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What's next in the #JSON-stat #Javascript Toolkit: #async #XHR, toTable() will accept a #callback function, etc. https://t.co/4TaaOuvX2K (About 3 hours ago by @badosa)
My current personal web project is dotepub.com: an automatic conversion service from web page to e-book (in the EPUB standard and in the Amazon MOBI format). Even though I don’t think e-books are the future of books, I’ve developed this tool for these transitional times full of dedicated devices with limited web browsing capabilities.
I am the promoter of JSON-stat.org, an initiative that tries to address the following questions: Could statistics benefit from JSON as an exchange format? How should data and metadata be expressed? The ultimate goal of this project is to define a JSON schema for statistical dissemination or at least some guidelines and good practices when dealing with stats in JSON.
Some recent projects I have led with my current employer (Idescat) are:
Badosa.com has been my main field of experimentation, a website in the Web 1.0 era that kept some editorial control but was made of user-generated content. Soon it offered e-books in the “standard” of those early non-standardized years (RocketeBook). Or dedicated e-books for MS Reader (e-books generated on the fly with a customized dedication). I always thought immersive reading was a handheld matter; that’s why Badosa.com was made available for some mobile devices (pocket.badosa.com).
In 1998 I played with random literature (“human-computer interaction” you might say) in the Poetic Browser, completely remodeled 10 years later with widgets and an API. Widgets weren’t new at Badosa.com. I tried them many years before in what I called our Content Server (this page is still online but it’s not linked and it’s not considered “active”). 2005 was the Ajax year: to try the technology I built Excerpta, a service that was introduced to the public in 2006. And because it’s always fun to play with APIs, in Map of fictions I couldn’t avoid putting my hands in the Google Maps API. Finally, December 2008 was the time to play with the Flickr API and machine tags (“tripletags”) to let people associate photos to texts.
Back in the 90’s I was full of energy. I thought some sort of literary directory was necessary and I built Inlibris.com. I think Inlibris was the first to offer random results. Or results from other user’s queries. Or the possibility to get a copy of the search results in an e-mail (this feature is gone; back then it seemed interesting considering there was no DSL). When Amazon.com introduced its Associates Web Service I couldn’t wait to build my own store. Inlibris Bookstore was made “à la 90’s”, and I haven’t updated since (sorry!). The store was designed PDA-friendly and tried to make sense of the Welcome tab by putting features instead of sections in the tab area (and failed). In the first quarter of 2009, I couldn’t fight the irresistible urge to put my hands on the New York Times API: I used it to add links to reviews of books in the bestseller’s list.
(Besides the aforementioned APIs, as you may have noticed, in the site you are viewing now I’m using the Twitter, Delicious and BackType’ APIs.)
Galeradas.com (galleys, in Spanish) was a platform for digital conversion services. But the e-book market wasn’t ready. I should be remodeling this site soon.
With Critipedia.com I learned how the Wikipedia works. It was meant to be a place for reviewing books and other content powered by MediaWiki. But it never took off (it wasn’t the right tool, actually, and once there was nothing else to learn I lost interest). I developed some tools to convert ISBNs, get related ISBN, find ISBNs... I should try to do something with those... Anyone with an interesting idea for this domain?
Widgets have a bright future, in my humble opinion. And that’s why I acquired the domain Widgetia.com. It sounds like the name of a directory of widgets. But I’m not planning on using this domain in the short term.
I’m also the proud owner of more domains: Accedo.org (on accessibility?), Leelia.com (on the Spanish reading universe?) or APIplatform.com (again APIs!). I should try to find some time to build something on them. (When? In another life?)
In no particular order:
Links and Widgets: the Fabric of the Web: In September 2012, I was invited by Eurostat to the Task force for the strategic project on the development and use of common ESS tools and services for dissemination. This was the opening contribution to that meeting held in Luxembourg.
La difusión estadística y la apertura de datos: un viaje de ida y vuelta: In June 2012, I was invited to talk at the University of Seville (Máster en Estadística Pública).
Standards for statistical data dissemination: a wish list: In March 2012, I was invited to talk at the OECD Statistical Information System Collaboration Community (SIS-CC) Workshop in Paris.
What’s our business? Statistics as platform: In September 2011, I was invited to join the International Marketing and Output DataBase Conference (IMAODBC) in Óbidos (Portugal), where I presented my view on the role of official statistics. This presentation won the Bo Sundgren Award (best presentation at IMAODBC 2011).
Idescat on the Google Public Data Explorer: The Why, the What and the near Future: In June 2011, I was invited by Eurostat to talk at the Google Public Data Explorer Day about Idescat’s experience.
Anatomía de las APIs del Idescat: On May 2011, invited by ISTAC (the Canaries Institute of Statistics), I gave this presentation in a Canary Islands’ minitour (Gran Canaria / Tenerife) about opendata and official statistics.
Los widgets del Idescat: una aplicación de las APIs: On May 2011, invited by ISTAC (the Canaries Institute of Statistics), I gave this presentation in a Canary Islands’ minitour (Gran Canaria / Tenerife) about opendata and official statistics.
Rectificaciones: una propuesta de estándar: On May 2011, invited by ISTAC (the Canaries Institute of Statistics), I gave this presentation in a Canary Islands’ minitour (Gran Canaria / Tenerife) about opendata and official statistics.
El Idescat en Google Public Data Explorer: On May 2011, invited by ISTAC (the Canaries Institute of Statistics), I gave this presentation in a Canary Islands’ minitour (Gran Canaria / Tenerife) about opendata and official statistics.
La difusión estadística y la apertura de datos gubernamentales: This presentation was the original starting point of my speech about opendata and statistical dissemination for the 2010 Spanish regional statistical offices’ meeting (JECAS). Due to time restrictions, the actual presentation I gave was shorter: I was forced to hide many slides. In this version all those slides are visible again.
E-books Are Not the Future of Books: On the concept of e-books. A follow-up to my presentation on "The Future of Books: Digital Literature & Market" (see below). Published in April 2010 but written mainly in the summer of 2009.
The Future of Books: Digital Literature & Market: I prepared (but didn’t use) this presentation for a round table given at a writers’ meeting on digital literature organized by Octubre CCC on October 2009 in Valencia. About e-books, e-readers and digital literature.
Statitistical Dissemination 2.0?: I prepared this presentation for a speech given at a course organized by Eurostat on Statistical Dissemination and the Internet in Madrid. The actual presentation was enriched with some web demos and had fewer slides: in this version, I have unhidden some slides that were not needed for the core of my speech and I have added some text to help following the line of argumentation.
WWW para editores (y más allá) (1): WWW for publishers (1). Introduction. Hypertext. Books, CD-ROMs and the WWW. User experience. Usability. Accessibility. This is part I of the material I prepared for my 2009 sessions on online publishing for Masters Courses on publishing by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Editrain/Universidad de Alcalá.
WWW para editores (y más allá) (2): WWW for publishers (2). Hypertext and software. Information arquitecture. Interaction design. Navigation design. Interface design. Categorization, nomenclature, structure. Orientation tools: sitemaps, indexes. Search engine. Conceptual model, metaphors. This is part II of the material I prepared for my 2009 sessions on online publishing for the Masters Courses on publishing by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Editrain/Universidad de Alcalá.
WWW para editores (y más allá) (3): WWW for publishers (3). Addresses: URL (URI). Domains. HTML. XML. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This is part III of the material I prepared for my 2009 sessions on online publishing for the Masters Courses on publishing by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Editrain/Universidad de Alcalá.
WWW para editores (y más allá) (4): WWW for publishers (4). Text. Writing for the web. Typographical resources for the web. This is part IV of the material I prepared for my 2009 sessions on online publishing for the Masters Courses on publishing by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Editrain/Universidad de Alcalá.
WWW para editores (y más allá) (5): WWW for publishers (5). Web 2.0. This is part V of the material I prepared for my 2009 sessions on online publishing for the Masters Courses on publishing by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Editrain/Universidad de Alcalá.
WWW para editores (y más allá) (6): WWW for publishers (6). Web 2.0. Digitization. XML. RSS/Atom, ONIX, BookDROP, papiNet, XBITS, TEI, ePub, DocBook, DAISY. API. Widgets. Webservices. Mashups. This is part VI of the material I prepared for my 2009 sessions on online publishing for the Masters Courses on publishing by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Editrain/Universidad de Alcalá.
WWW para editores (y más allá) (7): WWW for publishers (7). Creative Commons. This is part VII of the material I prepared for my 2009 sessions on online publishing for the Masters Courses on publishing by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Editrain/Universidad de Alcalá.
WWW para editores (y más allá) (y 8): WWW for publishers (and 8). E-books. This is the last part of the material I prepared for my sessions on online publishing for the Masters Courses on publishing by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Editrain/Universidad de Alcalá. Due to the important changes in the electronic book sector between 2009 and 2010, I updated this presentation in 2010.
La difusión estadística en el contexto de la web 2.0: This presentation was the original starting point of my speech at a round table concerning Web 2.0 for the 2008 Spanish regional statistical offices’ meeting (JECAS). Due to time restrictions, the actual presentation I gave was shorter: I was forced to hide many slides. In this version all those slides are visible again.
Proyecto E-book 2001: My 2001 e-book project. Interesting for historical reasons. We might learn something from the past.
TOPLAX, the right approach to Ajax: This presentation was really a test, or a joke, or a neologasm (the pleasurable feeling from having coined a new word). There are more neologisms than ideas these days. I was trying to prove that a new word in the Ajax semantic field even with no promo whatsoever could get a significant number of views.
I have studied Economics and Philosophy. A result of those studies is for example my very old article La metrización y las ciencias sociales: introducción a la teoría de la metrización para investigadores sociales. Not that it matters. For many years I have been teaching online publishing in Masters Courses by Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and EdiTrain. I have worked in the software sector (SAS Institute), but that was short: I have been working on statistics for the government for many years. Fruit of those years is for example the old article Estimation of sampling variance of the Spanish Labour Force Survey (with Montserrat Guillén Estany). Currently, I am the manager of the Statistical Institute of Catalonia website.
On the net, I’m known as Xavier Badosa. Other possible variants: Xavier M. Badosa, Xavier Martín Badosa, Xavier Badosa Martín.
You may contact me by sending an e-mail to my first name (Xavier) at my main domain (that happens to be my family name, too). If you are human, I guess you understood. If you didn't, use the form at Badosa.com.
