The DAKAR Rally 2010 course map

The 2010 Dakar Rally starts from Buenos Aires to Cordoba and follows a gruelling course across South America - see 2010 course info here. News updates here.

Last year saw the rally in South America for the first time away from it's usual France to Dakar route (originally the Paris - Dakar rally) due to increasing terrorist threats directed at the rally competitors in North Africa. Slightly "off piste" for a geotag photography blog but you can guarantee that the photographers covering the race will be geotagging.

I love this sport. It's the nearest you can get to real life "Wackey Races". High speed, high thrills and map reading ! There is no greater adventure on the planet.

DITA 11 - References and Resources

DITA CORE - my references:

1) Blog URL: http://imagesoutheast.blogspot.com/ Blog named - GeoTag ImageSE

2) WebSpace URL: http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abhb655/Index.html

3) Javascript application URL: http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abhb655/rhnewsorsport.html

GENERAL references used throughout Blog:

1. DITA Module Session 1-10 Notes - City University
   
   
2. Wikipedia for definitions
   

DITA 01 - Intro & Blog:

1. DITA Session 1 Notes
   
2. Blog support sites review at http://blog-services-review.toptenreviews.com/
   
3. Blog services I reviewed: Wordpress.com and VOX.com
   
4. Blog service chose: BLOGGER
5. My own Geotag photography site: ImageSoutheast.co.uk
6. Linked sites/webpages/blogs are listed on GeoTag Image SE
   

DITA 02 - Text & HTML:

1. DITA Session 2 Notes
2. JPEG definition at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG
3. HTML definition at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML
4. Teleprinter definition at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter#Teletype
   

DITA 03 - Internet & www:

1. DITA Session 3 Notes
2. RH webpages on City University Servers http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abhb655/Index.html
3. Wikipedia for definitions see blog links
4. TRYIT for HTML at W3SChools website for HTML practice area and example code
   http://www.w3schools.com/Html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_paragraphs1
   
5. Birth of the Interent at the Smithsonian Yahoo site: http://smithsonian.yahoo.com/internethistory.html
   

DITA 04 - Images & Graphics:

1. DITA Session 4 Notes
2. Wikipedia for definitions see blog links
3. Personal mini website on City University servers: http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abhb655/second.html

DITA 05 - XML:

1. DITA Session 5 Notes
2. Wikipedia for definitions see blog links
3. UK Ordnance Survey for Geographic Markup Language (GML)
4. Topographix for GPX mark up for GPS data interchange
5. W3C for "XML in 10 points": http://www.w3.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points
   

DITA 06 - CSS:

1. DITA Session 6 Notes
2. Examples of CSS at CSSZenGarden: http://www.csszengarden.com/
3. CSS Standards set by W3C: http://www.w3.org/
4. Example of the use of CSS commands on personal webspace at City University: http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abhb655/Index.html
5. RNIB Web Accessibility Initiative
   

DITA 07 - Databases:

1. DITA Session 7 Notes
2. Wikipedia for definitions see blog links

DITA 08 - Information Retrieval:

1. DITA Session 8 Notes
2. Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, O’Reilly Media 3rd Edition 2006
3. Example: JANE'S ALL THE WORLD'S AIRCRAFT
4. Snowall stemming demonstration: http://snowball.tartarus.org/demo.php
   

DITA 09 - Client Side Programming:

1. DITA Session 9 Notes
2. Wikipedia for definitions see blog links
   
3. TRYIT for JavaScript including Javascript practice area and example code: http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?filename=tryjs_intro
4. JavaScript Tutorial at W3C schools: http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp
5. The Art of Software Testing
   By Glenford J. Myers, Tom Badgett, Todd M. Thomas, Corey Sandler
   Google Books reference
6. Personal JavaScript example code to select BBC webpages: http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abhb655/rhnewsorsport.html
   

DITA 10 - Information Architectures:

1. DITA Session 10 Notes
2. How Keywords Help Determine Site Architecture By Eric Enge, Search Engine Watch, Oct 6, 2009.)
   
3. An example IA Development Process
4. Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, O’Reilly Media 3rd Edition 2006
5. Wikipedia for definitions see blog links
6. GoogleEarth: http://earth.google.co.uk/
7. Streetmap: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/
   

DITA 10 - Information Architectures

A defined information architecture (IA) is an essential step in creating usable information systems (IS). With discrete systems and specific users (say an air traffic management system) designers can map out a comprehensive IA and any non-intuitive commands required are addressed through operator training. A web based IS needs to be intuitive, managing information structures, searches and keyword vocabularies to provide simple access to relevant information for the stated purpose.

When browsing websites I have seen poor IA that seems to obscure the information or where no search facility is provided and the site requires you to guess where the information of interest is categorised. So, when creating an information architecture for websites the design stage includes checking the market and competition for relevant and highly ranked topics and then using a keyword analyser to identify top search terms for that topic. This information then helps to choose the top level search terms which are most likely to be of benefit to the user arriving at the site for the first time.
(Ref How Keywords Help Determine Site Architecture By Eric Enge, Search Engine Watch, Oct 6, 2009.) and also an example IA Development Process.

Past GIS have been organisation specific to support geographic data management (e.g. town planning by a council) but since the advent of websites presenting geographic data like GoogleEarth and StreetMap anyone can access a GIS and they need to be intuitive. This usually includes map presentations based on peoples experience with paper maps. In addition the types of underlying data and information files and structures need to be designed to facilitate the user needs (e.g. raster map data alone would limit the ability of a user to interact with symbols on the map like a photograph of the location or information about nearby hotels).

DITA 09 - Client Side Programming

Client-server computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or work loads between service providers (servers) and service requesters, called clients. Often clients and servers operate over a computer network on separate hardware. A client requests a server's content or service function. Reference Wikipedia.

Client side programming facilitates user customisation of the interaction between the client and the server which delivers the service or data.

The exercise for this session required the creation of a client side program to help users access a desired link from the BBC Web Site according to:

* whether the user is interested in news or sport
* whether 'news users' are in england, northern ireland, scotland or wales
* whether 'sport users' are interested in cycling, golf, football or tennis

While developing the program the development and testing facility at TryIt was used along with the descriptions and examples of Javascript given at w3schools.com. The development order followed the structure of the problem and the eventual program: 1) user selections input 2)processing the decisions 3) outputting the required link. The development was full of iterative changes and tests followed by modifications to correct program behaviour.

Once the basic functions were completed futher work was done to exclude and report erroneous input. Finally the program was tested using a variety of test cases chosen to cover all control flow boundary conditions (The art of software testing By Glenford J. Myers, Tom Badgett, Todd M. Thomas, Corey Sandler) including valid and invalid inputs with the aim of finding errors.

This link takes you to my JAVASCRIPT coded webpage: Select BBC Weblink

DITA 08 - Information Retrieval

Information is data with context which gives meaning in a subjective way to the recipient.

Three views of Information Retrieval (IR) are:

• User view - the user wants to fill a gap in their knowledge by searching for meaningful results from queries or browsing data in likely relevant topics
• System view - IT systems for reliable storage and retrieval of data supporting user needs
  
• Sources View - capturing and presenting data for 3rd parties e.g. collating aircraft data relevant to the aerospace industry by Jane's
  

To support IR from systems, content is structuring to speed searches using indexing techniques:

• Find data fields and communicate with metadata
• Find words used in the database
• "Stop word" removal reduces the word list by taking out the most commonly used words e.g the, and, to
  
• Stemming references common terms with suffixes removed e.g. generate from generator, generated, generates. An example of a stemming generation language is Snowball
• Synonym generation helps to create an index which finds more terms related to the original search e.g. table tennis & ping pong
  

My www search approach starts with a Google search for the most unique combination of words to narrow the likely results and give useful information on page one. If too many returned items have poor relevance I add further terms to select better information.

When looking for information on interests, such as guitars, I adopt "indiscriminate driftnetting" searching everything that mentions the esoteric interest and saving links to the ones which closely match the topic e.g. "which replacement pickup best delivers a classic jazz tone". No single search will find the answer and related searches are employed with a painstaking review for relevant listings which become a new search terms to find further information.

DITA 07 - Databases

In early computer business systems data was stored similarly to paper based filing systems in separate files by business departments. This was due to familiarity with old paper systems and was limited by sequential storage on data tapes in early computers. However, this file centred approach caused problems with:

• Data duplication
• Updating information across multiple files
• Difficult to cross reference data
  

To overcome this limitation a form of centralized and comprehensive data organization was developed and administered using a database management systems (DBMS). The centralization of data allowed exploitation of relationships across the dataset resulting in the term relational database. The benefits being:

• Comprehensive dataset
• Centralized administration with single point control of access, security and backups
• Data can be edited by multiple users improving the consistency and correctness – all users benefit from this single comprehensive view
• Data and physical computer resources are separated giving the user a logical view independent of hardware platform

A relational database stores data as sets of tables containing 2 columns of information. To ensure that the data held in each row is unique a primary key is held. Often this is simply a sequential index number starting with 1 and incrementing with each new row of data added. To relate tables a foreign key is used which numerically identifies a link to the relevant other table in the database.

To access relational data SQL (Structured Query Language) is used to create commands which select and display the required data. The most commonly used SQL instruction is the “select” command e.g.

SELECT surname, salary

FROM employee

WHERE department = engineering AND salary >= 40000
ORDER BY salary

would display columns for “surname and salary” from the “employee” database in salary order for those engineers paid 40000 or more.

DITA in 4 min. 32 sec.

Thanks to the anonymous "Demo Student" on the DITA Module message board this You Tube video summarises the DITA Module in just 4 minutes and 32 seconds!:

Link to YouTube video comment on Web 2.0