DITA Session 9

Open Data and Information Architectures part 1.

We looked at Open Source software and how this is software released and developed for free for users to utilise and enhance. How most is released under the General Public Licence which means that you cannot use any part of the programme in a future programme that is sold for profit, all future incarnations must also be released under the GPL.

Open Data is a government and public body initiative to provide the data they collect for free on the Internet, this excludes the need for the costly and time expensive method of Freedom of Information act requests and also promotes transparency in government. there is also a push for this data to be released using the RDF system of the Semantic Web.

Open Data websites like data.gov.uk and data.gov (US) release their datasets as a searchable database that promote users to create applications that exploit the data and unlike open source these applications can use the data fro free but also charge users to use the applications. this leads to people creating open data mashups that provide information on many aspect of life such as local schools information and the historical instances of traffic build up.

Another valuable set of open data s the Ordinance Surveys data sets that could prove very valuable to programmers that can use the map information to create some very use full applications.

a downside of this is the possibility of the data being used for political means by being taken out of context.

Information Architecture part 1

We looked at the progress in the last 10 years on the Internet and how it was/is viewed using the Rosenfeld and Morville book as an example comparing the 2 editions.

We looked at the theory behind web design and how  a site needs to work well and look good to be successful. how documents and interlinking's should be like rooms and doors interlinking together.