you can skip adding any data to the file. I, however, like having all the information stored within the file, like with MP3s (it’s only Apple Media players and various Operating Systems that can read this data for now, but this will change).

Open your weapon of choice, be it MetaX, Subler or one of the more obscure ones and populate all the required fields. The sites listed above are great for this.

Once complete, Save/Write the data to the file.

You’re done!

The file you are left with is about 33% to 50% the size of the DVD Title and can be imported to iTunes with all the data intact. It will be exactly the same resolution as the original (if you choose the ’strict’ method) and can be played back on almost any device – one file the rule them all!

I will post a guide for Blu-ray and High Def rips once that process has been more streamlined and standardised.

Some likely questions and things to note

Why choose the ‘Universal’ Preset?
This is the most compatible format to use. It leaves out all the unnecessary ‘extras’ that make it un-playable on some devices. One example is the B-frames added for the Apple TV preset – this only saves about 10% more file space but makes no improvements to video quality.
The consoles are always changing their requirements and therefore rendering their presets useless too often. They are being removed from the next release I believe.
The AVI container is a dying format and will also be removed from the next release of Handbrake.
The device-specific presets reduce the resolution for playback via the device’s screen only – too low for TV use really.

Be careful of blank chapters at the end of a Title.
Some DVDs are authored with a chapter at the end of the movie no more than about 3 seconds long. This is to help with the menu navigation (I think) and can be left out (select the previous Chapter as the last one in Handbrake’s main screen). leaving it in will result in an unwanted entry at the end of your Chapter List – not a huge deal, but irritating non the less.

Double-check your Movie duration once encoding is complete.
Handbrake will add or remove a few frames here and there to keep things in sync (nothing that can be spotted during playback, don’t worry) so the output file’s duration should be the same as the original, give or take a few seconds at the most. The movie studios are very aware that programs like Handbrake can circumvent most attempts to prevent encoding, so have started adding deliberate errors to the DVDs. These errors are handled by stand-alone players no problem, and skipped over, but many can cause Handbrake to choke. I am suffering from this issue with Iron Man – selecting the subtitle track for the bits of translation at various scenes causes Handbrake to drop whole scenes from the movie, leaving me with a file a full 15 minutes too short. This is because they haven’t kept that particular subtitle track’s time-stamp in sync with the main movie… sneaky cretins.

You can set the Constant Quality to anything from 59% to 62%.
Anything lower will result in noticeable artefacts. Any higher and you are wasting space. In this version of Handbrake, the percentage is in relation to the original film source, not the DVD – setting it to 80% will result in a file the same size as the original DVD, any higher and the size balloons. In comparison, a Blu-ray is considered 95% percent of the original film source.

The same method can be followed for TV Shows and 4:3 sources.
Just select the required Title, or Chapter range, that relates to the episode you’re wanting.

Some DVDs will flat-out refuse to rip.
For these you can plump out for DVDFab.

Please post any questions relating to this guide in the comments below.
I will respond as best I can.

Code generator adalah konstruksi software yang menghasilkan kode, merupakan sekumpulan kode yang menghasilkan kode. Code generation adalah sebuah teknik yang umum digunakan dalam sebuah proyek pengembangan perangkat lunak.

1. Passive Code Generator

Passive code generator dikembangkan satu kali dalam pengembangan perangkat lunak. Aplikasi ini menghasilkan kode yang kemudian akan dimodifikasi berulang kali oleh pengembang perangkat lunak.

2. Active Code Generator

Code generator yang termasuk dalam kategori ini menghasikan kode dimana code generator terus diubah menurut kebutuhan pengembang dalam sebuah proyek perangkat lunak.

Perbedaan dasar dari active code generator dan passive code generator adalah pada bagaimana kode yang dihasilkan direkayasa oleh pengembang, jika code generator menghasilkan kode yang baru setiap kali dijalankan, maka code generator merupakan bentuk aktif, sedangkan jika kode yang dihasilkan di ambil oleh pengembang, diubah dan direkayasa berarti kita menggunakan code generator bentuk pasif.

Active Code Generator Dan Generative Programming

Active Code Generator memiliki kemampuan untuk menghasilkan produktifitas yang tinggi. Berbeda dengan passive code generator, active code generator tidak bergantung pada pengembang perangkat lunak untuk merekayasa kode yang dihasilkan oleh code generator. Active code generator biasanya terdiri dari tiga bagian :

• Metadata

Metadata adalah data yang menggambarkan data yang lain, untuk itu metadata memberikan bentuk atau form dari data.

• Pattern Template

Pattern template digunakan oleh code generator untuk menterjemahkan data yang dideskripsikan dari metadata menjadi bentuk yang lain.

• Code Generator

Code generator mengikat metadata dengan pattern template untuk menghasilkan kode yang diinginkan.

Dikemukakan oleh krzysztov czarnecky dan ulrich eisenecker dalam bukunya, Generative Programming: Methods, Tools and Application. Generative Programming menggunakan active code generator untuk menyelesaikan masalah dari rekayasa perangkat lunak.

Adapapun active code generator memiliki beberapa poin kunci berikut penjelasannya sebagai berikut :

1. Hasilkan kode sebagai bagian dari proses eksekusi code generator.
2. Jaga kode yang dihasilkan terpisah dari kode sumber yang lain.
3. Jangan menempatkan kode yang dihasilkan code generator yang aktif dibawah kontrol  sumber.
4. Hindari penggabungan active dan passive code generator.

Sumber : http://www.ittelkom.ac.id/library/index.php?view=article&catid=20%3Ainformatika&id=169%3Acode-generator&option=com_content&Itemid=15FirefoxHTML\Shell\Open\Command

Apologies for the radio silence, the remains of Tropical Storm Ida have parked themselves over the Manor of Mixed Blessings and refuse to move. This presents a problem for my internet life, because the Manor of Mixed Blessings is so far out in the boonies that I rely on satellite broadband for my internet connection. Satellite is great under any number of conditions, but when heavy clouds and rain are overhead, my connectivity sucks.

That being said, I have managed to do some random surfing, and found this place which is selling, I shit you not, a 1/32 scale Andersonville prison playset. Scroll down to the middle of the page. One set contains the stockade and guard towers, and then the “Andersonville accessories” contains 24 little plastic Union POWs, tents and shebangs for them, and 8 teeny plastic Confederate guards.

I just keep looking at it. I think I’m balanced nearly perfectly between “Oh. My. God. Who the hell even thinks that a toy version of the most deadly prison camp on American soil is a good idea?” and “Holy shit, I need the accessories set at the very least for my desk at work.”