Data Unbound

In response to my question on the Freebase developers list [Developers] how to get items with properties having null values?, Chris Maden of Metaweb quickly wrote me the following solution:

To find all elements *with* boiling points:

[
   {
     "atomic_number" : null,
     "boiling_point" : {
       "value" : null
     },
     "name" : null,
     "sort" : "atomic_number",
     "type" : "/chemistry/chemical_element"
   }
]

By putting the value in an object, you are requiring a value to be present; a simple null matches no value at all.

You can find all elements *without* boiling points like this:

[
   {
     "atomic_number" : null,
     "boiling_point" : {
       "optional" : "forbidden",
       "value" : null
     },
     "name" : null,
     "sort" : "atomic_number",
     "type" : "/chemistry/chemical_element"
   }
]

The "value" clause matches only values that are present; the "optional":"forbidden" directive then eliminates them.

Official Google Data APIs Blog: Bringing OpenID and OAuth Together:

We are happy to announce an important enhancement to our recently launched OpenID endpoint. Google now supports the "Hybrid Protocol", combining OpenID federated login together with OAuth access authorization. Websites can now ask Google to sign-in a user using their Google Account, and at the same time request access to information available via OAuth-enabled APIs such as the Google Data APIs.

One paragraph from Congress Jumps on the Web 2.0 Bandwagon | Radical Tech | Fast Company caught my eye:

Latta agrees and adds “Real time communication applications, like Twitter and Facebook, provide Members of Congress an ability to receive feedback from their constituents even as the debate is taking place on the floor of the House.”

Hmmm…I wonder whether Barbara Lee, of California's 9th congressional district), or the two California senators (Barbara Boxer, or Dianne Feinstein) communicate with constituents with Twitter or Facebook. Tweet Congress shows that Boxer does but not Feinstein or Lee. So if I direct messaged @Barbara_Boxer, will that mean anything? If I see something going down on C-Span, should I hop on to Twitter or pick up the phone, run to my fax machine, write letters — or all of the above?

Much attention has been paid to the Amazon Kindle, an electronic device to read books that can be purchased and downloaded from amazon.com. But before there was the Kindle, Amazon enabled certain books to be read online — through Amazon Upgrade.  I ordered Getting Started in Consulting and wish more of Amazon's selection were available online.

Today's "NY Times" carries a nice introduction to "citizen science" — A New Kind of Big Science:

There is another way to extend our scientific reach, and I believe it can also restore some of what is lost in the process of centralization. It has been called Citizen Science, and it involves the enlistment of large numbers of relatively untrained individuals in the collection of scientific data. To return to our architectural metaphor, if Big Science builds the high-rise yet higher, Citizen Science extends outward the community of villages.

Who on the Berkeley campus might be considered an expert on this topic? To name a few, maybe the folks at Common Sense Reseach Project.

As a long time owner and user of Palm products (Palm V, Treo 300, Treo 600, Treo 700p), I've been hoping that Palm would release a cutting-edge product that would still enable me to keep synching my contacts with Ecco Pro.   After following the announcement of the Palm Pre has convinced me to hold off on giving up on Palm, it appears that the new device will not be able to run old Palm OS software (at least without a lot of third-party interop work.)

I wish there were a simple way to convert a WordPress post to page — that is without copying and pasting the content — but there doesn't seem to be a way in WP right now (at least according to the convert post to page? thread).

Time to install The Jython Project. I installed both the current version (2.2.1) and the beta version (2.50b). Time to run through the Jython book and the Jython User Guide.

In  the new year,  I would like to deepen my expertise in all-things-Pythonic.  One version I just installed today was Iron Python:

IronPython is a new implementation of the Python programming language running on .NET. It supports an interactive console with fully dynamic compilation. It is well integrated with the rest of the .NET Framework and makes all .NET libraries easily available to Python programmers, while maintaining full compatibility with the Python language.

My hope is to be doing a lot of programming in "generic Python" and then take advantage of specific platform libraries (such .NET using IronPython and the Java libraries using Jython). Let's see how well that strategy works.

(BTW, I look forward to seeing the upcoming new book on IronPython: IronPython in Action by Michael J. Foord and Christian Muirhead.)

I just installed coins-metadata plugin for my various WordPress blogs so that Zotero can pick up the embedded OpenURL ContextObject in SPAN (COinS).