austraLasia #2330

Take the first step, talk to it - and be surprised!

ROME: 18th January 2009 -- Prepare yourself for a touch of magic - or what seems magic but isn't. Every Salesian knows that 'taking the first step' is an important part of encounter, offering a brief 'word in the ear', whatever. Now shift that into the digital world and what might you get?
    Long experience has taught me that if I 'talk' to Google in real terms I get real answers. I ask real questions in natural language - that way I get the best results. This has nothing to do with things like talking to your tomatoes to get better tomatoes.  Indeed, it has nothing to do with the human activity of encounter and human warmth that Don Bosco was on about. Let's be clear about that.  But it has everything to do with Sir Tim Berners-Lee's desire (TBL invented the World Wide Web and heads the consortium which develops it) to achieve positive results from what he calls the semantic web, where everything is connected to everything by using natural language.
    Well, my friends, it has arrived.
    I use a tiny addon (add-on) to my Firefox web browser called 'Ubiquity'. with Ubiquity I can do (and do do) the following:
    - There is a word in a web page I can't understand. I select it, type 'def this' and it saves me going to the dictionary.  That's if the word is in English
    - The word 'diritti' is in Italian. Again, I select it, type 'tr this' and it tells me it means 'rights'. (It could have been a sentence - I'll get at least a machine translation result). Word or sentence in Japanese? Not to worry - you'll get it in English, or reverse the situation and you'll get it in Japanese.
    - I live in Hobart, Tasmanaia. I want to know where Tolosa street is.  I type 'map tolosa hobart tas', and the result I get is a map which nominates 'Dominic College Tolosa St' (which happens to be a Salesian school) and shows me how to get there.
    - I then want to send that map to a friend, so I type 'mail this to Frank'; it wants to check the several Franks I have in my Google mail - in due course it will be happy with Thunderbird, but not yet - then sends a map of Dominic college location in Tolosa St to the Frank I choose.
    My friends, it gets better still.....
    - I type 'w hobart tas' and I'm told that at the moment it is 9 degrees and 77% humidity - yes, mid-summer; probably means it's raining. But then, that's my Hobart. I was born there and I love it.
    - Never was very good at maths, so type in a sum of some kind (better at spelling!) and I get the result.
    - want to save 4 of 5 paragraphs on the web page in front of me as a pdf file, so first I select the paragraphs I don't want, type 'd this' (delete), then 'c this to pdf' (convert) and I get my pdf file which I can then 'mail this to Frank' if I really want to, or just save it to my desktop.  And on and on it goes.
    To do the same what do you need?  You need Firefox as your browser (doesn't matter if it's on Windows, Mac or Linux). Google up 'Firefox addons'.  As Ubiquity is experimental, you'll need to register - they want you to accept that this is your choice. Don't be afraid, it doesn't hurt you or your computer. Once you've followed that process you are sent an email (takes seconds) which you click to acknowledge. You can then download and install your addon in Firefox. Close it and open it again and everything will work. Hit Ctr-spacebar (for a windows machine) and the grey box that opens up is where you type the sort of stuff I've just indicated above. Use the real language I've indicated, though I have abbreviated the commands and Ubiquity understands those abbreviations. Play for a while, then settle down and use it wisely. It saves so much time!  Good luck.

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 AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific.  It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome.  For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - just go to Bosconet, click on austraLasia 2008 in the sidebar. You will see the RSS orange icon in your browser address bar - add it from there.  Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at http://sdl.sdb.org

Title: australasia 2330
Subject and key words:  SDB General Ubiquity
Date (year): 2009
ID: 2000-2099|2330