PhD by Mp3

Audio Comfirmation!I’ve created audio versions of the various sections of my PhD Confirmation document (PDF ~1Mb). They are read by a AT&T natural voice called “Mel”:

  • Summary.mp3 (3Mb, 3mins) – gives an overview of the document; helps you decide if this is going to be your cup of tea.
  • Section1.mp3 (46Mb, 48mins) – discusses the issues with widgets and how standardization could help fix them.
  • Section2.mp3 (14Mb, 15mins)- discusses the methodologies that can be used to fix the problems with widgets, and other relevant stuff.
  • Seciton 3 is the Widgets 1.0 Requirements, which you can read at the w3c.

Files are all encoded in 32Khz, 16Bit, mono…. perfect for listening on any Mp3 Player. Document was converted to Mp3 using NaturalReader by Natural Soft.

UPDATE: added the latest draft of the widgets 1.0 requirements document.

Continue reading PhD by Mp3

Finished Confirmation Document

My confirmation documentFinally finished my PhD confirmation document (PDF ~1Mb) on Standardizing Widgets. This document is supposed represent all the research I’ve been doing into widgets over the last year or so. If you are interested in widgets and the standardization process, Section 1 might be of value. Please send me any feedback and let me know what I need to work on.

Hate reading on screen? Don’t want to kill trees?… download the confimation document as an Mp3 File (~76Mb, 1:21:36sec, 16Bit 24Khz) . It’s read by AT&T’s Natural Voice’s Mike.

On the 11th of July, I have to do a 40 minute presentation to a panel of academics to “confirm”… once I confirm I then have two years to finish all my publications…. It will be great to have two years to focus on the widgets specs. Hopefully we can get them to Rec.

May wrap up

Confirmation doc screenshotMay was a fairly uneventful month. I spent most of my time just working on my PhD confirmation document (read the finished draft) and made but a few editorial changes to the Widgets 1.0 Requirements document.

I’m supposed to submit the confirmation soon (on June 13th to be exact). I still have a bit of work to do on it, especially in regards to methodology and a contextual review of widgets and widget engines… a contextual review basically looks at what widgets are, what they do, and what are the forces (markets, usefulness, web 2.0, etc) that are driving the continual popularity of widgets. As one can imagine, the contextual review is an ongoing process.

In regards to the requirements documents, I’ve was quite influenced by a chapter I read from the book Advanced Topics in Information Technology Standards and Standardization Research. In that book, there is a chapter title “Open Standards Requirements”, by Ken Krechmer, that provides a set of criteria for basically deciding if a standard is “open”. I took a few idea and used them in the requirements document to make sure that the standard remains “open” as defined by Krenchmer and that no one company controls it… even if not all widget engine vendors are taking part in the discussion.