XMLKit is a bundle of useful XML conversion and validation programs using batch files to simplify their deployment and use. Available programs include:
If you've been trained in Computer Science, there's a good chance that you see problem solving as primarily about breaking down big problems into lots of small, solvable problems.
(Alternatively, you may have learnt to create solutions to small problems independent of the big problem, which might then be usable when solving the big problem, but either way, it's the same pattern: small used to solve big.)
The drawback with this approach is that it leads to a tendency for reductionism; the idea that the universe is just a big problem waiting to be broken down into ever-smaller problems that need solving. The ideal reductionist position is to prove everything from the theorems of physics (dealing as it does with the fundamental particles of the universe).
There's a book called "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely. While I wouldn't really recommend the whole book, it did contain one experimentally-supported concept which I found interesting.
In essence, the experiment tested the idea that humans operate according to either social norms, or market norms.
If true, this would explain why some companies struggle to achieve effective collaboration: their environment emphasises market norms, and thus the what's-in-it-for-me principle wins out.
On the other hand, if the company achieves an environment where social norms are dominant, effective collaboration is much more likely.
In an ongoing debate on actKM about the relationships between knowledge and information, Foucault's concept of pouvoir-savoir has been raised by Michael Olsson. The original quote is here:
« Il n'y a pas de relations de pouvoir sans constitution corrélative d'un champ de savoir, ni de savoir qui ne suppose et ne constitue en même temps des relations de pouvoir... Ces rapports de "pouvoir-savoir" ne sont donc pas à analyser à partir d'un sujet de connaissance qui serait libre ou non par rapport au système de pouvoir ; mais il faut considérer au contraire que le sujet qui connaît, les objets, sont autant d'effets de ces implications fondamentales du pouvoir-savoir… » (« Il faut défendre la société »)
I have a confession to make.
Most of Web 2.0 leaves me cold. All this hype about Wikipedia, social networking solutions that will magically sustain themselves and revolutionize the world (Facebook, I'm looking at you) is generally just so much marketing bullshit, frankly.
So I tend to yawn a bit about books that yammer on about harnessing social power. But after reading the Ars Technica interview with author Clay Shirky as part of a review of Here Comes Everybody, I had to revise my opinion.
Ray Sims has done a sterling job in assembling 43 54 different published definitions of Knowledge Management.
As most people who have worked in the area know, one of KM's commonly quoted flaws is that there isn't one "gospel" definition of KM.
I thought it would be interesting to work through the definitions and summarize how these definitions talk about KM.
This is a follow up to my previous proposal on xpatch.
Joe has rightly pointed out that XPath is not sufficient to handles XML files where ordering is not guaranteed. For example:
<attendees>
<attendee name="Dream" status="Confirmed" />
<attendee name="Desire" status="No reply" />
</attendees>
If I want to update Desire's status, but don't know a priori which order these elements will be returned, xpatch won't work:
Tom Davenport makes an excellent point in his most recent post about the challenges of decision making:
We have lost much of the connection between the supply of information and the demand for it in decision-making. Despite the fact that companies often justify IT projects on the basis of better decisions, there is seldom a direct tie between the information a particular system produces and the decisions that are supposed to be based on it.
Seriously. Who the hell wants to pay for SharePoint when you get this for free? With about 40 seconds configuration time to boot?
Google Sites (based on JotSpot) ups the ante considerably on Google Apps Team Edition. Arbitrary file uploads of up to 10MB with a minimum 10GB cap will provide a huge, huge boost to its popularity.
Now, if Google could just provide OpenID support instead of emails for login, I would have a close to perfect federated collaboration system :)
UPDATE: Also see my follow-up post on an alternative method for replacing nodes.
Joe Gregorio asks about available XML diff formats, and based on some Googling, there really isn't anything robust and/or readable out there.
In particular, most formats seem to hard code differences by node number, which doesn't hold up at all well if you may want to merge diffs from multiple sources from a single code base a la traditional diff merging in code bases.
Given the enormous amounts of XML being processed, it seems incredible that nothing has been defined no standards have emerged so far. So here's a possible option. It's based heavily on the Mozilla XUL Overlays pattern, but generalised for any XML.
