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Taxonomy Reading Notes

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:17:49 GMT

These are just some key points that I got out of the introduction of the reading up through explaining the different types of taxonomy organizations.

"Good Taxonomies are simple; they become invisible and taken for granted, because they reflect so well the contours of their users' knowledge world."

"When we apply our knowledge we do so in a world that is mental, physical, emotional, and social, we do so using information and memory and tools and routines and observation."

Knowledge Management
  information management
  organization of infromation
  |
  |
\|/
  V
Knowledge Organization -> we organize so that we can manage.
  retrieval
  knowledge-building
  ientifying knowledge relationships
  sense-making
  managing complexity
  diagnosis & decision-making
  pushing knowledge in usefull directions

"Knowledge organization is a fundamental precondition for managing knowledge effectively."

Taxonomy ~ in general ~ the rules or conventions of order or arrangement.

  Classification scheme.
  Semantic
  knowledgemap

Classification Scheme ~ group related things together

Schematic ~ provide a fixed vocabulary to describe their knowledge and information assetes. Meaningful and transparent to ordinary users

Knowlege Map ~ creating the ability to grasp the overall structure of a knowledge domain covered by the taxonomy and accurately anticipate what resources might be found where.

Taxonomy forms

Lists
lists are the fundamental building blocks of taxonomy. All forms are built from some form of list
trees
a powerful structure that reflects the way people think.
hierarchies
a very specific type of tree structure
sociology & anthropology -> relative disposition of power.
humanities -> relative importance
Sciences -> inclusiveness, relational consistency, inheritance, mutual exclusivity.
'sense-making' and 'organizing' both involve ordering things, explaining deviations, simplification, and explaining relationships.
polyhierarches
hierarchies that break their own rules. They cross-connect hierarchies and can begin to lose the sence of regular structure.
matrices
typologies, paradigms, interlinked polyhierarchies.
have the ability to add a third dimension to the mix
facets
a base taxonomy comprising only one of the fundamental dimensions in which content can be analysed. Facets are based on important and easily recognisable attributes of the content being analysed the concepts do not have any overlap
facet-driven searches often result in s0-called 'false drops' where the facet seletion has been overly precise and no exactly matching content exist.
Basic Facet Types 1 -> Topic, Product, Document Type, Audience, Geography, Price
Basic Facet Types 2 -> Activities, Domain, Form, Type, Products/Services, Time, Location
Basic Facet Types 3 -> location, alphabet, time, category, hierarchy
system maps
visual representations of a knowledge domain where proximity and connections between entities are used to express their taxonomic and real-world relationships.

Taxonomy and Facet Updates

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:45:40 GMT

After looking through the different vocabularies and working to digest my own vocabulary, I found that my vocabulary is not as “well rounded” as it should be. So in order for me to create a new list it would involve starting through a different approach to determining significance in terms. I do not however believe this is a beneficial approach to be taken. I do believe that there is great value in my current vocabulary as it relates to further development and classification of information. So what you will find in my re-presented taxonomy data is the list of all 100 terms and their relationship to each other based on synonyms and antonyms. They have been grouped in to categories which could potentially lead to a few facets for the overall taxonomy. Also while looking through my information, I kept envisioning a database matrix that could potentially be developed with the associations that have been created both the general tree of term categorization and linking into the third dimension connecting to the related synonyms and antonyms.

As far as beginning to merge the different taxonomies into the class taxonomy, I have seen a general trend that categorizes information into the following categories (these category/facet names are not specific to individual taxonomies but instead an attempt to generalize what I have seen):

People
Places
Incident
Cause
Treatment
Prevention

~ mgoodwin

WikiMapia

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:12:16 GMT

I was doing research for studio and ran into this website which allows users to identify things giving a great deal of information about the item being identified... of course quantity and quality of information varies

Information Models Part 1C

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 19:53:29 GMT

Reconnaissance and Analysis
1. Analyze an existing mode of representation
2. Analyze a building and diagram it
3. Diagram a non-architectural operation

For the third task for part 1 of studio we were to choose a non-architecture related process and diagram it. We were to make sure we knew who our audience is because that influences what form the diagram will take. The process that I chose was making a basic sushi roll. I have created a "cook book" for how to roll your own sushi, it isn't finalized but if your interested in seeing the "hard copy" let me know. This isn't in a final digital form to share. The reason the cook book isn't finished is because of the fact that it has been decided to show the element of time in the process more by organizing the material in a scroll like a traditional scroll painting. That will also be in hard copy rather than digital copy.

Information Models Part 1B

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 19:51:19 GMT

Reconnaissance and Analysis
1. Analyze an existing mode of representation
2. Analyze a building and diagram it
3. Diagram a non-architectural operation

For the second step for the first part of studio, we were required to select a work of architecture that uses a lot of diagrams for producing the work and then we are to Re-present the concept behind the project.

For this project I selected MVRDV's Double House. Below is my analysis of the Double House.

Information Models Part 1A

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 19:50:36 GMT

I am currently in Michael Gamble's Options 3 Master Studio.
The major focus of this studio is how we represent information graphicly (DIAGRAMS, IDEOGRAMS AND DESIGN MODELS).
The studio is broken down into 3 exercises.

Reconnaissance and Analysis
1. Analyze an existing mode of representation
2. Analyze a building and diagram it
3. Diagram a non-architectural operation
Defining Parameters/Parametric Modeling
Data-mining an research on subject matter chosen by each student that fits the following template.
"A Place For ____________"
Design Models/Transformations
Develop the project associate with the research from Part 2

For the first part of the project we were to take an existing data model, anything from website layouts, to sport center news, to social networking, etc.

I ended up diagramming Wikipedia which created a massive web of information just within the relm of Wikipedia.
The original image was printed out at 36"x42" so the image here is not for content but for the graphic representation of the information. To view the actual diagram you will have to contact me personally.

Flash website From class

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:49:07 GMT

http://old.arch.ethz.ch/moere/mvrdv/index.html

This MVRDV website that I mentioned in class about how there was some interesting and some bad uses of flash. The information is worthwhile information but the presentation of the information has room to be cleaned up.

I will let you be the judge of where the site works and fails.

Website Server

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 23:39:31 GMT

If you do not have a place to host your website, you can ask the arch program IT people to setup a user folder on undertow and you can host your site there… For instance http://undertow.arch.gatech.edu/homepages/gte151n/ will take you to a website I created for a class a while back.

If for what ever reason you can’t get hosting through the arch servers, you can setup your “PRISM” website through Georgia Tech. http://www.prism.gatech.edu/ This option is a PAIN IN THE BUTT!!!
Other options include any number of free hosting out on the world wide web.
If you need to I can setup hosting for the semester on my personal domain… ask me and we’ll get things going.

RSS Editor

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:38:27 GMT

RSS Editor is a way to generate RSS Feeds without having to mess with the xml code. This software will generate the code for you.

I have been playing around with this sofware for this class and it does have some features that have to be figured out

One thing that I have not figured out is the URI feature which will allow for upload of your xml RSS file to a website rather than having to save the file to your harddrive and then upload it.

If you are interested in using this feature, install it from the link given. If you want help figuring out the software let me know and I'll help you out.

mgoodwin mgoodwin@mgoodwinDESIGN.com

Test Feed

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:24:55 GMT

this is a test feed only

Top 5 up and comming web products

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:21:21 GMT

Up & Comming Products

I have ordered these up and comings based on my preference of which has the greatest potential.

FushionIO

Performance based storage systems which allows greater performance than a typical hard drive. This product is a card that goes in the computer with the 600 plus gig of storage on the card rather than on disk drives.

This product seems to be in a different class than other products being viewed but at the same time it have very high potential because of the storage capacity it has with in such a small space. You have storage on a card rather than many hard drives.

DimDim

DimDim is a free cross-platform web conferencing software that does not require client side installation.

Not being able to actually participate in a dimdim meeting it makes it a little more difficult to determine how well the site works. But from seeing the demo launch video, the site looks very promising. The one concern I have about everything being web-based and not having the client side software running is the potential added buffer/refresh time, just watching the video showed some lag time between speech and visual interfacing that may be problematic.

gClick

gClick is a data mapping system that can take information from any web article and develop an extensive list of significant information along with more developed expansive information based on what was being read in the original article.

The potential of this software appear to have the ability to revolutionalize the concept of search. I can see the potential of reading an article, clicking a button and then in a matter of moments having a plethora of data at your finger tips that relates to the subject you were looking at.

ZoneAlarm ForceField

Malware protection through the use of a “double/copy” of yourself.

Not sure exactly how this software works but it does seem to have value. I’m not sure how the user interface would work or what kind of customization or even server speed effects would occur by using this software.

CoComment

“CoComment is designed to help users and sites get more out of the comment threads they follow by providing a centralized method for tracking and linking multiple comment threads.”

In working through CoComment I found that it was not acting very well for me. After I went to the test site and posted I went to the personal page and didn’t see anything. While going through the site, I noticed that it logs me off of the server at odd times and I in a 5-10 minute period I have had to log on 2-3 times. Before commenting there should have been a decription that explained the CoComment bar that occurs under the comment box because it has to be set to track for things to be seen on the site. When integrating CoComment on another site, it requires posting of code to every page that wants to be tracked and then requires the user to know exact information on URL etc that will be automatically generated when the page is created.

In principle CoComment could be valuable for people who have conversations on multiple sites but at the same time it is not very user friendly when actually trying to make posts when you may not know what the exact page will be until after it’s created. I wasn’t hooked with the site like I think I should have been, BUT I am not a heavy blogger so that could be part of it.