I share with you a letter that I wrote to Robert Stuart, Chairman, Marketing Committee, Infrared Data Association. I argue for the creation of a Special Interest Group for developing an import/export standard for sequences, hierarchies, and networks of notes. He responded very positively, and I will present the idea at the October, 1999 meeting of IrDA. Andrius Kulikauskas, Director, Minciu Sodas
I spoke today with Lawrence Faulkner and he encouraged me to get in touch with you.
I am the Director of the Minciu Sodas virtual laboratory devoted to caring about thinking. We are a member of IrDA, and I will participate at the October meeting.
In April, I gave a presentation
to the IrMC/OBEX group on our work to develop an import/export
standard for sequences, hierarchies, and networks of notes. Software
for organizing notes (or other information) cannot be used by corporations
or individuals for serious long term projects because the notes (especially
the structures used to organize them) get trapped when products get discontinued.
Consequently, the products are not maturing, and there is need for outside
leadership,
which our laboratory is providing.
I would like to ask the IrDA Marketing Committee to sponsor a SIG devoted to creating such a standard. If possible, I would like to give a short presentation at this next meeting of the Marketing Committee. I understand that the decision could be made during this next quarter, or at the next quarterly meeting, but because of the abstractness of this issue, I think it would be very helpful if I could at least briefly present it in person.
I am interested in working through IrDA because of your ability to develop
a standard very quickly. The companies that make software for organizing
notes are very interested and active in mobile computing. The existence
of a standard for the transfer of sequences, hierarchies, and networks
of notes should be useful with all types of information and make possible
the selection and retrieval of subsequences, subhierarchies, and subnetworks
of information in a bewildering variety of settings by both humans and
agents. The IrDA universe would be greatly enriched by allowing the
transfer of information to be conceived
of in structured aggregates rather than isolated mesages.
We are moving very fast. I have just completed an investigation to understand what the standard will roughly look like. I attach my results - the paper Developing Import/Export Standards for Aggregates of Notes which I have submitted for the Workshop on New Paradigms in Information Visualization and Manipulation, Kansas City, Missouri, November 6th.
Now we will be starting up an investigation at our laboratory to make
sure we understand the needs of various small tool makers and individual
and corporate users. Our laboratory is supported by our members because
of the relationships they build by participating in the public research
that we organize. We are looking for a large company to sponsor our
investigation that would benefit from being a catalyst for relationships
between various software makers and individual and corporate users.
Our laboratory's work is in the public domain and we would like the members
of IrDA to know that we are very open to their
participation. We would certainly benefit from having the standard
be strengthened by going through the IrDA process. We hope to meet
sponsors and participants for our investigation through the IrDA process,
and also we hope to help to encourage companies to join IrDA, especially
makers of software for organizing notes, and corporations that would like
to make such products available for serious work by their knowledge workers.
I understand that you are in Tokyo. I hope you have the chance to email me. Please let me know if I could speak before the Marketing Committee, and for how long, so that I might prepare. I look forward to meeting you and I hope you might be able to help me make more contacts within IrDA for work on this standard.
I am currently in Chicago and will be here for several months.
My message center is in San Diego. I attach the paper and also send below
information on the investigation we are now organizing.
Yours,
Andrius Kulikauskas
Director
Minciu Sodas laboratory
+1 (619) 881-2667
http://www.ms.lt
ms@ms.lt