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The Wow Factor, The Openness, The Developers Environment, … October 3, 2008 It strikes me that the recent set of comments made to my post on “Google’s G1 Phone: “Innovation For Tech Heads” have wider applicability to the networked development environment. To summarise some of the issues which were highlighted in the original Guardian review which I cited and have been expanded on in John Naughton’s Google’s Android could smash iPhone’s locked gateway” article published in Sunday’s Observer (28 September 2008):

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The Wow factor: Yes, the iPhone clearly wins with its ‘wow’ factor, As the Guardian review admitted the Android phone lacks the “wow factor of the Apple device“. The usability: The iPhone, like many Apple devices, also has its strengths in its ease-of-use. As Paul Walk has commented “I want a device which ‘just works’“. The openness of the application environment: As John Naugton describes in his Google’s Android could smash iPhone’s locked gateway article, a strength of the Android device there’s “a row brewing inside Apple’s cosily walled garden“. It seems that “developers are beginning to resent what they see as the company’s dictatorial attitude”. As one commentator puts it: ‘Trying to discern ahead of time [and of development expenditures] what Apple will or won’t accept has become close to impossible, not only because Apple isn’t talking about it, but also because it won’t let anyone else talk about it. All apps store dealings with developers are covered by a non-disclosure agreement“‘. The potential for power users: Now the geeks will argue that the iPhone’s walled-garden is a non-issue as it’s possible to ‘jail-break’ the device to allow the installation of applications which may not be available via the Apple store. However this approach is clearly not one which the majority of users would be happy with, and conflicts with the need for a device which ‘just works’. The hardware environment: The iPhone, like Macintosh hardware, is only 03/10/2008 14:51

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manufactured by Apple. The Andoid phone, in comparison, can be made by any manufacturer. This competition should help to bring down prices, which will be benefical to the consumer (as Stuart Smith pointed out to make use of a ‘free’ iPhone “you are still looking about £810 over 18 months“). So much for social inclusion and widening participation! Now as Mike Ellis argues “most users couldn’t give a stuff about the closed nature of their devices, applications OR data. Facebook, iPods, iPhone, any gaming console - the list goes on. These all seem to be pretty popular, however much us IT types continue to shout about the dangers of closedness.” And I think he’s right - the IT development community tends to focus on the backend development processes and policies which are not necessarily of great concern to the majority of users. But even if we accept John Naughton’s premise that ‘Google’s Android could smash iPhone’s locked gateway’ we need to emphasise the importance of word ‘could‘. It was not so long ago when people argued that Google’s Open Social widget environment would blow away the closed development environment provided by Facebook. But that, I would argue, hasn’t happened (and, indeed, Scott Wilson wrote a blog post back in November 2007 in which he described why he was singularly unimpressed by Open Social). Let’s be honest and recognise that both the iPhone and Facebook are very popular with large numbers of users - and let’s acknowledge that the development community can learn from the popularity of these closed environments. And let’s remember the point Mike Ellis made when he said “I find it sad when developers seem to think that any real users actually *care* about what’s under the hood “. But why do I think that Mike isn’t just referring to the mobile phone debate when he makes this point? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Gadgets | Edit No Comments »

iPres2008 Preservation Conference Gets Featured In The Guardian October 2, 2008 It was good to read the article in The Guardian Editorial page yesterday (1 October 2008) on the iPRES 2008 Conference on digital preservation which was held at The British Library on 29-30th September. As the article states “If all goes well, we will have the capacity to preserve as many of our memories, personal and national, as we want“. The issues of how and what we should be preserving on our Web sites happened to be the content of the paper I presented at the conference on Monday. The paper on “Preservation of Web Resources: The JISC PoWR Project” is available online and the slides of the talk (in which I focus primarily on preservation within a Web 2.0 environment) are also available and are embedded below.

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There is also a video recording of the talk available (I haven’t yet been able to upload the video to Google Video, I’m afraid). As well as this paper, which described the work of the JISC-funded PoWR project, I’m pleased to add that two of my colleagues (Alex Ball and Manjula Patel) also wrote papers which were presented at this conference. I should also add that Chris Rusbridge provided a comprehensive report on the conference. I was pleased to read Chris’s comments on my talk which he described as “a very entertaining talk, and well worth looking up“. He went on to describe me as ”not a preservationist, but is a full-blown technogeek discussing the roles of the latest Web 2.0 technologies on his blog, in his role as UK Web Focus“. And this technogeek was particularly pleased to read that the JISC PoWR “project achieved a strong level of interaction through its several workshops“. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit No Comments »

Library 2.0 at the University of Wolverhampton October 1, 2008

Guest Blog Post The guest blog slot provides an opportunity to include some different voices and views on the UK Web Focus, which can provide a fresh insight in the various topics covered in this blog. I’m therefore pleased to welcome this guest blog post from Jo Alcock, Academic Information Assistant for the Harrison Learning Centre at the University of Wolverhampton - although perhaps better known in some circles as Joeyanne Libraryanne for her Joeyanne Libraryanne blog. In her post Jo describes a variety of ways in which Web 2.0 services are being used and goes on to 3 of 544

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highlight some of the challenges which this approach entails. I should also add that Jo is a contributor to the paper on Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends which I’ll be presenting at the Bridging Worlds 2008 Conference.

Setting the Scene I work at the University of Wolverhampton which has a large proportion of part-time students (some schools are up to 70% part-time). The University is also geographically spread across the region with five campuses in total. This means students do not always come into Learning Centres and often use the closest geographical centre rather than their subject specific centre. We have recently adopted a University-wide Blended Learning strategy to support the changing nature of our students, and the Learning and Information Services department are developing ways to support students from wherever they choose to study. This includes obvious things like e-journals and e-books, as well as virtual reference support and Web 2.0/Library 2.0 initiatives to support students online.

Current Initiatives Blogs We currently have five subject blogs (the School of Computing and IT Blog, School of Applied Sciences Blog, School of Engineering and the Built Environment Blog, School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Languages Blog and the Wolverhampton Business School Blog to support students and staff of particular academic schools, along with an University of Wolverhampton Electronic Resources Blog for updates to services. We also have a number of project related blogs and internal communication blogs.

Social Networking The Learning Centres have a Facebook Page which was established at the end of last year. The page includes links to relevant parts of our Web site, our aggregated RSS feeds (from our blogs) and search applications. One of the most useful features of the page are sending updates to “fans” - another way of letting users know about our services and reaching them where they already are (a quick scan of any communal PCs show numerous Facebook users!).

Wikis We have started exploring wikis and although we do not currently have a departmental wiki we have a number of small scale wikis for sharing information.

Online calendars I’ve included this as although it’s not usually included in general “Library 2.0″ initiatives, it’s something that we’ve found really useful. We have been using Google Calendar (see the University of Wolverhampton InfoBites Calendar) to manage our events for a few months now and it’s so much easier than updating numerous places when the timetable changes or a new event is added. Now we just update the calendar on Google and the changes are reflected wherever the 4 of 544

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calendar is embedded. Users can also subscribe to the calendar or add single events to their own calendar. We’ve also recently used it as a shared calendar for scheduling purposes for our busy induction weeks.

Barriers There have been a number of barriers to the Library 2.0 developments, some which may have been exclusive to us but many that I imagine are shared with other libraries.

External Hosting and Software Many of the Web 2.0 products we use are external products, often hosted externally. This has immediate issues when it comes to reliability and stability. Services change over time, which is often a positive thing but may mean that your service no longer functions in the same way you wanted it to. You may find that it suffers “downtime” whilst the software is being upgraded or simply because the servers are not reliable. You may even find that the service ends completely without warning. This can be a big issue for institutions, and understandably so. An alternative option whilst still utilising the technologies is to use open source software but host it internally therefore passing control back to the institution. Examples of this are using the WordPress.org blogging software (rather than their hosted service at WordPress.com) and the MediaWiki software for wikis. This way, the institution can update when it wants to (and also therefore not when it doesn’t want to!) and also has greater flexibility with the functionality and style of the software.

Staff Awareness Another issue has been lack of awareness and uncertainty about the technologies utilised. Quite often, I have found that people are pleasantly surprised when they realise how easy it actually is to use. I understand that some of the software is bewildering at first experience though, and getting over that stage if you are uncertain about the fundamentals of the technology (for example, what on earth is a wiki or a blog?!) can be a big hurdle. Something that I think is now being recognised by the profession is that more time needs to be allocated for keeping staff up-to-date and providing training or even just time during work to explore the technologies.

Culture Change This is something I am particularly aware of, probably because I am part of the so-called “net generation”. I like to share experiences and work collaboratively, but I know this can be quite a culture change to many who are used to working in isolation and keeping their work to themselves. When you have a shared calendar for example, or a shared blog, it can take some getting used to. Clear definition of roles and expectations from the beginning can help alleviate this.

User Needs and Experience This is one of the main issues for me - although I am a keen user of many new technologies and use a lot in my own life, I only want to adopt them at work if 5 of 544

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they make sense from a user point of view - whether this is other staff when we are thinking about a shared resource like a wiki, or our community when it is a development for users. Over the summer we have thought a lot about the future of the blogs; whether to merge the subject blogs or keep them separate, and what the actual purpose of each blog is. There are many issues around merging the blogs - such as whether to include all subjects (not all currently have a blog) and the logistics of subscribing to your subject only. The main issue for me was to look at it from a user point of view. With many subjects all on one blog, you can use categories to create separate RSS feeds for each subject. This initially seemed like a feasible way of merging the blogs whilst still allowing users to subscribe to only their subject. However, from examining our blog stats, most of our users subscribe by e-mail, suggesting that many of them do not currently use RSS feeds. I considered having a guide on the blog and holding training sessions, but in the end decided it was too much to expect of our users and would likely put them off subscribing if it was too confusing. Ultimately, we are here for our users and if something doesn’t make sense or isn’t of use to them, there is little point us investing time in it. For example, if Facebook fell dramatically in popularity, it would make no sense to continue to develop our Facebook page and we should instead concentrate our efforts on whatever else our users are familiar with. This is a fundamental part of the Web 2.0 philosophy for me; have a go - if it works, great, if it doesn’t, there’s no big loss. I like to invest a small amount of time trying something and assess whether or not it is worth pursuing after you’ve given it a chance. If it isn’t or the barriers are too great, just scrap it or try something else. How about you? What barriers have you experienced with Library 2.0 Initiatives and how do you overcome them? Please share your thoughts in the comments. Jo Alcock, University of Wolverhampton Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog ·Tags: Guest-post | Edit 1 Comment »

Institutional Repositories and the Costs Of Doing It Right September 29, 2008 There’s an interesting discussion taking place on the JISC-Repositories JISCMail list, following a post from Jenny Delasalle who asked: Do any of you know how long it takes you to process a single item, before it is available as a live record in your repository? Please can you share that information with the list? Jenny provided details of her experiences:

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Here at Warwick it takes at least 2 hours to process a single item. We are adding to our repository at a rate of about 15 items per week. 03/10/2008 14:51

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I’m desperate to try to speed this up as we are receiving items faster than we can process them. My colleague Pete Cliff somewhat tentatively suggested “why not put the items in the repository with minimal metadata“. Pete and others seemed to feel that such compromises may be needed “in the current climate where quantity seems to have more impact than quality“. But this is where I would disagree. This argument seems to be simply a cry for more resources in an area of interest to those making such a plea. But people will always be asking for more resources for their areas of interest - and, as there will always be limited resources, others will argue that their areas are more worthy of being allocated more resources. And it strikes me as being somewhat disingenuous to have developed an approach which is known to be resourceintensive and then to make a plea for additional resources in order for the particular approach to be effective. A more honest approach would have been to develop a solution which was better suited for the available resources. This was an argument I made last week in my talk on “Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future“. As I described in my talk (and note a 30 minute video of the talk is available). I pointed out that evidence suggests that Web accessibility policies based on conformance with WCAG AA have clearly failed, except in a small number of cases. And rather than calling for additional resources to be allocated to changing this we need to acknowledge that this won’t happen, and to explore alternative approaches. And it is interesting to note that apprarent lack of interest on the JISC-Repositiories list in discussing the accessibility of resources in the repositories rather than the metadata requirements for aiding resource discover. Indeed when this topic was discussed a couple of year’s ago Les Carr, with a openness which I appreciated, argued that: If accessibility is currently out of reach for journal articles, then it is another potential hindrance for OA. I think that if you go for OA first (get the literature online, change researchers’ working practices and expectations so that maximum dissemination is the normal state of affairs) THEN people will find they have a good reason to start to adapt their information dissemination behaviours towards better accessibility. Here Les is arguing that the costs of providing accessibility resources in Institutional Repositories is too great, and can act as a barrier to maximising open access to institutional research activities. I would very much agree with Les that we need to argue priorities - as opposed to simply asking that someone (our institutions, the government - it’s never clear who) should give us more money to do the many good things we would like to do in our institutions. In the case of Institutional Repositories we then have competing pressures for resources for metadata creation and management and for enhancing the accessibility of the resources. In this context It should be noted that the WCAG 2.0 guidelines have reached the status of Candidate Recommendation, and that WAI Web site states quite clearly “We encourage you to start using WCAG 2.0 now“. And note that, unlike the WCAG 1.0 guidelines, WCAG 2.0 is format neutral. So you can provide resources on your Web site in a variety of formats, but such resources need to conform with the guidelines if it is your institutional policy to do so. So shouldn’t institutions who have made public commitment to comply with 7 of 544

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WCAG guidelines ensure that this applies to content in their institutional repositories, even if this will require a redeployment of effort from other activities, such as metadata creation? Or, alternatively, you may feel that complying with a set of rules, such as WCAG, without doing the cost-benefit analysis or exploring other approaches to achieving the intended goals is mis-guided. In which case perhaps Pete’s suggestion that you might wish to consider “put[ting] the items in the repository with minimal metadata” might actually be a sensible approach rather than an unfortunate compromise? And in response to Philip Hunter’s comment that “achieving interoperability through dumbing-down the metadata has a strange attractiveness in a world not overly crazy for quality” perhaps we should be arguing that “achieving interoperability and accessibility through labourintensive manual efforts is a perverse solution in a public sector environment in which should be demonstrating that we can provide cost effective solutions“? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, Repositories | Edit 1 Comment »

Launch of UKOLN’s Resources for the Culture Heritage Sector September 26, 2008

Resources For The Cultural Heritage Sector I’m pleased to report that an area of the UKOLN Web site dedicated to the cultural heritage sector has now been launched.

Historical Context UKOLN has had close links with the cultural heritage sector for many years when I joined UKOLN back in 1996 UKOLN was funded by BLRIC (British Library Research and Innovation Centre) together with the JISC. Over time this funding body changed, initially to the LIC (Library and Information Commission) and then, as the library, museums and archives sectors moved more closely linked, by Resource which was subsequently renamed MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Council).

Engagement With The Sector UKOLN is perhaps uniquely placed to exploit its close links with the higher and further education communities, libraries (both academic and public) and museums and archives. Over the past couple of years I have become very actively involved in supporting the museums sector, having been a program committee member, speaker, workshop facilitator and chair at the Museums and the Web conferences in 2007 and 2008 and a speaker at UK Museums on the Web conferences in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. But perhaps more significant to the broader cultural heritage sector are the workshops we have been running which have attracted participants from across a range of museums, libraries and archives. This has included workshops held on 8 of 544

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behalf of MLA London and MLA Yorkshire and CyMAL (the Welsh equivalent of MLA). We have also run workshops for the Society of Archives in 2007 and 2008, with a workshop for the Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions to be held in November. Many of these workshops focus on ways in which Web 2.0 can provide benefits to the cultural heritage sector, although a rather wider perspective on the digital landscape is often provided, covering additional areas such as the preservation of digital resources.

Changing Political Context The importance for UKOLN (which is a JISC Innovation Centre) to engage in this way with the cultural heritage sector was highlighted in Elspeth Hyams’ editorial in the CILIP Update magazine (June 2008, Vol. 7, No. 6) has the byline ”In This Climate, You Have To Innovate“. As Elspeth described (and I commented upon recently) “The age of the quiescent library or information manager or service is dead“. The editorial went on to describe the MLA’s action plan for public libraries and reports on the MLA’s Chief Executive, Roy Clare, calls for “radical action on structure, far-sighted leadership vision and more public Private Partnerships“. The editorial concludes with the warning that “It’s not just a challenge for the academic schools, but for all of us” but also suggests that “we should use tough times as a golden opportunity to focus on the strategy - and upgrade and refresh our skills“. I think it is clear from these comments that significant changes will be needed within the cultural heritage sector. And indeed Roy Clare has commented on the failures of previous national initiatives to deliver compelling user-focussed services. As reported in a post on the MCG JISCmail list: “Roy Clare highlighted the NOF Digitise project as an example of where we went wrong in assuming that mass digitisation and online publishing of collections would be engaging“. The political and funding changes (it seems public sector money is now being used to fund the 2012 Olympics) are taking place at a time in which Web 2.0 approaches are steadily gaining momentum, with smaller organisations (and indeed organisations) now being able provide services which previously would have required significant amounts of funding. The need to ensure that “engaging” digital services are provided by cultural heritage organisations underpins the workshops we have been providing. It also reflects the strategic thinking of various national bodies, including the National Library of Wales which in its Shaping the future: The Library’s strategy 2008-2009 to 2010-201 document (PDF format) states that: We propose … Taking advantage of new online technology, including the construction of Web 2.0 services, to develop progressive ways of interacting with users. It is expected that the Library itself will provide only some specific services on its website. Instead, the intention is to promote and facilitate the use of the collections by external users, in accordance with specific guidelines. A review of the uses of Web 2.0 services by the National Library of Wales was given in a talk by Paul Bevan at the first Sharing Made Simple: An Introduction 9 of 544

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to the Social Web workshop - and I’m pleased to say that Paul describes this work as a co-author of an invited paper on “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” which I’ll be presenting at the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference in Singapore in a few weeks time. UKOLN is well-positioned to identify such examples of best practices, make the examples available to wider audiences, encourage debate and use such case studies in the development of more general models for the sector. In this respect our links with the higher education sector is particularly valuable, as higher eductaional institutions seem to be better positioned to make early use of innoovative new technologies and has a healthy tradition of encouraging open debate on the merits of such innovation.

Resources For The Sector The new area of the UKOLN Web site provides access to a variety of resources on a range of issues of particular relevance to the cultural heritage sector, and brings together information previously distributed across the UKOLN Web site. As well as providing access to the events we’ll be running another important area of the Web site is the IntroBytes area, which provides access to a range of briefing document we have produced, sometimes in conjunction with practitioners from the cultural heritage sector. These documents are used at many of the event we run, which helps to ensure that we receive feedbackon the content of the documents. It should also be noted that the documents are available under a Creative Commons licence, which permits their reuse for non-commercial purposes. This licence was chosen in order to ensure that the resources can be embedded for use within organisation in the cultureal heritage sector (and beyond).

Sustainability We have received positive feedback on our results, as can be seen from comments provided at the recent workshops for CyMAL (which was given a rating of 5.35 out of a maximum score of 6) and MLA Yorkshire. In order to ensure the ongoing sustainability of our work for the cultural heritage sector we are now running workshops on a cost-recovery basis for the wider sector. This has included workshops for the voluntary sector and CyMAL with additional workshops already scheduled for CyMAL and ASVA. If anyone would be interested in organising a workshop along the lines described, feel free to get in touch. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit No Comments »

Google’s G1 Phone: “Innovation For Tech Heads” September 25, 2008 Yesterday’s Guardian (24 September 2008) contains an article on the release of the Google G1 phone. An accompanying review, entitled “Innovation For Tech 10 of 544

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Heads” describes how the technology is “as good if not in some cases better” than the iPhone, and mentions G1’s strengths in its camera and download speed. Most importantly, though, the article describes how “The real difference between the two devices … is likely to come from the openness of Google’s operating system, Android, which allows tech-heads to design ‘widgets’ for the phone.” The article does concede that the phone lacks the “wow factor of the Apple device“. Now I’m sure that most readers of this blog will understand the benefits provided by openness and the dangers of being locked into a proprietary system - whether this is Facebook, Microsoft or Apple’s iPhone. Some readers with a pragmatic view of the world may have bought an iPhone as at the time there wasn’t an equivalent open system. But now that the G1 device is available, which provides, unlike the iPhone, an open environment for accessing widgets, that argument is no longer valid. So we’ll soon be seeing those iPhone users who have strong beliefs in open systems and have criticised the closed nature of various Web 2.0 services seeking to move their contract, won’t we? And this should include many of the people I follow on Twitter who necame very excited when they purchsed their iPhone. Is this a likely scenario? Isn’t it the case that IT professionals and policies makers can be impressed by the ‘wow’ factor - this isn’t restricted young people who we sometimes accuse of being impressed by the latest ‘fad’. And don’t we all have to make judgements about openness, cost, functionality and, indeed, personal preferences. So if the iPhone, G1 or whatever other new device comes along and provides a valuable personal learning environment, personal research environment, personal work environment and personal social environment for the owner of the device, then shouldn’t we accept that? And if we accept that argument for the device that we have in our hand, then doesn’t it also apply to the equivalent service which we have accept via our fingertips- whether this is our preferred social networking environment or aggregation tool? Or to put it another way, when should openness trump personal preferences? (Disclaimer I’m the owner of a Nokia N95 with a short battery life!) Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Gadgets ·Tags: G1, iPhone | Edit 9 Comments »

Web 2.0 In Troubled Economic Times September 24, 2008 How should institutions response in their uses of Web 2.0 services at a time of a global recession? In response to a recent post CodeGorilla pointed out that at a number of participants at the Repository Fringe event had felt that use of services such as Flickr and Google should be avoided because such companies were not as well-established as many Universities. I feel the views that were reported were rather disingenuous, not so much because not all Universities have been in existence for several centuries (BCU is very new University) but because the services Universities provide will change and evolve over time (when I worked at the University of technology, Loughborough - as it was known at the time - the Computer Centre provided a 11 of 544

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data preparation service which was shut down many years ago). And as I pointed out last year, “Universities, Not Facebook, May Be Facing Collapse” indeed when I attended a JISC CETIS conference a couple of years ago doubts were expressed by senior academics as to whether high educational institutions in their current form will exist in 20 years time. This is, of course, just speculation, as was my post in which I pointed out that standards-making organisations, such as W3C, which are funded by memberships fees, with significant contributions being paid by commercial IT vendors and user organisations, may similarly be affected by the recession. But what scenarios might we envisage happening? And what plans should our institutions be developing in case the worst case scenarios occur? Let me give my thoughts: Externally-hosted Web 2.0 providers: What if the services provided by Google, Yahoo, etc. prove uneconomic and the services are shut down or the terms and conditions changed, with perhaps free-to-use services becoming subscription services? Our institutions: What if the economic downturn affects the sustainability of the IT services provided within our institutions? Our national services: What if the national services provided for our communities are similarly adversely affected, with users preferring the services provided by the global services? Our information providers: What if the services provided by individuals within our institution, who use Slideshare, Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. aren’t sustainable because the individuals may face redundancy, early retirement, etc.? Our funding organisations: What if our funding bodies have less funds available, and are forced to stop or reduce the level of funding provided to national or institutional services? Our user communities: What if our users expectations or interests change? How should we respond to such dangers, given that we can’t predict which dangers, if any, will materialise? My suggestion is that we should be embracing diversity, rather than searching for a single solution which we hope will be resilient to an economic downturn. So we should avoid any exclusive deals (some time ago I heard that one institution had signed an exclusive deal with a VoIP provider which seems to mean that the institution had to ban use of Skye). And we should ensure that our data can be easily reused by other services. And we should ensure that we have data migration strategies - and that we test the data migration to ensure that it works in the way we might expect. And finally we should ensure that we have new media literacy strategy in place so that members of our organisation, including senior managers and not just the users of our services, have an understanding of the risks associated with the services we may be using - with an understanding that the risks will also apply to the in-house and licensed services and applications and not just the services provided on the ‘cloud’. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 3 Comments » 12 of 544

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What Can Web 2.0 Offer To The IAMIC Community? September 22, 2008 Last week I gave an invited presentation on “What Can Web 2.0 Offer To The IAMIC Community?” at the annual IAMIC (International Association of Music Information Centres) conference. I gave my talk on Thursday 11th September, immediately after Nick Poole, CEO of the Collections Trust gave the opening talk of the day on “Technology and the Future: the Crystal Ball“. In his talk Nick described how the Web of the future will be a world in which organisational Web sites are likely to be little used and will have a low profile - rather organisations will make their information available in the places users visit. This may be a tool used by the individual (similar to the PLEs - Personal Learning Environments - or PREs Personal Research Environment - which are of such interest in the educational sector) or the popular services users visit (perhaps Flickr for photographs, YouTube for videos or the popular social networks). Following Nick’s presentation my talk described how national Music Information Centres could make use of Web 2.0 and the Social Web to support their organisational aims and to support the IAMIC member organisations, located at over 40 countries worldwide.

When I prepared my talk I had come across a number of examples of use of Web 2.0 by the national centres. The CMC (Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland) were making use of YouTube to provide easy access to video clips of interviews with contemporary composers (as illustrated) and were also making 13 of 544

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use of iTunes in a similar fashion. It was interesting to note that CMC managed the resources on their own organisational Web site in addition to providing access via popular video and music sharing sites. It was pleasing to see this approach to the management of resources complemented by use of a diversity of access mechanisms. It seems that the vision of the future which Nick described has already arrived, in some places at least. There were, however, some instances of failures within the IAMIC community; I was told over coffee of the problems with the international IAMIC Web site (which had been unavailable for quite some time) and of attempts to provide cross-searching across the European sites which seems to have been closed down after live up to its promises.

But the conference participants did seem to be prepared to learn from such mistakes and there did appear to be a willingness to engage with new developments including the social Web. I provided an example of the potential of Twitter by posting a tweet asking for “examples of Web 2.0 music services for talk I’m about to give to IAMIC members“. Responses I received a few minutes after my post included several from Pete Johnston on “Last.fm, rateyourmusic.com“, “For sharing own works, MySpace (obv), GarageBand.com, jamendo.com, kompoz.com + prob loads more“, “Internet Archive also has lots of “2.0″-ness” and “Plus zillions of music weblogs, many sharing mp3s, aggregators like Hype Machine” together with a note that we “Mustn’t forget MusicBrainz“. 14 of 544

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I also received several other responses within a few minutes of my initial post from several other of my Twitter followers including suggestions from marydeeo, t1mmyb, MintyVanilla, MrJ1197, georgeroberts, ianibbo, gavinmitchel and egrommet, as illustrated. Perhaps in response to my question “what can Web 2.0 offer to the IAMIC community?” one answer might be Twitter. Rather than the perhaps time-consuming process of evaluating social networking tools, maybe a simple approach would be for a group of professionals with a similar set of interests to simple write the occasional 140 character summary about what they’re doing and ask the occassional question. This works for me, I’m pleased to say. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit No Comments »

Web Accessibility 3.0 September 19, 2008 I previously mentioned a joint paper on “Redefining Accessibility for a Web 2.0 World” which has been accepted for the ADDW08 conference to be held at the University of York on 22-24th September 2008. David Sloan, the lead author for the paper, will present this paper. In addition to this paper Liddy Nevile and myself have had a paper on “Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future” also accepted at the ADDW08 conference. This paper describes three scenarios: it explores the limitations of a vision for Web accessibility based on use of the WAI approach to provide “universal accessibility” and then describes the limitations of the “holistic approach to Web accessibility” developed initially by myself, Lawrie Phipps and David Sloan. The paper describes how these approaches focus on, in the first scenario, on the accessibility of individual resources and, in the second scenario, on institutional approaches to enhancing the accessibility of the purposes of the Web services. However neither of these approaches seems to have much relevance to the accessibility of the globally popular Web 2.0 services. And if we are serious about Web accessibility we should be looking at the accessibility of the global World Wide Web, and not just individual resources or the resources managed within our institutions. But how should be go about addressing such large-scale challenges? In the paper we suggest that we should be exploring how the relationships between resources might help to provide users with access to related resources and how personalisation approaches might provide users with access to resources which are accessible to the individual user, rather than being universally accessible. The vision, Liddy and I feel, can be regarded as an implementation of the W3C’s vision for the Semantic Web. But we also argue the need to have the scepticism which failed to be applied to WAI’s model for Web accessibility. The slides which will be presented at the conference are available on Slideshare and are embedded below.

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And as we argued the need for a critical approach to proposals for Web accessibility (which we have taken in the past to the limitations of the WAI model and the WCAG guidelines) we invite your comments on our paper and this presentation. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility ·Tags: addw08 | Edit 3 Comments »

Killed By Complexity September 16, 2008 “If this is the death of Wall Street as we know it, the tombstone will read: killed by complexity” it was suggested on the front page of the Guardian today (Tuesday 16 September 2008). A similar question might be asked about the roadmap for a number of Web developments. Is Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the Semantic Web over-complex? Are the metadata standards which are being developed too complex to be used by many software developers? The abstract for a panel session at WWW 2005 suggested that “It has been estimated that all of the Web Services specifications and proposals (“WS-*”) weigh in at several thousand pages by now”. And one of the many objections to ISO’s decision to standardise the OOXML file format was that, at 6,000 pages, it was too complex for developers in small organisations to implement. So now’s the time for more lightweight approaches, it could be argued. Not so, comes the counter-argument. We will need to have comprehensive, well-grounded and unambiguous standards and specifications in order to build robust services. The current uncertainties in the financial markets of course provide more than just a analogy - they are also giving rise to uncertainties in the IT sector. This is often used as an argument to point out dangers of the dependencies on externally-hosted Web 2.0 services, as my colleague Paul Walk pointed out recently. But as I mentioned last year in a post entitled “Universities, Not 16 of 544

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Facebook, May Be Facing Collapse“, universities themselves are not immune to the financial difficulties which the banks and airline sectors are currently facing. But into such discussions we should also add the financial stability of the standards-making organisations. Organisations which have government backing may be able to weather the storm, but what about those member consortiums whose sustainability is dependent on the financial backing of the commercial sector. And as the W3C is one such organisation, can we be confident that the development and maintenance of complex standards will be sustainable in the long run. In light of suggestion in a recent interview with Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML 5 standard, that the standard is unlikely to be a “Proposed Recommendation in 2022″, should we not now be asking the difficult questions regarding the sustainability of such standards which seem to have a long gestation period before they can be regarded as stable. Or am I being unduly pessimistic? Might not any current financial uncertainties be a mere blip, and perhaps will not affect standardisation development processes along the lines I’ve hinted at? Or will a legacy of George W Bush’s economic mis-management (or Tony Blair’s if you are of a different political hue) be the failure of the HTML 5 standard to achieve its proposed recommendation status by 2022? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit 8 Comments »

Serious Thinking at Bathcamp08 September 14, 2008 On Saturday (13 September 2008) I attended my first Barcamp - the Bathcamp08 event held at Invention Studios in Bath. I was present at the conception of this event, in a cafe in Montreal where Mike Ellis floated the idea and explored possible themes with myself, Mia Ridge and Frankie Roberto on the day after the end of the Museums and the Web 2008 conference. It was initially suggested that the Barcamp should have a focus on the role of IT and the Web in cultural heritage organisations. However during the planning for the event is seems that this suggestion was dropped and the event didn’t have a particular single theme to it. What it did have, though, was a lot of enthusiasm and friendly vibes across a more diverse set of participants than I normally encounter, with free-lance software developers, people working in small Web development companies and from Web design and marketing agencies, developers from large companies as well as a handful from the academic and cultural heritage sectors. As the attendees were mostly very active users of various Web 2.0 technologies and services much of the discussions, comments and reflections of the event took place on Twitter using the ‘bathcamp08′ tag, with photos being uploaded to Flickr and slides to Slideshare using this tag and other resources, including blog posts about the event, should be available using this tag. There is also a Bathcamp08 Pageflakes page which aggregates the various RSS feeds associated with the event. And finally I should mention that there are a number of video recordings of the event available, including MIke Ellis’s introduction to Bathcamp08. 17 of 544

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With so many other comments about the event likely to be published soon I’ll not attempt to summarise the event, except to thank Mike Ellis (in particular) and the other organisers of the event (including Tim Beadle, Frankie Roberto, Matt Jukes and Mike’s Eduserv colleagues) for ensuring the event was such a success. The Barcamp rules expect first-timers to participate actively at the event, and not just be passive lurkers. I had floated the idea of a double-act with Dave Briggs (whom I’ve not met but have had a couple of Twitter conversations with) on the use of Web 2.0 in public sector organisations, with a focus on the barriers rather than the potential barriers. However Dave couldn’t make the event, which meant some last minute updating of my slides for my 40 minute session, which I decided to call “Web 2.0: Time For Serious Thinking!” - a reference to a talk Mike Ellis and myself gave at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference on “Web 2.0: How to Stop Thinking and Start Doing”. My slides are available on Slideshare and are also embedded below.

As the Bathcamp was an informal and friendly event I had the opportunity to be sceptical about our previous paper, using the example of the enthusiastic Web 2.0 developer (which I called an ‘Ellis‘) who has a valuable role to play in the early stages of a new technology in getting the involvement of other developers and early adopters. However once the initial period of excitement has died down, there’s a need for the more serious thinking to take place. This will include the need to address the various barriers to the use of Web 2.0 which I have encountered in recent workshop, including, most recently, the Sharing Made Simple: An Introduction to the Social Web workshop I facilitated for organisations in the cultural heritage sector in Wales. As documented on the event wikithe barriers for museums, libraries and archives include:

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Corporate Depts (eg IT, Corporate Image etc)- need to get political partners on board to apply pressure via SMT Need for Higher Level Education- fear of impacts of negative return from Web 2.0 - “it’s chaos”. Especially at SnrManager level. Need for realistic risk management. 03/10/2008 14:51

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Computer Literacy (public) - would we be excluding a generation who don’t use this tech but visual content can be more appealing to those with poor literacy. Training/ Staff Knowledge - How do we get people’s knowledge and skills up to scratch? Time - How do we resource this work? Who has the time? Evaluation- how do you evaluate this work as being worthwhile? How do we get our paymasters to say that these are OK in terms of our KPIs? Legislation & Procedures - DDA, DPA etc Sustainability - of Software and activity. How do you work with services with which you have no SLA? How do you make sure this continues in the long term? Who might support us? Choosing Software - how do we select the right product? Duplication of Effort (eg. with Corporate Website) - is this a waste of time? Will it be contradictory? Getting People to Use It - If we build it, will they come? What’s a ‘good’ level to judge ourselves against? Abuse & Bad Publicity - How do we deal with this? What if it all goes wrong and gets in the papers? Could I lose my job? Cost - Who pays? How? Anyone have any suggestions as to how these barriers can be addressed? Or even comments as to whether these barriers are real? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: bathcamp08 | Edit 1 Comment »

On the Videos from the Repository Fringe 2008 September 10, 2008 On the The thoughts of a Code Gorilla blog a post on Videos from Repository Fringe 2008 provides a link to a number of videos of talks given at the Repository Fringe held recently in Edinburgh. The blog is written by a software developed who has been “identified as “a free thinker” by JISC“. The post states that the videos “will be made available via a Streaming Server at some point, however this is a microsoft-specific platform, so non-windows/non-Internet Explorer users struggle to access the data“. In order to maximise the access to the videos Code Gorilla has “uploaded them to google video“. As I mentioned in post on the Open Standards and the JISC IErecently at one stage there was a fairly hard line view that open standards must be adopted in order to provide device independence - in the case of multimedia, W3C’s SMIL standard wold seem to be particularly relevant for synching audio, video and 19 of 544

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other resources such as presentation files. However as we see in this example, the vision that we had several years ago has failed to have any significant impact, as instead it is the popular services such as Google Video and YouTube which are being used to deliver such resources, as well as providing additional functionality, such as user comments and the ability to embedded the resources in other pages, as illustrated below. It is also interesting to note that this also provides a good example of a pragmatic approach to the accessibility of such resources. At one stage, when the SENDA legislation was being deployed, there was a feeling in some circles that institutions would need to remove videos from their services unless they could provide full captioning. We now, however, widely accept the view that we need to take ‘reasonable measures’ to provide accessible alternatives - and that removing resources does not improve their accessibility. So my congratulations to the ‘free thinker’ who has so clearly demonstrated that the naive views that we used to have can, in circumstances such as this, be ignored in order to maximise benefits to the user and provide cost-effective solutions. It is appropriate to embed this video of Dorothea Salo’s keynote talk at the Repository Fringe 2008, with her comments that “idealism isn’t enough” and “programmers are moving towards flexibility”. And finally I should add that at the end of this video clip (45 minutes in) Dorothy mentions the impacts that both Paul Walk and Andy Powell are having in questioning some of the assumptions which have been made in the past regarding the technical approaches taken to institutional repositories. We do need more ‘free thinkers’, I feel.

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, standards | Edit No Comments »

Are Institutional Portals and VLEs Really “Creepy Treehouses”? 20 of 544

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September 9, 2008 I first came across the term “creepy treehouse” during Ewan McIntosh’s plenary talk on “Unleashing the Tribe” at the IWMW 2008 event. Alan Cann mentioned it again in a recent comment on one of my blog posts, suggesting, I think, that the University of Bristol’s MyBristol portal is an example of a ‘creep treehouse” which we should avoid building. The term, according to a post on the Technagogy blog, was coined by Chris Lott. The Flexknowlogy blog has sought to provide a definition. It seems that ’creepy treehouse’ can have the following meanings: n. A place, physical or virtual (e.g. online), built by adults with the intention of luring in kids. n. Any institutionally-created, operated, or controlled environment in which participants are lured in either by mimicking pre-existing open or naturally formed environments, or by force, through a system of punishments or rewards. n. Any system or environment that repulses a target user due to it’s closeness to or representation of an oppressive or overbearing institution. n. A situation in which an authority figure or an institutional power forces those below him/her into social or quasi-social situations. Alan Cann commented that he felt that the University of Bristol’s MyBristol portal “Feels more like a creepy treehouse to me. Why not just facilitate users using public tools so that they’re not tied to UBris?” Following the doubts I expressed Alan responded: http://flexknowlogy.learningfield.org/2008/04/09/defining-creepytree-house/ n. Any institutionally-created, operated, or controlled environment in which participants are lured in either by mimicking pre-existing open or naturally formed environments, or by force, through a system of punishments or rewards. I rest my case. It would seem, from this definition, that institutions which are developing services to support their students are building creepy treehouses. After all whether it’s a locally developed portal, an open source VLE or a licensed product, these institutional services are created or operating in a managed (controlled, if you will) environment in which participants (the students) are encouraged to use through the incentives of having a quality service to use, with the support of staff and one’s peers in order to enrich the student’s learning and maximise their potential (otr help them get a good degree, if you’d prefer the reward to be described more bluntly). And I don’t think there’s anything wrong in institutions doing this. I do object to use of the term ‘lured’ in this metaphor, though. And I do think that it is ironic that the institution’s are regarded as creating the creepy environment by “mimicking pre-existing open or naturally formed environments”. And those pre-existing open or naturally formed environments 21 of 544

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would appear to be those social network and social sharing services owned by those bastions of open and democratic educational values - Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, … Now as readers of this blog will know I’m a regular user myself of many of these Social Web services. And I have found that such services can provide better services than those hosted by my institution. But if my institution does start to provide services which can compete with the externally-hosted services then I would have no problem in using them - especially if this means I no longer have to concern myself over changes in conditions or the sustainability of the service provider, which is something I need to be aware of in my use of the externally hosted services, as I recently commented on in my experiences of the Sqirl service. And I’m also aware of the complex issues relating to use of social services to support learning. But these complexities aren’t restricted to engagement with students - they are also relevant in other business and professional contexts. It seems to me that the creepy treehouse metaphor related to the ownership and provision of the services is flawed for a variety of reasons. And it’s also a metaphor which doesn’t really work in a UK context, I feel - I never had a treehouse when I was young and nobody I knew did either. And thinking about it, the only treehouse which means anything to me is Bart’s in The Simpsons. Let’s chop down the creepy treehouse metaphor and address the real issues. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: creepy treehouse | Edit 6 Comments »

On the Demise of the Free Twitter SMS Service September 8, 2008 Imagine the following conversation: “Where are you going?” “Down to the High Street. I’ve just received a message saying that there’s a guy giving away free £20 notes. Are you coming?” “No. And you shouldn’t.” “Why ever not?” “It’s clearly not sustainable in the long run” “What!” “Look, he’s clearly not got a sustainable business model.” “!?” “And don’t try and tell me that he might be bought out by Google or Microsoft. You know that’s unlikely to happen. You can’t base your decisions on such speculative thinking.” “Oh no.” Shuffles back to office. “Where are you going?” “Back to work” “I’m pleased that I managed to persuade you not to be tempted by someone with such clearly flawed and ill conceived idea.” “**** ***! All the money’s gone - and I missed out, thanks to you. And my friends picked up about £1,000.” This came to mind after I received a email from Biz Stone on the 14 August 22 of 544

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2008 saying that: Beginning today, Twitter is no longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives. The message went on to explain the the delivery of Twitter messages (Tweets) via SMS would continue in the US, Canada and India, as Twitter had negotiated business deal with the mobile phone provers in those countries. They hadn’t been able to negotiate a deal in the UK, unfortunately, As the email described “Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US“. Now when I wrote a post on Use of Twitter to Support IWMW Events in which I described how we used Twitter at the IWMW 2008 event to deliver SMS messages to participants for free using Twitter as the delivery mechanisms and then, a few weeks later, you heard that this service had been withdrawn did you think that that clearly demonstrates that organisations shouldn’t make use of free services with questiopnale sustainability models? Or did you think: “That’s an opportunity not to be missed. Let’s use it while it’s still going.“? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Twitter | Edit 1 Comment »

100,000 Views September 6, 2008

I’ve found it useful in the past to write about significant landmarks on this blog in order to provide some data which other bloggers may find useful in drawing parallels. And such factual data may also be useful in the various blog workshops which myself and colleagues have been running, including a workshop on “Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library” which my colleagues Marieke Guy and Ann Chapman will be running at the ILI 2008 conference next month. So I thought I would document the date at which the blog had reached 100,000 page views. This happened on Saturday 6th September 2008, 1 year and 10 months after the blog was launched.

Months and Years Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

2006 23 of 544

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Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

2007

2,528

3,055

4,059

4,387

4,321

4,389

5,876

4,063

4,18

2008

4,713

5,350

4,522

5,414

5,025

4,856

6,388

6,314

1,45

As can be seen the busiest month was November 2007, and this was primarily due to the popularity of a blog post on UK Universities On Facebook. This has been the third most popular post, following the post on The ‘Cities Visited’ Facebook Application and, in scond place, one on TokBox - A Useful VideoConferencing Tool Or Something Sinister?. It’s also pleasing to note that after an extended period of stability the numbers of visits to the blog has started to increase again over the past two months, as is shown in the following graph.

Of course, we still need to remember that there are lies, dammed lies and blog statistics. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 1 Comment »

The George Bush and Microsoft Parallels September 5, 2008 Back in May 2008 I published a blog post entitled George Bush IS President And Microsoft’s Office Open XML Format IS An ISO Standard which described how Microsoft’s Open Office XML (OOXML) had been approved as an ISO standard. However in the period between first writing the post and then publishing it South Africa, Brazil, India and Venezuela lodged appeals against this decision claiming that the voting process was marred by irregularities. So until ISO had addressed these appeals we could say that OOXML was not an ISO standard. However as described in an article on OOXML Gets Final Nod After Standards Body Rejects Appeals ISO has now has formally rejected these appeal. The analogy I drew with George W Bush was even more appropriate than I had 24 of 544

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anticipated - just as there were doubts over the legitimacy of Bush’s first election victory which were eventually rejected, so the appeals against the legitimacy over the standardisation of OOXML have been rejected, with OOXML now becoming an official ISO standard. I suspect many readers of this blog would have preferred it if neither of these decisions had happened, but they have. Whether this is the end of the matter is not yet clear: a article on CONSEGI 2008 Declaration — Open Letter to ISO Reveals More OOXML Issues published on the Grocklaw site describes how South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay and Cuba have signed and sent an open letter to ISO condemning this decision. Further information about the standardisation process is available in a Wikipedia article on Standardization of Office Open XML. But although the standardisation process may have been flawed with, no doubt, political skullduggery going on, the technical merits of the standards questionable and the likelihood that the standard will actually be implemented by vendors questioned by some, we now, I would say, have to accept that it is an ISO standard. But as I’ve argued for other reasons recently, we should in any case be questioning the significance and merits of open standards much more questioningly than we have done in the past, when slogans such as ‘interoperability though open standards’ seem to have been used to stifle discussions and debates on the extent to which open standards actually deliver their stated goals. It was also pleasing to read Ross Gardler, manager of the JISC OSS Watch service’s comment on my recent post in which suggests that “it is possible to diverge from [open] standards without enforcing locking. This is a huge advantage when it takes so long for standards to be specified and agreed by committees and standards bodies” - he could, of course, have added caveats regarding the political nature of standardisation processes. I therefore welcome Ross’s statement that “OSS Watch would be happy to explore these ideas further. Just what are the advantages and disadvantages of formalised standards against open implementations of data formats?” And over the next few weeks I will publish a number of posts in which I’ll invite discussions on standards issues. For this post, however, I’d welcome comments specifically on the OOXML standardisation process and the implications of ISO’s decision. My view is that it’s a good thing when proprietary formats become standardised (as has also happened recently with the standardisation of Adobe’s PDF format which was announced on 2 July 2008) as this can be beneficial for, for example, long term preservation. However this doesn’t necessarily mean that the format will be appropriate in many circumstances - we do need to decouple the view that because an open standard is available in a particular area that it should necessarily be deployed, I feel. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards ·Tags: OOXML | Edit 5 Comments »

Open Standards and the JISC IE September 4, 2008 25 of 544

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The Ariadne article on Lost in the JISC Information Environment has generated some interesting discussions, including my colleague Paul Walk’s post in which he suggests that all models are wrong, but some are useful and Andy’ Powell’s post entitled Lost in the JISC Information Environment?. I’ll leave the discussions on the technical architecture to others, but thought I’d pick up on Andy’s comment that: .. the technical standards certainly were intended to be prescriptive. I can remember discussions in UKOLN about the relative merits of such an approach vs. a more ad hoc, open-ended and experimental one but I argued at the time that we wouldn’t build a coherent environment if we just let people do whatever the hell they wanted. Maybe I was wrong? Myself, Andy, Pete Johnston and Paul Miller were the ones who had those long discussions about the role of open standards and the JISC Information Environment (IE). I was the person, who had been introduced to standards through my involvement with the Web from its early days, who was the most adamant on the need to use open standards, where open meant the standard had been ratified by a trusted neutral standards organisation, such as the W3C. I was therefore never in favour of standards and protocols which weren’t open in this sense, including Adobe’s PDF or Sun’s Java. On the other hand, I was always fairly relaxed about the technologies used to implement the services, not being too concerned if licensed software was felt to provide advantages over open source alternatives, for example. It was Paul Miller who suggested than my stance on open standards was too inflexible, suggesting that there was a spectrum to openness, rather than a fixed binary divide. As a result of Paul’s comments and subsequent discussions in UKOLN I wrote a briefing document which suggested that rather than seeking a formal definition of open standards, we needed a more flexible approach based on an understanding of the characteristics of open standards. And the need for such flexibility became even more apparent when the success of RSS had to be balanced against the lack of formal standardisation of RSS (both 1.0 and 2.0). And in retrospect many of the W3C standards which I had felt should form the basis of the JISC IE have clearly failed to have any significant impact in the market place - compare, for example, the success of Macromedia’s Flash (SWF) format with the niche role that W3C’s SMIL format has. Just as the open source debate seems to have matured (and I think that the JISC OSS Watch service has helped to move that debate from the polarised opinions we were seeing several years ago) we still need, I feel, to have a much more sophisticated understanding of the role open standards have to play in development activities. And, as with the decisions institutions (and individuals) have to make regarding their use of externally-hosted Web 2.0 services, so funders, developers and project managers will need to give more thought to the risks as well as the promised benefits of use of open standards. I’ve written, in conjunction with staff from CETIS, OSS Watch and the AHDS, a number of peer-reviewed papers on this topics ( Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access, Addressing The Limitations Of Open Standards, A Contextual Framework For Standards, A Standards Framework For Digital Library Programmes and Ideology Or Pragmatism? Open Standards And Cultural Heritage Web Sites). I suspect it is time to revisit this topic. 26 of 544

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Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit 2 Comments »

Over Ten Years Of Accessibility Work September 2, 2008 David Sloan and myself have had a paper on “Reflections on the Development of a Holistic Approach to Web Accessibility” (initially entitled “Redefining Accessibility for a Web 2.0 World“) accepted for the ADDW08 (Accessible Design in the Digital World) conference which will be held at the University of York on 23-24th September 2008. The paper reviews our work in Web accessibility from the early days of promoting the WAI model and use of WCAG guidelines through to our realisation of the limitations of this approach, initially in the content of e-learning accessibility and then more wider concerns. This work led to the development of alternative approaches to enhancing the accessibility of Web resources which were published in eight peer-reviewed papers (not included the two papers which have been accepted for the ADDW08 conference). I order to collate the historical data for the paper I created a Dipity time line of my involvement in accessibility work since attending the WAI launch meeting in July 1997. This is illustrated below.

I found the timeline very useful in giving me a bigger picture of my work in this area and provides me with fresh insights which I was unaware of from just looking at my lists of papers and presentations. In particular I can spot several 27 of 544

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different phases in my work which are summarised in the table below. Date

Comments The first few year were based on learning more about the WAI approach to Web accessibility, including the WCAG, ATAG and UAAG guidelines. 1997-1999 Naivity Advice was provided based of this approach. During this time I was also a member of the DISinHE Steering Group. The timeline indicates little activity in this period. Perhaps there was little new to say, as the view then was that WCAG conformance was all that Web developers need concern themselves with. In this 2000-2001 Silence case, best practices would primarily be a training issue to be carried out by bodies such as Netskills, rather than a development/innovative activity which is a key aspect of UKOLN’s work. During 2002 a number of automated accessibility surveys were carried out in order to gather evidence of institutional adoption of WCAG guidelines. The findings showed low levels of conformance, and as Evidencefurther manual testing would be needed in order to 2002 gathering provide proof of conformance with the WCAG guidelines, it was starting to become clear that the WCAG approach was failing to have impact amongst practitioners, despite its clear political success. Panel sessions on “Web Site Accessibility: Too Difficult To Implement?” at the ILI 2003 conference Debating and ”Web Accessibility: Will WCAG 2.0 Better 2003 alternative Meet Today’s Challenges?” at the WWW 2003 approaches conference and a debate on “Web accessibility is difficult to implement” provide opportunities to raise doubts over the effectiveness of the WAI approach. Lawrie Phipps (then at TechDis) and I discuss alternative approaches for e-learning accessibility and, together with Elaine Swift (then an e-learning developer at the University of Bath) have a paper on Alternative Developing A Holistic Approach For E-Learning approaches Accessibility published in the Canadian Journal of 2004for e-learning Learning and Technology. These ideas are further accesibility developed for a prize-winning paper on published “Implementing A Holistic Approach To E-Learning Accessibility” presented at the ALT-C 2005 conference and a paper on “Holistic Approaches to E-Learning Accessibility” published in the ALT-J journal in 2006. A paper on “Forcing Standardization or Alternative AccommodatingDiversity? A Framework for approaches to Applying the WCAG in the Real World” was Web presented at the W4A 2005 conference. This paper 2006accessibility was co-authored by myself, Lawrie Phipps and framework David Sloan, who have been the main driving force published behind this work. Further papers which further 28 of 544

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developed our holistic framework for accessibility and applied the approach beyond e-learning accessibility were published at the W4A 2006 (”Contextual Web Accessibility - Maximizing the Benefit of Accessibility Guidelines“), W4A 2007 (”Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes“) and W4A 2008 (”One World, One Web … But Great Diversity“) conferences. From 2006 to date the alternative approaches to Web accessibility have been disseminated to UKOLN’s core communities, including the UK’s higher and further education communities, the library, museum and the public sector organisations. This work has included taking part in a panel session on “Web and Access” at the “e-Access’06 Conference“, chairing a Public Sector Conference on Accessibility, helping to organise the Accessibility Summit II, giving a talk on “The Alternative Accessible Web” at the “Web Adept: Museums and approaches to the Web 2007 conference”, facilitating a session on Web “What Does Accessibility Mean To The Blogging accessibility Community?” at the blogs.ac.uk conference, disseminated facilitating a professional forum on “Accessibility 2.0: A Holistic And User-Centred Approach To Web Accessibility” at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference, giving an online interview on “Web Accessibility” in an Access to Experts interview organised by CHIN, contributing a chapter on “Accessibility in the Future for book on “Web Accessibility: Practical Advice for the Library and Information Professional” as well as writing a series of posts on accessibility on this blog.

The timeline has helped me to gain a better understanding of my work in Web accessibility over the past decade and how this work, led initially by myself and Lawrie Phipps and later supported by David Sloan) has been furthered developed and refined by ever-growing numbers of accessibility practitioners and researchers in the UK and Australia. So I would like to take this opportunity to thank the co-authors of my peer-reviewed papers for their contribution to this work: in order of date of publication these are: Lawrie Phipps, Elaine Swift, David Sloan, Helen Petrie, Fraser Hamilton, Caro Howell, Liddy Nevile, Ann Chapman, Andy Heath, Stephen Brown, Jane Seale, Patrick Lauke, Simon Ball, EA Draffan and Sotiris Fanou, not forgetting Stuart Smith, although the publication of that paper has been delayed. What lies ahead, I wonder? The release of the WCAG 2.0 guidelines should provide an opportunity for institutions to rethink their approaches to Web accessibility as these guidelines remove some of the more flawed of the WCAG1.0 checkpoints and are, I’m pleased to say, format-agnostic. But what of the implications of the popularity of many Social Web and Web 2.0 services? And can the Semantic Web finally start to provide useful benefits to the user community, including accessibility benefits? These are some of the questions which Liddy Nevile and myself will be raising in our paper on “Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future” which will also be presented at the ADDW08 conference. More of that work in a later 29 of 544

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post. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility | Edit 1 Comment »

Guest Post: You’ve Got A Friend September 1, 2008 It has been a while since I have a guest post published on the UK Web Focus blog. But as I am very keen on encouraging a debate on the role of Web 2.0 within our institutions I would like to welcome Hannah Hiles as a guest blogger. Hannah Hiles has been Media & PR Officer for Keele University in Staffordshire since August 2006. Previously she was Keele’s Alumni Officer and before joining the University she was a journalist at The Sentinel newspaper in Stoke-on-Trent. Her views are her own and not necessarily those of Keele University. Keele University has been exploring the potential for communications and connections that can be found in Web 2.0 technologies. In just 16 months of using Facebook as a corporate tool we have developed a thriving community with links spanning the globe; it has revolutionised the way we run some events, reconnected us with dozens of “lost” alumni and provided a platform where we can interact with prospective students in their own domain. The Keele University alumni LinkedIn group in particular provides networking opportunities for our professional graduates while at the same time allowing us to learn more about their careers and tailor our services to their needs. And all this for just the cost of my time – we have no fancy paid-for online community platforms here. We first started using Facebook in January 2007. One of our graduates had created a group called Keele Alumni and we thought we should get in there with our own official group, so Keele Society (http://www.facebook.com /group.php?gid=2224498996) was born. We didn’t go through any committees or get approval from anyone; we just recognised the potential and seized the opportunity, little knowing how quickly Facebook would grow within just a few months. We soon added our official Keele University Page (http://www.facebook.com /pages/Keele-United-Kingdom/Keele-University/19097243336), as well as the Keele-network only Love:Keele group (http://www.facebook.com /group.php?gid=9189098385&ref=ts to help me find student case studies. One of the most exciting uses of Facebook for me has been the creation of groups aimed at prospective students. Keele 2008 (http://www.facebook.com /group.php?gid=7459213335) and Keele University 2009 (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17727959813&ref=ts) have proved a lifeline for applicants wanting to get the lowdown on Keele from the people who know and love it best – the current students. A team of volunteers from among our Student Academic Representatives 30 of 544

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(StARs) check the group regularly and answer any questions. Other keen students, including Students’ Union sabbatical officers, also participate. I monitor what is being said and give an official University response when necessary but usually allow the students to take the lead. A major part of Keele University’s appeal is its friendly atmosphere, so I try to reflect that through my communication style. Our Twitter updates (http://twitter.com/KeeleUniversity are a mixture of news stories with web-links and general observations about what is happening on campus spoken in the “voice” of the University. I’m still very new to Twitter and I don’t think I have fully grasped the possibilities of its use, but it’s another opportunity for communication with prospective students, current staff and students and alumni to be explored. The University recognises Web 2.0 as an important area for growth, so much so that developing Keele’s e-communications strategy has now been formally built into my job description. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post ·Tags: Guest-post | Edit 3 Comments »

Blog Day 2008 August 31, 2008

A tweet from joeyanne alerted me that today is Blog Day 2008. As I only found out about this at 6.30 pm today I will have to be brief in my list of blogs that I find interesting. The instructions for contributing to Blog Day are: 1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting 2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2008 3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs 4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) My blogs, which may not necessarily be new to many readers of this blog, I’m afraid are: 1. The Ed Techie blog by Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University - and someone I have had valuable Twitter discussions with. 2. The unspun Electronic Museum blog, in which Mike Ellis argues passionately for the adoption of light weight Web 2.0 approaches within the museum community. 3. The Digital Curation blog in which Chris Rusbridge, in particular, provides 31 of 544

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a remarkably refreshing insights into preservation issues, even going as far to ask whether the “‘Digital Preservation’ term [should be] considered harmful?“. 4. The JISC Access Management Team blog, probably the liveliest of the blogs published by JISC programme managers. 5. I mentioned Tony Hirst’s Ouseful blog in a previous list of my favourite blogs, but as that referred to an old version of the blog I feel I’m allowed to mention this blog again, which Tony uses to write copious summaries of his prolific development activities. And as today is Blog Day I thought this would provide an opportunity to launch the first of a series of brief video blog posts entitled Video blog 1: Why I Blog which I am publishing in order to support a workshop on “Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library” which my colleagues Marieke Guy and Ann Chapman will be facilitating at the ILI 2008 conference. If you are a blogger and want to give the reasons why you blog why not sign up to Seesmic and respond to my post, explaining why you blog. You never know, you might get mentioned when Marieke and Ann run the workshop. There’s a marketing opportunity for you, especially if you are a blogging librarian. Technorati tag: BlogDay2008 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 2 Comments »

The Final JISC PoWR Workshop August 29, 2008 The final workshop organised by the JISC-funded Preservation of Web Resources (PoWR) will take place at the University of Manchester on Friday 12th September 2008. Now you may think that preservation is a pretty dull topic, compared with the exciting developments that are taking place in a Web 2.0 environment. And if that’s what you think, then you’re not alone. As Alison Wildish, head of Web Services at the University of Bath described on the Web Services team blog: We were asked by our colleagues at UKOLN (who organised the event) to deliver a brief talk detailing our approach to preserving web resources at the University. Our initial reaction was that we had little to say. Lizzie’s remit lies with the paper records and I am responsible for managing our website - ensuring it meets the needs of our users. Neither of us felt web preservation was something we had expertise in nor the time (and for me the inclination) to fully explore this. And you can even listen to Alison and Lizzie Richmond (University of Bath records manager, archivist and FOI coordinator) expand on this by viewing the Slidecast of the talk they gave at the first JISC PoWR workshop:

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If you listen to the end of the Slidecast you’ll hear Alison and Lizzie describing how they discovered in the course of the discussions reasons why Web preservation is a topic which needs to be treated seriously. But how should one go about Web preservation? What should you preserve? What should one discard? What are the implications of use of Web 2.0 on preservation policies? Whose responsibility is this? What are the costs associated with preservation? And what are the costs and associated risks of not developing and implementing a preservation policy for your Web resources? And how does one ensure that an institutional preservation policy is sustainable and embedded withn the institution? These are some of the topics which have been raised on the JISC PoWR blog and will be discussed at the workshop. But hurry up and book you place, as the deadline for bookings is Friday 5th September. And note that the workshop is free to attend for members of the higher and further education community. And finally I should point out that the case study given by Alison Wildish and Lizzie Richard has been saved from being trapped in the non-interoperable world of the past, accessible only to Doctor Who (and even then only on a good day) by recording the talk and synching the recording with the slides and hosting this on Slideshare. You see, preservation can be enhanced through use of Web 2.0 services. Digital preservation can be cool - even though, arguably, it may kill the odd polar bear Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0, preservation | Edit No Comments »

Defining An “Amplified Conference” August 28, 2008 The term ‘amplified conference’ was, I believe coined in a blog post by Lorcan Dempsey in which he observed that ” It is interesting to watch how more conferences are amplifying their effect through a variety of network tools and 33 of 544

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collateral communication“. It will be noted that Lorcan didn’t seek to define what he meant by the term, but was merely observing a pattern of uses of networked technologies at events being made, in Lorcan’s example, at a number of JISC events, although such uses predate this as I described in a paper on “Using Networked Technologies To Support Conferences” published in June 2005. But we don’t seem to have an agreed definition of the term. And this can be problematic, especially if we decide that we want to host an ‘amplified conference’. So I thought I’d set the ball rolling by describing what I mean by an amplified conference. The term amplified conference describes a conference or similar event in which the talks and discussions at the conference are ‘amplified’ through use of networked technologies in order to extend the reach of the conference deliberations. The term is not a prescriptive one, but rather describes a pattern of behaviors which initially took place at IT and Web-oriented conferences once WiFi networks started to become available at conference venues and delegates started to bring with them networked devices such as laptops and, more recently, PDAs and mobile phones. We can observe a number of ways in which conferences can be amplified through use of networked technologies:

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Amplification of the audiences’ voice: Prior to the availability of real time chat technologies at events (whether use of IRC, Twitter, instant messaging clients, etc.) it was only feasible to discuss talks with immediate neighbours, and even then this may be considered rude. Amplification of the speaker’s talk: The availability of video and audioconferencing technologies make it possible for a speaker to be heard by an audience which isn’t physically present at the conference. Although use of video technologies has been available to support conferences for some time, this has normally been expensive and require use of dedicated videoconferencing tecnologies. However the availability of of lightweight desktop tools make it much easier to deploy such technologies, without even, requiring the involvement of conference organisers. Amplification across time: Video and audio technologies can also be used to allow a speaker’s talk to be made available after the event, with use of podcasting or videocasting technologies allowing the talks to be easily syndicated to mobile devices as well as accessed on desktop computers. Amplification of the speaker’s slides: The popularity of global repository services for slides, such as Slideshare, enable the slies used by a speaker to be more easily found, embedded on other Web sites and commented upon, in ways that were not possible when the slides, if made available at all, were only available on a conference Web site. Amplification of feedback to the speaker: Micro-blogging technologies, such as Twitter, are being used not only as a discussion channel for conference participants but also as a way of providing real-time feedback to 03/10/2008 14:51

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a speaker during a talk. We are also now seeing dedicated microblogging technologies, such as Coveritlive and Scribblelive, being developed which aim to provide more sophisticated ‘back channels’ for use at conferences. Amplification of a conference’s collective memory: The popularity of digital cameras and the photographic capabilities of many mobile phones is leading to many photographs being taken at conferences. With such photographs often being uploaded to popular photographic sharing services, such as Flickr, and such collections being made more easy to discovered through agreed use of tags, we are seeing amplification of the memories of an event though the sharing of such resources. The ability of such photographic resources to be ‘mashed up’ with, say, accompanying music, can similarly help to enrich such collective experiences (such as the Animoto clips of IWMW 2007 and UKOLN’s Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks Workshop). Amplification of the learning: The ability to be able to follow links to resources and discuss the points made by a speaker during a talk can enrich the learning which takes place at an event, as described by Shabajee’s article on “‘Hot’ or Not? Welcome to real-time peer review” published in the Times Higher Educational Supplement in May 2003. Long term amplification of conference outputs: The availability in a digital format of conference resources, including ‘official’ resources such as slides, video and audio recordings, etc. which have been made by the conference organisers with the approval of speakers, together with more nebulous resources such as archives of conference back channels, and photographs and unofficial recordings taken at the event may help to provide a more authentic record of an event, which could potentially provide a valuable historical record. Well that’s my initial attempt at trying to define what I understand by the term ‘amplified conference’. I should add that in this post I’m not discussing any of the limitations of amplified conferences (which I’ve commented on previously). My final comment is to point out that I actually organise ‘amplified workshops’ and ‘amplified seminars’ but neither of these terms seem to have the resonance of ‘amplified conference’. So I suspect we should probably stick with this term to refer to a range of events. Does this definition work for you? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

MyBristol Toolbar August 27, 2008 I was alerted to the MyBristol portal via a tweet from Mike Ellis who commented on the URIs it uses: woa - check out the beautiful friendly url’s on UPortal… http://tinyurl.com /5uwr8k Now I’d agree that 35 of 544

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https://portal.bris.ac.uk/mybristol /tag.7ef20678c7572c37.render.userLayoutRootNode.uP?uP_root=root& uP_sparam=activeTab&activeTab=1 is a rather ‘uncool URI’. But I was more interested in the MyBristol portal service itself and, in particular, the portal toolbar which is available for the FireFox browser:

The Add Newsfeed option “allows you to maintain a personalised set of newsfeeds“. Wouldn’t it be great if every institutions provided a service like this, which allowed your news feeds and your bookmarks to be stored in a managed environment - if it would also allow such data to be seamlessly stored on your preferred external service as well (perhaps del.icio.us or Diigo for your bookmarks and Google Reader or Netvibes for your news feeds). I feel that the ability to store such resources on a remote service is needed in order to gain the ‘network effect’ that popular remote services can provide. But I’d also like to have a managed local copy, so I wouldn’t have to worry if the remote service went down, its performance was unreliable or if I was concerned about the privacy implications of storing sensitive information remotely. And I’d like such services to work transparently so I wouldn;t have to worry about managing plugins myself. Are such approaches being developed? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 5 Comments »

Squirl: When Web 2.0 Services Break August 25, 2008

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I have previously described that when you make use of third party Web 2.0 services you need to acknowledge the possible risks: yes, if you use Google Docs there are risks if Google goes out of business or the Google service is down. I have been willing to take such risks, especially with well-established and well-used services such as Google portfolio of services and other services such as del.icio.us and Slideshare. But what about less well-known services? What happens if such services do break? After all, as my colleague Paul Walk has recently pointed out and “there is a growing, commonly-held belief that we are about to enter a global recession” and as “venture capital can become harder to find in a period of economic down-turn” Paul asks “is this a good moment for HEIs to begin a brave experiment with outsourcing services to remote companies?” . An example of a Web 2.0 service which has become broken happened to me recently. In January 2007 I came across the Squirl service. I wanted to explore a number of Web 2.0 services, so I used Squirl to keep a record of the books I was reading. The service has links to Amazon, so I simply need to type in the title of the book, select the appropriate version and it will store a description of the book, including an image of the cover. That was fine until and by February 2008 Squirl was keeping a record of 42 books. But when I finished reading the next book, I found that the link to Amazon had stopped working. I thought no more of it (it wasn’t a mission critical service, after all) but went back to several times afterwards, after reading more books. Eventually I went to the Squirl groups and discovered a series of messages complaining about the service, as illustrated. And unfortunately there has been no response to any of the messages from anyone working for Squirl. It was also unfortunate, I felt, that Squirl didn’t provide a blog about their service, which I could add to my RSS reader and use various RSS filtering tools to help spot any 37 of 544

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worrying announcements or concerns raised by the users. I can still create entries manually (although this does not pull in the images from Amazon). But as the service was still working apart from retrieval of the metadata from Amazon I wasn’t too concerned, especially as I had checked that there was a data export function when I signed up for the service. But when I tried to export my data as a CSV file I got the following error message: Sorry, we screwed up. An email has been sent to somebody at squirl, and we’ll try and fix the problem as soon as possible. You might be able to find what you were looking for with the search engine above. If the problem persists, please contact [email protected]. And rest assured, somebody is going to get a permanent letter in their file for this. I mean, heads will roll. I first saw this error message back in February, I think, and I’m still getting the same message in August :-( Even worse, when I send an email message to the address given above I find that the email address no longer exists. Fortunately as the service provides an RSS feed of my data I have been able to retrieve my data. But this experience has helped to identify a number of approaches which one should take to help minimise such risks in the future. I think ideally the steps would be: Find out details about who is providing the service. Is it well-funded? Is it likely to, for example, be sustainable through the current troubled economic times? Does the service allow the data to be exported? Can the data be exported in a rich format, allowing the service to be recreated without too much difficulties? Check the data export functionality and import into a new service. Possibly replicate the data in a complementary service (note this is something I do with this blog). In addition to these points related to the service and the data I would also look to see if the service provides announcements and discussions using blogs rather than, as in this case, forum software as I add feeds from the third party services I use to my blog reader which allows me to periodically check for any untoward discussions in a single place. It might be felt that having to implement such processes for any Web 2.0 service could be very time-consuming. But, of course, across a community we are likely to find uses of such services being made by others. So perhaps what we need is to make use of social networks to share our experiences, and have mechanisms in place to alert others to any possible problems (and I’m alerting other Squirl users of problems with the service 6 months after I first spotted them). Of course, in order to ensure that we have our risk assessment processes in place we will also need an audit of the services we use. That’s a topic I’ll discuss in a future post. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: Squirl | Edit 38 of 544

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What Is JISC? August 22, 2008 I recently noticed a referrer link to this blog coming from the Answers.com Web site. I’ve not visited this site before so I thought I’d visit and use the service to find an answer to a question. The question I thought I’d ask was “What is JISC?” And, as shown below, I found that “The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) supports United Kingdom post-16 and higher education and research by providing leadership in the use of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in support of learning, teaching, research and administration. JISC is funded by all the UK post-16 and higher education funding councils.“.

This answer is taken from the JISC entry in Wikipedia. Similar results are found by asking questions such as “What is UKOLN?” and “What is Bath University?” as well as for more general questions such as “What is research” although for questions such as “What is education?” the answers are drawn from a variety of sources, with the Wikipedia definition to be found after results from sources such as The American Heritage Dictionary, Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition and the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. What are the implications of this? The first, unsurprisingly, is that if information about your organisation or your areas of interest are available in Wikipedia, then 39 of 544

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the Creative Commons licence which is assigned to the material will help to ensure that this information is surfaced in multiple locations. And perhaps more subtly, if you don’t use Wikiepdia, or you require that your students don’t use Wikipedia, you may find that you are inadvertently using information held by Wikipedia and made available via others services such as Wikipedia. In the search for JISC the top entry was clearly labelled as coming from Wikipedia, but in the example of “What is education?” the first set of references came from more traditional sources of information, and if you scroll down you may miss the citation details for the entry from Wikipedia. My view is that providing information about your organisation of the topics you care about in Wikipedia will help to maximise awareness of and an interest such information. And failing to provide such information on the grounds that people shouldn’t use Wikipedia is mistaken. But if you do make use of Wikipedia you should be careful to provide an objective and encylopedia-like definition and avoid the trap of the entry sounding like an advertisement:

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: jisc, wikipedia | Edit 6 Comments »

The ILI Tenth Anniversary August 21, 2008

The Internet Librarian International Conference Is Ten This year sees the 10th anniversary of the Internet Librarian International (ILI) conference. This year’s event, ILI 2008, will be held at Novotel London West, London, UK on 16-17th October 2008. And, unfortunately, it will be the first ILI conference I won’t be able to attend. I have spoken at all of the ILI conferences and have also been a member of the programme committee and chaired sessions for a number of years.

My Involvement In ILI Conferences Details of all of my talks at ILI are available on the UKOLN Web site. In light of 40 of 544

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the forthcoming anniversary I thought it would be interesting to produce a timeline of my involvement with the conference. I used the Dipity software to produce the timeline of my involvement in the ILI conference series, as illustrated below (and I should add that an embedded version of this is available on the UKOLN Web site, which also provides access to a locally managed copy of the data, so that potentially the service can be recreated if the Dipity service is not sustainable).

The conference has been of particular relevance to UKOLN, as it has provided an opportunity to actively engage with the communities served by both of our core funders: the academic libraries and the JISC development community together with those working in public libraries. Producing this timeline has provided a useful opportunity to observe and reflect the topics which have been of interest to these communities over this time.

Talks On Web Standards My first talk was entitled “New Standards on the Web” and I described emerging new Web standards, including a range of XML standards (XLink and XPointer) and RDF. Looking back at the presentation (and the references to related work such as Eric Miller slide’s on support for RDF in Netscape) I can see how naive I as in my expectation that the emerging new W3C standards would be quickly deployed in a mainstream service environment. I gave another talk on standards at ILI 2003 entitled “HTML Is Dead! A Web Standards Update” in which I avoided the complexities of Semantic Web standards and focussed on data formats including SVG and SMIL. Again I was soon able to appreciate that the market place had little interest in these standards, although my comments on the importance of and XML and CSS, for example, were appropriate and timely. The final talk I gave related to Web standards was given at ILI 2005 and was entitled “Facing The Challenges Of A Standards-Based 41 of 544

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Approach To Web Development“. Here I reflected on the failure of various Web standards to gain acceptance in the marketplace and described the ‘contextual approach to use of open standards’ which I had been involved in developed for the JISC to help avoid repeating the costly mistakes made in the past when open standards (e.g. Coloured Book software) had continued to be advocated even after their failures had been widely acknowledged.

Web Accessibility A talk on “Benchmarking Of Library Web Sites” given at ILI 2002 included a description of use of automated Web accessibility testing tools. The following year, at ILI 2003, I took part in a Web accessibility panel session entitled “Web Site Accessibility: Too Difficult To Implement?” and this time I gave one of my first presentations in which I argued that the traditional approaches to providing accessible Web resources, based on implementation of WCAG guidelines, was flawed. Two years later the joint UKOLN/Techdis holistic approach to Web accessibility had been developed and at ILI 2005 I was able to run a half day workshop with Lawrie Phipps on “A Holistic Approach To Web Usability, Accessibility And Interoperability“.

Best Practices For Publishing E-Journals ILI conferences have provided a dissemination opportunity for various projects I have been involved in. I gave a talk on “Electronic Magazines: Issues in Implementation” at ILI 2000 which described the EU-funded Exploit Interactive e-journal. The following year, at ILI 2001, Marieke Guy and myself ran a half-day workshop session on “Publishing Web Magazines, e-Journals & Webzines“, the first of four workshop sessions I have facilitated at ILI conferences.

Other Areas Other topics which I’ve covered at ILI conferences have included advertising on Web sites (at ILI 2001), new devices on the Web (ILI 2002) and quality assurance for Web sites (a half day workshop at ILI 2004).

Web 2.0 Since ILI 2004 the main focus of my involvement at ILI has been related to Web 2.0. The first talk was entitled “Beyond E-mail! Wikis, Blogs and Social Networking Software“, with a talk on “The Sceptics View Of New Technologies” being given in a panel session at the ILI 2004 event. A talk on “Email Must Die!” at ILI 2005 described the benefits of various Web-based collaborative and communications tools, and, at the same event I continued to argue the need to adopt a critical approach to the new technologies with a talk on “Folksonomies - The Sceptics View“. I was invited to chair a session on Wikis at ILI 2006 and, due to the late unavailability of one of the invited speakers, also gave a brief talk on “Reflections On Personal Experiences In Using Wikis“. My main talk that year was on “Web 2.0 and Library 2.0: Addressing Institutional Barriers“. Finally at ILI 2007 Kara Jones and myself ran a masterclass on “Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library” and I gave a talk on “The Blogging Librarian: 42 of 544

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Avoiding Institutional Inertia“.

Returning To ILI 2008 I had intended to participate at the ILI 2008 conference, but as I have been invited to present a paper at the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference, I will unfortunately not be able to attend. I will be there in spirit, though with my colleagues Marieke Guy and Ann Chapman this year facilitating the half-day blogging workshop. I would like to take this opportunity to give my thanks to everyone who has helped to make the ILI conference series such a great success, especially the conference organisers (including Marydee Ojala, Jane Dysart, Nancy Garman, David Raitt, Bill Spence, Jean Mulligan) and the people I’ve met at ILI (too numerous to mention, but I should include Michael Stephens, Mary Peterson, Frank Cervone, Karen Blakeman, Phil Bradley, Darlene Fichter and Peter Scott). All my best wish to everyone at ILI 2008 - and all the best for the next 10 years. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: ili, ili2008 | Edit 3 Comments »

The Markmail Service August 18, 2008 In a recent tweet Matt Jukes alerted me to the MarkMail service. As Matt forms part of my trusted “interesting Web applications alerting services” I went to the Web site. What I found was a search interface across over 4,300 mailing lists. A search for ‘ukoln’ provided me with not only various posts containing this string, but also details of the person who made the post, the lists posted to and also, as shown, a graph of the numbers of posts over time.

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Initially I felt that the graph supported my view that email is dying, but a search for a more general term, “web”, showed me that this was clearly an inappropriate conclusion to make based on this evidence. But perhaps of more relevance is the main point that Matt made in his tweet: just discovered http://markmail.org/would be cool if jiscmail lists were searchable here as well.. Yes it would be great if JISCMail exposed its mail archives to third party indexing services such as MarkMail. But to do that (or rather to do that effectively) would require the JISCMail mail archives to provide ‘cool’ application-independent and persistent URIs (which they don’t currently do) and allow robot software to access the resources. Doing this will, of course, require the service to commit resources to develop work and make changes in policies. A popular and large scale service, such as JISCMail, would only be in a position to do this if they could see tangible benefits to their user communities. I hope the example of the MarkMail service illustrates the potential benefits of opening up one’sdata to third party services. I have to admit that I find the JISCMail search interface so poor that I seldom use it. Exposing the data to other services (whether MarkMail, Google or whatever) would enhance access to data available in the JISCMail Web archives, without JISCMail having to wait for the underlying Listserv software to conform with fundamental Web architectural 44 of 544

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principles. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General ·Tags: Markmail | Edit 3 Comments »

Fahrenheit 451 August 15, 2008 I recently attended the JISC’s Innovation Forum. One of the most interesting of the plenary talks was given by HEFCE’s John Selby. In his talk John praised the work of the JISC and the JISC Services, but went on to warn of troubled financial times ahead for the educational sector. The glory days of the past 10 years are over, he predicted. This was probably not unexpected. What did surprise me, however, was the figures John quoted which put the carbon cost to the environment on par with the cost of flying - both at 2%. This generated much debate at the forum, and, later on at the conference meal and in the bar. Although people questioned the accuracy of these figures, and wanted to know how these figures were obtained, there was an awareness that the carbon cost of IT is an issue which the IT secure needs to address. I should add that I subsequently came across details of a forthcoming Government Goes Green conference in which Malcolm Wicks, Energy Minister, BERR was quoted as saying that ”ICT is now responsible for around 2% of global CO2 emissions. The public sector, with annual IT spending of £14bn, has an important role to play in reducing this two percent. An increased focus on sustainable procurement and efficient use of IT products are two key areas that it needs to work on and I am very pleased to see a conference dedicated on this.“ At the JISC Innovation Forumdinner I found myself sitting next to colleagues from the Digital Curation Centre (DCC). I suggested, partly in jest, that although there was a clear need for continued development of networked services which are popular with the users, we had to ask ourselves where the costs of preserving digital resources could be justified. If, as we learnt from Alison Wildish’s recent presentation at the first JISC PoWR workshop, those involved in Web development activities tend to focus on the pressing needs of their user communities and find it difficult to justify diverting scarce resources to preserving resources which are no longer of significant interest to the institution, why don’t we stop pushing the notion of digital preservation. And not only will this allow the development community to focus their efforts on responding to pressing user needs - but removing archived files from hard disk drives could result in significant savings in energy. This approach would then both help the users and help save the planet As I’ve said this was intended as a joke, over our conference meal. But we realised that their may be benefits for the digital preservation community in making such suggestions. After all, preservation is widely considered as worthy but dull. If digital preservation was regarded as something radical, might it have a greater appeal to developers? Could those involved in digital preservation work - harvesting old Web sites and even implementing OAIS models - find 45 of 544

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themselves repositioned as members of an underground radical movement, secretly preserving digital artefacts for a society which regards such activities as unacceptable. Fahrenheit 451 for the 21st century, perhaps.

The following day when I suggested this, I was told that there have been discussions about strategies for digital preservation which acknowledge that there are environmental factors which need to be addressed. It seems that there have been proposals that such preservation activities should be based in places such as Greenland and Alaska where the low temperatures may reduce the need for consuming energy to keep the disk drives running at acceptable temperatures. Now scientists may point out that running large scale server farms in locations near glaciers and the ice cap may increase the rate at which they melt. But the ideas which were bounced around at the event did make me wonder whether centralisation of networked services (e.g. running applications hosted by Google or Yahoo or running our applications on Amazon’s S3 and EC2 servers) would be more beneficial to the environment than all of our institutions running our own local servers. And perhaps such discussion might be useful in a teaching context. Does data curation, for example, conflict with environmental protection? If so, should we forget it? Or could this approach result in deletion of the very data that could save the planet What do you think? And if you’d like to take part in a viral marketing campaign which seeks to make digital preservation interesting by suggesting that it might be responsible for global warming, feel free to make use of the post which has been produced. And note that a Creative Commons zero licence (currently in beta) has been assigned 46 of 544

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to this resource, so you don’t need to cite the original source. Let’s be part of an underground movement

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in preservation | Edit 12 Comments »

Usage Statistics for the IWMW 2008 Live Video Stream August 14, 2008 The first live streaming of talks at a IWMW event took place at IWMW 2006, when we experimented with an in-house streaming service and use of the Access Grid. The following year live streaming of the plenary talks was provided by staff at the University of York, and recordings of most of the talks were subsequently made available on Google Video. On both occasions the numbers of people watching the live streaming video was low, with the maximum numbers of viewers being less than 20 at each of the events. Despite the low numbers we felt the service was valuable as it provided us with an opportunity to gain experience of not only various streaming technologies but also, and more importantly, the non-technical aspects of live streaming at events such as privacy, copyright, accessibility, etc. This year’s IWMW 2008 event was held in the King’s Conference Centre at the University of Aberdeen. I was not the only delegate who was impressed by the King’s Auditorium - as one person commented on the event evaluation form “Conference hall had great facilities and microphones meant that you could hear delegates questions“. The venue also had an excellent AV facilities, and we were pleased that, once again, we were able to stream the plenary talks. The quality of the video was excellent, as you can see if you watch any of the videos of the talks.

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But perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the live streaming was the numbers of people who watching the talks. As can be seen from the accompanying diagram there were 160 people watching the videos on the final day of the event. As IWMW 2008 attracted 180 participants, with a number of them having to leave before the event finished I suspect we can say that there were more remote people watching Ewan McIntosh’s closing plenary talk on “Unleashing the Tribe” that there were in the King’s Auditorium. When I mentioned this to my director, Liz Lyon, she wondered whether we will soon reach a ‘tipping point’ in which live streaming of talks at large conferences in the digital library environment will be expected as a mainstream offering. For that to happen, though, there will be a need to establish the business case for providing the streaming service, ensure that it is easy to use and ensure that the risks are being addressed. The business case is interesting. Who should pay for the costs of providing a video streaming service for an event? Should the costs be taken from the participants who attend the event? Or should remote viewers who wish to access the video stream have to pay? Or perhaps event organisers should be looking for commercial sponsorship to cover the costs (although in light of the current economic turbulence, now is probably not a good time to suggest this). I wonder, though, whether the costs be covered by the host institution. Once the AV equipment has been installed, can the support costs be included i the rental of the facilities - just as we are now starting to expect access to WiFi network being provided as standard. Once the business case has been sorted, there will be a need to ensure that the service is easy to use (back at IWMW 2006 people wishing to view the streaming video service needed to install “Real Player and the Xiph Player Plugin or Windows Media Player with the illiminable Ogg Directshow Filters for Speex, Vorbis, Theora and FLAC, with Linux users needing MPlayer with Ogg Theora“). Nowadays users shouldn’t need to concern themselves with details of the technologies, as use of Flash seems to provide the interface to streaming services (although there may be issues about versions of Flash). However I suspect there will be a need to provide a back channel, to enable the remote participants to discuss the talks. There will also be a need for the remote participants to join in discussions with the local audience, especially if a WiFi network is available. There will be a need, therefore, to ensure that the back channel is not tightly coupled to the video streaming service. Finally there will be a need to address the risks. This will include addressing issues such as privacy, copyright and data protection. In addition there will be a need to consider the quality of service and reliability of the streaming service, 48 of 544

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especially if the costs in providing the service have been made transparent. And the more I think about such issues the more I wonder whether live streaming at conferences has reached a tipping point. Might it simply be too much effort to provide on a regular basis? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2008 | Edit 4 Comments »

Revisiting Development Of Facebook Applications August 13, 2008 I recently commented that I was pleased to see that the JISC-funded EDINA service was engaging with a number of externally-hosted Web 2.0 services in order to “improve engagement with their user communities”. In my post I made an observation on the release of a Facebook application (one which provides access to the Suncat service). I was pleased to see that EDINA are willing to explore the potential of Facebook for providing a platform for accessing their service - in some circles Facebook is regarded as unacceptable, perhaps because of concerns over data lock-in and privacy concerns, but also on what might be regarded as ‘ideological grounds’. My view is that if such applications can deliver useful services to the users in a cost-effective manner, then that will probably be acceptable. In response to my post Nicola Osborne, a developer at EDINA, commented: If anyone has comments on the search app or features that should be added we’d be very keen to hear them as the gradual migration over to the new version of Facebook seems like a good time to reassess how our app is working and could be improved and expanded (it’s very basic at the moment). Nicola’s comment is very timely as I think there is a need for a debate on exactly what it is we (developers and users) might expect from the development of such Facebook applications. We will also need to consider the resource implications in developing such applications and the longer term maintenance and support costs. The Facebook page for the Suncat page is shown below. It should be noticed that as well as the search interface itself (shown at the bottom of the image) the page also provides information about the service, allows users to become ‘fans’ of the application, provides a ‘minifeed’ of information about the application and has a ‘wall’ which provides a forum for user comments. What this would seem to provide is an open environment for discussions about an application and mechanisms for potentially for making contact with fans of the application.

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If we look at the Copac Facebook application page developed by the JISC-funded MIMAS service we can see a related approach. Here we can see how the application can be added to (embedded within) other Facebook pages. I can also see my Facebook friends who have added this application. And as, in this case, the people shown are people whose views on digital library applications I trust this can potentially help me in deciding whether to install the application. And if, for example, my Facebook page is updated with a message saying that 50 of my friends have installed the Copac or Suncat application I’m likely to wonder what I’m missing. And if I install the application this may influence my Facebook friends. So the viral marketing aspect has the potential to enhance usage of a service which is made available in Facebook.

But if you actually use either of these application you will find that the experience is rather disappointing. Once you’ve entered a serach term and 50 of 544

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pressed submit you then leave the Facebook environment and are taken to the Suncat or Copac service. You do not have the seamless environment within Facebook you might expect. And your use of of the service does not have any ’social’ context - if you have installed the application you are not informed of the numbers of your friends who have searched for a particular item. And you might be relieved at this, as you may not want your friends to see what you have been searching for. But if this is the case, if searching isn’t actually a social activity, what then is the point of providing the service within a social networking environment such as Facebook? The answer to this question may be that the marketing aspects that social networks can provide is regarded as beneficial to the organisation developing the service. And as we have seen with popular applications such as Firefox large numbers of users are sometimes willing to associate themselves with an application (and I’ve just noticed that the Twitter application page in Facebook has 10,106 fans). So perhaps a decision to develop a Facebook application would be one made by the marketing group for a service. Or perhaps there is an expectation that a thriving support service can be developed within popular social networking environments, in which case the decision would be made by those involved in providing the support infrastructure for a service. But perhaps, based on the experiences I’ve had, we shouldn’t expect too much in terms of the functionality which a Facebook application can provide. Is this a limitation of Facebook as a platform, or is it simply that, as Nicola has said about the Suncat application, the service is still very basic at present and EDINA are still exploring how the application might be developed? Or might Facebook applications have a useful role to play, but only in certain application areas. Earlier this year Seb Chan, on the blog described the Artshare Facebook application, developed by the Brooklyn Museum (one of the pioneers in a number of uses of Web 2.0 services). As Seb described: “This allows you to add selected objects from museum collections to your Facebook profile. These object images then link to your museum’s collection records, the idea being that people can effectively ‘friend’ objects in your collection, promote them for you on their profiles, and drive traffic back to your website.“ Are the benefits, then, in providing access to objects which can, in some way, drive traffic back to your service? Or could Facebook provide an environment for games which provide educational benefits (Scrabulous for remedial English teaching, perhaps?) But are there any significant benefits to be gained, apart from the marketing aspects, from providing search interface to services from within Facebook? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook, Web2.0 ·Tags: Copac, Suncat | Edit 12 Comments »

EDINA And Web 2.0 August 11, 2008 I was recently reading the EDINA Newsletter. EDINA, a JISC-funded national datacentre based at the University of Edinburgh, has announced its strategic plan for 2008-2011(PDF) and amongst its priorities are “improving engagement with our user communities” and “appropriate use of Web 2.0 social media and 51 of 544

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collaboration tools“. It seems that EDINA has already started implementing these plans, as the newsletter also describes the EDINA Digimap blog which has been launched as a way of “exploring alternatives to email for distributing information about the service“. It is interesting to note that the blog is hosted on Blogspot. This strikes me as a sensible - rather than having to find technical expertise in-house to install and maintain blog software EDINA are using a well-established and mature externally-hosted service. It was also interesting to note that they are using Blogspot rather than WordPress. I suspect that, after lagging behind a few years ago, Blogspot may have caught up with WordPress in its functionality and ease-of-use. The newsletter also mentioned that the Suncat service (the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK research community) now has a “search application that anyone on Facebook can easily add to their profile, enabling them to search for journals held in over 60 UK research libraries” - and if you have a Facebook account you may wish to try the application. Externally-hosted blogs and Facebook applications - it does seem that EDINA is embracing Web 2.0. And reading the strategic plan for 2008-2011 (PDF format) it seems this decision was made in order to enhance accessibility of its services. The plan describes how “EDINA recognises the growing user-base arising from delivery of service to a widening client community and integration with other environments, especially those using mobile technologies. In addition, the growth in popularity of Web 2.0 social media and collaboration tools is important for the support of learning and research activity.” I was also pleased to read that although EDINA is committed to improving the utility and usability of its services for “the full range of its users, including those with disabilities” EDINA has acknowledged that “adopting too conservative an approach risks disenfranchising many users and therefore EDINA will evaluate how its services can be presented and personalised to address changing information-seeking and user practices, including access through devices other than computer screens, such as PDAs and mobile phones.“ It is good to see a national JISC service such as EDINA embracing Web 2.0 and making a commitment to enhancing the accessibility of its services by providing personalised services and supporting a variety of devices (and it is noticeable that no reference is made in the plan to achieving such accessibility be simply mandating WAI-compliance). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility ·Tags: EDINA | Edit 2 Comments »

Citizen 2.0, Strike 2.0, David Cameron 2.0 and Coldplay 2.0 August 8, 2008 Last week’s New Statesman magazine (4th August 2008) had a special supplement entitled “Citizen 2.0″. As described in a blog post by Aleks Krotoski, Technology Correspondent of the Guardian and chair of the event this was a 52 of 544

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summary of a roundtable discussion on “Privacy, security and civil liberties in a digital society”. The main article in the Work supplement of Saturday’s Guardian (5th August 2008) was entitled “Strike 2.0” and described how strike actions in the 21st century are beginning to make use of social networking services. The Guardian also published a leader column on 16th July 2008 which was entitled “David Cameron 2.0“. And a review of Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” album published in The Observer on 8 June 2008 described how “After three best-selling works which the piano-rock four-piece now consider a trilogy concluded, Coldplay declared themselves ready for Coldplay 2.0“. The 2.0 meme is now established in mainstream journalism, it seems - well, perhaps only left-of-centre publications, although I haven’t read the Telegraph or the Mail for some time :-). I wonder if the style guides for these publications has been updated to define how this term should be used? I am comfortable will use of the term in this way, just as I am when I hear terms such as ‘library 2.0‘, ‘e-learning 2.0‘, ‘research 2.0‘, ‘enterprise 2.0‘ and ‘government 2.0‘ . And I am pleased that the Web industry has had an impact on the language which now seems to be becoming accepted within the mainstream media, An earlier attempt by the Web community to describe a new generation of technologies was the suffix NG, which was used, for example, to describe HTTP-NG. I have to admit that I’m please that coining of this term by fans of Star Trek failed to take off. In the political sphere we have seen the term ‘New’ being used to describe the different approach which was taken by the Labout party in the mid 1990s. We subsequently saw the term ‘modern’ and ‘moderniser’ being used to describe the response being made by the Conservative party. Now although I suspect many readers won’t describe themselves as fans of ‘New Labour’ or the modernised Conservative party it should be acknowledged that these terms were widely used and understood, even if they did not have a rigourous definition. And for me it’s just the same with Web 2.0, e-learning 2.0, Library 2.0, etc. Let’s get over debates about these broad terms and instead discuss the issues. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit No Comments »

IWMW 2008 Bar Camps August 7, 2008 The main change to the IWMW 2008 timetable this year was the introduction of a barcamp session. As described on the IWMW 2008 Web site:

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at a weekend attended by people with an interest in technology. The day is split into a number of sessions typically of around 30 minutes each. Depending on the number of participants, size of venue, etc. there may be several sessions running simultaneously. For the IWMW 2008 event we still had the conventional plenary talks and parallel sessions which had been planned in advance. But in addition: A board [was] provided at IWMW 2008 for people to post up ideas for slots, rooms will then be allocated. Screen projectors will be available in rooms for people to use. During the 45 minute allocated slot there will be time for up to 18 sessions and each session will be 20 minutes long. This innovation was introduced by my colleague and IWMW 2008 co-chair Marieke Guy, with suggestions from Michael Nolan, Edge Hill University, who shared his experiences of barcamps: “One of the best presentations I’ve seen was titled “stuff I know” and was a guy drawing shapes, arrows and random words on a flip chart while telling us what we should know…“. And having just had my first glance at the IWMW 2008 feedback forms it seems that the Barcamp idea was a great success. The Overall views for the event included the comments “Bar camp was an excellent idea that should be utilised more in the future” and “Bit disappointed by the main session but the parallel/barcamp sessions were much better“. Comments on the Most Valuable Aspects of the Event included “Barcamp and discussion with others and seeing how successfully people have implemented successful change over the last year“, “Barcamp sessions“, “Barcamp” and “Barcamp” We were also keen to get feedback on Aspects Which Could Be Improved. Even the responses to this question were all positive about the barcamps: “Bar camps a bit rushed. The session were not too long but changeover times took too much out of 20 mins, More barcamp stuff please-lets build stuff!“, “Barcamps not long enough” and “Not enough time left between barcamp sessions to get from one room to the next“.

The Barcamp Topics The barcamps were clearly a success. But what topics were covered? A list of the topics is provided on the IWMW 2008 Web site and is also given below. And note that a page has been created on the IWMW 2008 Ning social network which will enable the barcamp facilitators (and, indeed, the participants) to provide a summary of the session, notes on the discussions and links to relevant resources.

Session1: Wednesday 23rd July 2008 from 14.15-14.35 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 54 of 544

Sex, Lies and Microsites [see Ning page] So What Is A Good Open Source CMS? [see Ning page] Stuff You Need To Know About iTunesU [see Ning page] How Can A WCMS Save £3.4 Million In 12 Months? [see Ning page] Tenish 5-Minute Ways To Improve Your Website [see Ning page] Web Analytics Guiding Web Development [see Ning page] Web 2.0 In Student Activism: What We Can Learn From Anonymous [see Ning page] 03/10/2008 14:51

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8. How Qualified Do You Have To Be To Manage A Website? [see Ning page]

Session 2: Wednesday 23rd July 2008 from 14.40-15.00 1. Canadian View On Life, Dearth and Social Software [see Ning page] 2. DIY CMS - Building A Low Budget System, Getting People To ‘Buy-In’ [see Ning page] 3. Immediacy WCMS In Action [see Ning page] 4. T4 CMS / Sitestat / Redesign / Rambling Q&A / Discussion [see Ning page] 5. Barriers To Making Things Work On Second Life [see Ning page] 6. Simple Scriptaculuous [see Ning page] 7. Forum: Feedback on Nedstat [see Ning page] 8. Migrating Into A CMS - What Is Your Experience? [see Ning page] 9. Live@EDU [see Ning page] Of course, as the barcamps were fairly informal and may have been provided on an ad hoc basis, there is no requirement for the facilitators to provide such resources, but I think it is useful to have a record of the sessions which were held and to provide an opportunity for those who may wish to have a summary of the session to do so, without myself or Marieke acting as a bottleneck to the creation of such resources. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2008 ·Tags: barcamp | Edit 3 Comments »

The ‘Chat’ Infrastructure At IWMW 2008 August 5, 2008

The First Use Of Realtime Chat An IWMW Event The IWMW 2005 event held at the University of Manchester on 6-8th July 2005 was the first time that a WiFi network was used at UKOLN’s IWMW annual event. I had attended the EUNIS 2005 conference a few week’s prior to this and presented a paper on Using Networked Technologies To Support Conferences. This paper described the potential benefits which networked applications could provide to what Lorcan Dempsey subsequently described as Amplified Conferences. As described in that paper we ensured that we described the technologies which would be available at the IWMW 2005 event and provided an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) covering use of the technologies. I think there were less than 20 participants who made use of the event ‘chat’ infrastructure, which was provided by IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and those taking part were mainly Web managers ho had a very technical focus, as can be seen from the IRC archives. The nature of the discussions changed, however, on the second day of the event, the 7th July 2005 or, as it became known 7/7 - a date that (fortunately) is not as globally significant as 9/11 but, especially for those with London connections, a date which will be associated with the London Bombings. It was a very surreal experience following a message on the IRC channel about 55 of 544

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was was initially reported as a train crash on the London Underground, and the subsequent discussion. Jul 07 10:08:02 <Tim>explosion on london underground. entire network closed!! Jul 07 10:09:04 <–DavidBailey has quit (Quit: CGI:IRC (EOF)) Jul 07 10:10:06 <JeremySpellerUCL>explosion where? Jul 07 10:10:15 <Tim>liverpool street Jul 07 10:10:35 <JeremySpellerUCL>Grief Jul 07 10:10:40 <Tim>metropolitan line, two trains collided, several wounded Jul 07 10:10:58 <Stuart_Steele_Aston>Tthe bbc site is grinding? Jul 07 10:11:02 <JMHarmer>bbc news site not responding - u saw the news report? prrsumably everyone else is trying to now. The launch of a WiFi-enabled IWMW event will be one that will be remembered for a long time by those who took part in the discussions on that day.

The ‘Back Channel’ At IWMW 2008 Moving forward to IWMW 2008 we knew that many of the participants would expect a real time communications infrastructure to be provided, as this has been the norm at IWMW and many other UKOLN events since 2005. And as we were video streaming the plenary talks we expected to have remote participants joining in the discussions, too. Over time the terms used to refer this technology has developed. Use of the term ‘chat’ has decreased, in part due to its derogatory connotations but also due to a move away from IRC to move native Web-based communications technologies. I have heard the term ‘back channel’ being used, and this term works when it is used if (as was the case with Ewan McIntosh, the final plenary speaker at IWMW 2008) it is used to provide realtime feedback to a speaker. But more commonly the realtime communications technology is used by the audience (both those physically present, those watching a video stream and also, in some cases, those who may only have access to an audio stream or are viewing the PowerPoint slides). The term ‘micro blog’ has also been used (indeed this is how I described the service on the IWMW 2008 Web site) but that suggests a official commentary on an event, rather than the discussion forum which was how the service was actually used). I don’t think there is yet a widely agreed term to describe this, so for now I’ll use the term ‘back channel’. Since IWMW 2007 Twitter has become very popular in certain circles, and most IWMW 2008 participants will have heard of it, even if they weren’t Twitter users. However we decided not to suggest use of Twitter as the event back channel, as, when I’ve tried this previously, I’ve found it is too intrusive those who follow me on Twitter who aren’t at the event or aren’t interested in the event. There was a need for a tool, I felt, similar to Twitter, but which was less intrusive. I had some experience of Coveritlive (at events such as the eFoundations Symposia - although I haven’t been able to find the archive of the discussions). However I found a number of niggles with that software, including the need to (normally) approve comments. In response to a tweet for alternative suggestions I decided to make use of Scribbeitlive. 56 of 544

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This did have some advantage, but also some weaknesses. As Andy Powell commented on the eFoundations blog: My feeling is that ScribbleLive makes better use of screen real-estate. On the other hand, Coveritlive has better bells and whistles and more facilities around moderation (which can be good or bad depending on what you want to do). In particular (and somewhat surprisingly), Coveritlive handles embedded URLs much better than ScribbleLive. Overall, my preference is slightly twoards Coveritlive - though I could be swayed either way. In response to Andy’s post Matt Jukes and Phil Wilson suggested that neither tool was ideal for the job. I would agree with this - I think we will see much development in this area, not only in enhancing the usability of the tools but also in allowing the data to be more easily integrated with other tools. I would like, for example, to be able to have tools to allow me to export the data to other environments (I have migrated the content to the IWMW 2008 Web site, but I had to do that manually). It would also be useful to be able to link comments with particular presneter’s slides or the video - without having the disucssion having to be tightly-coupled with the multimedia experience (as seems to be the case with, for example, the Elluminate service). Another comment Andy made was “the importance of having someone in the venue dedicated to supporting remote participants “. Again I would agree with this. This was an area I had responsibility for - but found that I was not able to do this at the start of the second afternoon due to difficulties in connecting to the WiFi network. I also found myself failing to support the remote participants during Ewan McInitosh’s talk because I found it so interesting! But if we do need dedicated support for remote participants there will clearly be a cost in providing this support. Does this mean we should start to charge remote participants, I wonder? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2008 | Edit 3 Comments »

Why Don’t Members of Institutional Web Teams Blog More? August 4, 2008 On the second day of the IWMW 2008 event Michael Nolan made the comment “If people are saying we need to communicate what we’re doing better, why do so few Web Services depts have a blog?” on the event’s live blog. Shortly after getting back from the event Michael, a Web developer at Edge Hill University sent a message to the website-info-mgt JISCMail list in which he raised this issue with a wider audience:

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At the risk of opening myself up to (probably deserved) flaming and accusations of blatant self promotion, I’ve posted to the Edge Hill Web Services blog questioning why so few other university web teams have a blog: http://blogs.edgehill.ac.uk/webservices/2008/07/28/blogging-web-teams/ 03/10/2008 14:51

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Comments and feedback welcome! This led to a discussion on the list - and also responses to Michael’s blog post on the Edge Hill University Web Service’s team blog. On the mailing list various reasons were suggested for the lack of blogs by members of Web teams : I find it hard keeping up with blogging - reading and writing, [because] I’m too damn busy with other projects. … our workload is so great that this sort of activity tends to sink to the bottom of the list. Does anyone think that such blogs would add any value over and above resources such as this list? … So, to turn the question on its head, who thinks that they could benefit from reading another web team’s blog? If every one of us blogged about our work, it would be very hard to sort out the chaff. Other replied arguing the benefits of blogging suggesting the benefits of the ‘long tail’ (an obscure blog post on the intricacies of XSLT coding is likely to be of interest to perhaps small numbers of others) and how use of filtering tools should help such nuggets to be found by interested parties. Janet McNight at the University of Oxford also suggested that: I think there’s a feeling that a ‘blog’ has to involve sustained pieces of writing, well-crafted prose, etc; when really all it needs to be is “I was wrestling with [some problem] and found [some neat solution]: [lines of code, config, whatever]” — or “we’ve been looking into [some new technology] and these are a few of the thoughts we’ve had so far”. I would very much agree with Janet’s comment. I feel there is a need to regard a blog as a communication rather than a publication medium. After all, many members of Web team who may be reluctant to blog are willing to make use of email lists for advice on often obscure problems - and, ironically, mailing lists tend not to have the richer structure content and software tools which can help people to filter out content which is of no interest and find the material which is. The comments on Michael Nolan’s blog were, perhaps unsurprisingly, somewhat critical of the failures of institutional Web teams to embrace blogging (Michael has found only 4-5 examples of such blogs). Matt Machell, for example, commented that: it often surprises me how insular the HE web development world is. It seems to talk to itself, but not to the wider web professional community Alison Wildish responded on both the Edge Hill blog and the website-info-mgt mailing list with some considered views on the matter. She identified some of the barriers to blogging (and note that I will link to her comments on the blog as this is both easier to read, more navigable and has more easily cited URIs than the JISCMail archive) but she still felt that “there aren’t enough of us [blogging] for people to see the real value - yet! If more of us used blogs then we’d be able to gain a real picture of the work going on across all Universities“. Alison went on to list the benefits University of Bath Web Services blog are providing. But although I would agree with Alison’s views I think there are dangers in forcing people or teams to blog (I should hasten to add that I’m not suggesting 58 of 544

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that Alison is saying this). I still feel there is a need to discuss the benefits and to gain a better understanding of best practices - and the associated dangers. And I did wonder whether, as many members of institutional Web teams are happy to contribute to mailing lists whether an email blog service, such as Posterous, might provide a lightweight approach to blogging - with this service you simplky send an email to create a blog post, which, of course, has the ‘cool uris’ and usable RSS feeds which JISCMailo lists fail to provide.

But if an email blog tool is still to heavyweight, perhaps another approach might be microblogging. We are, after all, seeing such conversational use of Twitter being used to discuss the pros and cons of team blogging, with the advantage that posts have to be kept to the limit of 140 characters - in this case, as partly illustrated, Michael Nolan raised the issue on Twitter initially, Paul Walk suggested some of the possible difficulties, Mike Ellis, with tongue in cheek, questioned whether Web managers had anything to say and Michael Nolan delivered the punch line In the screen shot shown above there are six tweets, ~ 6*140 bytes and three twitterers discussing the issue (there are only 5 active blogs, reasons why this may be, a challenge to the reasons and a witty riposte). Short and sweet But more seriously I think there are roles for a diversity of communications tools including email lists, blogs and micro-blogging tools: each will have its own strengths and weaknesses, but we need to experiment and gain experiences in order to find out what the strengths may be. And to revisit Michael’s original reflection on the need for members of Web teams “to communicate what we’re doing better” can it be really suggested that email lists are sufficient? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 4 Comments »

Popular IWMW 2008 Presentations July 31, 2008 59 of 544

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We encouraged presenters and workshop facilitators at IWMW 2008 to make their slides available on Slideshare using the IWMW2008 tag. And I’m pleased to say that not only have a number of the slides have been uploaded, but that they getting large numbers of views. The most watched slide is Ewan McIntosh’s Unleasing The Tribe closing keynote talk. However the figures are somewhat misleading, as the slides were uploaded a month ago, after Ewan gave a similar talk at a conference in Ireland. Discounting this the most popular slides and from the workshop session on “Mind Mapping for Effective Content Management” given by Gareth Saunders and Stephen Evans (University of St Andrews) following by Michael Nolan’s slides on “Stuff What we’re doing at Edge Hill University“.

I am pleased that the resources which were delivered to about 20-30 people at each of the two sessions I’ve mentioned have been shared with, and used by, a much larger community. Let’s do more of this, I say. And if you are wondering why Gareth and Stephen’s slides are so popular, why now view them for yourself, or read Gareth’s blog post about his session.

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Use of Twitter to Support IWMW Events July 30, 2008 Twitter has been used at a number of events recently, often as a discussion channel for participants and, on occasions when a live video stream is available, as a channel to facilitate discussions and questions with remote participants. However there are potential problems with use of Twitter in this way. If, for example, only a small number of one’s Twitter followers are at the event (or interested in the event) the tweets can be annoying - as I found when I used Twitter to comment on a conference I was attending in Taiwan back in April. There are other micro-blogging tools which may be better suited for use at events, which I’ll comment on in a forthcoming post. In this post I’d like to comment on the approach taken to use of Twitter to support the recent IWMW 2008 event. For this event an ‘official’ IWMW Twitter account was set up. This was intended to provide a channel for the event organisers to deliver messages to participants who chose to follow the IWMW Twitter account. A particular benefit of use of Twitter is that you can configure your Twitter account so that posted from selected Twitter accounts can be delivered as SMS text messages to your mobile phone free-of-charge. The need for a communications channel for event organisers first occurred to me several years ago, when travel was being disrupted by floods. I asked participants at an event I was attended if they would be willing to give details of their mobile phone number to an organiser of an event, for use in emergencies. The majority indicated that they would be happy with this and we became aware of the need to have the mobile phone numbers of speakers at our events when a bus failed to turn up to take delegates (including one of the speakers) to the 61 of 544

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lecture theatre at IWMW 2004. So we updated our IWMW booking form back in 2005 in order to record mobile phone numbers. The event organisers had this data available on a spreadsheet, but this could only be used to contact individuals - we didn’t have the backend processes to send bulk text messages to the delegates, and we were not keen on spending additional time and effort on evaluating and deploying software to allow us to do this. But as the middle day of the IWMW 2006 event took place on the 7/7 (the day of the London bombings) we felt this was something we would need to explore at some point. After gaining experience in use of Twitter over the past year it struck me that this might provide a communications channel between the IWMW event organisers and the participants. And as the participants simply need to sign up for a free Twitter account and can then choose to have posts delivered to their mobile phone it avoids the need for us to store and manage the mobile phone numbers and to establish a service for sending text messages. Perhaps best of all, the users are in control of whether or not they wish to receive text messages.

Twitter was used to send a small number of posts. One of these was sent (automatically, using the Easy Tweets service which can be used to schedule posts) at 12.30, at the start of the event, reminding people to send their mobile phones to silent mode. And we did have one example which demonstrated the potential benefits of this service - I was handed a set of keys belonging to one of the delegates. I sent a message out on Twitter and within a few minutes someone came up to me telling me that he had misplaced his keys. A great example of the benefits of Twitter? Well, not quite, as he wasn’t using Twitter and he came to see me as I was one of the conference organisers 62 of 544

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It should also be noted that if Twitter followers sent a message to the IWMW account this could also be delivered to a mobile phone, thus providing a 2-way SMS communications link, without the need to divulge a mobile phone number to conference delegates or organisers - the trusted party, in this case, is Twitter. Twitter, it seems to me, has great potential in the support of events. Prior to encouraging its use we created a page describing Twitter and how it could be used. I guess one issue we will need to address is what would happen if Twitter was unavailable during an event? This has been happening a lot recently, and some may argue that you shouldn’t rely on third party services which have proven reliability problems. I don’t agree with this - I regard this use of Twitter as a value-added service and if Twitter is not available we will use the communication channels we used previously. But what do you think? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Twitter, Web2.0, iwmw2008 | Edit 7 Comments »

Social Networks Can Be Just For Christmas July 29, 2008 Due to one of the speaker’s not being able to attend, we had to find, at the last moment, a couple of speakers to take part in the opening session at IWMW 2008. I was pleased that Claire Gibbons, University of Bradford and Mike Ellis, Eduserv, were able to provide brief presentations which helped to engage with the IWMW 2008 theme of The Great Debate. I videoed Claire’s talk, in which she described why the University of Bradford had set up a social network using Ning. I have previously commented on institutional use of Ning, including Bradford’s service, but it was good to hear why this social network was established (to support newly arrived students) and how it is envisaged that the social network is expected to have an impact only during the first term of the new academic year. Such social networks, according to Claire, don’t always have to have long term sustainability - and maybe a social network can be for just until Christmas.

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Please note that this video is available on YouTube (and further details of Claire’s talk are available on the IWMW 2008 Web site). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Social Networking, iwmw2008 | Edit 3 Comments »

IWMW 2008 Innovation Competition July 28, 2008 The Innovation Competition held at this year’s IWMW 2008 event probably differentiates itself from other mashup events, hackfests, etc. in welcoming not only examples of technical innovations, but also submissions which do not require technical expertise. So it was pleasing that the most popular submission was the IWMW theme song, performed by Debbie Nicholson (University of Essex), Claire Gibbons (University of Bradford), Miles Banbery (University of Kent) and David White (Sheffield Hallam University), which received 117 votes on the electronic voting system (and is available on YouTube).

However although this submission (entitled A collaborative cross-institutional user-generated interactive mashup thing) may have been a clear crowd-pleaser a number of the more technical submissions could have more significant impact on the sector.

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The Live Train Departures info submission by Dawn Petherick, University of Birmingham gathered 92 votes for, I think, two main reasons: it is user-focussed (we all have an interest in knowing when the trains we are planning to catch will arrive) and Debbie stated that the code used to develop this service can be freely used by others. I am sure, incidentally, that Debbie’s comment that it was her birthday did not influence the voting An image of the interface within the University of Birmingham portal is shown. You can also view the full portal page, a more complete view of train information, and a diagram of the technical architecture of the service. The first submission to the contest, Mashing Points of Interest for your Institutionreceived 87 votes. This submission, by David Mackland, University of Abertay display points of interest on a Google map without the need for any HTML or coding knowledge and allows the management of multiple maps for various audiences from a single source. This submission was popular with Mike McConnell, one of the local organisers for IWMW 2008, as he had used the service to support the IWMW 2008 event - a clear example of a mashup service developed for the use of one institution which provided a valuable service to another. Tony Hirst’s submission: Steps towards a media release tracking/effectiveness dashboard widget received 84 votes. As Tony has described in his blog post, this application uses Yahoo Pipes and the Yahoo Search term extractor to explore the impact of institutional press releases, with a visualisation of the output being provided using a Dipty timeline. And in response to a question from Paul Walk, this demonstrator only took about a couple of hours to produce (the additional time taken in cleaning the data and learning the tools traditional doesn’t count in a developer’s man month Finally I should mention Mike Ellis’s StudentViews submission which received 72 votes. The Studentviews application is based on the premise that students (in fact most users) aren’t likely to be particularly interested in “the corporate, preened and sanitised view of an HE institution. Instead, peer viewpoints, reviews, alumni pictures, video and Facebook comments are likely to be the first port of call for most freshers when considering which HE institution to apply for.” The StudentViews application aimed to mash HE data with Flickr pictures of the institution and surrounding area within a quick, intuitive interface. Because the build involves the gathering of institution data which should be freely and easily available to all, this data will also be exposed via a simple Web API. However Mike’s plans were thwarted by the University of Aberdeen firewall which restricted access to devices on the WiFi network. But Mike did successfully build a very simple “API” which lets you query 65 of 544

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institution name (see example) with queryable RSS output. In addition Mike also produced a KML file of locations of UK HEIs (for use with the Google Earth application), a simple IM (Instant messaging) application for accessing institutional information and finally a Google Custom Search Engine which spiders all 190 UK HE sites. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2008 ·Tags: iwmw2008 | Edit 1 Comment »

Would You Like To Contribute To A Paper On Library 2.0? July 27, 2008 I’m pleased to say that I’ve been invited to present a paper at the “Bridging Worlds 2008” conference, to be held in Singapore on 16-17th October 2008. I’ll be writing the paper over the next 6 weeks and have started thinking about the structure and things I want to say. But having recently heard Cameron Neylon give a talk on “Science in the You Tube Age” at IWMW 2008 I am reflecting on his summary of various open approaches which are being taken by scientific researches, which included a description of an open process for pulling together and submitting a bid to a funding body. Could this approach be used for my paper, I wonder? The title of the paper, which is a slight rewording of the topic I was invited to talk about, is “Library 2.0: Reaping the Scholarly and Cultural Heritage Dividends“. The paper will cover the benefits of Web 2.0 in a Library context, but will also address the possible risks and outline approaches for addressing such risks and ensuring that organisations maximise the potential benefits of Web 2.0 technologies and approaches. Would you be interested in contributing ideas to the paper, or perhaps being a co-author? I appreciate there will be issues to clarify, such as IPR, but I would like to further explore the approaches to openness which Cemeron described. If you are interested either add your name, interests and contact details on the Google docs page, send me an email or add a comment to this blog post. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

Ewan Mcintosh’s Talk At IWMW 2008 July 25, 2008 I’ve now back at work after a very tiring (not helped by train delays from Birmingham airport last night) but also very enjoyable IWMW 2008 event at the University of Aberdeen. Myself and my fellow co-chair of IWMW 2008 read though the evaluation forms for the event on the plane last night. We agree with the overwhelming positive comments which were made for Ewan Mcintosh’s plenary talk which closed this year’s event. For those who weren’t at the event or had to leave 66 of 544

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early, a version of the talk Ewan gave at a conference in May 2008 is available on Slideshare, and is embedded (with audio commentary) below.

We will see if we can get a video of Ewan’s (longer) talk given at IWMW 2008, which will be embedded in the IWMW 2008 Web site. [Note a streaming version of the talk is now available - added on 26 July 2008.] I will be writing further posts about the IWMW 2008 event, but I felt it would be worth giving a speedy comments on Ewan’s talk as those who were stimulated by his talk may wish to sow their appreciating by voting for his blog in the Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards 2008 . And note that as Ewan’s blog has been shortlisted in the Public sector IT blogs category, the UK Web Focus blog, which has been shortlisted for the Web 2.0 and business blogs category, is (fortunately) not a competitor to me :-) But hurry - as the deadline for votes in 31 July 2008. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: iwmw2008 | Edit 2 Comments »

Slideshare? Why Don’t We Video Our Talks? July 24, 2008 My RSS reader (Feedreader) recently delivered to me a post on the eFoundations blog in which Pete Johnston mentioned that a “nice overview of RDFa and its potential applications, mostly here looking at Javascript client-side stuff” was available as an hour-long video clip on YouTube.

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The video was, I believe, of a researcher who was giving a talk at a conference. He had a message he wished to communicate (of the value of RDFa) and, as he wished to maximise the impact of his message, was apparently willing for a video of his talk to be taken and subsequently made freely available. In a recent post I described how Slideshare can help to maximise the impact of a researcher’s ideas, and Andy Powell has described how Slideshare was helping him to reach a large audience for one of his recent talks on Web 2.0 and repositories. Andy suggested that recording an audio commentary to accompany the slides would be even better, but acknowledged that he probably didn’t have the time to do this. But seeing the above video clip, makes me wonder whether we should be encouraging videoing of talks, rather than the audio. And rather than attempting to do this for oneself or expecting the organiser of an event to provide a videoing service, perhaps all that’s needed is a colleague in the audience with a lightweight video device. And a blog post from Matt Jukes alerted me recently to the Flip F260N-UK Video Ultra Series Digital Camcorder, available from Amazon for about £100. The approach I’d like to take the next time I give a talk (or if I find a speaker who’d be willing to be recorded) would be for the friendly face in the audience to video the talk, and also to have a laptop with the slides with a screen 68 of 544

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recording application (such as Camtasia or Jing) running. The video can record the speaker (which would be advanced by the helper) and the audio, which would then be in sync with the slides. Of course the speaker would need to agree to this (and I feel should have the option to veto subsequent reuse of the recording if things go wrong). But as we found at last year’s IWMW 2007 event, many plenary speakers are happy for their talks to be recorded. And providing access to both an audio commentary of he slides and a video of the speaker might provide a richer experience for the audience. Or is this just using the technologies for their own sake? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 6 Comments »

International study of the use of Web 2.0 technologies July 21, 2008 I’m involved in a short-term international study of the use of Web 2.0 technologies in teaching, learning, support and administration. This study is collecting evidence, in the form of case studies, of the use of Web 2.0 in higher education in the UK, Australia, USA, South Africa and the Netherlands. This study, which is being coordinated by Tom Franklin, will be informed by an online questionnaire which is now available. If you have been using Web 2.0 in these areas I would be very grateful if you would complete the survey. It should take around 20 - 30 minutes to complete the survey. If you leave your email address you will be sent the draft report for comment and final report. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 3 Comments »

Innovate, Innovate, Innovate July 20, 2008

JISC and Innovation I recently attended the JISC Innovation Forum 2008, held at the University of Keele on 15-16thJuly 2008. Several blog posts about the event have already been published includes one’s by Paul Walk, Owen Stephens and Chris Rusbridge. Rather than repeating such reports, I feel it is appropriate to mention Sarah Porter’s introduction to the event. Sarah, Head of Innovation Group at the JISC, described what JISC meant by ‘innovation’. She provided a description of the term which she obtained from Wikipedia (dated 17 July 2008):

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The emphasis which JISC is placing on innovation clearly reflects developments to the UK Government’s policy initiatives in this area, in particular the establishment of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, DIUS.

MLA and Innovation Elspeth Hyams’ editorial in the CILIP Update magazine (June 2008, Vol. 7, No. 6) has the byline ”In This Climate, You Have To Innovate“. As Elspeth describes, the need to innovate applies equally to the information sector: “The age of the quiescent library or information manager or service is dead“. The editorial goes on to describe the MLA’s action plan for public libraries and reports on the MLA’s Chief Executive, Roy Clare, calls for “radical action on structure, far-sighted leadership vision and more public Private Partnerships“. The editorial concludes with the warning that “It’s not just a challenge for the academic schools, but for all of us” but also suggests that “we should use tough times as a golden opportunity to focus on the strategy - and upgrade and refresh our skills“.

UKOLN and Innovation As UKOLN is funded by both the JISC (we are a JISC Innovation Centre) and the MLA, there is a need for us to respond to these clearly-stated policy directions. So I’m pleased to report that we helped to provide staff in museums, libraries and archives in the London region with an opportunity to “upgrade and refresh [their] skills” with the most recent Web 2.0 and Social Networks workshop aimed at the cultural heritage sector. And next week we’ll be running the twelfth of the annual Institutional Web Management Workshops (IWMW 2008), in which we will be providing further examples of innovation which we hope will be both new and useful for members of the higher and further education communities including our explorations of use of Twitter by event organisers, use of video blogging, a live video stream of the plenary talks, the establishment of a Ning social network for the event and the innovation competition. Regular readers will be aware that such technologies have been discussed for some time now. But their use at events and within institutions is still, I feel, fairly unusual and so can be regarded as new. Whether they will be regarded as useful can only be judged by trying things out and receiving feedback. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: iwmw2008 | Edit 1 Comment »

Institutional Use of Ning July 18, 2008 A post by Lorcan Dempsey cited Tony’s Hirst’s comments on use of the Ning social network at the University of Wales, Newport and the University of Bradford. Michael Webb, Head of IT and Media Services at the University of Wales, Newport was responsible for helping to establish one of the first institutional strategy embracing use of Web 2.0 in the UK, as he described in a talk on 70 of 544

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“Developing a Web 2.0 Strategy” which he gave at the IWMW 2006 event (a video of his talk is also available). AJ Cann responded to Tony Hist’s post by saying: AARRRGHHH! Bad idea! These sites are just ghettos waiting to happen. Do they think that students joining the institution don’t already use social networks? Do they think they can compete with MySpace/Facebook? He could be right - but we won’t know unless we start to gather evidence on the ways in which social networks may be in higher education. And I have to say that I’m impressed with the approaches which are being taken at Newport. As Michael describes on his blog they first identified the purposes for the service (”The brief was to create a social place for students coming to the University to meet online before they join the University, and to be able to contact the student mentors“), they considered the legal implications of Ning’s terms and conditions (”we retain ownership of content. Hosting locating is ambiguous, but is the data isn’t that precious.“) and were willing to ‘address the constraints’ provided by the service (the use of adverts, the costs for additional storage space, the lack of single sign-on and the loss of institutional branding in the site’s URL). In return Newport have gained an opportunity to evaluate the potential of a social networking environment for new students at little cost to the institution: If we had created the site ourselves it would have taken months. If we had bought in software it would have still taken weeks. This took days. And no worrying about upgrades, downtime etc. What have we lost? We can’t control the development of the service - our users probably don’t understand this, and have already started suggesting functionality improvements. I welcome this development - and I am particularly pleased that Michael is being so open in describing the reasons for this decision, the possible risks and how the institution has responded to the risks. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Social Networking ·Tags: Ning | Edit 8 Comments »

Using Searchcube July 15, 2008 One of the unexpected benefits of having a blog was to find that, via the incoming links to my blog posts, I would be alerted to developments likely to be of interest to me - after all, if a blogger has linked to one of my blog posts, I’m likely to find what they are writing about of interest. It was via a referrer link from the Dougmuse blog that I spotted a post entitled “Bored with your search engine? Try searchcube“. I’ve previously described the SearchMe Visual Service which provides a 3D gallery style display of search results, so I was likely to be interested in how search results can be displayed on a 3D cube. This service is provided by Searchcube which “is a graphical search engine that presents search results in a compact, visual format“. It “uses the 71 of 544

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Google AJAX Search API. It displays the first thirty-two (32) results for each of websites, videos and images“. It requires support for JavaScript and Flash version 9 or above. I’ve experimented with the service for a search for ‘iwmw’. The interface is illustrated below (although to get a better idea of how this service works you need to try it - it’s fun, for example, to see how the images on the cube are assembled).

But is this ‘presentational fluff’? After an initial exploration of the interface, is this likely to be the type of search interface that people who be likely to use? And even if it does have a role to play, what are the limitations of this service? As I suggest in my post on the SearchMe service, although I personally would be unlikely to use a 3D style interface for general search queries, I could see a role for this type of interface in other contexts. If, for example, I wished to get a feel for the first page of Google results for a particular search term, this might be useful (and remember that most users are likely to only look at the first page of search results). And perhaps this type of 3D interface may provide accessibility benefits to users who find it difficult to make use of textual interfaces to search. But even as a possible interface for niche applications there are some limitations to this tool. The service requires use of Flash and even though Flash support is available for many browsers SearchCube does not provide a URI for the searches - and even the help page doesn’t have a URI associated with it. But are these insurmountable barriers? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: searchcube | Edit 2 Comments »

Nudge: Improving Decisions About RSS Usage 72 of 544

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July 13, 2008

The ‘Nudge’ Phenomenum Saturday’s Guardian has an article on ‘Nudge’, an idea developed by US economist Richard Thaler and other behavioural economists who “want to highlight the best option, while still leaving all the bad ones open“. This approach can be applied to social and economic areas such as healthy eating and pension schemes, but rather than the state mandating solutions which aim to bring about positive benefits to society or to individuals, people are made aware of the benefits of the preferred option, but are left free to make their own decisions. An example of this approach which David Cameron is exploring in the Conservative party return to power is a proposal that electricity bills should contain details of whether you are using more or less energy than other households in the area. This subtle use of peer pressure is felt to encourage households to use energy more efficiently.

WebWatch Surveys This has similarities with approach I’ve taken over the past ten years or so. A project called “WebWatch” ran a number of automated benchmarking surveys across a number of Web communities in 1998-9. After the funding had ceased the approach continued for a number of years, providing, for example, documented evidence of conformance with WCAG guidelines for institutional home pages based on use of an automated checking tool. The approach was not intended to act as a league table, but to observe patterns across the community, identify and learn from best practices and also to discuss the limitations of the survey methodology (in this case it led me to a much better understanding of the flaws in the WAI model for addressing accessibility issues).

Survey of RSS Usage on Scottish University Home Pages With the forthcoming IWMW 2008 taking place in the University of Aberdeen on 22-24thJuly 2008 it is timely to revisit the WebWatch approach across the Scottish higher educational sector, this time to monitor takeup of RSS which are embedded on institutional home pages. The approach taken has been to visit Scottish institutes of higher education (based on the table provided on the Scottish Web Folk blog) using the FireFox browser. The RSS Panel extension will detect any embedded links to RSS files and the numbers of RSS links recorded.

The Findings The findings are given in the following table.

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Institution

No. of RSS Thumbnail Feeds

Comments

RSS Feed

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University 1 0 of Aberdeen

No autodetect, but manual link to RSS Events feed news feed on home page

University 2 of Abertay

No autodetect, but manual link to RSS News feed news feed on home page

0

3 Bell College 0

University of Dundee

0

University 5 of Edinburgh

0

Edinburgh 6 College of Art

0

4

7

University 2 of Glasgow

Two comprehensive news feeds, one of News current news and University in one of an archive the news of news items dating back to October 2007

Glasgow 8 Caledonian 0 University

8

Heriot-Watt 0 University

9

Napier University

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Manual link to RSS page, containing links to News two RSS feeds, Events together with help information

0

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(Thumbnail not available) University 10 of the West 0 of Scotland Queen Margaret 11 University College Robert 12 Gordon University

0

2

Two RSS feeds, one of current news and one of events

News Events

Royal Scottish 13 Academy of 0 Music and Drama

Scottish 14 Agricultural 6 College

News and events Crop issues Seven RSS feeds this week on news and Farm events, farm diversification diversification, crop issues this Research week, research funding bids funding bids (internal only) (internal use only), student Student recruitment news, recruitment undergraduate and news postgraduate Undergraduate and courses and training courses postgraduate courses Training courses

University 15 of St. Andrews

2

Two RSS feeds, one of current news and one of events

University of Stirling

0

16

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RSS feed of press Press releases releases

UHI 18 Millennium 0 Institute

University 19 of the West 0 of Scotland

Discussion It is perhaps disappointing to find that several Scottish institutions do not appear to be providing RSS feeds which can be found from the home page. A number of them do provide a feed, which is displayed using one of the conventional orange RSS icons to indicate its role, but do not provide an autodetect mechanism, which can enable software to process the RSS file in some way. An example of how the Intenrnet Explorer browser provides access to RSS feeds which have been autodetected is shown below.

The mechanism for providing such auto-detection is use of a single <meta> tag for each RSS feed. In the case of Robert Gordon University they used the following:

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href=”http://www.rgu.ac.uk/common/xml/rssfeed.cfm” title=”RGU News RSS Feed”> Why, I wonder, aren’t all the institutions which have an RSS feed doing likewise? After all this approach can not only benefit end users, it also allows other automated tools, such as indexing robots, to find the feeds - and I suspect most institutions will want their news feeds and details of their events to be found. Perhaps the reason for not doing this is a lack of awareness - in which case I hope that this post has addressed that issue. But it may be that changes to the content of the home page have to be approved by a committee - and suggestions for “inclusion of an autodetect link for RSS feeds” might be regarded as technobabble. In which case show them the business benefits and show how other institutions are using this. My final comment on the findings of this survey is to note how the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) have included links to seven RSS feeds, including not only the conventional lists of news and events but also various other feeds for content which is directly related to their agricultural interests. Here SAC is making use of RSS as a syndication service in addition to an alerting service. An image showing how these feeds can be displ;ayed using the RSS Panel tool in FireFox. I should hasten to add that on arriving at a page which has autodetectable RSS feeds the panel is displayed as a small transparent floating window - you need to open up the window in order to display the feeds as shown.

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How usable this particular tool may be for processing more than one or two feeds may be open to question - I tend to just have one or two RSS feeds on my various Web sites, and have a dedicated RSS page which provides access to a full range of feeds. But I do think that the approach taken by the Scottish Agricultural College, of providing a number of structured resources (using RSS) is one to be welcomed. And I wonder why the Scottish Agricultural College seems to be ahead of the game. The talk I gave on Web 2.0: The Potential Of RSS and Location Based Services in Edinburgh in September 2006 didn’t have anything to do with this, did it?

Acknowledgement The thumbnails of the institutional home pages were created by the Thumbshots thumbnails service. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in rss | Edit 4 Comments »

Web Accessibility and Information Literacy Books 78 of 544

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July 11, 2008

I’m pleased to report that two books which I’ve contributed to have been published this year. I’ve previously mentioned Information Literacy Meets Library 2.0, by Peter Godwin and Jo Parker (published by Facet Publishing and also available from Amazon). In addition Web Accessibility: Practical Advice for the Library and Information Professional by Jenny Craven, which is also published by Facet Publishing and available from Amazon, also contains a chapter by me. My contributions to these two publications reflect various posts I’m published in this blog - a chapter which introduces Web 2.0 technologies is given in the Information Literacy book (this book, incidentally has been reviewed on the Joeyanne Libraryanne blog) and a description of the limitations of WAI’s approach to Web accessibility with a description of the holistic approach to Web accessibility concludes the Web Accessibility book. So rather than revisiting these topics, let me give some thoughts on the statistics on the sales of these book available on the Amazon Web site. The ranking for Information Literacy Meets Library 2.0 on 10 July 2008 is: Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 405,869 in Books and for Web Accessibility: Practical Advice for the Library and Information Professional on the same date: Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 370,249 in Books My colleague Emma Tonkin brought to my attention an article on Inside the Amazon Sales Rank. This in turn links to another article on page on Amazon Sales Rank For Books which contains a couple of embedded YouTube videos which expand on the discussions. It seems that the Amazon sales ranks reflect the following numbers of sales: Ranking Sales per day 1 3,000 10 650 100 100 1,000 13 10,000 2.2 (11 copies every 5 days) 100,000 0.2 (1 copy every 5 days) This table has been produced by publishers who correlated their sales figures with the Amazon ranking figures. But it occurs to me that with Amazon publishing these figures in a consistent fashion on their Web site it should be possible to automate the harvesting of such data, and perhaps carry out trend analyses. And for scholarly publications available from Amazon might an institution find it valuable to aggregate data for books published by staff from the institution? Or maybe it will just be the individual authors who would like to receive an alert when their publication rises up the Amazon ranking table? 79 of 544

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Fragmentation, Ghettoisation and Polarisation or Diversification? July 10, 2008 In response to my recent post on “The Open University’s Portfolio Of Web 2.0 Services” Stuart Smith described how “It’s really interesting how polarising the lowcost, easy development web 2.0 stuff is becoming“. Stuart went on to comment that “Another problem I can forsee is ghettoisation. I am thinking about those who don’t have access to the technology, or don’t want to communicate this way, or can’t e.g. because of disability.” in response to a more recent post on “Experiments With Seesmic”. Is this really the case? Are the Web 2.0 services I’ve been posting about responsible for fragmenting discussions within small ghettoised communities, resulting in polarised opinions across the community? Is the answer to this ‘yes’? And, if so, is this answer to be welcomed? Rather than regarding the developments as ghettoising communities, I would argue that we are seeing a diversification which allows communities to make use of technologies at their own rate. And this is to be welcomed over the McDonaldisation of the digital environment in which we all use the same software, either at an institutional, regional or international level. But we shouldn’t gloss over the issues which Stuart rightly raises. Fragmentation of discussions and content is happening. But this is nothing new fragmentation happened back in the early 1990s, when there were tensions between those who were continuing to provide, use and promote their in-house Campus Wide Information Systems (remember CWISs?), Gopher services and Web services. It was only over time that the market leader was identified and became accepted. And even then the institutional Web service was regarded initially as a tool for the marketing department - it took another couple of years before the Web became accepted as a legitimate mechanism for the support of teaching and learning. The thing that is new within the Web 2.0 context is that the fragmentation of discussions and content across the diverse range of Web 2.0 services can be aggregated. In part this is happening by the marketplace responding to the need for aggregation services, with tools such as Friendfeed allowing content to be aggregated from RSS feeds of blog posts, del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr photo, Twitter tweets, etc. And as well as the technical developments social services, such as Twitter, are allowing communities to share expertise, knowledge and links. For me Twitter is becoming my personalised agent, by which useful information can be quickly gathered by a group of context-aware agents (my Twitter followers) respond to my requests - and I respond by doing likewise. In his response to my blog post Stuart went on to point out that “I can think of a 80 of 544

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number of people who don’t want to be on Facebook, for example, but are feeling increasingly left out“. Here, I feel, is where we need to ensure that when use of made of social networking tools for work or formal study purposes, the social networks are used as one of several ways of accessing the resources. A blog post I wrote back in July 2007 on MyNewport - MyLearning Essentials for Facebook provided an example of this approach. As described by Mchael Webb: MyLearning Essentials is the VLE/portal used by our staff and student, including course material, news, blogs, forums, library access etc. MyNewport is a Facebook application that allows students to access to MyLearning Essentials resources from Facebook. In this example staff and student can choose whether to use the managed in-house MyLearning Essentials or the MyNewport Facebook application to access the same resources. What is needed are institutional policies which ensure that students aren’t required to use social networking services such as Facebook in order to access required resources, coupled with new media literacy strategies which will ensure that users of such services are aware of the potential downsides (the privacy issues, for example) and are aware of how such issues can be managed (i.e. knowledge of how to change privacy settings). I also feel that supporting a diversity of services which the end user may prefer to use can also address the accessibility challenges. If a user is uncomfortable with a text-based interface to communication tools, perhaps a video interface might provide a alternative which the user will prefer. So rather than forcing everyone to use the same interface (”we will only deal with email”) the organisation may wish to provide a range of channels. This approach can also enhance accessibility by regarding the user not as a disabled user but as a user with a particular set of preferences. The challenge, then, is to ensure that an appropriate level of response is provided to the various channels. Let’s say yes to the diversification - but let’s also ensure that we address the management and support challenges, as well, of course, the sustainability of the services (which has been discussed in a number of other posts on this blog). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

“How the Google generation thinks differently” July 9, 2008 I was pleased to receive an email message this morning from Gill Smith, the Communications Officer here at the University of Bath. Gill’s ‘finely-tuned antenna‘ (a daily Google alert for news articles on “University of Bath” OR “Bath University” had alerted her to an article published on today’s Times (as an aside I should say how pleased I am that staff in our Corporate Communications department seem to be routinely making use of RSS). Although I disagree with the title of the article - “How the Google generation thinks differently” - I am pleased with the second part of the byline: “Digital-age kids process information differently from parents. Our writer admits misjudging how her son was learning“. The article describes the background to the story, which was published in the 81 of 544

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Women’s section (I mention this to make clarify that the article aims to give the perspective of a concerned parent rather than a scholarly article). In brief, Catherine O’Brien, the mother of a 15 year old boy is concerned that her son is spending a lot of time on the Internet, partly listening to music and chatting to friends and also doing his homework. As a journalist she spotted the opportunity for an article, which was based on reading the literature and talking to a number of experts in the field. In our telephone interview I argued that (a) teenagers doing new things that parents didn’t really understand is nothing new and (b) the way teenagers use Google is not very different from how the parents do - whether we’re professional in academia or in the press. And, indeed, Catherine admits in her article: Google has been my godsend as a writer. Research that once required hours of trawling through reports and cuttings, and days of fielding calls to source experts, can be done in a few clicks of a mouse. It seems that my advice that she should encourage her son to make use of the Internet, but to ensure that she advises him on best practices has been taken: I recovered quickly enough from my hissy fit and returned my son’s laptop the next evening. The proof of the pudding would be in his results, I decided, and now that they have come in, I have to concede that the social networking/internet surfing/revision combo threw up no surprises. From the pleasing to the mediocre, his grades were predictable. I’m pleased that the 15 minute phone interview had such a positive impact in the O’Brien household. And it’s even more pleasing that this may be read by the hundreds of thousands of readers of The Times

Footnote After I published this post I bought a hard copy of The Times and found that the article (page 10 in the Times2 section) had the title “Why I confiscated my son’s computer (then gave it back)“: a much more appropriate title, in my view, although the same byline is used. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 12 Comments »

Dipity Timeline Of IWMW Events July 8, 2008 For the Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event I created a timeline of IWMW events using MIT’s SImile software. This software is being used to drive a number of timeline displays, such as the example created by Frankie Roberto at the recent Mashed Museum 08 event. The Simile software is not, however, all that easy for a non-developer to use. So I was pleased to recently come across the Web-based Dipity service for creating and visualising timelines. I used this to create a timeline of IWMW events, which can be accessed on the Dipity Web site. It has also been embedded on the UKOLN Web site. An image of the interface is shown below. 82 of 544

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In addition to providing a timeline of the annual event from 1997-2008 I also included photos from Flickr which had been tagged with ‘iwmw2008′. And as the service allows not only uploads from various popular Web 2.0 services (Flickr, YouTube, etc.) but also from any RSS feed I realised that I could also add the news feed for IWMW 2008 and details of the plenary talks, which is also available as an RSS file. The timeline of the IWMW 2008 News provides a visual display of the public announcements such as when the Web site was set up, the call for speakers announced, the event opened for bookings, etc. The display of the timetable for the plenary talks can provide a similar overview - but in this case the times are not necessarily accurate, due to the complexities of time zones (I haven’t yet established whether this is a limitation of the Dipity service or the data I use). More importantly, though, is the danger of data lock-in when using a service such as this, together with the question of the sustainability of the Dipity company -especially as a Crunchbase article on Dipity fails to provide any evidence of investment in the company. The approach I have taken is to steer clear of making significant use of the data entry form for the service - and initially I thought that it wasn’t possible to export data added to the system, although I subsequently discovered an RSS feed for my timeline - although this does not appear to be documented. As a general principle, however, I would be concerned if my data is locked into an 83 of 544

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application,and lost if the service failed to be sustainable or if I wanted to migrate my data to an alternative service. However as Dipity allows data to be imported from RSS feeds I am able to have my managed RSS feeds as the master source for my data, thus reducing the risks of data loss to any minor tweaks I may make to the data within the Dipity service. So if you regard Dipity as a visualisation tool for data which is managed elsewhere, I would suggest that the service can provide a very useful way of displaying data. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: Dipity | Edit 1 Comment »

Experiments With Seesmic July 7, 2008 I recently met Alan Cann and he mentioned to me how he has been exploring the potential of the Seesmic video micro-blogging service in a learning context. This renewed my interest in the Seesmic service - so I have started to evaluable its potential to support the forthcoming IWMW 2008 event. My intention is to post a number of short video clips prior to the event which will describe some of the things that will be taking place at the event. I will also be inviting video responses from the IWMW 2008 delegates and others who have an interest in the event. I’ve created a page on the IWMW 2008 Web site in which the Seesmic video posts are embedded. The first video post (illustrated below) provides an introduction to the event, and further posts are planned which will describe the IWMW 2008 bar camp, the innovation competition, the IWMW 2008 social network, the plenary talks, workshop sessions and the social activities planned for our time in Aberdeen.

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But what about the limitations of the services and the risks which use of the tool may entail? After all, I’ve previously suggested that when making use of new tools we need to be honest about potential risks. The first point to make is that, although Seesmic video clips can be embedded in other Web sites, it does not seem to be possible to export the video clips. And from a user’s perspective we have no evidence that there will be an interest in this type of service by the intended target audience. Creating the video posts might possibly be a waste of time.

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But despite such concerns, I will be continuing to create the video posts. Even if the video clips are not currently exportable, this could change (after all the Slideshare service did not intially allow uploaded PowerPoint files to be downloaded from the service, but a download option was subsequently added to the service). And even though it cannot be guaranteed that an export function will be provided in the future I still feel it is worth evaluating a service such as this in order to gain experiences which could be transferred to other services. And it is very interesting to read on Rafe Needleham’s blog that Twirl will be providing support for Seesmic video posts. As can be seen from the accompanying screenshot, the textual display of ‘tweets’ can be complemented by an accompanying video. And with many laptops having cameras bundled in with them and many mobile phones now also providing video facilities, perhaps this is the next stage in the development of the communications infrastructure of what is often refererd to as Web 2.0. I should conclude by saying that following my first few Seesmic blog posts I have received a number of interesting replies. In particular it was suggested that there is a need to ensure that any responses to an inital video post are kept on topic - unlike text it is not easy to quickly skim a video post. I have therefore created a general Seesmic video post which I’m happy to be used for general responses - I’ll keep any responses to the IWMW 2008 video posts to their stated purpose. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: Seesmic, twhirl | Edit 5 Comments »

The Open University’s Portfolio Of Web 2.0 Services July 3, 2008 I’ve commented recently on the Open University’s use of Facebook (they have more ‘fans’ than any other university).

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And it seems the Open University is proactive in making corporate use of several other Web 2.0 services.

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As can be seen from the accompanying screen shot the Open University are making use of iTunes University, YouTube and Twitter Their use page describes how they are using these services - and encourages interested parties to make use of this content. The Open University describes how it is the first UK university to have a dedicated page on YouTube, and they have stated that they’ll be making available a much greater range of their video materials available on the service. And I wonder if they’re also the first UK university to have an official Twitter account? I don’t think, though, that they’re the first to make use their institutional podcasts available on iTunes - indeed, as I posted about recently, the University of Bath won a European award for the quality of its podcasts, which are available for downloading from iTunes as well as from the University’ of Bath’s podcast page. And finally, as well as their commitment to use of third party Web 2.0 services the Open University is also taking a high profile with its OpenLearn service which provides access to free learning resources. I recently commented on how ‘Edupunks’ are challenging institutional inertia and conservatism by engaging with light-weight development. Is the Open University embracing an ‘edupunk’ approach in its use service, I wonder? And if so, does this mean that Tony Hirst, whose OUseful blog has often challenged conservatism in the Open University, is now being embraced by the establishment? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: Open University | Edit 11 Comments »

WordPress has Gears (and my Glass is Half Full) July 2, 2008 88 of 544

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WordPress have just announced the availability of WordPress Gears: Gears? It is a browser extension like Flash or QuickTime/Media Player. However Gears works with the browser to enhance web based applications. It can create local database and file storage, and run JavaScript in the background to update them without slowing down the browser. Gears has been in the making for over a year and is well known among the web developers. Currently it supports Firefox versions 2 & 3 and Internet Explorer versions 6 & 7. Safari 3 support is coming soon. On WordPress.com it is used to store all images and other web page components from the admin area to the user’s PC, speeding up access and reducing unnecessary web traffic. The speed increase is most noticeable when Internet is slow or on high latency and makes everybody’s blogging experience more enjoyable. We’re now starting to see the development of a numbers of tools which will reduce the bandwidth requirements for using a networked application and/or allow Web-based applications to be usable offline (e.g. Google Gears). I’m pleased with the variety of developments which are taking place behind the scenes on the WordPress.com Web site which hosts this blog. In January 2008, for example, there was an announcement on the WordPress blog that an interface which provides access statistics for syndicated accesses to blog posts had been relaunched and a week later there was an announcement of enhancements to the interface to the Akismet spam filter. Indeed if you look at the WordPress.com blog archive for 2008 you will see a whole host of developments which have been made, many to the hosted blog environment. This is an example of the ‘always beta’ nature of many Web 2.0 services. But not everybody likes this. Stuart Smith, for example, has commented recently on my blog that: Part of the problem is the eternal beta syndrome that dominates the world of web apps. It means nothing is ever finished or entirely taken responsibility for. It’s true that an ‘eternal beta’ approach could be used to deploy new developments which have not been adequately tested, to the detriment of the end user. But to me the response to this criticism is to say that ongoing enhancements to services need to be carefully managed and mechanisms are needed to allow users to quickly and easily provide their feedback. In the case of the WordPress.com blog, the announcement are made on their developments blog, are brought to the attention of blog authors in their administrators interface and they encourage feedback - which they do receive. When the WordPress open source software is installed locally to provide a blog service, such ongoing developments do not happen. And this, I find, somewhat irritating when I use the JISC PoWR blogwhich is hosted by the JISC on their JISC Involve blog hosting service- the blog software is somewhat dated, and hasn’t benefitted from the developments I’m used to on the UK Web Focus blog. Perhaps the differences between my perspectives and Stuart’s are based on 89 of 544

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particular experiences we may have had. On the other hand perhaps this reflects an individual mindset - do you see software development as bringing about improvements, or are developments more likely to be to disrupt well-established working practices? Or to put it another way, is the glass half full or half empty? I’m pleased to say that WordPress.com blog is half full :-) (But WordPress shouldn’t get too complacent - if the quality deteriorates, I can always take my custom elsewhere). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog ·Tags: Wordpress | Edit 3 Comments »

UK Web Focus Blog Shortlisted for Web 2.0 and Business Blogs Award July 2, 2008

I’m pleased to report that the UK Web Focus blog has been shorlisted in the Web 2.0 and Business category of the Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards 08 competition. The full list of the nominated blogs in this category are: Brian Kelly’s UK Web Focus: Reflections on the Web and Web 2.0 Roo Reynolds - What’s Next?, “UK-based Metaverse Evangelist, blogger and geek” Eightbar from Hursley Park DRM blog by CapGemini’s Jude Umeh, from BCS Middledigit.net, by Jonathan Hopkins and covers Web 2.0, technology and marketing Broadstuff.com from Broadsight TechCrunch UK Blending the Mix: A look at the new world and new marketing and all it means… Paul Downey: Whatfettle, marras? User Pathways by James Kelway I’d like to invite readers of this blog to have a look at the shortlisted nomintations - and vote for the blog you think is best. I should add that Mia Ridge’s Open Objects blog is also shortlisted, in the Programming and Technical category. And seeing as how Mia wrote a post on Sunday on Responsibility to users? I think her blog would be a worthy winner (in interest of transparency I should add that I know Mia and we went out drinking at the Museums and and Web 2008 conference!) 90 of 544

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And finally I’ll mention that a Seesmic video post about the blog nomination is also available. Free to watch thde video (it only lasts for 52 seconds) - and I’d invite comments and feedback. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: computer-weekly, cw08 | Edit 4 Comments »

We Can Be Right And Wrong! July 1, 2008 There has recently been a series of blog posts which have reflected on the differing views on and approaches to use of Web 2.0 within our institutions. Initially I gave a talk on What If We’re Wrong? in which I described the legitimate concerns that have been raised related to Web 2.0 (privacy concerns, dangers that services may not be sustainable; etc.). I argued the need to listen to such concerns, refine the ways in which Web 2.0 services may be deployed and developed risk assessment and risk managements strategies. Martin Weller responded with a post on Web 2.0 - Even If We’re Wrong, We’re Right. Martin argued that even if, for example, some Web 2.0 services aren’t sustainable or if services suffer from performance problems (as is currently the case with Twitter) we can’t expect that we can go back to the previous environment of brochure-ware Web sites and disenfranchising users from the creation of content.. I then asked What If We’re Right? and asked what would be the implications of adopting an over-cautious approach to Web 2.0 in which we found that others (our competitors, perhaps) were successfully exploiting Web 2.0, while we were wasting time and resources in developing small-scale conservative alternatives which we can’t even guarantee will be used by out user communities. (And I should add that I was pleased that this post was picked up by Michael Stephens on the Tame The Web blog). Owen Stephens joined in the debate with his post on Even If We’re Right We’re Wrong in which he cited evidence from a number of JISC-funded reports on the use of the Social Web by students - and in particular the negative reactions from students if use of social networking services was imposed on them. The final scenario, it seems to me, is to suggest that We Can Be Right And Wrong! This approach would build on evidence such as that described by Owen but rather than responding with a blunt approach to concerns (”students don’t like use of social networks being imposed on them - so we’ll have nothing to do with social networks“) a more sophisticated approach would be adopted (”as the students do seem to find social networks useful and appear to welcome the availability of advice and support, but on their terms, we’ll (a) not ban the tools; (b) provide mechanisms - such as RSS feeds - whereby support can be provided and (c) we’ll ensure our institution provides a new media literacy policy“). And, of course, there still remains the opportunity to make use of social networks in other areas, such as by the research community and engagement with one’s peers (this latter use case is the one I found most useful). The approach of taking a number of different scenarios and exploring the 91 of 544

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implications of those scenarios was something I came across at a JISC workshop some time ago (JISC had funded consultants to develop and deliver a series of scenario planning workshops). And I think that many of those involved in Web 2.0 development are willing to explore a broad range of issues. The danger is, I feel, those who may be sceptical of a Web 2.0 approach who aren’t willing to explore the implications if they are wrong. And I have come across people and organisations who seem to have been ignoring the developments we have seen over the past few years.

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

The Mashed Museum Event June 30, 2008 I recently attended the Mashed Museum event, organised by Mike Ellis (Eduserv) which was held on the day prior to the UK Museums and the Web 2008 conference. Further information on the event is available on the MashedMuseum wiki. Frankie Roberto has already written a blog post on his use of Freebase (for providing structured access to collections data from the Science Museum) and the Simile timeline service for visualising the data. However the most comprehensive summary of the day I’ve found is available on the Findus.org.uk blog which gives an excellent overview of several of the developments, together with a more in depth summary of a development which made use of Twitter, Google Maps, Google earth. My effort was much simpler - it involved use of the PicLens tool to produce a 3D visualisation of museum objects along similar lines to the 3D visualisation of the history of the University of Bath home page. However rather than focussing on technical development (not a strength of mine) my main interest was in ways in which development activities which take place at mashup events can be shared with a wider community and become embedded within the organisation. And so my visualisation included details of why such a service would be valuable to an organisation (a 3D visualisation may be more engaging than a static 2D Web page and could help to engage new audiences), business models to help to ensure the sustainability of such services (you could have occasional advertisements including in the 3D gallery) and concluded by summarising possible barriers (e.g. accessibility issues) and how those barriers may be addressed. In addition brief technical details were provided for those who might want to know how to implement this type of interface for their own service.

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I did wonder, though, whether such supporting materials would be needed aren’t software developers typically self-reliant and capable of working out for themselves how to make use of the lightweight development environments which were used during the event? I was therefore reassured when Michael Twidale raised the issue of the difficulties which can be encountered when using tools such as Yahoo Pipes, which aren’t well-documented and fail to provide much assistance if the software fails to work. And several other people at the event agreed with Michael’s thoughts, which I recorded as a video clip.

Shouldn’t we encourage software developers to record screencasts of their development work, I wonder, explaining why they make decisions which may not be obvious to others, and perhaps even swearing when things go wrong after all, learning from the mistakes made by other can be a particular valuable way of avoiding making similar mistakes ourselves. And haven written the above post, I’ve just received an email from Mike Ellis announcing a 12 minute video clip which summarises the day’s event including 93 of 544

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snippets from many of the developers at the event. Not only has he edited the various clips he took during the day, he’s also added music which he’d composed - very impressive stuff! Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in mashups ·Tags: ukmw08 | Edit 4 Comments »

Come Into My Twitterverse June 27, 2008 Some time ago I published a post entitled “Come Into My World” in which I described a Facebook application which could be used to visualise the links between your Facebook contacts. Recently, via a post on the Twitter Apps blog, I discovered a similar application, TweetWheel, which can be used to visualise the relationships between one’s Twitter followers - on, indeed, any Twitter user. As can be seen in the accompanying image (or by viewing the live data) Matt Jukes is connected to many others of my Twitter followers, whereas the JISC Twitter ID is linked to only one of my followers and the Dulwichonline and RareEdge IDs are not being followed by any of my contacts.

Unlike Facebook, relationships in Twitter are, by default, open for everyone to view meaning anyone can make use of this tool, even if they don’t have a Twitter ID. I think that this is another tool which can be useful in helping to provide users with a visualisation of how they, or others, are using Twitter. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) 94 of 544

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When W3C Web Pages Break June 26, 2008 I was looking at a page on the W3C Web site recently to update my knowledge of the SVG specification and SVG tools. I noticed a link at the bottom of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) page to an RSS feed for the page, and, as a fan of RSS syndication, thought it might be worth adding this feed to my RSS viewer. However when I clicked on the link, rather than seeing the RSS feed and having the option to add this to my preferred RSS reader, an error message was displayed:

Now validating this RSS feed with the RSS validator on the W3C Web site informs me of an error with the feed:

Sorry This feed does not validate. line 227, column 87: Undefined named entity: reg (5 occurrences) [help] ... ability as well as the Internet Explorer® Plugin and

This feed does not validate. It seems that either W3C’s workflow process has failed to removed the registered trademark character for the term “Internet Explorer®” or the RSS schema has failed to included a declaration for this character entity. No big deal, you may think - and, as the page isdisplayed in the FireFox 95 of 544

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browser, this is surely another failure of Internet Explorer to follow Web standards. But if you view the page in Opera you get an XML parser error message:

And here, I think, both Internet Explorer and Opera seem to be obeying the requirement that user agents aren’t expected to render non-compliant pages. And this hard line approach has been promoted as a vision of the future of the Web by the W3C. It has been argued that mandating rigourous compliance with specs would help to maximise interoperabilty. This may be true - but at what cost. As someone who studied engineering at University I am aware of the benefits of a fail-safe approach to design, so that if one small component fails it doesn’t mean that the building will collapse. But in this case one small component (the trademark character entity) which hasn’t been properly defined, has led to a total failure for the page to be rendered in two browsers. Don’t we need Web resources to be designed so they’ll fail gracefully and will be tolerant if humans make mistakes or, as it seems is the case here, there are failures in the workflow?

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards ·Tags: SVG | Edit 5 Comments »

Government Web Sites MUST Be WCAG AA Compliant! 96 of 544

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June 25, 2008 I commented previously on the Public consultation on Delivering Inclusive Websites (TG102) which proposed that “all government websites must meet Level Double-A of the W3C guidelines by December 20082009“. It seems that this proposal has now been implemented. Some may feel that this is to be welcomed, but as I have argued previously, mandating use of a dated set of Web accessibility guidelines which have been shown to be flawed will, I believe, be counter-productive. And judging by an article by Julie Howell (formerly of the RNIB and currently Director of Accessibility at Fortune Cookie and chair of the British Standards Institution’s committee on web accessibility) entitled Web Accessibility. Life In the Post-Guideline Age I don’t think I’m alone in my views. The updated Chapter 2.4 to the Guidelines for UK Government Websites document is now available as a document on Delivering inclusive websites (MS Word format; a PDF version but no HTML and HTML versions are also available) states that: The Delivering inclusive websites document (issued on 12 June 2008) states that: 1. The minimum level of accessibility for all Government websites is Level Double-A of the W3C guidelines. Any new site approved by the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Public Engagement and the Delivery of Service (DA(PED)) must conform to these guidelines from the point of publication. All new websites must conform to these guidelines from the point of publication. 2. Continuing standalone sites must achieve this level of accessibility by December 2008. Websites which fail to meet the mandated level of conformance shall be subject to the withdrawal process for .gov.uk domain names, as set out in Naming and Registering Websites (TG101).

3. Websites owned by central government departments must be Double-A conformant by December 2009. This includes websites due to converge on Directgov or BusinessLink, unless convergence is scheduled before this date.

That’s right - if Government Web sites don’t achieve WCAG AA compliance by December 2009, their domain name may be withdrawn. That’s bound to enhance the accessibility of the service, isn’t it? I wondered about the accessibility of the 10 Downing Street Web site. Putting this through a HTML validator I find mutiple validation errors. And as HTML compliance is mandatory (in WCAG 1.0), this means that the Web site fails to pass the Government minimum standards for accessibility. And if this is still the case in December, the No 10 Downing Street Web site will be forced to shut down - with processes for shutting down Government Web sites have already been documented (in MS Word and PDF formats). Coincidentally (or perhaps not) the accessibility auditing 97 of 544

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company SiteMorse have just published a Website Survey June 2008 - UK Central Government report. This survey (based on SiteMorse’s automated accessibility checking tool) reports that only 11.3% of the government Web sites surveyed pass the WCAG AA tests which their automated software can detect! A table showing the rankings of Government Web sites for a range of criteria including accessibility is available on the SiteMorse Web site and the Top 11 Web sites, which comply with WCAG AA according to the automated test are shown (there is one other Web site , labelled as ‘London Councils’ which passes the automated accessibility compliance test). Will we see a drastic pruning of the Central Government Web sites which aren’t included in the table at the start of the 2009? Or will we see vast amounts of tax-payer’s money being spend on ensuring that the Web sites manage to pass the automated tests? Or perhaps we’ll simply see a withdrawal of the services. What we can’t say is that the Web sites which fail the automated tests are necessarily inaccessible to people with disabilities. And we also can’t say that the Web sites which pass the automated tests are necessarily accessible to people with disabilities. This approach is all about passing artificial benchmarks, not addressing the needs of citizens with disabilities. An unfortunate aspect of this new policy is that when the JISC TechDis Service together with UKOLN organised the Accessibility Summit II event on A User-Focussed Approach to Web Accessibility we ensured that as well as inviting accessibility researchers and representatives form the disability community (including Kevin Carey founder of HumanITy and Robin Christoperson, head of Accessibility Services, AbilityNet) we also invited a representative form the central Government. The participants at the meeting agreed on the need “to call on the public sector to rethink policy and guidelines on accessibility of the web to people with a disability“. As David Sloan, Research Assistant at the School of Computing at the University of Dundee and co-founder of the summit reported in a article published in the E-Government Bulletin “the meeting unanimously agreed the WCAG were inadequate“. What is to be done? The cynic, disillusioned by the current Government, might relish the embarrassment Gordon Brown and his Cabinet colleagues may face when the implications of this decision become more widely known. And we can expect opposition Shadow Cabinet Ministers and papers such as the Daily Mail using this as an opportunity to undermine the Government, with initial questions of “Will the minister explain why almost 90% of Government Web sites can’t be accessed by people with disabilities?” to be followed by “Will the minister give the costs of changing Government Web sites to comply with WCAG accessibility standards which are now obsolete?” or “Will the minister explain why the Government has caved in to European demands to implement a set of politically-correct guidelines which researchers have shown to be flawed?”“. 98 of 544

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And if the Government does carry out its promise to shut down non-compliance Web sites: “Why has the Government shut down its Web sites? This is political correctness gone mad“. But to take satisfaction in such embarrassment is to miss the point. Implementation of this policy is likely to result in a deterioration of the quality of Government services to all:-) Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility | Edit 7 Comments »

What If We’re Right? June 23, 2008 Back in April I gave an online presentation to the JISC-Emerge community entitled What If We’re Wrong? in which I described some of the concerns which have been expressed related to use of Web 2.0 servies (e.g. sustainability of the service, privacy issues, etc.) and suggested some approaches for dealing with concerns (e.g. risk assessment and risk management strategies. Following some Twitter discussions Martin Weller wrote a post entitled Web 2.0 - even if we’re wrong, we’re right in which he argued that even if some services aren’t sustainable, we won’t go back to the way thiungs were and we can’t unlearn our experiences and expectations. As I described in my response “Even If We’re Wrong, We’re Right” Martin’s post gave me a fresh insight into these issues. But what, I wonder, are the implications if we’re right? Perhaps it’s now timely to ask ourselves: What if externally-hosted services do turn out to be sustainable? What if technologies such as AJAX, coupled with ARIA support, provide usable and accessible services and define the type of user experiences which our users will expect in the services they use? What if an’edupunk‘ approach succeeds in implmenting change, leaving behind the more formal approaches to IT development? Now many of the pragmatic Web 2.0 users and developers are addressing the potential problems they could face with their risk strategies. But are the Web 2.0 sceptics assessing the risks hat they may be wrong? What about the risks that students will abandon institutional services (as, it seems, they are starting to do with email)? What about:

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The risks that graduates will find it difficult to get jobs if they have little experience of popular Web 2.0 technologies, having spent 3 years using elearning tools which aren’t known outside the HE/FE environment? The institutions which fail to attract new students, researchers or staff as they aren’t making use of popular social networking services? The researchers who continue to work just small groups, using email and accessing papers on institutional repositories but don’t follow discussions which their peers are having in the blogosphere? And finally what about the risks that IT development programmes ignore the benefits of lightweight solutions, preferring to develop more sophisticated services which aim to solve every possible contingency - and then nobody uses the service as it’s too complex for most? 03/10/2008 14:51

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The question needs to be asked: what if we’re right? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 6 Comments »

RSS Training For Remote Workers (And Remote Users) June 20, 2008 We have a number of remote workers at UKOLN, with staff based in the south west, south east and north of England and Scotland. We are making increasing use of networked technologies to support the remote workers - with a workshop session on “Embracing Web 2.0 Technologies to Grease the Wheels of Team Cohesion” being given by my colleague Marieke Guy together with Andy Ramsden, head of the e-learning unit at the University of Bath at this year’s IWMW 2008 event. When preparing for a recent training course on “An Introduction To RSS Readers: Google Reader and Netvibes” I thought this would provide a useful opportunity to explore the potential of screencasting, which is described in Wikipedia as “digital recording of computer screen output“. In my case I used the Camtasia software to record the screen display together with my accompanying audio description of what I was doing. I had also created an accompanying PowerPoint presentation which acted as my script. I had intended to also sync the sound with the PowerPoint slides to create a Slidecast on the Slideshare service, but didn’t get round to doing this, this time. Initially I had intended to make this available just for colleagues at UKOLN (the remote workers and office-based workers who couldn’t attend the session). But it strikes me that the screencast may be useful to others - and, indeed, a colleague of mine commented that “I found it useful to have the seminar available in this version (I was on holiday on the day of the seminar). As a remote worker, I would welcome similar initiatives for future seminars.” So although it isn’t as polished as a professionally made video I thought I would share it with readers of this blog.

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A question I would have is should we encourage the production and sharing of such screencasts more widely? Would you be willing to do this for training sessions you may give? And, if you’ve watched it, how useful have you found this screencast? Note: via Phil Bradley’s blog I came across a post on Common Craft and Google Reader which provides “a new short video just over a minute long demonstrating Google Reader“. [This note added on 1 Sep 2008]. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0, rss | Edit 1 Comment »

How Plenary Speakers Are Maximising Their Impact June 18, 2008 Last year I happened to notice that David De Roure’s has updated his Facebook status to say that he’d achieved a ‘deci-goble rating‘ on Slideshare. I managed to correctly interpret this to mean that one of David’s slides which he had uploaded to Slideshare was a tenth as popular as Professor Carole Goble’s. The particular presentation which had proved so popular for Carole was her keynote talk on The Seven Deadly Sins of Bioinformaticswhich she presented at the 15th Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB 2007) in Vienna, July 2007. Carole’s slides are publicly available on Slideshare and are embedded below. By 7 JulyJuly 2008 the slides had been viewed 8,617 times and downloaded over 500 times. David De Roure’s most popular slides, a keynote talk given at the IEEE e-Science Conference, Bangalore in December 2007, have been viewed 2,613 times with 140 downloads.

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Shouldn’t researchers be making greater use of Slideshare, I wonder, in order to maximise the impact of their research? And an additional benefit of doing this is that the materials will also be available for use by students as well as the researcher community. Indeed conferences such as the W4A 2008 Conference are now making speaker’s slides available on Slideshare, thus, as might be expected for a conference on accessibility, enhancing access to materials used at the conference. The sceptics might argue that there is no guarantee that the Slideshare service will continue to be available over a long time span, or that there can be no guarantees of the reliability of the service. But these are somewhat disingenuous arguments, I feel. The 7,000+ downloads suggests a large numbers of readers who were sufficiently motivated to access and view the slides - and I think it is questionable as to whether there would be this number of accesses if the slides weren’t available on a popular service such as Slideshare. And if Slideshare were to disappear tomorrow (unlikely, I know), those users would have still gained benefits from the resource while it was available. The sustainability of the company question is one that we should be asking about our own services as well as the externally-hosted ones - will our resources disappear from view when a new CMS is installed, for example. And in the case of Slideshare, the recently announcement that “SlideShare Secures $3M for Embeddable Presentations” should be regarded as good news. My own most popular slide available on Slideshare, “Introduction To Facebook: Opportunities and Challenges For The Institution“, has been viewed over 4,800 times in 9 months - not as popular as Carole’s, but worth almost two De Roures in its impact There will be a variety of legitimate reasons why researchers may chose not to make their slides available in this way - and I acknowledge that for some, perhaps many, speakers, the slides may act as a visual cue rather than a resource which is useful in isolation. But as Lorcan Dempsey said on his blog a few days ago about a presentation on “Web 2.0 and repositories - have we got our repository architecture right?” given recently by Andy Powell: “I find Slideshare a good place to look for pointers when I am wondering about 102 of 544

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current issues. Presentations are often elliptical, but are also current”.: And in a post on the eFoundations blog in which Andy announced the availability of the slides on Slideshare Andy commented: “with around 1000 Slideshare views in the first couple of days (presumably thanks to a blog entry by Lorcan Dempseyand it being ‘featured’ by the Slideshare team) I guess that most people who want to see it will have done so already: “. (And note that numbers of views are now almost 2,000). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: Slideshare | Edit 4 Comments »

Places Still Available on “Preservation of Web Resources” Workshop June 17, 2008 I’ve previously mentioned the JISC Preservation of Web Resources (JISC-PoWR) project which is being provided by UKOLN and ULCC. The project has established a blog and will be running its first workshop, entitled Preservation of Web Resources: Making a Start, on Friday 27th June 2008 at Senate House, London. The workshop is aimed staff in the higher and further education sector with responsibilities for the preservation of institutional Web resources. The workshop will introduce the concept of Web preservation, and discuss the technological, institutional and legal challenges the preservation of Web resources presents. One aspect of Web site preservation might be keeping a history of changes to your institution’s home page. Do you have a digital record of the changes? And do you have a record of why significant changes were made and when? I have been working with colleagues in the University of Bath on ways in which we might address this particular issue. The following video clip, which is available on YouTube, illustrates some of the issues (although if the display is too small you might prefer to view the original resource):

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There are still a number of places available on the workshop - which is free to attend for those in the higher and further education sector. But please sign up promptly if you are interested. The timetable is given below: 10:00 - 10:30 Registration and coffee 10:30 - 12:45 Morning Sessions: Presentation: Preservation of Web Resources Part I Breakout session: What are the Barriers to Web Resource Preservation? Presentation: Challenges for Web Resource Preservation Presentation: Legal issues 12:45 - 13:45 Lunch 13:45 - 16:00 Afternoon Sessions: Presentation: Bath University Case Study Breakout session: Preservation Scenarios Presentation: Preservation of Web Resources Part II 16:00 End Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in preservation | Edit No Comments »

Revisiting UK University Pages On Facebook June 16, 2008 Back in November 2007 I wrote a post on UK Universities On Facebook, shortly after Facebook had announced that organisations could have a presence on their social networking service. I commented that a search for organisations containing the word ‘university’ revealed a total of 76 hits which included, in alphabetical order, the following UK Universities: Aston, Cardiff, Kent and the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). Now, over 6 months later, what is the position of UK University pages on Facebook? Well on 15th June 2008 there were over 500 hits for a search for organisations containing the word ‘university’ (the exact numbers aren’t provided). This will include details of University departments and student clubs and societies, so the exact numbers will probably be confusing. What is interesting to observe is the numbers of fans of each University, which is used to order the search results. The Open University Facebook page is the top of all University pages, with 7,539 fans (with the University of Michigan way behind in second place with 5,313 fans (up from a count of 2,874 a month ago). The other most popular UK Universities are Aston University (2,976 fans), Royal Holloway (1,765), Aberystwyth University (1,655 fans), University of Central Lancashire (1,475 fans), Keele University (1,420 fans), Cardiff University (1,357 fans) and the University of Surrey (1,166 fans). There seems to be a fairly consistent pattern of usage being taken to these pages. As can be seen form the accompanying image, institutions seem to be providing a series of useful links to the main areas of the institutional Web site on the right hand menu. The main body of the content is typically addresses and contacts details, together with news feeds which are automatically embedded using an 104 of 544

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Facebook RSS reader application. In addition to this information which is either very brief or is dynamically embedded from other sources, there are wall posts and other messages which may need to be monitored and responded to. So there are resource implications in having a presence in Facebook. But there are also benefits as well, and the Open University and Aston University, for example, seem to be doing well from the stake they have claimed. In addition to possible concerns over the costs of managing the resources and dialogue, people have expressed concerns over data lock-in and the licence conditions associated with use of Facebook. I would argue that if you manage your data in an open environment which is external to Facebook (e.g. your own institutional RSS feed or use of Flickr or YouTube for access to photographs and videos) then the data lock-in issue should not be of concern. And, as I’ve suggested previously, surely we should be encouraging third parties to make use of our marketing materials. And if they can make money out of the materials, then this can help to ensure the viability of their service. Finally we should remember that our institutions have a well-established tradition of making use of delivery channels which are not interoperable - the physical world of magazines, newsletters and bill-board advertisements. Indeed when I was in Taiwan recently I came across a poster advertising Northumbria University. My reaction was to applaud Northumbria for getting its message across to where potential students were, rather than to criticise them for their use of a non-interoperable dead tree delivery mechanism. We need to remember that interoperability isn’t always everything. Ask the marketing people - I suspect they’ll confirm this. And some news just in. On 12thJune 2008 the Techcrunch blog reported that Facebook [Is] No Longer The Second Largest Social Network- but rather than declining in popularity as some predicted (or perhaps hoped), Facebook has now overtaken MySpace in popularity, as the accompanying image shows.

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Perhaps the popularity of the Open University page in Facebook isn’t so surprising considering the large numbers of Facebook users there are. Now that we have evidence of the large numbers of users and have seen patterns of usage from the early adopters, what reasons can there be for institutions not to engage with Facebook- whether this is simply creating a page containing RSS feeds and a set of links back to the institutional Web site or creating a Facebook application such as the Open University’s Course Profile app (initially described by Tony Hirst as a ’skunkwork’ project, but now, it seems, becoming mainstream)? And remember the need to factor in not only the resource implications of doing this, but also the missed opportunity costs of not doing so. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook ·Tags: Open University | Edit 5 Comments »

The SearchMe Visual Service June 13, 2008 A recent Tweet from Tony Hirst alerted me to the Searchme Visual Search service. An example of use of this service searching for “UKWebFocus“ is illustrated below.

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As the name suggests this service provides a visually-oriented approach to searching and, rather than attempting to describe this service I suggest you try it. I suspect that an initial response from some information professionals would be to highlight the limitations of such an interface, pointing out the difficulties of more advanced searching. However I feel that this would be to overlook the potential of this type of interface to provide browsing functionality. And this, indeed, was the use case made by Tony Hirst: @briankelly would like a wayback machine browser for home pages over time. http://beta.searchme.com would look neat? Any libraries for it? I met Tony at the recent CRIG DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) Metadata Barcamp held at the University of Bath. Over lunch I mentioned UKOLN’s JISC-PoWR (Preservation of Web Resources) project and described my interest in ways of exploiting content held in the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine. I suggested that a generic screen-scraping interface to the service would be useful - and when I returned to the Barcamp later that afternoon Tony demonstrated the first version of the software And the following day Tony had started to explore ways of providing a richer user interface to such data. A browse interface such as that used by Search Me Visual could potentially provide a very engaging way of visualising the changes to an organisation’s home page, I would think. And wouldn’t it be great if this could be demonstrated at the JISC-PoWR’s opening workshop on 25 June 2008. Has anyone come across any tools which could do this? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0, preservation ·Tags: searchme, searchmevisual | Edit 3 Comments »

RSS For Events June 12, 2008 Over the past few years UKOLN has made use of RSS to support its annual Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW) series. Initially RSS was used to provide access to news about the event, allowing delegates to be alerted to updates about the event without needing to visit the Web site, thus allowing users the choice of avoiding the intrusiveness of email. But as more applications and Web-based services became available which exploited RSS, we started to appreciate the wider ranges of potential uses for RSS. Since 2006 we have used RSS to syndicate structured data for the event, including, as can be seen for this year’s event, lists of the plenary talks, workshops sessions, speakers and workshop facilitators. This frees the data from the constraints of the event’s Web site allowing the data to be accessed by users in more varied ways including the user’s preferred RSS reader, PDAs, mobile phones and even, using an RSS iPod Reader, having this data conveniently available on a iPod. More recently we have made use of geo-located RSS data to enable the 107 of 544

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locations of the IWMW events to be displayed on a map. This then led to a geo-located RSS feed of the host institution for plenary speakers at all twelve of the IWMW events (including this year’s event, to be held at the University of Aberdeen on 22-24 July 2008). This provides the event organisers with a management tool which can help to visualise the participation at the event on a geographical basis – have we, for example, provided opportunities for plenary speakers from throughout the UK? I’m pleased to say that we do seem to have a broad representation throughout the UK, will speakers from as far north as Aberdeen, as far south as Southampton, as far east as Norwich and as far west as Belfast. In addition, if you zoom out from the UK you will discover that there have been a number of speakers from overseas including the Republic of Ireland and Australia. In a recent post on RSS For Your Project Web Site I cited Stephen Downdes’ comment that failing to provide RSS is unsocial. But a couple of people posted comments and argued that RSS only has a role to play in specific cases. I disagree, as I feel that providing RSS feeds for structured data can allow the data to be used in interesting, and perhaps unexpected ways. Let’s make much more use of RSS generally, I would say. But how else can it be used to enhance events, I wonder? And are there any developers reading this post who might be in a position to submit an entry to the IWMW 2008 Innovation Competition which makes use of this data? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in rss | Edit 3 Comments »

whois++ and IAFA templates June 10, 2008

SCA Home Nations Forum I recently facilitated a series of breakout sessions on Standards at the SCA Home Nations Forums, held in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff. The aim of the sessions was to discuss the approaches which are being taken to the use of standards by SCA partners in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. 108 of 544

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The first event included a plenary talk on “The Standards Dilemma” given by Alastair Dunning, JISC, and I’ve embedded his slides in my blog post.

Alistair’s blog post about the first event, entitled “Digital Standards: Going beyond Stalin“, summarised some of the difficulties which have been experienced in seeking to deploy open standards in digital library development work.

eLib Standards Document These concerns were reflected in the breakout sessions at the three events. And when I was preparing the breakout session I though it would be useful to review my involvement in standards work, which date back to my contribution to the eLib Standards document, published in February 1996. In that document I was fascinated to discover some of the open standards which we thought would lead to interoperability for eLib projects. The document mentioned the Open Document Architecture (ODA) standard but went on to (correctly) predict that “It is unclear what future there is for the ODA standard” and stated that “It is not recommended for use in the eLib programme“. Rather than using ODA, the standards document “anticipated that SGML will be a key standard for eLib“. The document “encouraged [projects] to work together to agree or, where necessary, develop document type definitions“. Although SGML was used by a number of projects (such as, I think, project which used the TEI DTD) SGML did not have a significant role to play for many of the eLib projects until a simplified version of SGML, XML, became available. The exception to that generalisation was HTML. My contribution to the eLib standards document was to write: “Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) is simply a DTD which prescribes formats for presentation and display. Hypertext documents in the World Wide Web are written in HTML. eLib projects will make heavy use of HTML and should use HTML 2 and HTML 3 when it is stable. Netscape and other vendor-specific extensions are deprecated.“ 109 of 544

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It was in the area of standards identifiers, metadata and searching in which the recommendations are most interesting. The document (correctly) stated that “eLib projects should be able to supply a URL for public services” - although in retrospect we should have said “a static and stable URL”. But the above sentence then went on to say the “… and be prepared to adopt URNs when they are stabilised“. The URN (Uniform Resource Name) was envisaged as “a persistent object identifier, assigned by a ‘publisher’ or some authorising agent“. Now today, 12 years later, project Web sites still have a URL for their resources, with other approaches to identifiers (such as DOIs) only being used in specialised areas, such as providing identifiers for journal articles or, in projects such as E-Bank, molecules. Regarding metadata standards, the document stated: Relevant standards for resource description:US-MARC, IAFA, TEI headers although it immediately added the caveat that “This is an area in which there is still much research and development and where it is premature to suggest one preferred approach“. The document also suggested that the WHOIS++ cross-search protocol could have an important role to play for searching metadata held in the IAFA templates. Indeed the e-Lib-funded ROADS open source software, which underpinned several of the eLib Subject-Based Information Gateways (such as SOSIG and OMNI), was based on this approach.

Discussion I feel there is much which can be learnt by reviewing the experiences of digital library programmes such as eLib - indeed eLib projects were themselves expected to be open in reviewing their experiences, both positive and negative. Looking at the standards document with the benefit of 12 years of hindsight we can smile at its naivety. But we should also ask why certain standards, which failed to gain acceptance, were encouraged in the first place? An answer, perhaps, is to be found in the interests of the contributors to the standards document. Anne Mumford (a former colleague of my when I worked at Loughborough University) was actively involved in the development of the CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) standard, so it’s perhaps not surprising that this standard was included in the standards document. What have we learnt since 1996? Do we ensure that we have more disinterested processes for recommendations? A recent Tweet from Owen Stephens, related to a TechWatch report on “Metadata for digital libraries: state of the art and future directions” suggested that this is not the case: “[I] was surprised how pro-METS [the report] was until I noted “Richard Gartner is [...] is a member of the editorial board for the METS“. Which current exciting new standard will turn out to be tomorrow’s whois++ I wonder? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit 3 Comments »

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June 9, 2008 I was never into punk when I was at University (I went to see Queen when I was at Leeds University) but I can appreciate how it changed the music scene. So I was interested to see the recent buzz on Twitter and in the blogosphere over the term ‘edupunk’. Mike Caulfield likes the term because “it captures the cultural revulsion many of us feel with the appropriation of the Learning 2.0 movement by corporations such as Blackboard“. And I feel that Tony Hirst encapsulates the edupunk approach which “favors technical accessibility over grand design” from his comments on the CRIG DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) Metadata Barcamp : A couple of things to note: JISC apparently likes to fund SOAP powered webservices. Whilst these might conceivably make sense for complicated web service transcations, they’re probably overkill in our sector most of the time (a sigh went up from the developers whenever a SOAP interface was mentioned). REST, it seems, is the punk response to the pompous stadium rock of SOAP and the Web Services stack. And in a post on Changing Expectations: Educational PublishingTony published a video clip giving his contribution to the EDupunk movement:

Now David Harrison recently comented in response to my post on From Disruptive To Innovative Technologies: I think it was me that raised the question at the event in the context of “Can you imagine going to your Vice-Chancellor and saying … I want to introduce and support some disruptive technologies into our organisation”. It’s clearly even less likely that institutional policy makers will find the term ‘edupunk’ appealing. But just as punk transformed the music scene, and the wider cultural environment perhaps edupunk will have a similar impact on the educational system. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) 111 of 544

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Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: edupunk | Edit 6 Comments »

A Quarter of a Million and Counting June 8, 2008 This blog has now attracted over a quarter of a million spam comments. Fortunately the vast majority are stopped by the Akismet spam filter, which is provided on the WordPress.com blog service. But it’s quite clear that without the spam filter it would be a very time-consuming task for me to manually delete spam comments. And if I didn’t do this the effectiveness of the blog as a forum for discussions would be severely reduced. I could change the blog settings and require comments to require approval before they are published - but this would also be time-consuming for me. Or comments could be restricted to registered users - but this would add a barrier to those who wished to comment, especially those who aren’t regular visits to the blog. I could also disable comments on posts after a certain period of time, which should reduce the amount of spam comment - but just because a post was made some time ago doesn’t mean that comments would not be useful. I’m happy with the policy of allowing comments , complemented by use of Akismet to automatically capture spam (although, I should add, sometimes Akismet traps legitimate comments). But if you’re setting up a blog and are thinking about your policy on comments you’ll need to bear in mind the need to manage spam comments. And remember that Akismet is licensed software although Akismet state that “We love non-profits. We have half-off and free pricing for registered non-profits, please see the link above.”. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog ·Tags: Akimset | Edit 1 Comment »

Revisiting iSoton June 6, 2008 112 of 544

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In February 2008 I asked the question “Is Southampton Setting A New Standard For Institutional Web Sites?“. There was subsequently a lively discussion about the iSoton service, with Helen Aspell, Head of Digital Marketing at the University of Southampton and the person who led this collaborative project, describing the background to this work. But in addition to the main iSoton page, which provides access to information about the University of Southampton held on Web 2.0 services including Youtube, Flickr and Wikipedia, it is also work noting the approach taken to the provision of a search interface for resources at the University of Southampton. The search page is illustrated below.

It is interesting to observe the single search box used for searching (on the top row) publications, people and experts and (on the bottom row) the main University of Southampton Web site and all Web sites at the University of Southampton. And although the Search publications option allows you to refine a search or start an advanced search, this isn’t the case with the other searches. Does this, I wonder, reflect the evidence that very few users ever make use of the advanced search capabilities? Or is this a worrying trend, a dumbing down of search for what should be typically an intelligent group of users? I have to say that I’m looking forward to hearing Helen give a talk about the iSoton service at this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2008). Alison Widish, head of Web Services at the University of Bath recently commented on a presentation by Helen at the CASE 2008 conference: “I eagerly awaited Helen’s talk and I wasn’t disappointed“. Alison went on to say: 113 of 544

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Overall I was really impressed with Southampton not just with the website (which I find visually appealing and easy to use) but with the way the University LIVE their brand. It’s incredibly important to know who you are as an Institution and to provide an experience which reflects that… and it’s great to see this being carried across to the web. Lots of food for thought! And as this year’s theme for IWMW 2008 is “The Great Debate” I’m sure Helen’s talk on the first day of the event will help to contribute to the discussions on future directions for both the institutional Web site and institutional approaches to search. But if you can’t make it to Aberdeen, feel free to engage in the debate here. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: iwmw2008 | Edit 7 Comments »

Preservation of Web Resources: Making a Start June 4, 2008 My colleague Marieke Guy together with the JISC-PoWR project partners at ULCC have announced details of a workshop on “Preservation of Web Resources: Making a Start” - this one-day workshop will take place on Friday 27th June 2008 at the Senate House Library, University of London. The JISC-PoWR project runs until the end of September 2008 and will run three workshops which will aim to identify best practices for preserving Web sites. The key deliverable of the project will be a handbook which will document the challenges to be addressed in Web site preservation in a number of areas which will include key institutional Web services (e.g. the prospectus), project Web sites (which have clear termination dates) and, a particular challenge for the project, the preservation issues associated with use of Web 2.0 services. The first workshop will be free to attend (although there will be a penalty for non-shows), with the second workshop being held as part of the IWMW 2008 event at the University of Aberdeen on 23rd July. Please sign up now if you would like to attend. And I’d you can’t make it but have an interest in the preservation of Web resource, why not subscribe to the JISC-PoWR blog - and, rather than being a passive reader, join in the discussions. Topics we’d be interested in hearing about include (a) how institutions are currently addressing the preservation of key institutional Web-based services (such as the prospectus); (b) the approaches you may be taken to short-term project Web sites (whether JISC-funded or institutionallyfunded and (c) your views on the preservation of data and services provided by externally-hosted Web 2.0 services. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, preservation | Edit No Comments »

Innovation Competition at IWMW 2008 114 of 544

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June 3, 2008 The Innovation Competition was introduced at the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007, held at the University of York. This provided an opportunity for developers (and, it should be added, non-developers) to submit examples of lightweight examples of innovation which provided valuable services to a user community and/or were, in some way, ‘cool’, provoking a reaction of “Wow, we should be doing that” to IWMW 2007 participants. The competition, which was sponsored by Amazon, was a great success, with four prize-winners receiving Amazon vouchers: Sebastian Rahtz’s Alternative Course Discovery using Calendars and Maps (first place) Michael Nolan’s How To Find Us and Hi From Edge Hill (second place) Paul Walk’s Community Focus Mashup (equal third) Mike Ellis Mashed Museums Directory (equal third) This year we will be repeating the Innovation Competition. This time, rather than relying on a commercial sponsor, the Universities of Aberdeen and Bath and Edge Hill University are the sponsors. These three institutions have recognised the potential benefits of opening up their data and APIs to the community, and invite members of the community to demonstrate what can be done with their RSS and Atom feeds, their XCRI data, their microformats, their OpenSearch APIs and other data on their Web site. And although we welcome submissions based on data from the sponsoring institutions, we also invite other submissions as well (perhaps use of multimedia or Second Life). One change we have made from last year’s competition, however, is that we would not expect submissions to be based on mainstream institutional development work. You may choose, however, to submit a proposal which brings together content from a number of institutions, perhaps on a regional basis or using data provided by organisations outside the HE/FE sector. Further details are provided on the IWMW 2008 Web site. There will be prizes for the winning submissions and, depending on the numbers of submissions, we may even, as we did last year, also provide prizes to runner’s-up or for special categories (the funniest submissions and perhaps even submissions created during the event). We look forward to receiving your submissions. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2008 | Edit 6 Comments »

Can You Be Sued For Not Upgrading Your Browsers? June 2, 2008 A blog post on the Justin Thorp’s Oatmeal blog informs me that “all the major browsers are now doing something to support [WAI-ARIA]“. And I quickly find that the Paciello Group confirms IE 8’s support for ARIA: their blog posts describes the Microsoft’s announcement that “Internet Explorer 8 uses ARIA 115 of 544

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role, state, and property information to communicate with assistive technologies” as “amazing news in terms of WAI ARIA implementation!“. And, as might be expected, the Firefox browser also supports ARIA (Accessibility Rich Internet Applications) - W3C WAI’s guideline for ensuring that richly interactive Web services which make use of technologies such as JavaScript to enhance their accessibility, usability and functionality can be used by a variety of client devices, including assistive technologies. The support for ARIA by mainstream browsers is clearly good news and, with the WCAG 2.0 guidelines now available as a Candidate Recommendation, it is now timely for institutions to begin planning how they will respond to these pleasing developments - especially for those in the educational sector who should be in the process of planning upgrades to their technlcal environment and corresponding policies, training, etc. during the summer vacation. The simple response would be to suggest that institutions should migrate to the latest version of Firefox during the summer vacation (and note that the Firefox 3 Candidate Release was announced a few days ago). However when I suggested last year that Firefox was the researchers’ favourite application both Mark Sammons and Phil Wilson pointed out the difficulties of managing Firefox across the enterprise. And Mark has recently posted that the situation does not appear to have progressed significantly since then - indeed Mark, creator of the Firefox ADM enterprise administration tool in a post on The Firefox Enterprise Issue Hits the Media has argued that “ the real problem with Firefox in the enterprise: Mozilla“. But if Mark is correct and organisations are likely to find it difficult to manage the deployment and maintenance of Firefox across the enterprise at least IE 8 (and, also, I should add, Opera) are available which have support for the ARIA guidelines. We also know that institutions have regarded support for WAI WCAG guidelines as important with many institutions making policy statements regarding their support for the guidelines. But as WAI have also regarded the WCAG guidelines as just one of a set of guidelines which need to be implemented in order to ensure that resources are widely accessible, surely it is clear that institutions should also be supporting the UAAG guidelines and ensure that the browsers deployed across the organisation support these guidelines. And surely that means upgrading to the latest version of IE, Firefox or, possibly, Opera. Or to put it another way, if you fail to do this is your institution likely to be in breach of accessibility legislation which requires organisations to take reasonable measures to ensure that people with disabilities aren’t discriminated against unfairly? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility ·Tags: ARIA | Edit 4 Comments »

From Disruptive To Innovative Technologies May 30, 2008 In a report on the recent eFoundations Symposium Ale Fernandez has given his thoughts on the discussions which took place on the symposium back channel in 116 of 544

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which there seemed to be agreement that the term ‘disruptive technologies’ was increasingly counter-productive and proposed use of the term ‘innovative technologies’: “it surfaced that I wasn’t the only one who thought a more positive terminology (like “Emerging Technologies”) would be more conducive to positive adoption on campus or even just to an understanding of the real strengths and limitations of these tools“. This sounds sensible to me as we are now finding that the disruptive aspects of Web 2.0 are now becoming better understood and institutions are now developing ways of makes use of the technologies and cultural changes in their planning. The disruptive aspects of Web 2.0 are I feel, the Social Web and the ‘network as the platform‘, with technologies such as AJAX being accepted as simply an welcome development which can provide more usable services and application areas such as blogs and wikis are now being deployed to support the teaching, learning and research functions within the institution. In his talk at the Symposium Chris Adie outlined the need to take a risk management approach - and went on to point our the risks of doing nothing. Guidelines on the risks of using externally-hosted services are being written, and I’m aware of the Guidelines for Using External Services produced by the University of Edinburgh and the Checklist for assessing third-party IT services, produced by the University of Oxford. These documents are to be welcomed and it is particularly pleasing that the documents are publicly available and not hidden on the institutional Intranet. And despite grumbles from some quarters about the ‘noise’ on the back channel, useful additional resources were shared by people who may not have been physically present at the event. Ale Fernandez reminded us of the BBC guidelines on Personal use of Social Networking and other third party websites. And via Twitter (another very useful channel which brings to my attention resources relevant to my interests) David Harrison alerted me (and his other Twitter followers) of Roo Reynolds’ post on Policing vs Guidelines which described the approaches to use of social networks taken at IBM. In response to the question “How do you police use of social software in the workplace?” Roo responded: The answer, which might surprise you, is that you don’t, You can’t. You physically can’t monitor, review and approve everything all your employees are doing. Instead, you need to use trust. Our sector can learn from the approaches which are being taken by the BBC and IBM. And, as we have a well-established tradition of sharing, I feel we are well-placed to collaborate on the development of such guidelines and shares experiences in the deployment of such guidelines. Would anyone like to start? Has any institutions published similar guidelines? Or does anyone have any suggestions on what the guidelines should cover?

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: efsym2008 | Edit 5 Comments »

IWMW and Innovation May 28, 2008 117 of 544

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UKOLN is now one of JISC’s Innovations Centres. But how does UKOLN participate in innovation? An approach we have taken during my time at UKOLN has been to make use of our annual Institutional Web Management Workshops (the IWMW series of events which have been running since 1997) to deploy a variety of innovative approaches. Doing this at a popular annual event (which is often fully-subscribed, attracting from 150-200 participants from throughout the HE sector) can help to maximise awareness of and, potentially, the impact of such innovation. A number of examples of innovations were made available for the IWMW 2005 event, held at the University of Manchester: Use of RSS for news alerts related to the event. Exploitation of WiFi networks at events. Official workshop bloggers. Use of SMIL to provide a synchronised multimedia version of one of the plenary talks. A series of podcasts, published in advance of the workshop. The use of RSS for news alerts has become embedded at subsequent IWMW events, as has pro-active use of the venue’s WiFi network. At IWMW 2006 we introduced use of wikis to support note-taking and sharing at the discussion group sessions - again an approach which has become standard at IWMW events. IWMW 2006 was also the year in which tagging (using the IWMW2006) tag became popular, allowing bookmarks and photographs to be easily pulled together. And our initial experiments with the use of social networking services to support an event began that year, with the establishment of a Frappr community. As might be expected innovation does not always necessarily lead to the deployment of a sustainable service. At IWMW 2006 we also tested use of a chatbot and provided access to a remote audience for a number of the plenary talks using the Access Grid. And as well as the ACcess Grid we also had a live Web stream of the plenary talks, with Michael Webb’s talk on Developing a Web 2.0 Strategy subsequently being made available on Google Video. We also experimented with another approach to use of a chat facility at the event - this year using the Gabbly service, instead of an IRC service we had used at IWMW 2005. At last year’s event, IWMW 2007, we continued to provide an RSS feed (not only of news, but also syndication of the key content areas of the Web site details of the sessions and the speakers) and a wiki service. And in addition we launched IWMW’s first innovation competition- which provided the participants with an opportunity to demonstrate to their peers examples of their approaches to innovation. Again the plenary talks were streamed on the Web and this time all of the talks were subsequently made available on Google Video. We have evaluated the innovations - and we’re pleased to see that other services, such as JISC with its use of Crowdvine at this year’s JISC 2008 conference on Enabling Innovation, are now beginning to implement similar ideas. But what do you feel we should do next? Should we seek to consolidate on these experiments? Or, alternatively, are there other areas in which the community would encourage UKOLN to continue innovation - so that if we encounter problems, institutions will benefit from knowing what not to do 118 of 544

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Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0, iwmw2008 ·Tags: iwmw, iwmw2008 | Edit 10 Comments »

George Bush IS President And Microsoft’s Office Open XML Format IS An ISO Standard May 27, 2008 On 2nd April 2008 the IT Week magazine described how “Microsoft’s Office Open XML document format standard has been approved as an ISO standard” in an article entitled “OOXML gets the nod as an ISO standard“. Everyone who has been critical of Microsoft for continuing to promote its proprietary Office format should be pleased with this news, one might think. And indeed an editorial comment in the same issue of IT Week a piece entitled “Microsoft wins format standards” suggested that the “ISO vote endorsing OOXML ends vicious committee wrangling“. But the article admitted that the “decision means that there are now two ISO document standards“. And further “Supporters of the rival Open Document Format claimed OOXML is not truly open because it was not designed by an open process“. In addition they also suspect “Microsoft will find ways to retain control“. Rowan WIlson on the JISC OSS Watch blog elaborated on these concerns: “the perception that OOXML is in itself an inadequate standard which has triumphed through Microsoft’s expertise at lobbying ISO member bodies for their votes“; “the standard is itself is incredibly long and complex - over six thousand pages” and “Microsoft’s patent non-enforcement promise that accompanies [the standard]“. Similar concerns are described in a Wikipedia entry on OOXML. But do such criticisms mean that we should not make use of OOXML? I would say not. If you believe in open standards, then you should be prepared to accept standards which have been ratified by a formal standards body. Just as when George W Bush first became president, despite the concerns regarding the voting process and allegations of corruption in certain states, the Democratic party was prepared at accept this decision. The criticism that “there are now two ISO document standards” misses the point that duplicated standards are not unusual, as the joke “the great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose” illustrates. Indeed, readers of this blog will probably be familiar with the RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 - not two versions of the same standard, but two different standards - RDF Site Summary and Really Simple Syndication Standard (to say nothing of its original name Rich Site Summary). The battles which have taken place over this popular syndication format seem to be typical of the standardisation process in the IT sector. So we should not be surprised to read of dissent in the document format area. I suspect that a lot of criticism of the standard is really aimed at seeking to persuade organisations that they shouldn’t be using Microsoft Office products. But that, I feel, is a different argument. Rather I’ll leave the final comment to Richard Boulderstone, the chief technology officer at the British Library who has welcomed OOXML’s approval as an ISO standard, as the establishment of an open well-defined OOXML standards will ensure documents can be viewed through future applications: “We think hundreds of years in the future, by which 119 of 544

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point this standard won’t be supported anymore. But we’ll be able to create an application to views these documents as they’re based on an open format. Under the closed proprietary format previously used by Microsoft we couldn’t do that.“. Amen to that. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit 13 Comments »

RSS For Your Project Web Site May 23, 2008 Stephen Downes has recently suggestedthat use of RSS and blogs “should be basic and fundamental information, and in my view, projects without this sort of informational support are just being anti-social.” I think Stephen’s right although, as a Brit, I’d probably be more circumspect (perhaps along the lines of a Sir Humphrey Appleby “Is really it wise not to have a RSS feed“). Stephen’s direct North American approach is to be applauded, I feel. And Stephen linked to a blog post on RSS injects edu with accuracy, freshness, and cool stuffwhich gives an example of how RSS can be used. My own use of RSS to enhance access to project deliverables was for the JISC-funbded QA Focus project. In this case RSS filesprovided for the project’s key deliverables including briefing documents, case studies, papers and presentations. In addition OPML fileswere also created which enabled the RSS files to be integrated in a variety of ways. Stephen’s right - if you’re not doing this you are “just being anti-social“. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in rss | Edit 6 Comments »

Preserving The Past Can Help The Future May 21, 2008 Many of the posts featured in this blog describe innovative tools and applications which aim to provide a more effective work or study environment for users. However there can be a danger that an emphasis on new and innovative services can mean a failure to manage legacy services which can result in a loss of our experiences, history and culture. This can be particularly true in the Web environment. I first became aware of the scale of the problem when I monitored the Web sites which had been set up for projects funded by the EU’s Telematics For Libraries programme. As I described in an article on WebWatching Telematics For Libraries Project Web Sites published in the Exploit Interactive e-journal in October 2000 of the 65 projects which had Web sites, a total of 23 of the Web sites has disappeared when I carried out the survey. And a recent check shows that at least 39 of the Web sites have gone. Our digital history, the associated learning and the investment (from EU taxpayers) is being lost! 120 of 544

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Or is it? Is this assertion just being alarmist? Might not the information have been migrated to a more manageable environment? And perhaps some of the projects are now available, possibly under new names, as sustainable services? There’s a clear need for these issues to be addressed and for advice to be provided - both to organisation as responsible for managing their own Web services and to funding bodies which commission development work which will involve the development of Web sites. JISC have recognised the need to provide such advice. They issued a recent call for an ITT on “The Preservation of Web Resources Workshops and Handbook” and I’m pleased to report that a joint bid by UKOLN and ULCC was successful. The project, which had its launch meeting on 1 May 2008, will run three workshops which will aim to gain a better understanding of the challenges to be faced in Web site preservation, identify examples of best practices and provide a set of recommendations to policy makers, content providers and developers. This will be documented in a handbook which should be available after September 2008. Although the project is only funded for 5 months it will seek to provide advice not only on conventional institutional Web sites, but also on use of third party Web 2.0 services - the potential benefits of such services are well-understood, but there needs to be a better understanding of the risks associated with their use and how institutions should assess such risks and use such assessments to inform policy. The project team members themselves are using a variety of Web 2.0 tools to support their work. As well as communications technologies (beyond email) to support the work of the distributed team members a blog is also being used to disseminate information about the project and to solicit feedback and encourage discussion and debate. The JISC-PoWR (Preservation of Web Resources) blog (illustrated) is hosted on the JISC Involve blog service. The team would like to welcome those with an interest in Web site preservation to join the blog and contribute to the discussions. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in preservation ·Tags: jisc-powr | Edit 1 Comment »

Data Portability Battles Go Beyond The Individual And The Large Corporations May 19, 2008 121 of 544

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Josie Fraser has given her views on the recent squabbles over data portability standards for social networks. She has observed that the language of ‘the data wars’ and ‘guns blazing’ can be characterised as “boys clubs and bun fights”. As Josie describes: “The last couple of weeks has seen MySpace, Facebook and Google make announcements about their variously not-that-portable data portability initiatives. MySpace announced the Data Availability Project, Facebook announced Facebook Connect, Google announced FriendConnect, and Facebook then announced FriendConnectwouldn’t be welcome in the Facebook valley.“ I would agree with Josie’s comments on the “general agreement that the new initiatives have more to do with Empire building than with empowering users“. Josie goes on to suggest that, rather than the current focus on applications and widgets to facilitate sharing “users should be the ones controlling and determining their data“. While I would be in broad agreement with that sentiment, I think the individual’s perspective is only a part (albeit an important part) of the role that social networking software (SNS) can provide. Many of us make use of social networking tools to support our professional activities. This gives rise to interesting issues over ownership (I try to make use of a Creative Commons licence when I use SNS to ensure that others - including my organisation - can reuse my content). But what happens to the content which I may have hosted on a social networking services if I’m knocked down by a bus, leave my organisation or fall out with by boss? Do I have the right to ‘control’ and ‘determine’ what happens to this data? An approach I have taken when I make use of SNS to provide access to my data is to keep a master copy in a managed environment (the UKOLN Web site) with Slideshare, for example, the title slide and the metadata give a link back to the managed copy of the slides. But in other cases (such as my use of del.icio.us) I’ve not done this. One answer to such concerns would be to avoid use of social networking services, and make use of managed services hosted within the organisation. But this, I feel, has many disadvantages and is not an approach I would recommend. But what approaches, then, should the professional academic or researcher take to manage data or behalf not only of the individual but also the organisation? In 2006 UKOLN made use of a range of externally hosted services to support its IWMW 2006 event. The use of a variety of third party services was complemented with a risk assessment statement which summarised the services which were being used, justified their use and outlined potential risks and how such risks would be addressed. I feel that it is now timely to build on this approach to risk assessement and to begin to address the risks associated with use of social networking tools in a work capacity. As I suggested in a recent JISC Emerge online conference, perhaps we should start by providing a personal audit of the social networking tools we use at work and document the risks that our organisations and our colleagues could face if we chose to exercise our individual rights to delete such data! And once we’ve got a better picture of the risks we can start to address the risk management issues. What do you think? 122 of 544

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Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit No Comments »

Sites Which ‘Rip Off’ Marketing Videos May 16, 2008 A few months ago there was an email message sent to a national list from a member of a UK University institutional Web management team who complained that “We’ve come across an outfit calling themselves Unitour who have ripped one of our marketing videos“. The message went on to add that the institution had requested that the video was removed from the site - and it seems that this has been done. The Web site in question is Unitour and they do indeed have a video tour guide of UK Universities - from which it does seem possible to opt out of. But how should an institution go about ensuring that its marketing videos aren’t ripped off’? Well my suggestion may be regarded as rather radical in some circles - I’d suggest that you provide a Creative Commons licence for such videos and encourage people to reuse it. After all, we are talking about marketing materials. And if you are concerned that organisations may be ‘ripping off’ your bandwidth, why not make the video available from YouTube or Google Video - so that your institution doesn’t even have to provide additional bandwidth when potential students view the video. Is this really a radical proposal, I wonder? Shouldn’t this be an approach which all universities use as part of their institutional marketing? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 9 Comments »

IWMW 2008 Now Open For Bookings May 15, 2008 This year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2008 ) will be held at the University of Aberdeen on 22-24th July. The theme of this year’s event is “The Great Debate” and during the 3 days participants will have the opportunity to listen to a number of plenary talks which describe various examples of innovation and best practices which are taking place across the community. But more importantly the participants will be encouraged to contribute to a debate on the future of the institutional Web services - active participation in the parallel workshop sessions, discussion groups and during the social activities will be encouraged! The event opens with a session on A Vision For The Future which features a talk by Cameron Neylon on “Science in the You Tube Age: How Web Based Tools are Enabling Open Research Practice” followed by one on “Web 2.0 and Brand: Theory and Practice” by Helen Aspell. And this year, for the first time, 123 of 544

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as well as opening with two high profile talks, the event will conclude with a talk on “Unleashing the Tribe” by Ewan McIntosh, a speaker of international renown who will be known to many through his edu.blogs blog. The timetable for the event is available, together with details of the plenary talk and the 16 parallel sessions. The Web site is now open for bookings - and we encourage early bookings as the places on the parallel sessions will be allocated on a first come first served basis. Regular updates on the event will be provided on an RSS feed. This information will also be available on the IWMW 2008 news page. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2008 | Edit No Comments »

How Rude! Use Of WiFi Networks At Conferences May 12, 2008

The Debate A blog post on “Making Connections 2.0” by Martin Weller alerted me to the discussions which have been taken place following a recent conference at the annual internal Open University conference. As Martin describes on his Ed Techie blog one of his colleagues, Doug Clow, who was live-blogging the conference “was told by three different people in separate sessions to stop as his typing was offputting“. The pros and cons of use of a WIFi network during a conference have been further discussed by Doug Clow himself and by Niall Sclater.

A Framework For Use Of Networked Technologies I have to say that I don’t find such debates surprising - indeed I wrote about this in a paper on “Using Networked Technologies To Support Conferences” (I wish I had Lorcan Dempsey’s skills in coining snappy names - nowadays we would refer to ‘amplified events’) which I gave at the EUNIS 2005 conference way back in June 2005. The paper described some early experiments in exploitation of iFi networks, including my first experiment at a one-day joint UKOLN/UCISA event on “Beyond Email - Strategies For Collaborative Working In The 21st Century” in November 2004. But as the paper describes, rather than just providing access to the WiFi network and leaving the delegates to make use of it as they see fit, an Acceptable Use Policy was produced which was based on the general principle that “Use of mobile device and networked technologies to support the aims of the workshop with be encouraged” but which alerted the participants to their responsibilities: “The use of mobile device and networked technologies should not be disruptive to other delegates, infringe rights of privacy or breach copyright or cause degradation to the network which would aversely affect others“. The paper went on to suggest that, rather than imposing a single-minded approach to policies regarding use of WiFi networks at events, there was a need for a framework for the development of an Acceptable Use Policy which would 124 of 544

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reflect the expectations of the users and take into account the potential diversity of views. The paper suggested the need for such a framework to address policy, technical, legal, social and organisational issues.

Implementing This Approach This approach was implemented the following year at the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2005(IWMW 2005) held at the University of Manchester on 6-8thJuly 2005. An AUPwas produced, together with details of networked applications which users might find useful during the event and an optional talk was held shortly before the opening of the event which provided details of how to connect to the WiFi network and use the applications. But perhaps the most important approach taken was the evaluation of the technologies by the event participants. The evaluation form asked three questions: “I found use of the networked applications enriched the event“, “I found use of the networked applications distracting or disruptive to the event” and “I would encourage use of networked applications at future events“. A summary of the responses is given below. Q1: I found use of the networked applications enriched the event Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree 6 14 11 3 1 Q2: I found use of the networked applications distracting or disruptive to the event Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree 2 8 16 5 4 Q3: I would encourage use of networked applications at future events Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree 10 16 5 2 1 In addition the following comments were made: Use of the technologies: People need to follow the guidelines and TURN OFF laptop sounds Need to be more inclusive - can you find a sponsor next year who will give us/lend us a wireless PDA or laptop? Firewalls made it difficult Tables for laptops and be better equipped rooms with more powerpoints It seemed a little ‘gimmicky’ and I am not sure their use added real value/benefit to the workshop. Also the noise of people tapping their keyboard can be irritating! General issues:

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up to each person to discipline themselves IRC fun & thought provoking - allowing comment without disruption could even reduce whispering! I was sitting in ‘geek’ corner so it was disruptive, the clicking & beeping was a but much at times - but a very useful evil .. .and I could have moved so it can’t have been that bad! Made it too easy to ignore presentations but makes it even more important for presenters to be interesting! Non-users may feel under-privileged Useful for sharing info but can be used negatively for ‘bitching’ about speakers Very distracting in seminars A negative effect if people abuse it e.g. surf the Web. Beneficial if people take notes. Lots of people spent the session surfing the Web or checking their email I found this distractive. Facilitators did not often refer to the Wiki.

Discussion It is interesting to note that although some of the problems and potential problems of use of networked technologies had been commented on by the participants, a majority (of 26 to 3) felt that use of networked technologies should be encouraged at future events. This indicates, I feel, that there is an awareness that potential problems can be addressed. Subsequent IWMW events have made further use of networked technologies, and the numbers of participants with laptops has been growing steadily, will, I think, now over 50% of the audience bringing along and using their laptops. We’ve explored (and will continue to explore) various ways of addressing the dangers. When I run workshop sessions, for example, I make it clear that laptops should only be used for purposes relevant to the session (e.g. keeping notes, discussions with others, checking relevant resources, etc.) and I try and joke about other uses (”I must be boring if your email is more interesting than this session“). I’d also like to explore ways of making use of space at events - perhaps the geeks could go to other side of the lecture theatre (when the power sockets are to be found) leaving the other side to those who prefer pen and paper. Simply suggesting that it’s rude to make use of laptops at conferences - with the implied suggestion that such use should be banned - is, I feel, inappropriate. Why, after all, are WiFinetworks being installed in lecture theatres? But to raise concerns is appropriate - and we do need to explore ways in which we can seek to satisfy both the twitterers, live bloggers and Web surfers and those who don’t partake. In part this is being helped by the posts from Martin Weller, Doug Clow and others who are explaining why they do this and the benefits this can provide. But in addition event organisers, event chairs, facilitators, etc. need to explore ways of developing best practices for maximising the benefits of the technologies nut just for the early adopters and enthusiasts but for, if not all, then for many. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 12 Comments » 126 of 544

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Twitter Saves Lives! The Backlash Must be Due May 9, 2008 The front page of yesterday’s Technology Guardian (which I still normally refer to as the Online Guardian) had a very positive article on Making The Most Of Twitter which opened with: An American student is arrested in Egypt, and manages to send a brief text with a single word - “ARRESTED” - which is picked up around the world, and leads quickly to his release, helped by a lawyer hired by his university back in the US. In Britain, the prime minister’s office decides people should be able to find out what their premier is doing; as of today, more than 2,000 people do. …People fleeing from fires in California say where they are’ that proves more useful and timely than official government information. The common factor? Twitter, the free (at present) service which lets you send a 140-character message, or “tweet”, to a site where anyone can read it Such views reflect those of Martin Weller who, in a post on Turning to Twitter in a crisis related a story on Jim Groom’s blog which described: how a group of people at a presentation at the University of Richmond were suddenly told to turn off the lights and be quiet as a suspicious character with a gun had been spotted on campus. After the initial moment of fright, he relates how a number of them turned to Twitter, and how this turned out to be both soothing and useful And I’ve remembered that last week a tweet from Josie Fraser pointed to a CNN article which was featured in the opening sentence of the Guardian article (where Josie leads, the Guardian follows!). A great time for those early adopters of Twitter, with our commitment to initially puzzled colleagues now being vindicated in the mass media one might thing. It’s perhaps reminiscent of the excitement we felt in May 1997, perhaps the last time we felt the people were, at last, being empowered. But why do I feel that the dreaded Boris moment is lurking around the corner? But what can we expect in the backlash. I suspect journalist have already been asked to dig for a story on the negative side of Twitter. I think we can expect the CEO of a large company (other head of the CBI would be even better) to provide figures on the amount of productivty lost due to Twitter. And, on a personal level, expect the tabloids to cover stories of the teenager who tweeted that their parents were away, and found a large horde descending on the place and vandalising the home (and I know that story was first used with MySpace as the guilty service - but we should expect such stories to be endlessly recycled). Has anyone spotted the backlash in the press yet? And what other stories can we expect? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Twitter | Edit 3 Comments »

“Even If We’re Wrong, We’re Right” 127 of 544

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May 8, 2008 It can be a real thrill when you see someone give a fresh insight into your thinking, and that happened to me recently. The background was a talk on “What If We’re Wrong? Developing A Sustainable Approach to the Use of Web 2.0” which I gave at an online JISC Emerge event recently. I tweeted that I was giving the talk and Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University, responded expressing an interest in my talk. As it wasn’t possible for Martin to attend that online event, a few days later I pointed Martin in the direction of a Slidecast of a talk on “Exploiting The Social Aspects Of Web 2.0 In HE Institutions” which I gave the following day, and subsequently synched the slides with the audio of the talk. The gist of my talk was the need for fans of Web 2.0 approaches to listen to concerns which may be raised and to seek ways of addressing such concerns. And in the talk I explored some of the legitimate concerns and suggested some possible solutions. But when Martin sent me a Twitter message saying that “even if we’re wrong we’ll still be better placed to understand what comes next than non-engagers” I felt he’d got the wrong end of the stick. However in a post on Web 2.0 - even if we’re wrong, we’re right Martin explained his thinking: Which brings me on to my even if we’re wrong, we’re right argument. Sure things won’t be the utopian vision of free services, open education and democratisation that some talk of, but whatever comes after the current trends will build on top of them. Just as web 2.0 built on what had happened in the first wave of web development. And the people who got it, the founders and the visionaries weren’t people who had dismissed the web and insisted it would go away. They were people who engaged with it, and could see how to take it forward. So, whatever comes after web 2.0 (don’t say web 3.0), the people best placed to understand it and adapt to it will be those who have immersed themselves in the current technological climate, and not those who have sat waiting for it to fail so they can say ‘told you so.’ These views were reiterated on the Scott O’Raw blog in a post entitled Will It Never End? who made the point that: It doesn’t really matter that individual technologies will live, die, evolve, or be stunning success stories. I wholly expect that the version of WordPress I am using to write this post (or even WordPress itself) will be considered an anathema in the years to come. The key is to embrace not only the technology itself but the process of changing technology with a view to how it can help us all learn more and share in that learning. My approach had been to seek to minimise risks and perhaps to be rather cautious. Martin and Scott are suggesting that we are now in a position to acknowledge that although there may be risks, in many cases we have already gained positive benefits over those who aren’t willing to engage. And I think there is a lot of truth in this. If, for example, Twitter were to fold (and I can’t see how it has a sustainable business model) or the recent performance problems which have affected Slideshare were to make the service unusable, I would still feel that I have gained tangible benefits during the time I’ve been used the services. After all, that IBM mainframe technology wasn’t sustainable in the long term, and neither was MS Windows 3.0 - but we did use them when they 128 of 544

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were around, and in using them we gained a better understanding of how IT could be used in our organisations. Does anyone seriously think that if one or two current Web 2.0 services fail that we will go back to a world of CMSs systems managing static information content for reading by a passive user community? Now who’s not being realistic? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 3 Comments »

How Blogs Can Help Museums To Engage With Their Users May 5, 2008 In a recent blog post on the Cultural Interpretation & Creative Education blog Bridget McKenzie summarised the MLA and HLF views on 21st C Curation which were presented at a seminar given at UCL on 30th April 2008. Carole Souter, CEO of the HLF informed the audience that “‘We’re getting tough with people” and went on to say that “If you tell us that 200,000 more people are going to look at your website because of it, well, so what? How do you know they have really been engaged?“. The importance of user engagement was echoed by Roy Clare, CEO of MLA. In a comment on a project funded by the NOF-digitise programme he asked: “How they [the users] would engage with it?“. I am really pleased that such views are being expressed so clearly by senior managers of public sector bodies. In the past I’ve been concerned an an emphasis on blunt usage statistics. But now the emphasis in the museums sector is on the quality of the user experience and user engagement. And, as Bridget observed, Carole Souter’s “suggestion was that if you are going to include digitisation into an HLF bid, it would have to involve people in specific thematic projects of local interest“. If funding will only be available for digitisation projects which enable users to actively engage with the digitised content, then this, to me, seems to be sending strong signals that a Web 2.0 approach should be taken. And one approach to enable users to be able to engage with the content is through the provision of blogs as, in a UK context, Ingrid Beazley demonstrated at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference with a session entitled “Reach new audiences, increase numbers of visitors, and become a major part of the local community by using online social networking sites and blogs“. As described in her abstract Dulwich Picture Gallery has “experienced marked successes with our user driven, dialogue friendly Facebook and Flickr sites” and “there is considerable buzz around our plans for 2008, including the launch of our online magazine blog with which we are building a Gallery associated community“. But how should museums go about establishing and sustaining their blogs - and also exploiting the potential of social networking services? Well I’m pleased to say that this is a topic I will be talking about at the Museum Heritage 2008 show at London Olympia on Wednesday 7th May 2008. If any readers of this blog from the museum’s sector are planning to attend this event, I’d love to chat with 129 of 544

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you. But if you can’t attend, then my slides are available on Slideshare - and are also embedded in this blog post.

Your feedback is welcome. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Events | Edit 2 Comments »

A Wonderful Discovery May 2, 2008 I’ve come across a great idea for improving the efficiency of businesses. The idea is based on the notion of what in the UK has been called ‘tea breaks’ - and it seems that businesses in the US are using a similar idea but call it a ‘coffee break’. The idea is that the workplace pays people to have informal chats. ‘That’s crazy’ I hear the sceptics say. ‘There’s no sustainable business model’. But the research suggests that during the ‘tea breaks’ employees not only discuss the television programmes they watched the previous night and their plans for the weekend, but also work-related topics. And the informal nature of tea breaks allows people from different parts of the workplace to engage in the discussions. This provides the justification to managers who wish to ensure that any new ideas provide a return on investment. And the latest research (which is still being evaluated) suggests that staff who are particularly active keen in tea breaks have also started to participate in social activities outside office hours. Typically a social networking environment is used, which are sometimes referred to as ‘pubs’, although ‘wine bars’ are sometimes used in metropolitan areas. And managers will be pleased to learn that the discussions which take place in these social environments sometimes relates to work activities - in these cases the organisation gains benefits for zero investment! What a brilliant idea!! OK, so we don’t quite see tea breaks and out-of-hours meetings quite in these terms. But people do ask what benefits social networks tools such as Twitter can 130 of 544

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provide. In my case, Twitter provides a similar function to the coffee break - but rather than providing a forum for a mixture of informal and work-related chats with work colleagues, it enables me to have such discussions with a wider group. This typically starts off with people I work closely with, but then extends to people I’ve met at conferences and sometimes people I may not have met but have some connection with. A good example of this is Bryan Kennedy. I met Brian at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference a year ago. We discovered a shared interest in Twitter and have been following each other since then. This has enabled me to have a low-key insight into what Brian was doing at the Science Museum of Minnesota. And when Brian started twittering about this year’s Museums and the Web conference our informal connections through Twitter enabled us to reestablish contact at the conference more easily than people I’d met a year ago and hadn’t had the opportunity to follow what they were doing, What’s the business case for Twitter? Look at your organisation’s business case for tea breaks, and that may help you to understand. Now I wonder if, in ther future, staff will have a legal entitlement to a social network break? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Twitter | Edit 3 Comments »

Is Accessibility 2.0 Becoming Mainstream? May 1, 2008 In May 2007 I presented a paper entitled “Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes” at the W4A 2007 conference. This paper reflected discussions which took place at a professional forum on “Accessibility 2.0: A Holistic And User-Centred Approach To Web Accessibility” which took place at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference. Yesterday Frankie Roberto, a Web developer at the Science Museum, emailed me with details of a recent conference entitled “Accessibility 2.0: a million flowers bloom“. Now the use of the 2.0 meme to refer to a renewed and user-focussed approach is nothing new, so we shouldn’t be surprised at seeing the ‘Accessibility 2.0′ term being coined by independent bodies. But what was pleased was to see that the ideas and approaches which Lawrie Phipps and myself first described in a paper on “Developing A Holistic Approach For E-Learning Accessibility” back in 2004 being reflected by those more directly involved in accessibility support and advocacy. The Accessibility 2.0 conference was described as “the first ever conference focussing on web accessibility in a Web 2.0 world. By Web 2.0 we mean rich web applications which allow users to create content by writing blogs, uploading videos or commenting on other user’ content and creating networks.“. The conference Web site went on to say that “The title of the conference was inspired by T.V. Raman, a Google Research Scientist, to describe the current wave of creativity and innovation brought about by the development of web applications“. The introduction to the conference was given by Robin Christopherson of AbilityNet. I’ve met Robin on a number of occasions and Robin participated at the Accessibility Summit II hosted by the JISC TechDis service for which I was 131 of 544

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one of the event co-facilitators and speakers. A report on the meeting was published in the E-Government Bulletin. The participants at the meeting “call[ed] for change in the way web accessibility is advocated particularly in local and central government, education and the museum and cultural sectors.“ Although we have not managed to organise a follow-up meeting, I feel the “Accessibility 2.0: a million flowers bloom” conference has reflected the views and approaches expressed at the summit and brought those ideas out to a wider community. The blog post about the conference which Frankie referred me to was entitled “Open Data“. In the blog post, written by Jeremy Keith, a Web developer living and working in Brighton, England, Jeremy expands on the talk he gave at the conference. Jeremy drew parallels with approaches which can address long term access to resources. He commented “Open formats are better than closed formats” whilst acknowledging that the ”terms “open” and “closed” are fairly nebulous“. Jeremy went even further by admitting that “Standardization doesn’t necessarily lead to qualitatively better formats. Quite the opposite in fact. The standardization process, by its very nature, involves compromise“. He goes on to support the simplicity of HTML, but, in response to the diversity provided by a Web 2.0 environment “instead of battling against the anarchic nature of the Web, go with it” and “embrace flexibility in your attitude towards accessibility“. Jeremy argues that in today’s Web 2.0 world, users are now making use of publishing services (he himself mentions Flickr, Twitter, Pownce and Magnolia). In a world in which users may read and write in equal measures “accessibility guidelines that deal with Web content just don’t cut it any more“. I very much welcome this contribution to the debate and, indeed, the image of Accessibility 2.0 reflecting a renewed approach to accessibility in which we encourage ‘a million flowers to bloom’. And it’s great to see this approach being advocated by those actively involved in the accessibility arena, such as organisations like Abilitynet, which hosted the conference. But how, I wonder, should we address the conservatism we’re likely to face within the institutions which have adopted an approach to Web accessibility which is based on simple conformance with checklists which simply cover the Web content? And what about the Web developers and content creators who, possibly for a period of almost 10 years, have prided themselves on implementing such guidelines? How should we change this culture? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

The Rise and Fall of Apache? April 25, 2008

The Data It can difficult to know how to respond when the evidence fails to support one’s beliefs. What then, should one make of the recent figures from Netcraft’s March 2008 Web Server Survey which show that figures for usage of the Apache Web server software peaked in 2005 and the decline since then has been matched with a corresponding rise in use of Microsoft’s Web server software? 132 of 544

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Using The Data To Unearth Preconceived Ideas I used this image, incidentally, in an online presentation yesterday, but without the companies’ names being displayed. In response to my question “Which company do you think seems to be in decline?” the answers suggested included Facebook, Twitter and Blackboard - all companies which various participants in the conference had negative views on.

Discussion In professions such as politics or in the commercial sector we might expect inconvenient data to be conveniently ignored (says me cynically!). In higher education, however, we pride ourselves on developing theories to fit the facts and not finding facts to fit our beliefs (says me in a rather arrogant fashion!). Or do we? I can’t help but feel that in IT we have a whole series of beliefs and find it difficult to know how to respond when the evidence challenges such beliefs. Indeed I’ve commented on this previously: we haven’t embraced the open source FireFox browser to the extent which had been expected when the browser was released; conformance with the WAI accessibility guidelines doesn’t necessarily bring about universal accessibility and open standards sometimes don’t work. The IT profession needs, in my opinion, to be more sceptical about its beliefs and to gather evidence to demonstrate, or refute, such beliefs.

Returning To The Data But what, I wonder, can we make of the growth in Microsoft’s Web server software? And, perhaps more intriguingly, what should we make of Google’s entry into the chart in July 2007? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web Server ·Tags: Netcraft | Edit 7 Comments »

One World, One Web … But Great Diversity 133 of 544

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April 23, 2008 Yesterday I presented a paper on “One World, One Web … But Great Diversity” at the W4A 2008 conference which was being held in Beijing. After the presentation and responding to the questions I received I went to the Claverton rooms at the University of Bath for coffee with my colleagues. For the first time I presented a peer-reviewed paper which I had previously recorded and made available on my Web site and also via Google Video. The 22 minute long video was played at the conference and I was available to respond to questions via a Skype connection with the conference chair, David Sloan. This was a very valuable learning experience. My previous use of video to give a presentation was at the UCISA 2008 Management Conference, where Andy Powell was available to complement my introduction with his live participation at the conference. On both occasions I’ve found that my talk has sounded ‘flat’ without the feedback one gets from presenting to a live audience. Perhaps the next time I do this I should record a talk I give to a live local audience. But at least I saved an estimated 2.9 tonnes of carbon emissions and was able to get back to pressing items of work after the presentation. The paper build on previous papers on accessibility, and explored how the holistic approach to Web accessibility we have developed previously can be applied in a Web 2.0 context. The paper arguing the need for a user-centred approach to Web accessibility, rather the the resource-centred approach which is the underlying basis for the accessibility guidelines developed by WAI.

Your comments are welcomed. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility | Edit 14 Comments »

The Guardian’s “Libraries of the Future” Supplement 134 of 544

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April 22, 2008 Lorcan Dempsey has picked on on a post in the eFoundation’s blog about the “Libraries of the Future” Supplement in today’s Guardian. And it’s good to have the article in the supplement available online. The thing I find interesting about the first page is how the JISC-funded report on Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future is being interpretted. The introduction to the supplement begins with a statement that the report “found young people lacking in critical and analytical skills“. And the main article on the first page entitled “Information alert” has the byline “A recent survey shows many students from the so-called ‘Google generation’ lack the basic skills needed for online research“. What are we to make of this? Clearly we (the information professionals, the institutions, the policy makers) need to take action to address the deficiencies of our students. But if you read on you’ll find that the report says “From undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal, flicking behaviour in digital libraries. Factors specific to the individual, personality and background are much more significant than generation.“. Now this presents a very different picture, I feel. Indeed that headline to the supplement could equally have read “the report has found that researchers, academics and lecturing staff are lacking in critical and analytical skills“. But does surfing of Web sites and an emphasis on Google for searching necessarily demonstrate a lack of critical and analytic skills? I myself use Google many times a day. Recently I used it to find hotels prior to travelling to conferences in Taiwan and Montreal. I used Google to find hotel bookings sites and Google maps to find hotels close to the conference venue. And, for my first trip, once I’d found a possible hotel I used the Google Taiwan search engine to find other ways of accessing the information - and discovered I could get the hotel for a cheaper rate using a local company rather than the US-based Web site. Before booking the hotel I, of course, checked that a secure connection was being used. We should all be developing skills in using search engines such as Google and in interpretting the results we find, as the vast majority of us will turn to the Web to support our social activities, personal finances, etc. And to suggest that a quality, peer-reviewed and safe environment will solve all of our needs is clearly wrong. The Guardian supplement includes article on “Quiet revolution” (a heading based on a library cliche suggests Phil Bradley) Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library says regarding your scholars ”Their ease with computers and technology hides the reality of their information literacy skills: lacking analytical, effective search strategies, they rely on simple solutions for their study needs - parking their critical faculties.“ I would agree with this. Rather than focussing on the building of alternative services, there’s a need to develop and implement new media literacy strategies - and the new services that we will be building shouldn’t be regarded as providing alternatives, but providing complementing services aimed, perhaps, at niche areas. And let’s remember the growing body of evidence which suggest that users seem to prefer simple search interfaces - a recent post by Jennifer Trant comments on this from the perspective of searching museums’ collections. 135 of 544

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It is also important to remember that new media literacy strategies need to address the professors, researchers and policy makers and not just the students. And this provides me with a timely opportunity to mention a book on “Information Literacy Meets Library 2.0” edited by Peter Godwin and Jo Parker. I should add that I contributed a chapter to this book (on Web 2.0 Tools). However the hard work was down to Peter and Jo, and the fellow contributors who provided a range of case studies illustrating a wide variety of approaches to information literacy which are being taken using Web 2.0 tools. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in information literacy | Edit 5 Comments »

Should We “Leave Search To Google?” April 21, 2008 When I chaired the session on Search at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference the discussion, as I described in a recent post, turned to lightweight approaches to federated searching. During the session I received a Twitter comment on my feedback channel (intermingled with the football scores!) asking “is it more useful to develop compelling browse interfaces & leave search to Google?” The response at the time seemed to be that although Google might have a role to play in the future, its role at present is limited (in a museums’ context) due to the complexities of typical collections management Web interfaces: the valuable data is part of the ‘deep Web’ which search engines such as Google find difficult to index. But just a few day’s ago, via a comment made by Nate Solas on his blog post about the Search session, I discovered that Google have announced their intention to index the deep Web: This experiment is part of Google’s broader effort to increase its coverage of the web. In fact, HTML forms have long been thought to be the gateway to large volumes of data beyond the normal scope of search engines. The terms Deep Web, Hidden Web, or Invisible Web have been used collectively to refer to such content that has so far been invisible to search engine users. By crawling using HTML forms (and abiding by robots.txt), we are able to lead search engine users to documents that would otherwise not be easily found in search engines, and provide webmasters and users alike with a better and more comprehensive search experience. Mia Ridge has commented on the implications of this announcement: You’re probably already well indexed if you have a browsable interface that leads to every single one of your collection records and images and whatever; but if you’ve got any content that was hidden behind a search form (and I know we have some in older sites), this could give it much greater visibility. In light of Google’s announcement it is timely, I would think, to revisit the question “It is it more useful to develop compelling browse interfaces & leave search to Google?” Imagine the quality of services we could provide if we redirect resources from replicating search algorithms which have already been 136 of 544

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developed (”standing on the shoulders of giants”). And let’s remember (a) the evidence which suggests that users prefer simple search interfaces and (b) the costs of attempting to compete with Google in the search area - let’s not forget that, despite their riches, Microsoft haven’t been able to compete successfully. Is it likely that search technologies developed by tax-payers’ money will succeed where Microsoft have failed? PS I should probably add that I’m not the first to suggest this idea. The OpenDOAR team, in particular have deployed a search interface using Google across institutional repository services. Many congratulations to the team at the University of Nottingham for evaluating this lightweight approach. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in search ·Tags: mw2008 | Edit 27 Comments »

Twitter? It’s An Interactive Business Card April 17, 2008

The Background I was talking to Gwen van der Velden, head of the Director of Learning and Teaching Enhancement at the University of Bath recently. We spoke about the evaluation of Twitter that Andy Ramsden is currently engaged in with his colleagues in the e-learning unit. Gwen asked me for my views of how Twitter could be used and, in light of my recent trips to conferences, I described it as an ‘interactive business card’. When you go to a conference you’ll often exchange business cards with people you meet. But when you get back to work you’ll probably find (well I do anyway!) that you can’t remember whose card it was or what you have intended to get back to them about - and if this has happened to you before, you might have decided to scribble a note on the card; so now you have the additional task of deciphering the scrawl written late at night in the bar after the conference reception!

Exploring The Analogy Exchanging Twitter IDs enables you to receive an informal stream of information which can help you to develop a better context for any follow-up activities. And if you decide you are not interested, you can remove the Twitter address from the people you follow - the equivalent, perhaps, of tearing up a business card. I noticed a good example of this when I returned home after my chat with Gwen and read a tweet from ‘homebrewer’ which said: @briankelly It’s free for reuse, but I haven’t put a license on it yet: http://tinyurl.com/5b7fbf This was in response to a tweet from me after I spotted thistweet from homebrewer:

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I had asked: @homebreweris your Google ANl;ytics talk avilable online? And is there a CC licence for reuse This to me provided a good example of the benefits of swapping Twitter IDs at conferences and the benefits of micro-blogging your work activities. Now the business card analogy is meant to refer to just one use case for twittering which works for me. Does it for you? And how might you apply this use case?

Applying The Analogy How about creating a Twitter account before you go to a conference which you pass on to people you connect with? Then use the account during the conference to summarise your thoughts on the talks and provide some brief reflections when you return to work. This can then provide an ‘in’ for the contacts you’ve made and there’s no need to sustain the micro-blogging or to worry about microblogging the minutae of your daily activities. Why not give it a try - what’s there to lose? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Twitter | Edit 1 Comment »

Facebook Or Twitter - Or Facebook And Twitter April 15, 2008 In the opening plenary talk on Hands On The Internetat the Museums and the Web 2008 conference Michael Geist mentioned the popularity of Facebook in Canada - apparently Canada has the highest per capita Facebook usage in the world. And, as described in a blog post on the talk by arkrausehardie Michael described the “enormous pressure a sort of flash-mob FaceBook group can bring to bare (sic!) on public policy such as the recent group started by Geist on copyright issues in Canada, now with more than 40,000 members“. The interest in the potential of Facebook for engaging with a museum’s user community was described in a number of papers at the conference. For example Shelley Bernstein’s paper on “Where Do We Go From Here? Continuing with Web 2.0 at Brooklyn Museum” described the ArtShare Facebook application they had developed to “share works of art from Museums around the world“. And a paper by Brian Kelly and colleagues at the Canada Science and Technology Museum on “Social Presence: New Value For Museums And Networked Audiences“ described “specific experiments with social media, including a detailed analysis of a Facebook group used by the Canada Science and Technology Museum Corporation’s Membership Program“. In addition the paper described “two theoretical models – the “Innovation Radar” and genre analysis – to help analyze the nature of the opportunities for innovation, and to develop a better understanding of the distinctive characteristics of alternate communication channels“. And yet in some circle such use of Facebook is being derided with comments such as “It’s a closed garden“, “Its popularity is on the wane” or “Twitter is a better development environment” being made. I have to say that I find that such 138 of 544

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comments tend to miss the point. A recent post on “The Becoming Uninteresting Complex - Facebook versus Twitter” commented on the “pretty irrational questionings like “is Twitter replacing Facebook?“, Twitter doesn’t allow socialization. It simply allow instant interactions“. And as can be seen from a SIteanalytics snapshot which compares usage of Facebook and Twitter, it you want to make inappropriate comparisons, it’s Twitter which fares badly.

Making these points, I should add that we shouldn’t explore the potential of Facebook uncritically. But the early adopters do acknowledge some of the concerns which need to be recognised. Dawson et al have commented that “There are, however, a variety of potential pitfalls with social networking sites. One concern is whether such sites are a fad or flash in the pan“. The paper goes on to add “Issues of privacy are another important factor. Users of social networking sites appear to be willing to live with great compromises in their privacy. However, even these broad boundaries have been tested a number of times. Facebook, for example, has risked alienating its users in controversies such as the introduction of the news feed in 2006 (boyd, 2006a), and the more recent introduction of the “Beacon” in 2007 (Hirsh, 2007).“ So let’s be realistic and continue the experimentation and debate. But let’s also be critical of our preferred environments. And although I’m a happy user of Twitter and participated in its use at MW2008, looking at the hashtag data for the mw2008 tagI would acknowledge that it was used primarily by a small group who knew each other - and indeed went out drinking together. Twitter can be useful for some - but it’s not necessarily the killer application for everybody. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Facebook, Social Networking, Twitter ·Tags: Facebook, mw2007, Twitter | Edit 7 Comments »

The Search Session At MW 2008 April 14, 2008 On the final day of the Museums and the Web 2008 conference (Saturday !) I chaired a session on Search. There were only two papers presented at this session - and as the session was scheduled to last from 11.00-12.30 both of the 139 of 544

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speakers were happy for the session to provide an opportunity for general discussions after the papers had been presented. Terry Makewell ’s paper was entitled “The National Museums Online Learning Project Federated Collections Search: Searching Across Museum And Gallery Collections In An Integrated Fashion“. As described in a blog post by Nate Solas, the paper described the approaches to federated search being taken by 9 partner organisations in the UK. The two search technologies described were OAI/PMH and Opensearch - and a decision was made to use Opensearch, due to its simplicity, the short timescales and the limited technical expertise and resources available by some of the partners. Following Terry’s talk Johan Møhlenfeldt Jensen, Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark presented a paper on “Approaches To Presentation Of Cultural Heritage Information In The ALM-Area In Denmark And Scandinavia“. This paper complemented Terry’s paper nicely, and highlighted some of the challenges posed by federated search including the differing cultures across the archives, libraries and museums domains and the differing cultures across the Scandinavian countries. The discussions afterwards focussed on whether a simple approach to federated search would be sufficient. Mike Ellis asked Terry whether used of Google search technologies, such as Google Coop, had been considered. It seems it had, but ruled out due to the complexities posed by use of session IDs on some of the collections. In a subsequent tweeton the Twitter back-channel Mike pointed out his experimentation with Google Coop across a number of museums - and this was briefly tested by the two speakers after the session had concluded (as an aside I should note that this was the only relevant Tweet received during the session - however Terry and I were also interested in the football scores which I receive on my Twitter account, including the flurry of goals conceded by Derby County!) . The discussion on simplicity versus sophistication led to discussions on the user experience. Following a question on evidence of use of advanced search capabilities, data from an Australian example showed that a very low percentage of users (1%, I think) accessed an advance search capability - and, indeed, most users submitted only a single search term! I pointed out that the importance of simple interfaces was likely to grow as use of mobile devices became more popular - a comment that was particularly pertinent to the MW 2008 conference, as the WiFi access problems conference delegates had experienced the previous day were apparently due to the large numbers of network users who were using an iPhone or Nokia N95. There was a feeling, I think, that federated search may, in the future, be provided by mainstream commodity products - and, indeed, as collections management tools evolve and start to provide static URIs, the benefits of solutions such as Google Coop may become even more apparent. Will there, I wonder, be a session on federated search at future MW conferences or will this area be, like institutional search, be addressed by mainstream solutions? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: mw2008 | Edit 3 Comments »

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Reflecting On Openness and the Semantic Web April 12, 2008 The printed copy of the proceedings of the Museums and the Web 2008 conference divides the papers into four sections: Institutions, User Participation, Web Space and Reflecting. The concluding section, on Reflecting, contains only two papers: one on Semantic Dissonance: Do We Need (And Do We Understand) The Semantics Web? by Ross Parry (University of Leicester), Nick Poole (The Collections Trust) and Jon Pratty (Culture 24) and my paper on What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community?, co-authored by Mike Ellis (Eduserv) and Ross Gardler (JISC OSS Watch), which I’ve posted about recently. It is pleasing that the two papers which reflect on the challenges and opportunities posed by recent Web developments have been written by a combination of researchers and practitioners based in the UK. Ross Parry’s paper is based on a series of workshops funded by the AHRC which were held at various locations in the UK during 2006 and 2007. The paper describes discussions which have taken place recently in the UK in which it has been suggested that “museum data with good URIs, consistent metadata and simple tagging are seen to provide a vitally stable infrastructure on which to build“. To this list I would add the importance of providing data which is free from restrictive licence conditions and which is exposed for reuse by other applications which can exploit the rich semantic data. But stable URIs, consistent metadata, simple tagging, open data and machine interfaces - isn’t this what Web 2.0 is about? From one perspective, people may regard Web 2.0 as shorthand for referring to blog, wiki and RSS applications. But Tim O’Reilly’s original Web 2.0 diagram makes it clear that Web 2.0 is broader than this. In a chapter entitled ‘‘If it quacks like a duck…’ - developments in search technologies‘ in a recent Becta Research Report on Emerging Technologies for Learning Volume 3 (2008) (PDF version of chapter) my colleague Emma Tonkin argues that: By “semantic”, Berners-Lee means nothing more than “machine processable”. The choice of nomenclature is a primary cause of confusion on both sides of the debate. It is unfortunate that the effort was not named “the machine processable web” instead. I think Emma is right: the term Semantic Web has caused much confusion. But if the Semantic Web is really a machine processable Web in which clean URIs can help to provide programatic access to structured data, then isn’t this very close to what Web 2.0 may be considered to be about? And can you claim to be in favour of the Semantic Web if you are critical of the architectural aspects of Web 2.0? Or, to put it another way, isn’t engagement with Web 2.0 a needed stepping stone towards the Semantic Web? And won’t we find that those who come out with reasons for not engaging with Web 2.0, will come out with a similar set of reasons for not engaging with the Semantic Web? 141 of 544

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Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Semantic Web, Web2.0, openness ·Tags: mw2008 | Edit 6 Comments »

What Does Openness Mean To Your Community? April 9, 2008 Myself, Mike Ellis (Eduserv) and Ross Gardler (JISC OSS Watch) are the co-authors of a paper on “What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community?” which has been accepted for the Museums and the Web 2008 conference. And I’m pleased that David Bearman (conference co-chair) response when he read the paper was that it should be discussed in a Professional Forum at the conference. Indeed David’s comment on the paper was “it sounds like it could be the most amazing session at MW this year” The paper suggests that openness can include open standards, open source, open APIs, open access and an open culture (i.e. a willingess to encourage user-generated content). But the paper also acknowledges that there is a downside to each of these aspects. Some of these concerns were raised by Nick Poole, Chief Executive of the MDA in a thread on “The speculative aspect of using Web 2″ on the MCG JISCMail list. Nick commented: … ‘how can you be so naïve’? Low cost of entry? We were promised that with Open Source Software and it turned out to be no cheaper. Reaching audiences while we sleep? They told us Z39.50 and interoperability would solve that and we’re still not there. Content Management will make everyone a publisher? You just try and get a username and password out of the Council IT Admin. I’m pleased that Nick raised such concerns. He’s right when he suggests that the potential benefits of both open source and open standards have been over-hyped. And, similarly, the benefits of Web 2.0 can also be exaggerated. But my response to the concerns raised by Nick are to argue that we need to develop more sophisticated ways of engaging with these aspects of openness and just because policy makers appear to feel that simply mandating use of open standards and open source software will be sufficient to deliver their benefits, doesn’t mean we are faced with the binary choice of accepting or rejecting such views. Rather we need to engage in discussions and debate on ways in which real benefits can be realised. I’ve been involved in working collaboratively with others in developing models for exploiting the potential of open standards and open source software. At the Museums and the Web 2.007 conference I presented a paper on Addressing The Limitations Of Open Standards, co-authored with my colleague Marieke Guy and Alastair Dunning (then of AHDS). These ideas were further developed and extended to include open source and an open access in a paper on Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access co-authored by Scott Wilson (JISC CETIS) and Randy Metcalfe (then of JISC OSS Watch). But there’s a need to build on these approaches and to develop approaches for exploiting other aspects of openness. And such approaches need to recognise the dangers and difficulties. But just because there are difficulties, doesn’t mean we should reject openness - rather it means we need to continue having the debate, 142 of 544

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whether it’s on mailing list such as the MCG list, on this blog or at the professional forum at the Museums and The Web 2008 conference. So I’ll ask here the questions w’ll be discussing in a few day’s time: what does openness mean to your community, what are the benefits it can provide, what are difficulties which are likely to be faced and, most importantly, how do you feel such difficulties should be overcome. Your feedback is warmly welcomed. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in openness, standards ·Tags: mw2008 | Edit 3 Comments »

Micro-blogging At Events April 8, 2008

Background I can recall attending the UCISA 2004 conference and listening to a speaker describing the problems caused by providing free laser printing services to student. It seems students made heavy use of the service and this caused particular problems at the end of term: the print queues would be full, so students would resubmit jobs, compounding the problems. But this is nothing new, I felt. I wanted to chat with my former manager at Loughborough University and ask him if we hadn’t addressed this problem back in the late 1980s. But he was near the front of the lecture theatre and I was near the back. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if we could exploit the WiFi networks which were starting to appear, and have such discussions during a talk - this could help to improve the quality of the questions I felt. Since then I have explored various ways of providing chat channels at events. At the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2005 held at the University of Manchester we made use of an IRC channel - on which the small numbers of IRC users heard about the 7/7 London bombings prior to the rest of the audience: the logs of the IRC chat makes interesting reading from a historical perspective: Jul 07 11:09:30 <SebastianRahtz>scary stuff with bombs. not impossible mchester next? … Jul 07 11:19:54 Sebastian: Swindon and Brighton rail stations shut Jul 07 11:19:59 <EmTonkin>oh Jul 07 11:20:00 all central london bus services stopped

Various chat tools were used at subsequent events, including Jabber and the Gabbly service. But since last year the term ‘micro-blogging’ has come into vogue and I’ve an interest in exploring the potential of Twitter in a conference setting, especially as I’ve been making regular use of Twitter for some time now.

Recent Experiments My initial experiments took place when I attended the NDAP 2008 conference in Taiwan. However my use of Twitter (sometimes summarising individual 143 of 544

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slides) caused problems for my Twitter ‘followers’, some of whom commented that their Twitter client was full of my photos of my portrait when they logged on in the morning and others found that having my Tweets being delivered on their mobile phone resulted in a continual stream of SMS alerts. Following a suggestion from James Clay, I then tried the Jaiku service. I’d tried this before, but this time I installed a dedicated Jaiku client and, with some help from James, set up the #ndap2008 channel which was dedicated to the conference. However, despite its richness as a micro-blogging and aggregation tool, Jaiku hasn’t really taken off - and as the most important aspect of a social networking tool is the social network, I reluctantly decided that Jaiku wouldn’t be the tool to use.

The Social Dimension Of Micro-Blogging At Events The fact that the numbers of posts (tweets) I sent on the first day of he NDAP 2008 conference irritated a couple of my Twitter followers is a good indicator of the social aspect of micro-blogging. And although I’ve concluded that it’s not the best tool for summarising individual points for a series of talks I have found that it can provide social benefits. After the conference had finished and on my last night in Taipei I tweeted that I was about to head off for a meal. A few minutes later I received a phone call from Casey Bisson, a fellow speaker at the conference. He’d spotted my tweet and suggested we go out for a meal. Which we did, and found a German restaurant where we found sausages and dark German beer made a refreshing change from the Chinese meals we’d been eating. And then arriving at Montreal I tweeted a few minutes after arriving at the hotel that I was about to go out for a meal. A few minutes later I received a series of suggestions for how I should spend my time in Montreal:

And a few minutes later another Twitterer pointed out a post on the conference forum aimed at “Beer Geeks in Montreal“:

From this I’ve learnt about the serendipitous benefits Twitter can provide. If I say where I am and what I’d like to do, people are willing to help And this, of course, fits in nicely with the social aspect of conferences - it’s not all about listening to talks.

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Micro-Blogs At The Museums and The Web Conference These reflections are very relevant to the Museums and the Web 2008 conference I am currently attending. Mike Ellis (with whom I am running two sessions at the conference) is providing the technical infrastructure for aggregating blog posts, Flickr feeds, etc. related to the conference. Mike is currently finalising these technologies, which includes an aggregation of posts on the conference.archimuse.com home page and, something I’ve not seen before, a timeline of Twitter posts with the #mw2008 tag.

It is really interesting to see how the use of networked technologies at events is evolving. Initially we were using self-containing instant messaging tools, but we’re now using tools, such as Twitter, which, when used in conjunction with RSS feeds and agreed tags (#mw2008 in this case) allows the content to be reused in a variety of different ways. I’m looking forward to seeing how this experiment works. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: mw2008 | Edit 7 Comments »

UKOLN 30th Anniversary Celebrations April 7, 2008 I’ve just written a post about my participation at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference. Although I’m pleased to be so actively involved in this conference, I do regret the fact that the conference coincides with the UKOLN 30th Anniversary celebrations which will be taking place at the British Library Conference Centre on Thursday 10th April 2008. As my colleague Paul Walk has written, the event features talks from senior figures in the Library, Higher Education and Cultural Heritage sectors. I will be sorry to miss the opportunity to meet up with the speakers and participants at the event. I would particularly have liked to chat to Lorcan Dempsey, who appointed me to the post of UK Web Focus back in 1996. And I should acknowledge Cliff Lynch’s dedication - Cliff will be giving a talk on Reflections on Museums and the Web 2008 here in Montreal on Saturday 12 April, just two days after speaking at the UKOLN event. Unfortunately as I am running sessions on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday it hasn’t been possible for me to participate at both events - although I hope that a short video clip giving my reflections of my time at UKOLN will be played at the event. 145 of 544

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My best wishes to everyone at the anniversary event, and all those others I’ve met during my eleven years at UKOLN who have helped to make my role at UKOLN so stimulating and enjoyable.

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: ukoln30 | Edit 1 Comment »

Museums and the Web 2008 Conference April 7, 2008 It was over 19 months ago when Jennifer Trant invited me to join the programme committee for the Museums and the Web 2007 Conference. As myself and colleagues at UKOLN were looking to engage more with the museums sector, I welcomed this opportunity. And as I like to engage fully with such activities, I found myself at last year’s conference presenting one paper (on Addressing The Limitations Of Open Standards), running a professional forum with Professor Stephen Brown on Accessibility 2.0: A holistic and user-centred approach to Web accessibility) and contributing to a paper by Mike Ellis on Web 2.0: How to stop thinking and start doing: Addressing organisational barriers. In addition I chaired a session at the conference. And while I was at the event I blogged about the conference. Jennifer, together with David Bearman, have succeeded in getting their money’s worth out of me again this year I’m in Montreal this week for the this year’s Museums and the Web 2008 Conference. And this year I’ll be running a half-day Blogging workshop, with Mike Ellis (the workshop, I’ve just noticed, is fully subscribed), running a professional forum, again with Mike Ellis, on What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community? and again chairing a session, this year on Search - which is being held on Saturday morning! It’s going to be a busy week, I can tell. And as I seem to have left the snow behind in England, and am enjoying the sunshine here in Montreal Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: mw2008 | Edit 1 Comment »

Have I Got News For You April 4, 2008 I’m sure many readers of this blog will be familiar with the Have I Got News For You TV programme. So I’d like to make my contribution. Which is the odd one out for the following: UMIST, AHDS, Lotus and Yahoo!?

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For those unfamilar with this BBC programme, the convention is that the first responses are expected to be humourus, before attempting an answer. And note that there isn’t a single answer to the question. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 7 Comments »

IWR Information Professional of The Year 2007 Article in Panlibus April 3, 2008 I’m pleased to report that a two-page feature article which describes my work activities on best practices for exploiting Web 2.0 has been published in Talis’s Panlibus Newsletter (Issue 8, Spring 2008). Many thanks to the editorial team, Ceri McCall and Harpeet Kaur Dhillon, for their support - and I’m particularly pleased with the layout of the article, which includes a photograph of myself receiving the IWR award and the cartoon which was drawn the following day. I must admit that I am a fan of the Talis newsletter (I should probably disclose that I know both of Talis’s Technology Evangelists: Paul Miller, who used to work at UKOLN, and Ian Davis). Although it is perhaps surprising that there doesn’t appear to be an online version of the newsletter available. Correction a PDF version is available. The article is on pages 6-7. The current issue (which runs to 26 pages) includes feature articles from Chris Banks, the Librarian at the University of Aberdeen (on the future of the library) and Christopher West, Director of Library and Information Services at Swansea. As always, Paul Miller has written an excellent article entitled “Unlock the power of shared data” - and for those with an interest in open data I’d recommend subscribing to his Panlibus and Nodalities blog. But the article I found of most interest was written by Dame Lynne Brindley. In her article in developments in The British Library Lynne reporting that her organisation is “adapting to the ‘wiki’ view and the ‘beta’ mindset of the digital world and engaging more with the needs of the ‘Millenials’. … We are encouraging a more participative approach through co-created experiences, user-created content, remixing services and social networking spaces. We have established Facebook groups, posted relevant videos on YouTube and are experimenting with he possibilities offered by Second Life and MySpace“. UKOLN is hosting its 30th anniversary event at the British Library next week, with Dame Lynne Brindley as one of the guest speakers. I’m very pleased that the work of myself and my colleagues at UKOLN is so closely aligned with the thinking at The British Library. My only regret is that I won’t be able to attend the event as I’ll be participating at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference next week. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) 147 of 544

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Are Social Networks Accessible? April 2, 2008 Are social networking services such as Facebook accessible to people with disabilities? As suggested by the title the ZDNet article on Social networking: Not as inclusive as you might think would indicate that they’re not. The article initially suggests that “social networks have created a level playing field for internet users — regardless of their physical disabilities” with a description of a user, Simon Stevens, with cerebral palsy who ” is a highly successful entrepreneur and consultant, and finds time to run a successful nightclub”. The article goes on to say: Stevens is highly active in Second Life, and also uses Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. Social networks are a vital business and social tool, he says. “Sometimes, it’s difficult for people with impairments to physically meet or get to places, and the internet makes that much easier,” he says. Added to which, social networks present entrepreneurs with a golden business opportunity. “There are 10 million users on Second Life and Facebook — that’s a big potential market and it’s ideally suited to campaigning,” he says. Good news for users with disabilities, it would seem. But the article then goes on to suggest that social networks have barriers to users with disabilities: “Most mainstream social networks don’t offer a simplified audio or “text only” version of their pages” and “… the biggest challenge for users is something that might at first seem very small: Captcha. … many disabled users have to rely on friends and family to complete Captcha forms on their behalf, and those without anyone to help them are often locked out of the networks altogether“. The article goes on to suggest that “A lack of accessibility is driving many disabled web users to create their own, alternative social-networking platforms” and argues that “Sites need to tighten up the privacy and control settings and make them easier for people to understand“. So social networking services fail to be accessible, then? And we should therefore stop using them, it might appear? I would disagree. The comment that “Most mainstream social networks don’t offer a simplified audio or “text only” version of their pages” clearly fails to appreciate that o comply with the WCAG accessibility guidelines you shouldn’t be providing text only version of pages! And when the article suggests that “A lack of accessibility is driving many disabled web users to create their own, alternative social-networking platforms” is this really the case - or are disability organisations simply following the crowds in setting up social networking services just like so many other organisations? And Disaboom, which provides “disabled people with a secure, accessible online community” ironically fails to comply with WCAG 1.0 guidelines! What evidence is there that disabled users are failing to use the mainstream social networks? Facebook has a number of groups for users with disabilities 148 of 544

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including “Blind Students on Facebook” and “Deaf all around the world” and a blog post on “The Gift Shop is Now Open .. for Everybody” by a Facebook developer states that: Most Facebook pages adhere to the guidelines which make the site accessible to the blind community. Recently, however, we received reports from a few devoted users that not all of our features were up to snuff. So, this week we launched a screen-reader accessible version of the Gift Shop . It’s currently linked off the help page, though later this week we’ll be incorporating it more tightly with the original Gift Shop. Well they would say that, you might suggest. But a blog post entitled Myspace and facebook, Comparative published in August 2007 the author concluded that “I have found myspace to be completely inapproachable and seemingly uncaring of their visually impaired users. Facebook were prompt and their content is completely accessible“. OK, the methodology may be flawed and this is only one report - but at least it is based on user testing rather than compliance with guidelines. The one area I haven’t covered is the barriers impose by CAPTCHA when registering to signup with social networks. The RNIB has reported on the accessibility issues associated with CAPCHA and concluded: It really seems to me that there is no catch all accessible alternative to CAPTCHA that can be secured from spammers. As we’ve seen some sites make efforts to incorporate an audio CAPTCHA but this isn’t sufficient, even if a logic question were thrown into the mix, (putting aside the fact that this places a lot of development work on the website owner to provide all three options). The article goes on to say that “it certainly seems that website owners are choosing security over accessibility“. Possibly true, but lets not forget that the ZDNet article argued that “Sites need to tighten up the privacy and control settings“. And if automated bots succeed in signing up to social networking services due to the lack of CAPTCHA barriers, users with disabilities will be particularly inconvenienced by the spam which is bound to follow. A post entitled “Thanks, Facebook!” on the American Foundation for the Blind’s blog indicated that Facebook does seem to be addressing the CAPTCH problem and concluded: For now, we want to thank Jeff and Facebook for making accessibility a priority. As Michelle said after the meeting, “I really liked what he said about Facebook really being accessible for everyone who wants to use it, because, of course he’s right, but I don’t think other people are always as considerate.” Clearly much more research on the accessibility of social networking services is needed - but let’s remember that disabled students are students too, and will be likely to want to make use the same social networking services as their friends. Let’s not assume that new services are bound to be inaccessible! And let’s apply the same level of criticisms to the other services we make use of too - it would be ironic if systems procured or developed for use within institutions were even more inaccessible than social networking services. And sadly I have heard stories of enterprise systems within universities which only worked with Internet 149 of 544

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Explorer Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility | Edit 6 Comments »

Disappearing Public Sector Web Sites March 31, 2008 I recently used the Intute service to see what records it held about UKOLN’s activities. I found a record about the ‘Crossroads West Midlands service which UKOLN provided technical advice on the design of the collection description database: This is the website of ‘Crossroads West Midlands’, a Resource funded project that is working to develop online access to the collections of libraries, museums and archives in the West Midlands (including universities and local authorities as well as private institutions). The Crossroads website is currently a prototype, testing a database built upon the RSLP collection level description database, covering the collections relating to the potteries industry of North Staffordshire. The record provides additional information about the service which reminded me about the meetings I attended several years ago about this project. I was interested to see what the Crossroads West Midlands service now looks like, so I followed the link to the http://www.crossroads-wm.org.uk/ address - and, rather than a service providing access to a database of cultural heritage resources in the West Midlands, I found a page full of links to services such as golf, gambling, estate agents, motor insurance, etc.

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Clearly at some point the domain name for the original service had lapsed and was purchased by a company which used it to host advertisments and links to companies which would be willing to advertise in this way (or possibly companies wishing to enhance their search engine ranking may have procured the services of a Search Engine Optimisation service and might not be aware of the approaches taken.) I was interested in the history of the Web site. Using the Internet Archive I discovered that the Web site was first archived on 26 September 2002. At this point the information in the archive contained details about the project. The service itself was first launched around February 2003. And the service disappeared to be replaced by an advertsiment site at some point between December 2005 and April 2006. What happened? Did project funding run out? Did key staff leave? Or was there a blunder, with nobody receiving the email requesting renewal of the domain name? Whatever the reason, this West Midlands Crossroads service has disappeared for sight. Is this inevitable? Well back in 1999 I was the project manager for the Exploit Interactive e-journal- an EU-funded project which ran until 2000. Once the funding had finished we had to decide what would happen with the domain name. We agreed to continue paying for the domain for at least 3 years after the project funding had ceased and would try to keep the domain for a period of 10 years. This policy was informed by a survey I carried out of project Web site funded by the EU-funded Telematics for Libraries programme. As I described in an article published in Exploit Interactive in October 2000 23 Web site had disappeared of the 103 projects funded. We are seeing a disappearance of cultural resource and EU-funded projects from the digital environment. And this may well get worse, if the UK Government’s policy of centralising its Web sites, which will result in 551 Web sites being closed down, is not managed properly. Will we, for example, find that the Drugdrive Web site at http://www.drugdrive.com/ suddenly becomes a site used for selling drugs? What is to be done? The good news is that the Government does seem to be handling its redirects properly - the Drugdrive Web site, for example, is redirected to http://www.drugdrive.com/ Well done, the UK Government. But what about the rest of us? Are we managing the closure of Web sites? And are we assessing the risks of failing to do this? After all, if a government Web site on protection of children from dangers on the Internet became available and was bought by a pornography site, we could well see a government minister being forced to resign Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in preservation | Edit 3 Comments »

Come Into My World March 28, 2008 Back in December 2007 Lorcan Dempsey wrote a blog post about the Nexus 151 of 544

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Facebook application, which provides a visualisation of your friends in Facebook. The highest density of his friends were his professional colleagues followed by “mostly UK friends (and the most highly connected nodes are people who work or worked at UKOLN“. This seemed interesting so I installed the Nexus application and captured a screenshot of the representation of collections of my friends and contacts. As with Lorcan, the highest density represents professional colleagues across the UK Web management community. The second largest cluster, shown on the bottom right of the image, are mt rapper sword dancing and folkie friends.

It’s possible to interactive with the data, exploring who knows who and explore what the links are. The concluding remark Lorcan made on his blog post was “Not sure it means much, but it was interesting to play with for a while ….“. I agree with Lorcan that it’s fun to play with. But can it be used in any meaningful fashion? I’m inclined to think that it may have some potential in the support of information literacy. Could this tool be used by students to explore the relationships across their groups of friends. Perhaps one could suggest that the students write a Daily Mail style expose´ based on the premise that “It’s 2028 and Carl Marks is the new leader of the Labour Party. Our Social Networking History Correspondent has managed to unearth the shocking details of what Carl got up to as a student. Read pages 1-5 for the shocking truth“. Or, in the interests of balance, write a 152 of 544

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article for the New Marxism Today on “On the day Prince William ascends to the throne we describe his student lifestyle“. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 4 Comments »

It’s Not New Labour vs Old Labour, It’s Cato And Cicero (typos fixed) March 25, 2008 I’ve previously suggested that there’s a need for political realism in the debates over ownership of social networks and the general direction of Web 2.0. And I’ve suggested that Old Labour is dead, and any expectations that the government will start nationalising services is being naive. Well, I got that wrong didn’t I! However lefties in the US and Canada will probably be disappointed that the Government’s nationalisation of Northern Rock doesn’t herald a return to socialist principles - indeed even the Daily Mail acknowledges that nationalisation “is extremely rare and embarrassing for Labour“. I think my mistake was in attempting to use political analogies which are still too relevant to many and capable of being reinterpretted in different ways. So I was really pleased to read Martin Weller’s post on Downes vs Wiley - Cato and Cicero revisited on his Edtechie blog. As Martin describes: Cato and Cicero both believed passionately in the same higher level goal, ie the establishment of the Roman Republic. Yet they frequently clashed about what was the best way to achieve it. In the same way I think Stephen (Downes) and David (Wiley both believe passionately in the overall aim of open education, but have differing views as to how it should be realised. Cato was the purist, unbending and uncompromising. Cicero was the pragmatist, willing to compromise and work with a range of people to advance the republic. Cato often thought Cicero compromised too much, thus rendering his beliefs invalid. Cicero was often infuriated that Cato wouldn’t compromise and through this played in to the hands of the anti-republicans. In his post Martin was suggesting that Stephen Downes’ objections to the Cape Town Declaration were based on the declaration’s inclusion of commercial entities, with Stephen arguing that “… the internet is already awash with really vile and intrusive commercial activity, do we have to export it too? We have the opportunity to do something really special in the world; why do we have to carve into every declaration of principle a paean to Things As They Are (and Those Who Profit From Them)?“. Now I have to admit that, although my knowledge of Cicero and Cato is limited to having read Imperium, I have (mostly) taken a pragmatic approach to life generally and IT development in particular. This struck me today when I read an article in CILIP Update about the inclusion 153 of 544

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of advertising leaflet in books borrowed from libraries and then returned home to find that my new passport had arrived - and a leaflet from a local estate agent was included in the letter (together with one from the NHS inviting me to join the NHS Organ Donor Register). Now I personally don’t have any great concerns about the inclusion of adverts in library books or with my passport. Indeed if the income this generates can improve the quality of their services, then I would suggest that this is a good thing. These particular issues, of course, aren’t about technologies. And neither, fundamentally, are the issues about ownership of social networks and use of commercially-provided services in the provision of educational and cultural heritage services (although I do acknowledge that the nature of IT can add extra complexities to the debate). We need to recognise that the debates on the specifics of Facebook’s ownership, Bill Gates plans for Microsoft’s future role in Internet services and Rupert Murdoch’s plans for his media empire will only go so far. The Catos (Catoers, Catoists?) followers of Cato will need to convince the followers of Cicero that there vision have a realistic chance of being implemented, otherwise the debates are doomed to be endlessly repeated. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 3 Comments »

How I (Inadvertently) Helped A Microsoft Patent Claim March 23, 2008 I was recently using Google Scholar to try and find out more about the impact of my peer-reviewed publications. Initially I was looking at papers published since 2004, but I then thought it would be interesting to see how far back the citation data might go. So I used Google Scholar to find out about links to my paper on The Evolution of Web Protocols which was published in the Journal of Documentation in 1999 (Vol. 55, No. 1 January 1999, pp. 71-81). I discovered two citations to this paper: one in course material for a course on Organization of Information written by the School of Library and Information Studies at The University of Alabama and, much more interestingly, one in a US Patent claim! The title of the patent is “System and method for discovering information about web resources ”. And, as can be seen from the Google Patent Search, the patent was filed in February 2002 and issued in August 2007, with the assignee being Microsoft Corporation! The first part of the patent states that the claim is based on:

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A computer-implemented method for identifying metadata about a first resource identified by a first Uniform Resource Identifier (“URI”), the method comprising: issuing a request for the first resource identified by the first 03/10/2008 14:51

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URI; receiving a response document from the first URI; parsing the response document received in response to the issued request, wherein the response document includes a second URI for accessing a second resource, wherein the response document includes an indication that metadata about the first resource exists on the second resource, wherein the indication indicates a metadata format; generating a request to retrieve the metadata from the second resource, wherein the generated request is formatted to support the metadata format identified by the indication; and retrieving the metadata from the second resource. The patent goes on to describe how this will be implemented: The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the response document comprises an HTML document and the indication comprises a LINK tag. Yes, the patent is based on use of the HTML LINK tag to link to a metadata description. As my colleague Pete Cliff has pointed out to me; OAI-ORE says you can include a resource map (which describes the agreggation of resources that make up (for example) a document - an article in the form of a Web page that includes images say)

The resource map is metadata. Does this mean that doing this now will require paying a fee to Microsoft? How can this patent claim have been granted? And why was my paper cited in the patent? Looking back at my paper I find that I stated that: Metadata can be described as the missing architectural component of the web. I went on to say that:

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Work in this area included Netscape’s proposal on “Meta Content Framework Using XML” [32] which provides a specification for describing information structures (metadata) for collections of networked information using XML and Microsoft’s “Web Collections using XML” [33] proposal for providing a metadata framework which can be used for a variety of applications, such as sitemaps, distributed authoring and content labelling. 03/10/2008 14:51

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Both of these proposals recognised the importance of XML for representing the syntax of the metadata. The proposals, together with other related work, led to the development of RDF, the Resource Description Framework, which provides a framework for metadata giving interoperability between applications that exchange machine-readable information on the Web [34]. At the time of writing (July 1998) work in developing RDF is still at an early stage. However RDF does seem to provide a mechanism for pulling together the various related metadata components and adding a new architectural component to the Web. It seems the patent claim cites my work as evidence that use of the tag to embed metadata was not envisaged back in 1998. However my paper was never intended to do provide a complete description of the architecture of Web. And I am sure that there will be examples of use of the tag for this purpose prior to the submission of this patent in 2002. My paper clearly has had an impact which I hadn’t expected! However rather than flaming me for helping Microsoft to patent use of metadata in Web pages I’d much rather the readers of this blog provided examples of prior art and suggested ways in which nthis patent can be overturned. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General ·Tags: patent | Edit 1 Comment »

PLE 1.0 and PLE 2.0 March 21, 2008

The Debates Martin Weller has recently commented on his Ed Techie blog that there has been a lot of discussion about PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) recently, and the relationships between PLEs, VLEs, TLEs (Teacher Learner Environment) and DPLEs (Default PLEs). Andy Powell has also discussed PLEs and PREs (Personal Research Environment) is a recent post on P vs. P in a user-centric world: the first of three posts he has written prior to our joint UCISA presentation.

PLE 1.0 This made me think about what I understand by the term PLE. And I realised that my first experience of a PLE was in primary school in the 1960s - back then a PLE was a Pen Learning Environment! And I was around at the time of several technological innovations as well as different ways in which the Pen Learning Environment (which in this post I’ll refer to as PLE 1.0) was used to support my learning. When I started at school I have vague recollections of using a ’scratch pen’ which we dipped in the ink well on our desk. However this was soon made obsolescent by the ‘biro’ technology. But when I passed my 11-plus and went to grammar school I remember one teacher who didn’t approve of ‘biro; technology and insisted that all of his homework had to be submitted using a fountain pen. But such technological luddism wasn’t 156 of 544

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sustainable, and I think that only happened in my first year. By the time I was a teenager I was free to use a biro. The initial focus of control was clearly on the technology itself. But I have only recently realised the different pedagogical approaches which accompanying PLE 1.0. In some classes the PLE was used to write down what the teacher had written on the blackboard. However other teachers (or did this reflect other disciplines) the inefficiencies of the teacher having to write on the blackboard were removed, and we had to copy directly from our text books. It was only later on the the teachers seemed to lose interest in controlling the technologies used and allowed me, the learner, the flexibility to make notes as I preferred.

PLE 2.0 What can PLE 2.0, the Personal Learning Environment, learn from my experiences in the 1960s and 70s? I think our institutions are still focusing too much on the technologies themselves and ways in which the technologies should be used - scratch pens, biros and fountain pen debates revisited. And there seems to be a tendency to be seek the best solution and make that the norm for all students - a Parker pen for all! But what we learnt from our writing instruments was the advantages to be gained when the technology became invisible, and we were free to make our own choices. (but when, I wonder, did personalised pens become prevalent?) The ideal PLE (to drop the versioning I introduced in this post) should surely follow the pen in becoming technologically invisible, and just something that the learner uses to support their tasks? And, perhaps more importantly, the institution’s response should be to provide the flexibility needed to support this approach. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General, Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

NDAP 2008 Conference March 18, 2008 I’m pleased to report that this week I am participating in the NDAP 2008 conference which is being held in Taipei, Taiwan. NDAP (National Digital Archives Program) was launched in 2002 with the objective of promoting and coordinating content digitization and preservation at leading museums, archives, universities, research institutes, and other content holders in Taiwan. The NDAP International Conference aims t0 provide a forum to encourage and facilitate interaction, collaboration, and dialogue among specialists in digital archives from different countries. There’s a good programme which starts today with an opening talk on “Digital Preservation: Where are we now? Where are we going?” by Deanna B. Marcum, Library of Congress, USA. I’m also looking forward to this afternoon’s Creative Commons/IPR Session. Tomorrow sees sessions on Digital Preservation, Biodiversity and Archives. The Museum 2.0 session on Thursday 157 of 544

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morning will give me an opportunity to catch up with Jennifer Trant and Sebastian Chan and in the afternoon I’ll be speaking in the Library 2.0 session. I’m not sure what the network access will be like at the conference but I’ll try and publish reports on the sessions. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: ndap2008 | Edit No Comments »

Revisiting Web Usage Metrics March 17, 2008 I recently wrote a post on The UK Government and Web Metrics in which I described potential ambiguities in reporting on the usage of Government Web sites. In a comment on the post Phil Wilson oberved that This extract from Hansard only really tells me one thing: there isn’t a government-wide standardised hit-tracking/visitor analysis scheme. That’s true - and the temptation would be to recommend the adoption of an industry standard, such as that provided by ABCE. As this page says: The ABC international standards working party (IFABC, International Federation of Audit Bureaux, http://www.ifabc.org/) has developed a set of rules and definitions that are the effective world-wide standard for Web audits. Definitions and rules specific to the internet industry in the UK and Ireland are controlled and developed by JICWEBS, the Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards. ALL current Industry agreed metrics are listed below (in alphabetical order): Great, we have a standard which can be used for measuring Web usage. The problem is, what if the content of a Web site is syndicated? What if users don’t visit the Web site to read the information, but expect the information to come to them, via their preferred RSS reader? This struck me when I viewed the usage statistics for my initial post on The UK Government and Web Metrics. At one stage all I could view via the administrators interface on the WordPress.com service was the overall hits on pages on my blog. But some time ago WordPress provided a display of syndicated accesses to blog posts, as can be seen in the image.

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Now what would I report on the day the post was published if I was making use of the ABCE’s standard for Web site usage? Less than 40 page views on the day the post was published, and a drop in views after that. The statistics showing the much higher syndicated views of the post would fail to be reported. OK, so the usage data is flawed - but everyone knows that. The danger, of course, if usage data becomes competitive, with services failing to be funded if the usage levels as recorded by Web site visits doesn’t reach acceptable levels. And what will providing RSS feeds to services do - it may provide a richer and more personalised ervice for the end user, but the Web usage figures as reported by tools which comply with the ABCE standard will drop. Here’s an example of how use of an agreed international can potentially result in a failure to develop richer service for the user community. Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have an agreed baseline for usage statistics. Rather the Web site usage needs to be analysed in conjunction with an understanding of alternative ways in which users may access the data. And I don’t know if there’s a standard available for this. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in rss | Edit 2 Comments »

Final Score: 250 to 3 Victory for IT Services 2.0! March 14, 2008 On Wednesday night Martin Weller and I were simultanaously sharing (via Twitter) the joy of a fightback, the tensions of extra time and the final failure of both our teams in the penalty shoot-out. On Thursday morning, however, whil I travelled to London for a meeting Andy Powell spoke at the UCISA 2008 Management Conference, Following my video presentation Andy gave his contribution to the talk on “Digital Natives Run by Digital Immigrants: IT Services are Dead, Long Live IT Services 2.0!“. How slides are available on Slidshare:

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And as Andy described to a live Twitter audience (which I only caught up with later that day) there was a debate at the conference on “this house belives (sic) that University IT services should block access to social networking sites“. Andy reflected on the debate: odd debate here… some people taking the motion very seriously… others treating it as a joke - hard to judge if people are seriously …… it’s a serious motion - though obviously positioned intentionally to stir up debate - but yes, basically it is daft sanity prevails… only 3 out of about 250 IT Services directors voted in favour of blocking student use of social networks Good news then It seems IT Service managers overwhelmingly recognise that they can’t stop users accessing social networking services. But how was our talke received? Michael Webb has been blogging from the conference. He gave his views on my video presentation: Anyway, morning themes were about Web 2.0/Social networking, starting with Brian Kelly from UKOLN and Andy Powell from EduServ – talking about IT Services 2.0. Brian wasn’t actually their though, and instead had pre-recorded his presentation. I find this pretty fascinating – I’ve had loads of discussions with people about why we don’t do this more often (we do actually do this for our IT induction), but it’s the first time I’ve experienced it as an audience member. So did it work? Somewhat against my expectations (Brian is a very engaging presenter in person) it worked fine (even with the low production values and a phone ringing half way through!). And then went on to briefly summarise the content of my talk:

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What about the content? Essentially the premise was that IT Services have evolved before, and can do so again, into IT 03/10/2008 14:51

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Services 2.0 where we embrace, support, and educate users about the possibilities of externally hosted Web 20 services. Michael’s thoughts on the views expressed by myself and Andy: So where does that leave us? The common theme between Brian and Andrew’s talks were they were both saying we need to understand risks. Some of the risks, in my opinion (and, I think, Brian’s) aren’t that great – service reliability for example – how often is Google or Facebook down? Privacy of data across national borders though is a really challenging issue, and perhaps one of the most obvious stumbling blocks to wholeheartedly embracing some externally hosted technologies on an institutional level. There’s another significant issue though – we don’t really have any control of this do we? Our work and home life and identities are becoming increasingly blurred – we can’t ban people from using Facebook to support learning. So how much user education are we actually responsible for, both from a moral and legal perspective? It’s something we all need to give more thought to. Later on at the conference there were “two supplier presentations – one from Google, and one from Microsoft, both promoting their free, web based email/productivity/web 2.0 suites.” Michael made an interesting comment on the tensions between the views of Myself and Andy that IT Services should move towards playing an enabling role rather than the provider of IT Services and encouraging Microsoft or Google to provide core IT services: Second issue, and I need to reflect on this a little more, is that doesn’t this go against the IT Services 2.0 philosophy? We’d still be imposing a single tool set on our students (albeit an outsourced one) rather than educating our users to pick the best tools for any given activity. Maybe that’s an impractical aim - remember back to Sir Alan Langlands plea to keep things simple for academics? Don’t know – my instinct is that this sort of approach is still a very IT Services 1.0 things. Sure, Google Apps (say) may be a great tool set for a certain group of users for a given activity, but maybe another group or activity would work better with Elgg or WetPaint? I think this gets right to the heart of the IT Services 2.0 dilemma – how much technical diversity can our user base sustain? Or am I missing the point? Now I don’t feel that making use of Google Apps should prevent ue of Elgg or WetPaint - unless your institution has foolishly agreed to a contract which requires the institution to only allow a single provider of a service on campus (and I’ve heard this has happened with VoIP, which means institutions are contractually obliged to ban Skype from the campus :-() But how use of Google and Microsoft externally-provided services relate to a vision of small pieces loosely connected vision is an interesting question! Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 12 Comments »

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The UK Government and Web Metrics March 12, 2008 Spotted recently on Hansard (25 Feb 2008):

Departmental ICT Norman Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills how many hits the (a) most popular website and (b) least popular website run by his Department has received since 1 January. [162286] Mr. Lammy:The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills corporate website was launched on 28 June 2007, following the machinery of Government changes and creation of the new Department. The numbers of hits for the most and least popular websites that come under the DIUS remit are as follows: Website

The Intellectual Property Office (www.ipo.gov.uk) Technology Strategy Board (www.berr.gov.uk/innovation /technologystrategyboard/index.html

Number of hits( 1) from 1 January 2007 to 25 October 2007 236,301,690 (2)

82,370

(1)

Please note that a ‘hit’ is simply a successful request to the web server from a visitor’s browser for any type of file, whether an image, HTML page, or any other type. A single web page can cause many hits, one for each image included on the page. (2) Figures are form page views from 1 July 2007 to 25 October 2007 as hits are not measured for this site. Now what is worse, I wonder? The fact that Norman Baker, Lib Dem MP for Lewis is asking about the popularity of UK Government Web sites based on such simplistic criteria or the Government’s response which compares ‘hits’ with ‘page views’? Even worse is that the official response is so defensive about having to provide figures on ‘page views’ (which is a legitimate measure on Web site usage) as data on hits (which reflects the Web site design and not the popularity of the Web site) are not measured. Even worse is that the response compares a Web site domain (www.ipo.gov.uk) with a Web site area (www.berr.gov.uk/innovation/technologystrategyboard /index.html). And the latter Web page is not longer available - although I suspect that it refers to http://www.berr.gov.uk/dius/innovation/technologystrategyboard /page40217.html Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that a Government Web page which no longer exists isn’t particularly popular! But what worries me most about such absurdities are the implications of the 162 of 544

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Government’s increasing preoccupation with such (flawed) measures of impact and the responses which might be expected from the Government critics. I could easily envisage a Daily Mail leader article being critical of a drop in the numbers of ‘hits’ to Government Web sites, ignoring the realities of technological enhancements which may mean that although the numbers of hits or page views go down, the user may actually be getting a much more valuable and useful experience (e.g. the data being surfaced in other areas). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 8 Comments »

My Talk At The UCISA 2008 Conference March 10, 2008 I mentioned previously my talk on “Digital Natives Run by Digital Immigrants: IT Services Are Dead – Long Live IT Services 2.0!” which I’ve been invited to present at the UCISA 2008 Management Conference. In my post I described the background to this talk and invited feedback on the slides which, together with an audio track, is available on Slideshare. I was particularly struck by the comments made by Martin Weller: Hi Brian - I have finally shed all institutional services - it’s marvellously liberating. And this is just the basic stuff - I have also evolved a PLE/PWE (for want of a better term). IT services simply can’t compete - just look at the email - my mailbox was full at the OU. With GMail I am using 1%. That’s an order of magnitude difference. And the same applies with every tool you care to mention in lots of different ways - design, usability, robustness (the idea that IT services hosted tools are less robust doesn’t stand up). Martin provide further information on how he sold his soul to Google on his own blog. The suggestion that I’ve made previously that IT Services need to transform themselves to take into account the Web 2.0 environment is clearly demonstrated by Martin’s actions. As I have another meeting which clashes with the UCISA conference I won’t be able to give my talk in person. However a video presentation of the talk is available in various formats, including this one which is hosted on the Zentation service. IT Services Are Dead – Long Live IT Services 2.0! 19:43 Talk on IT Services Are Dead – Long Live IT Services 2.0!

Andy Powell will be co-presenting at the UCISA Conference - and Andy will be physically present :-) Andy has already posted some of his thoughts on what he’ll be saying. In his post, entitled P vs. P in a user-centric world, Andy focusses on the “move towards user-centricity … and in particular the use of the word ‘personal’ in both Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and 163 of 544

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Personal Research Environment (PRE)“. Martin Weller provides a good example on how individuals are beginning to select their own preferred set of IT tools, and no longer feel constrained by the tools provided by the institution. But is this the start of an inevitable trend or will it be limited to small numbers who are highly skilled in use of IT? What about the pitfalls? And how should IT Services respond? Time permitting, Andy Powell with address comments made on this blog and on his eFoundations blog at the UCISA conference. Here’s an opportunity to make your voice heard. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: ucisa-2008 | Edit 8 Comments »

Top of the Pods, Podpickers March 7, 2008 Which UK University has the most popular podcast? This question occurred to me recently after visiting a page on the JISC Web site in order to subscribe to JISC podcasts. Following the link launched iTunes and allowed me to subscribe to the podcast, so that new podcasts are downloaded automatically. I noticed the search option in iTunes and thought I’d search for University podcasts. The most popular podcasts came from Vanderbilt University but in third place was Oxford University. And listening to the start of the current podcast I discovered the title was “Podcasts from Medieval English lectures”. So much for the dumbing down of the iTunes generation! Who’d have thought that all of those young students with their white ear pieces were catching up on Chaucer - perhaps “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”!”

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In second and third places for UK universities were the universities of Edinburgh and, I’m pleased to say, Bath. The University of Bath not only has the kudos of a top three place in iTunes popularity, the public lecture podcasts at my host institution recently won a European award for its podcast series. As the press release announced “its podcasts had from November 2006 to September 2007 been seen (sic) 188,000 times“. The press release went on to say that “Our podcasts are popular enough to get us featured in the top 50 podcast originator on i-Tunes in the “Science and Medicine” section, ahead of any other university in the world.“ I think this is a great example of an institution successfully engaging with a popular Web 2.0 services (ITunes) in order to maximise its impact. My congratulations to the Audio Visual and Web Services teams at the University of Bath. But apart from Oxford, Edinburgh and Bath, where are the other UK universities? There don’t appear to be any in the top 50 places in iTunes, although I did spot Aberdeen in about the 68th position followed by a cluster of the universities of Swansea, Westminster and Cambridge. Are UK Universities missing out, I wonder? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: podcast | Edit 9 Comments »

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March 5, 2008 The JISC OSS Watch service are running a workshop on “Risk Management in Open Source Procurement” which Ross Gardler describes in a blog post on the OSS Watch Team blog. The background to this event, which will be held in Oxford on 18 March 2008, is described in an article on open source in HE and FE published in the October 2007 edition of JISC Inform in which Ross suggested that: There is often a lack of understanding about how best to consider OSS as part of institutional IT procurement and development activities. Ross Gardler, manager of the HE and FE advisory service for open source software, believes such issues can be explained by difficulties surrounding evaluation techniques. ‘There often isn’t an established marketing department that will take you out for lunch and smooth talk you about the potential benefits, like there is with a commercial provider,’ he says. I can recall that about 10 years ago there seemed to be a feeling that having source code available under an open source software licence was sufficient to guarantee sustainability of software. But you just have to look at example such as the ROADS software which drove a number of what are now know as the Intute hubs. Looking at the graveyard of many open source software projects which fail to be sustainable in the long term, you’ll find an area for ROADS. We do need to do the risk analysis and risk management. So I’m pleased to see that OSS Watch are running a workshop which will cover the risks associated with procurement of open source software. In his blog post Ross goes on to describe how the OSS Watch service “provide[s] one-to-one consultancy services to help people understand how to evaluate open source and open source providers using frameworks such as the Business Readiness Rating and the Open Source Maturity Model.” The workshop will provide an opportunity for OSS Watch to share their expertise with a wider community. Of course, there’s not risks risks aren’t only associated with open source software - there are risks associated with use of proprietary software. And also, it needs to be said, use of externally-hosted Web 2.0 services - as we saw recently with the recent downtime of the Amazon S3 service which affected other services including Twitter. This doesn’t mean, however, that we shouldn’t use externally hosted Web 2.0 service - or, indeed, open source software. Similarly the recent crash of the Northern Rock Bank doesn’t mean that we should withdraw our savings and stuff the cash under our mattresses! I suspect that a workshop on “Risk Management and Web 2.0″ would be popular. I’ve posted previously on Your Views On Externally-Hosted Web 2.0 Services back in September 2007. But, apart from the risk assessment document which have been produced at the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, have any other institutions published anything in this area? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments » 166 of 544

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IT Services Are Dead – Long Live IT Services 2.0! March 3, 2008 Back in March 2004 I was pleased to be invited to give a talk at the UCISA Mangament Conference on “What Can Internet Technologies Offer?“ in which I introduced a raft of collaborative and communications technologies which are now referred to as Web 2.0 to about 350 senior managers in IT Service departments. Two years later I was invited back and I gave a talk on “IT Services: Help Or Hindrance? ” in which I argued that IT Services needed to actively engage in providing access to services such as blogs and wikis, otherwise there would be a danger that central services would be marginalised. I’m pleased to say that IT Service directors seem to like my talks as I’ve been invited back again this year to speak at the UCISA 2008 Management Conference. The title of this year’s talk is Digital Natives Run by Digital Immigrants: IT Services are Dead, Long Live IT Services 2.0!” and the talk will be given on 13 March 2008. Unfortunately I have another meeting already arranged for that date - but rather than this being a problem I regard it as a useful opportunity to make use of another set of technologies and approaches to presenting. So I have prepared the initial draft of my slides, and have made it available as a Slidecast (i.e. with an accompanying audio track) on Slideshare.

This 15 minute presentation only provides a high-level view of my thoughts on why IT Service departments need to engage with use of third party services. But I’m pleased to say that Andy Powell will be a co-presenter and will be attending in person. Andy will be giving his views on the implications of Web 2.0 on IT Service departments, and will be able to respond to questions form the audience. But rather than my talk simply being presented on the day, in the spirit of openness which I write about recently in the context of open science, I would like to invite comments on my talk in advance of the conference, which Andy may be able to integrate in his presentation. And, as an article on Technology Populism: Risks & Rewards points out, there can be risks to the organisation when users circumvent IT Service departments. 167 of 544

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The Demise of Netscape Navigator March 1, 2008 An article entitled In praise of … Netscape Navigator announced that today (Saturday, 1 March 2008) sees the official end of support for the Netscape Navigator Web browser. The “In praise of” column does indeed praise Netscape for “opening the web, [and] pav[ing] the way for everything from Google to Wikipedia“. What the column doesn’t say is the that the browser went from strength to strength after it was launched by ignoring standards bodies and introducing several new proprietary HTML extensions which infuriated HTML standards groups when they were released. As an article in Wikipedia describes: Through the late 1990s, Netscape made sure that Navigator remained the technical leader among web browsers. Important new features included cookies, frames, and JavaScript (in version 2.0). Although those and other innovations eventually became open standards of the W3C and ECMA and were emulated by other browsers, they were often viewed as controversial. Netscape, according to critics, was more interested in bending the web to its own de facto “standards” (bypassing standards committees and thus marginalizing the commercial competition) than it was in fixing bugs in its products. Consumer rights advocates were particularly critical of cookies and of commercial web sites using them to invade individual privacy. But why is the Guardian praising Netscape, if the company behaved in this fashion? Well I think the Guardian was right when it says that “Everyone from secretaries to salesmen started logging on” thanks to the initial success an popularity of the browser. But let’s not rewrite history and suggest that this was due to the software vendor supporting old standards - rather, and ironically, its success was due to flouting the standisation processes and forcing innovations (which, in some cases, subsequently became standardised) through seeking to position itself as the dominant vendor in the marketplace. Of course, although they were the dominant player for a short period, this did not last, with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser eventually finding itself as the world’s most widely-used browser, despite the appeal which FireFox has to its admirers. Strange how things turn out. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in browser | Edit 2 Comments » 168 of 544

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PLEs Please Me February 29, 2008 AJ Cann recently described his experiences of “teaching” PLEs (his quotes). In his post he described how his discussions with his peers in the elearning community began with a ‘tweet’.

And his colleagues (or should that, in the context of Twitter, be his ‘followers’) asked him to share his experiences. Alan then went on to explain that he felt that: I should start by saying that I don’t believe you can “teach” someone how to build a personal learning environment, any more than you can teach them “wisdom” - it’s an experiential, contextual thing. From previous discussions I’ve had with AJ I know that he is a fan on use of PLEs to support learning, as opposed to the more monolithic VLE approach and, in a way, the question of whether the VLE is open source or not is a bit of a red herring. But although PLEs may please AJ, how confident can we be that it is the PLEs which helped with the “clear winners with the students, notably the Google suite.” Might not the enthusiasms shown by the students simply reflect his own enthusiasms. AJ will, of course, be aware of such factors (and I should declare that I am a member of an advisory group for AJ Cann’s Leicester PLE project which is “Using Web 2.0 to Cultivate Information Literacy via Construction of Personal Learning Environments“). But if we are honest we (the blog readers and those engaged with Web 2.0) will be aware that there with be large scale chunky proprietary and unfashionable enterprise systems which are crying out “Love me do” - and the supporters of such systems will, indeed, be happy to use the systems - and there are also likely to be happy users of such systems, too. Indeed I can remember the first time I attended the ALT-C conference -I attended the technical standards where I heard about developments using an SOA approaches, the e-Framework and Web 2.0 developments, but in the other strands other academics and e-learning support staff were presenting about the quality of the learning and user satisfaction for services delivered by Blackboard and Web CT. I guess we do need to be honest about how our enthusiasms, whether it’s for Web 2.0, open source, social networks, Twitter or whatever, may help to enthuse others but the indifference shown by the majority may be invisible to us. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 2 Comments »

Open Science, Open Seminars February 28, 2008 169 of 544

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Open Science One of the ways in which myself and my colleagues in UKOLN keep up-to-date with new developments across our communities is through the UKOLN seminar programme. The speakers tend to be those who are working in areas related to our interests and have something new to say. The most recent seminar was given by Cameron Neylon, of STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and School of Chemistry, University of Southampton. The title of Cameron’s talk was “A Beginner’s Guide to Open Science: Not for beginners but by beginners“. Cameron described his involvement in various aspects of ‘openness’ within the context of scientific research. Further information on his work is available from his Science In the Open blog - and he also contributes to the Openwetware blog, as you can see from his thoughts on his visit at UKOLN. He described how Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and wikis are being used by the scientific research community, not only for making notes and sharing ideas, etc. using blogs and wikis in ways which will be familiar with readers of this blog, but also what I would describe as ’semantic blogging’ use of templates to allow structured information (e.g. names of objects, processes, etc) to be used in ways which allowed for rich use with the blog/wiki environment and reuse in other contexts. For example in the Sortase Cloning example, the data in the table in not created using a table editor (which can lead to errors being introduced) - rather a template will ensure that the data is valid. In addition the data is integrated with other relevant areas of the blog. Effectively the blog is being used as a structured scientific content management system. Cameron also described OpenWetWare - “an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering” which runs on the MediaWiki software. Another example Cameron provided of use a a wiki within this community was UsefulChem, which this in this case uses the externally-hosted Wikispaces service. As well as illustrated how blogs and wikis are being used by the scientific research community, Cameron also described how he is embracing the Web 2.0 philosophy of openness. In a post on “The OPEN Research Network Proposal update and reflections” Cameron described an open process for submitting a proposal for a research grant. The proposal was written using Google Docs and the final version, prior to its migration to an in-house application for producing the PDF in a format required by the research council, is freely available for viewing. - and, if you are interesting, you can compare this with the version which was submitted(PDF file) to the funding council. Use of blogs, wikis and open development - some great example of how Web 2.0 is being used by the research community. And, as I discovered when Googling for further information on Cameron Neylon’s work, it doesn’t stop there. A number of given by Cameron and others involved in open Science activities have been videoed, screencasted or recorded. For example a talk by Jean-Claude Bradley on “Open Notebook Science: Putting the Information User in Control through Transparency” is available as a screencast using the Google Video playerand several talks are available as podcasts through iTunes, as illustrated below.

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Open Seminars This latter example reflects some of my current activities. Cameron kindly gave me permission to video his talk and, as an experiment, I have uploaded the first 10 minutes of the talk (which is all I took) to YouTube.

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I’m aware of the limitations of this particular video: I didn’t have my tripod to hand, for example and there is visual clutter - bottles of mineral water - in front of the speaker (although perhaps this could provide an for a sponsorship deal :-). And there are clearly resource implications in recording seminars on a systematic basis (provided, of course, that speakers would be willing for their talks to be made publicly available). In this case, however, (using my Casio Exlim EX-Z1080 camera) I simply needed to take the recording and plug the camera into my PC. I was then asked which application I wished to use. selecting the YouTube uploader, I simply needed to fill in a few fields and press the upload button. Simplicity itself - and it was pleasing to receive an unsolicited email from a colleague saying “Thanks Brian, that was useful to get a feel for the seminar since I missed it yesterday“. I think it was particularly appropriate that a seminar on Open Science provided an opportunity for this initial experiment in opening up access to the talk to a wider audience. But what do you feel about this? Is the light weight approach adequate? Is the 10 minute clip sufficient or does the lack of the full talk frustrate you? From the point of view of the speaker and the main audience (colleagues at UKOLN and other participants from the University) would such openness tend to stifle open discussion and debate? And, finally, can we, if we are thinking about making greater use of video recordings, really justify the additional time and effort this make take? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in openness | Edit 5 Comments »

Doodle Is Simplicity Itself February 27, 2008 Paul Walk’s blog post on Get off of my cloud acknowledged that even clever techies sometimes value simplicity over the complexity often found in richly functional and distributed systems., In Paul’s case he was praising the ease of use and convenience of an iPhone over, say, the additional functions provided by a Nokia N95 or the inconvenience of carrying multiple devices. I feel that this is a valid position in many cases. And, coincidentally I have just discovered a very simple Web-based tool for organising meetings.

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With Doodle (address www.doodle.ch, incidentally) you simply select dates and times and email the people you wish to invite. The service will then send an email with the URI of a page containing the available dates. And, as can be seen in the image, once the data has been entered you can see the preferred slots. OK, there’s no authentication, updating dates can’t be done and security is through obscurity. In addition the data can’t be output in formats such as RSS or iCal. But sometimes we need to remember that we don’t always need such richness. And yes, who knows whether this service is sustainable. And, perhaps, like Facebook (according to some), is is a front for an extreme right wing organisation. But, for arranging a date for a practice and a rapper dancing crawl prior to the national rapper sword dancing competition, I am willing to take a risk and avoid the confusions of arranging such events on email or, even worse, via text messages. Why not give it a try? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: doodle | Edit No Comments »

Firefox Use In UK Is Near The Bottom Of The League February 26, 2008 Via a post on Seb Schmoller’s blog I came across an XiTi Monitor article which gives statistical data on usage of FireFox across Europe. The news isn’t good for use supporters of the open source Web browser, with usage in the UK in December 2007 at 17.2%, with only Ukraine and the Netherlands below. The top three countries which make use of FireFox are Finland (45.4%), Slovenia (44.6%) and Poland (42.4%).

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I must admit I find these figures disappointing and also somewhat surprising. Last year I wrote a post entitled FireFox - The Researchers Favourite Application? in which I was confident the the clear superiority of FireFox over its competitors would lead to much greater use of FireFox as a platform, with increased use of FireFox plugins. Mark Sammons, however, responded by arguing that “Firefox is not Enterprise-ready enough to be considered for migration from IE” and Phil Wilson agreed with Mark’s comment: “I’m glad Mark wrote that comment because it’s exactly what I was going to write when I read your post Brian“. The evidence, it seems, backs up Mark and Phil’s views - for whatever reasons, FireFox isn’t the success many of us would have hoped for within the UK. Sad, but true. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in browser | Edit 6 Comments »

Is Southampton Setting A New Standard For Institutional Web Sites? 174 of 544

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February 22, 2008 Is the University of Southampton setting a new challenge for other institutions with their new iSoton service, I wonder? Or is this merely an attempt to be stylish by bolting on a variety of Web 2.0 features? What will the users make of it, I wonder? And what about accessibility, interoperability, compliance with standards and the other issues which the providers of Web services tend to emphasise?

I came across iSoton via an RSS alert from Lorcan Dempsey blog. In his post Lorcan expressed a particular interest in the four (out of six) panels which provided content from Web 2.0 services:

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The other four are more interesting. One displays the University’s wikipedia entry. One displays photos from Flickr (I am not sure how they are being selected: is it more than the ‘university of southampton’ tag?). One displays videos from Youtube (again, I am not sure if these are any videos which show up on a ‘university of southampton’ search or if some other selection criteria apply). 03/10/2008 14:51

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I would agree with Lorcan’s comment that “this seems like a sketch for what one might do, rather than the fully worked through presence. For example, why not display the full del.icio.us tag cloud which gives richer access to the Southampton pages?“. However I suspect that “The site is designed by Precedent, ’specialists in strategic thinking, digital communications and brand communications’” will be regarded with concern be some of the more traditional Web developers who have been sceptical of Web 2.0 style interfaces. And it’s true that the page does contain HTML errors - but these seem to be minor problems, such as unescaped ampersands, which could easily be fixed. And, shock, horror, passing the page through the WAVE automated accessibility testing tool reveals that “WAVE has detected no accessibility errors“. I’ve criticised reliance on automated accessibility tools previously - and here’s a good example which demonstrates the need for user testing on the accessibility and usability of the page. Is this, then, setting new directions for University Web sites? I don’t know, and I’m sure that further examination of the site is likely to reveal some problems but it is good to see something new happening in the design and functionality of University Web sites. And it would be good to get some feedback from those involved in commissioning and developing this Web site, and, even more importantly, feedback from users of the Web site. A potentially interesting talk at this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop, perhaps? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 28 Comments »

GCSEs Revisited February 21, 2008 It always pleasing when a blog post achieves its aim, and even more so when this happens so quickly. So it was good to read AJ Cann’s post in which he describes how he spent 3 minutes using the Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE) to provide an alternative to his institutional search engine. As he titled his post “It was all Brian Kelly’s fault“! Revisiting my original post it would seem that there are a number of ways in which GCSE is being used: For personal uses (e.g. searching one’s favourite music sites). For professional purposes e.g. searching across Web 2.0 sites or edublogs. On institutional Web sites, such as the JISC example which searches across the JISC and JISC Service Web sites. Across consortia sites (thanks to Dave Flanders for this). And, in AJ’s case, as an alternative to an institutional search facility. In this latter case, AJ is clearly unhappy with the local search engine service (ht://Dig): “I can’t stand the inadequate institutional search tools I’ve been forced to use for a decade” - and decided it was worth spending “less than 30 seconds” to set up an alternative! And this approach reflects AJ’s interests in Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). He now has a Personal Search Engine. 176 of 544

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Now if setting up GSCE across a range of Web sites is so easy and can be done by individuals without the need for institutional commitment. in what other ways could the software be used? As we’ve recently discussed institutional repositories and various people have aired their concerns on the approaches being taken, it seems to me that the GCSE could have a role to play in providing an alternative way of searching repositories. And this approach has already been taken on the OpenDOAR Search Repository Contents service and the Search ROAR Content With Google service. This approach fits in nicely with Rachel Heery’s comment that “I don’t really see that there is conflict between encouraging more content going into institutional repositories and ambitions to provide more Web 2.0 type services on top of aggregated IR content. Surely these things go together?“. We have the managed content in the repository and are providing users with a choice in the selection of a search interface. It’s good to see that happening. But can’t we do even more. We could, for example, use the two ways of searching for gaining evidence of the preferences users may have for searching. And perhaps rather than exposing new users of repositories to the rich functionality of the repository’s search interface, shouldn’t we acknowledge that many users will prefer the simplicity of a Google search, and provide the GCSE interface as better focussed alternative to the global Google search tool, with the option of pointing the users in the direction of the richer service if they find that this search interface is not good enough. This approach would have the added advantage of not requiring the expenses associated with in-house software development. Indeed could it not be argued public-sector organisations should have a responsibility to make use of relevant freely-available services, at least in prototyping or providing a service for making comparisons even if it isn’t envisaged that the service will be used in a final production role? Of course the danger may be that the users decide that they are happy with Google. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Repositories ·Tags: GCSE | Edit 4 Comments »

IT Services - Set Your Documentation Free! February 20, 2008 Back in 2005 I presented a paper entitled “Let’s Free IT Support Materials!” at the EUNIS 2005 conference, an annual conference aimed at IT support departments throughout Europe. In the paper I argued that IT Service departments should be making their documentation and other support materials available under a Creative Commons licence for reuse by the wider community. I pointed out that the UK had a well-established tradition of collaboration, through organisations such as UCISA, and, in the area of document sharing, had already set up a national archive of Computing Service documentation. This was initially established in the late 1980s/early 1990s based on a centralised 177 of 544

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repository of documentation on the HENSA/Micros service at the University of Lancaster. However floundered due to the complexities of network access in pre-Web days and the effort it took to transfer resources to a centralised location. A renewed effort in the mid 1990s provided a Web-based interface to a distributed archive known as the UCISA TLIG Document Sharing Archive. Although this required little effort from participating institutions, the service failed to be sustainable due to the technical expertise require to provide and maintain the indexing across the distributed archives. And since the search interface points to a script on Mailbase, despite the message saying “Unfortunately the search facility is currently unavailable. We hope to rectify this shortly” I suspect this hasn’t worked since Mailbase was replaced by JISCMail in November 2000. But now the indexing capabilities can be provided easily, using third party services such as the Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE). Is it really easy, you may wonder? Well the interface is shown below. and, as can be seen, setting up the search engine requires little more than entering the URLs to be indexing and then copying the code to be embedded on a Web page. Easy :-) And the search engine is easy to use from a user perspective. Why not give it a try. You might even wish to embed the search interface into your own page.

Now you might be suspicious: it’s too easy; there’s no metadata; it’s not open source; etc. My response - am I bovvered? Computing should be easy - I remember the excitement I felt when I discovered the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s and Paul Walk has been making similar comments about his iPhone. Ease-of-use and simplicity are to be applauded, I would argue. And, as I discovered from my Twitter friends recently, a number of colleagues have been using the Google Custom Search Engine for some time: Pete Johnston for searching music sites he frequents, Mile Ellis for his search across museum collections and Phil Bradley for searching across 35 Web 2.0 sites. And thanks to Matt Jukes for pointing out the use of this approach on the JISC Web site and the How Do I? example from the Open University, which is described in a blog post by Tony Hirst. And edubloggers may find Stephen Downes Edublogs search of interest: this searches across no fewer than 456 blog 178 of 544

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sites! But how might my experiment be scaled up to a service, in order to deliver the original aims of this service, only about 15 years late Perhaps the UCISA TLIG group could take responsibility for developing this prototype and seeing if there are are barriers to it being deployed into service. But there might also be an interest from a institution which could see benefits of such a search facility across a region (Scotland, perhaps?). Or maybe individuals would be motivated to do this. And as it is possible for me to open up the management interface to pothers, I would be happy to respond with anyone who may be interested. And as I’ll be giving a talk at the UCISA Management Conference on 13th March 2008, that would be an opportunity for me to name-check anyone who would be willing to investigate further Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General ·Tags: UCISA | Edit 4 Comments »

Distributed Discussions On Repositories February 19, 2008

The Repositories Debate Andy Powell recently wrote a post on the eFoundations blog about his opening plenary talk at the VALA 2008 conference. His post generated interesting discussions and debate amongst those involved in repository activities in the UK and the wider community. Paul Miller was in agreement with Andy’s comments in his post on the Panlibus blog entitled “Andy Powell is Spot On” with Paul feeling that “Our current approach, fundamentally, is totally, completely, utterly wrong, isn’t it?”. Over on his blog my colleague Paul Walk has given his thoughts on Andy’s post expressing agreement in several areas but disagreeing with Andy’s view that “we need to focus on building and/or using global scholarly social networks based on global repository services“. Paul (W) responds by asking “Why can’t we “focus on building and/or using global scholarly social networks” (which I support) based on institutional repository services? We don’t have a problem with institutional web sites do we? Or institutional library OPACs?”. My former colleague Rachel Heery has responded in a similar vein to Paul in a response to Andy’s post: “I don’t really see that there is conflict between encouraging more content going into institutional repositories and ambitions to provide more Web 2.0 type services on top of aggregated IR content. Surely these things go together?“. Meanwhile over on his Overdue Ideas blog Owen Stephens gives his thoughts from the perspective of a practitioner involved in setting up the Spir@l institutional repository at Imperial College with a wittily-titled post “R.I.Positories“. Owen concludes “we need is a system that helps us administer the workflow around the delivery of digital objects in a corporate environment, but that is invisible to those not involved in the administration 179 of 544

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and that’s what I want out of a ‘repository’ - so, for me, the Repository is dead, long live the repository“. And a few minutes ago I noticed a pop-up alert informing me of a blog post entitled “RESTful Repositories?“. An intriguing title, I thought, so I viewed the post and came across Stu Weibel’s contribution which suggested that “One way to think about repositories is as the bookshelves of the digital library“. Stu went on to point out that “We don’t ask scholars, having just published an article or book, to ‘go to the library to find the most appropriate place for it… and don’t come back until you do!’“ This sounds reasonable to me - there’s a need for the physical library and the infrastructure that is associated with it, but the researchers don’t need to know how it works. This might be an approach to be taken with institutional repositories - so let’s not scare them off with the ins and outs of the metadata schemas.

Engaging With A Distributed Debate There’s clearly an interesting debate taking place around the approaches which should be taken to maximising access to the UK’s research papers. But if you have an interest in institutional repositories how do you find out where the debate is taking place and how do you participate? I have had discussions with colleagues who feel that such debates should be centralised and should use a ubiquitous communications channel - namely email. From this perspective the debate about institutional repositories within the UK higher education community should take place on the JISC-Repositories JISCMail list. However I feel that this will result in the debate being marginalised to those with a particularly strong interest in repositories, will tend to focus on the nitty-gritty details which email tends to encourage and, in the case of JISCMail, the debate will be trapped within the JISCMail Web site, not only because the JISCMail archives are not exposed to search engines such as Google, but also because of the ‘uncool’ URIs for messages in the archive. And, of course, email discussions fragment, in any case, and I suspect the Australian participants at the VALA 2008 conference will be having their own discussions about repositories on their own mailing lists. An alternative view is that the debate with take place via scholarly articles published in peer-reviewed journals. This may be the case in many areas of research, but man in the digital library community would be frustrated by the lengthy timescales that process would entail. Like it or not, the debate is taking place using a variety of communications tools, including the blogosphere. So, if you wish to engage with such discussions, how do you find out what is happening? In my case my RSS reader (Feedreader) will automatically inform me of new posts for the blogs I’ve subscribed to. This includes the eFoundations blog, although in the case of Andy’s post I was alerted to its publication a couple of hours after it had been published via a tweet on Twitter. The distributed nature of such debates has benefit, such as allowing the discussions to be brought to the attention of different communities. When doing this, there is an expectation that bloggers will link to the original post. And if blogs allow trackbacks, it will be possible to follow links from an original post to blogs which have commented on it. 180 of 544

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Returning to Andy’s original post, Paul Walk noticed that the eFoundation’s blog hadn’t included a trackback to Paul’s post. This is probably a technical glitch - but this incident made me think about the importance of trackbacks in the integration of distributed discussions. Owen Stephen’s R.I.P.ositories post included a link to a post on The importance of being open the eFoundation blog dating back to October 2006. But comments to such old posts are disabled - I assume to minimise the effort in deleting spam comments. But this is breaking the linkages to related discussions. How, then, should we balance the benefits of allowing such tracebacks versus the maintenance costs of managing misuse? Or do you disagree with blogs being used for this type of discussion and debate? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Repositories | Edit 7 Comments »

TwitPic, Twitterwhere, Twitterfoo February 18, 2008 On Sunday 10th February 2008 infobunny twittered “TwitPic: TwitPic lets you easily add photos to your Tweets. Upload to TwitPic, add you.. http://tinyurl.com/2wrbr8“. Twitpic was new to me so I Googled it and discovered that the killerstartups blog gave a somewhat politically incorrect description of how a photographic microblogging extension to Twitter might be used: Yes, Twitter is unstoppable. And it’s currently amassing an army of Twitter related apps that’ll ensure its reign for a good amount of time. The latest recruit is TwitPic, an application that allows you to post photos and images to your Twitter stream. Now daily ramblings can have an added visual element instead of just the usual plain stream of text. Say you’ve just had the worst blind date ever, but you managed snap a pic of the twit. Now you can go home and post your grievances along with a visual aid to demonstrate your dating woes. TwitPic works from your PC. All you have to do is log in to your Twitter and upload the image or photo you want, then post it. TwitPic is absolutely free. Via Techcrunch I found that the service was launched in November 2007 but the service seems to only now becoming discussed on the blogosphere and in Twitterland. Worth further investigation, I felt, so I created my fist twitpic. And I quickly received a response from Noah Everett, the TwitPic developer who directed me to a page which described why he had developed the service: “TwitPic was born out of my need to be able to share & comment on photos easily with twitter. I developed it over a weekend, from concept to working site. As always I’m open to feature suggestions“. Blogowogo, however, points out that:

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An obvious disadvantage to Twitpic is that you have to be in front of your computer to post your images. Contrast this with other services such as VisualTwitter and MobyPicture, which allow you to upload an image from your mobile device. Seeing as Twitter really shines as an on-the-go social network, this limitation might 03/10/2008 14:51

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be devastating. Hmm - so there are other services available which build on Twitter which I wasn’t aware of. Indeed the day before discovering Twitpic Brian Suda mentioned the Twitterwhere service which is described on readwriteweb.com as “a service that makes tracking Tweets from any location“. Rather than discussing how such services might be used (a topic I raised recently) I would make the observation that the development of these services is based on lightweight services and open APIs. The approach isn’t one of developing a richly sophisticated service or use of data standards which will cover every contingency. Is this approach one we should be adopting more generally, I wonder? And I’ll leave it to others to suggest how Twitpic, Twitterwhere, Twitterfoo and Twitterbar (too late, that’s already gone) might be used to deliver real benefits. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: twitpic | Edit 6 Comments »

Losing My Religion February 15, 2008 I discovered the Web in December 1992 and, after Christmas, helped to set up the institutional Web site at the University of Leeds. Later that month I met Robert Cailliau, a colleague of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, when Robert was in Leeds visit relatives. Robert gave me the background to the developments of the Web and it was around that time I subscribed to the www-talk mailing list. This was the start of my belief in a Web based on standards developed by an open community. And I can remember the controversy caused when NCSA, in their development of the Mosaic browser, broke with the consensus in the format of the IMG tag. Marc Andreessen made a proposal which generated debate. However Marc chose to ignore Tim’s suggestions: Tim Berners-Lee writes: > Let the IMG tag be INCLUDE and let it refer to an arbitrary document > type. Or EMBED if INCLUDE sounds like a cpp include which people > will expect to provide SGML source code to be parsed inline — not > what was intended. We’re not prepared to support INCLUDE/EMBED at this point; it raises a number of nasty issues that are quite separate from the idea of inlined images. What happened was that Mosaic was released to universal acclaim. But later, when the lack of extensibility of the IMG tag became apparent, the Netscape browser was released and introduced a more effective way of embedding content other than images, using the EMBED tag. And Marc promoted supported support for this proprietary tag over the limited IMG tag as a killer feature of Netscape. Similar tactics which Microsoft have been guilty of over the years. 182 of 544

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It’s not just Microsoft, you have to be wary of software vendors in general as they all have vested interests in proprietary lock-in, has been my belief over the years. Stick with the W3C, I’ve felt. They are independent of vendors and will be best positioned to provide open standards which everyone can use, I’ve argued over the years. But over time I’ve begun to question the wisdom of this view. I raised this issue last June in a post entitled “Are W3C Crazy?” in which I picked up on a comment made by Phil Wilson, a Web developer based at the University of Bath. Phil told me, based on his attendance at the XTech 2007 conference that: There seemed to be a couple of big fat W3C elephants in the room. The first was that the w3c are doing stuff for use in five or ten years’ time whereas most of the other talks are about things you can do today or next year, which makes them seem like futurologists. The other is that they really didn’t seem that happy that HTML5 was going ahead, and what the hell was wrong with XHTML2 anyway? It must be nice to work in a standards organisation where everything you do meets some Platonic Idea of perfection. Are W3C working in a purist world in which everything needs to meet a Platonic idea of perfection? Others, including long standing Web standards evangelists, seem to be raising similar concerns. Molly (of Molly.com, a well-known author of dozens of books on Web standards) is the latest to raise her concerns. In a post on “From Web Standards Diva to Web Standards Devo“ she makes a startling suggestion: I’m going to design my new site with frames, tables, spacer gifs, lots of flash embedded into framed pages via iframes. I’m going to use non-semantic, presentational HTML, table based layouts, and lots of inline CSS. The frightening issue is that I can build such a site so it will validate, pass at least WCAG priority 1 accessibility and have effective SEO. However she goes on to say: The mere fact that I can actually do all that and be in compliance with specs should help clarify my point, I hope. It’s not the specs that define Web Standards. We are talking about best practices. We use the term “standards” fast and loose, and for an industry that is so interested in semantics, I find it endlessly ironic that we have chosen such a piss poor description to define a certain level of professional practices. This post is a follow-up from one on “Web Standards Aren’t” which, as with many of Molly’s posts, succeeds in generating much debate, including contributions from some of the leading lights in Web standards development work. I met Molly at the W4A 2005 conference when I gave a paper on “Forcing 183 of 544

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Standardization or Accommodating Diversity? A Framework for Applying the WCAG in the Real World“. This was my radical paper in which I suggested, to a room full of Web accessibility experts, that Web accessibility wasn’t about conforming with a technical set of universal standards, but in identifying best practices which would support users in the particular tasks they were engaged in. Molly, who I didn’t know at the time, supported various comments I made at the conference, which led to various late night drinking sessions at the conference (but I won’t go into that!) And now Molly is taking the debate even further. and other leading standards-based developers are raising similar concerns, such as Andy Clark’s post dated 11 February 2008 on “transcending the web of today” in which he suggests: Transcending is about moving away from outdated notions, for example that a design should look the same in all browsers. It is about designing the best possible visual experience for people using the best browsers (and then considering what happens for people using outdated technologies). This is the opposite of progressive enhancement where a designer would design for the most common, lowest common denominator browser (even it is the least capable), and then add extra visual decoration to reward people who use more modern software. Transcending about designing the best for the best. If leading lights such as Molly and Andy (who have both published books on Web standards, given many prresentations on this topic and beern active in W3C working groups) are questioning the W3C vision, we should pay heed. Have W3C lost the authority they once had? Have the dangers posed by software vendors leading the development of standards simply been replaced by the dangers of a group of researchers and purists who are happy to develop sophisticated solutions which may fail to gain acceptance in the marketplace? It’s not longer just a question of passively accepting the vision of the standards developers, I’m afraid. And if you don’t believe me, tell me -do you think the future lies in W3C’s XHTML 2 standard (July 2006 draft) or W3C’s HTML 5 standard (hmm, latest draft came out on 11 February 2008)? If there’s a schism within W3C and W3C Consortium Members such as Microsoft, Sun, Opera and Google, which sect will you follow? Or do you feel the need to avoid the religious wars and join the agnostics? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit 3 Comments »

The Oxford vs Cambridge Race February 13, 2008 No, not the boat race - which has the most popular Web site, Oxford or Cambridge University? We don’t know, has been the traditional view. The data is only available on the institution’s Web server and there’s no point in making such data publicly available. But this isn’t quite true. If you go to the Alexa traffic ranking service you can view traffic data for public Web sites - and you can compare the traffic data 184 of 544

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across a range of Web sites. So who has the most popular Web site? Well if you visit the comparison page you’ll find the answer is …

too close to call Now the obvious response when discussing Web site statistics and making comparisons with one’s peers is to point out the limitations of the methodology unless, of course, your Web site is on top In this case we might discuss the limitations of Web traffic metrics (caching, etc.) and point out that an organisation’s Web site isn’t the organisation and need not reflect the quality of the institution’s teaching and research. But we need to remember that the people who have an interest in such figures are typically civil servants and policy makers - they’re like the so-called ‘Google generation’ - they don’t explore issues deeply and will dismissive of explanations of the limitations of such figures The rest of us will be aware of such limitations. And we’ll also know when such league tables are inappropriate in many contexts and not just within the Web environment. or example the New Stateman magazine on the 21 January 2007 has an article entitled “It’s wrong to publish league tables” in which Peter Wilby argues that “News scores tell parents nothing about schools“. The next thing we’ll hear will be suggestions that football should be judged on a single metric such as the number of points obtained during the season - we know that this is more of a indication of the bank balance of your team’s Russian, American or Thai billionaire and factors such as the number of African players your team may have who may disappear in January and the quality of the players and their countries (an inverse relation as, if they’re too good, they’ve stay away for longer period) :-). Even so, it can be fun using the Alexa service to make comparisons with your peers. And, of most interest to me, when did usage traffic stop growing? And 185 of 544

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what has been happening since 2006? Have all the users of university Web sites moved to Facebook or even Second Life? Joking apart, there are some interesting questions to ask. Why has Web usage traffic been in decline since February 2006? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 3 Comments »

Boycott of the Premier League February 11, 2008 “Supporters threaten boycott of Permier League spnsors over foreign fixture plans” read a headline on the front page of the Guardian’s Sport section on Monday 11th Febuary 2008. I can sympathise with those views, but if I wanted to support such a boycott where would I go? Well a search for “boycott premier league” in Facebook found the group on ”SAVE THE PREMIER LEAGUE - PETITION AND BOYCOTT” which was set up on 9th February and already has 242 members. Last August the BBC described how Facebook had been used to force the HSBC to make a U-turn on its plans to introduce student charges, a story which was picked up my many newspapers and bloggers. Is, then, Facebook turning out to be the channel for mass protests, with only the hardline marxists arguing for a more politically correct channel? OK, a tonguein-cheek suggestion - but where else would you go to set up a mass campaign? I have discovered the Football Supporter’s Federation petition, but only through the Facebook group. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 7 Comments »

IT Service Blogs February 10, 2008 In a post last month entitled UCISA Award for UK Web Focus Blog I mentioned that I’ll be giving a talk on blogging at a UCISA workshop an Innovation and Communication which will take place on Thursday 14th February 2008. I’m currently finalising my slides - which, incidentally, are available on the event’s Wetpaint wiki. On a discussion on the wiki Sue Cunningham asked: “One of the reasons people in our dept don’t want to start blogging is that they don’t think they would keep it up. Do you find it takes a lot of your time - is it difficult to post on a regular basis?“ I would suggest that (a) blogs can be used to replace or complement existing communications channels and provide greater functionality (b) IT Services need to give greater priority to engaging with their users, otherwise the users will stop using their services and (c) we don’t have to work in isolation and sharing 186 of 544

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experiences and resources, such as blog policies, scripts, etc. and discussing best practices will benefit the wider community and is something that UCISA is good at. My questions then: What IT Services blogs are available (I’m aware of the Tech Services blog at Edge Hill University, Michael Webb’s at Newport and John Dale’s at Warwick) ? What experiences and best practices can be shared. Have any IT Service departments produced guidelines on the scope of their blogs, avoiding problems, dealing with spam comments, etc.? The current version of my slides is available below (although this may be updated).

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Events | Edit 3 Comments »

Baggy Trousers February 8, 2008 Yesterday in a post on Is That A Pistol In Your Pocket? I wondered what type of mobile devices we would be carrying on our person in 5 years time. James Clay “wonder[ed] if the devices will get bigger rather than smaller?” as the screen size is a factor for viewing images and watching movies and Mike Ellis suggested that “we’ll probably laugh at the number of devices we carry now“. Paul Walk has admitted to a change in his views over the years:

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I had a long running argument with a previous boss where he argued that we just needed all our gadgets integrated into one device, while I argued for smaller, focussed gadgets which could inter-operate with something like Bluetooth. The other day I 03/10/2008 14:51

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bought an iPhone. He was right. I was wrong. I’m happy A very interesting comment. In a technical environment I suspect James, Mike, Paul and myself see the advantages of the coupling of dedicated devices (as with networked applications) which could be coupled - and I suspect that was our view when we purchased HiFi separates rather than a music centre when we were younger. (For example I still have my NAD amplifier, Dual turntable, Technics casstee player and Vision loudspeakers). But Paul, who is a Mac fan, has changed his views. I can see the advantages of the single system (and I now listen to my music on my Sony combined DVD/CD player). But in other respects I prefer the flexibility of buying new devices as they come available and upgrading them as needed (I suspect a GPS device may be next). But how will I carry all of these devices? I suspect I’ll be wearing baggy trousers in the future. Paul, on the other hand, may be wearing the tight-fitting Star Trek uniforms which, in the 1960s, we predicted would be the norm in the 21st century. Madness? Perhaps, but it’s interesting to speculate on how mobile devices and pervasive networks may affect what we wear. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Gadgets | Edit 6 Comments »

Is That A Pistol In Your Pocket? February 7, 2008 Mae West asked “Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” Last night when I went out rapper sword dancing around the pubs in Bath the bulges in my pocket were due to my Casio Ex-Z1080 digital camera, Nokia N95 phone and iPod MP3 player. It struck me that the processing power, storage capacity and functionality that these devices would have been in the realm of science fiction when I was younger (Star Trek comes to mind). I was carrying around in my pocket a iPod which has an 80 hard disk drive, a camera with a 2Gb SD card and a mobile phone with a 512 Mb micro SD card. All three devices play videos, display photos and play music, the phone and the camera are content capture devices which can be used for taking photos and recording video and sound. In addition, as Phil Wilson has described recently, the Nokia N95 phone is also has WiFi, GPS support and provides a Podcast client and can be used to watch TV and listen to the radio (if you are prepared to pay the network charges). When, I wonder, were the processing power, storage and functionality of such devices only available on expensive, state-of-the-art desktop computers? And what will the bulges in our pockets be capable of providing in 5 years time? Any suggestions? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Gadgets | Edit 13 Comments » 188 of 544

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Thoughts on Goowy February 4, 2008 Yes, there’s another integrated Web-based environment for providing access to email. calendar, instant messaging, etc, as well as having a widget environment which provides extensibility. The service is called Goowy. I have just been notified of this service via a tweet from Techcrunch which has just announced that “AOL Acquires Goowy http://tinyurl.com/2n9dhb” (in this case I find that Twitter does provide a useful alerting service, which has similarities to RSS alerts). The news here was the acquisition of the service by AOL. The Techcrunch article went on to say “On Monday AOL will announce the acquisition of San Diego-based Goowy, a startup founded in late 2004 and which launched, incidentally, in my living room in late 2006“. I’d not heard of Goowy, but via a quick look at the online demonstration and reading a Techcrunch article from 2005 I find that Goowy provides a Flash-based interface to popular communication technologies (email and instant mesaging), file store management (1 Gb filestore available for free), games and, well that’s about it. I had to stifle a yawn - and not just because it’s 5 am and, following a recent long-haul flight I am both wide awake and feeling tired. But is there anything which can be learnt from Goowy? From my point of view I found it interesting that Goowy’s instant messaging capabilities are based on providing an interface to MS Messenger and AOL Messenger. It’s good, I feel, that they haven’t released yet another instant messaging service. But about 4 years ago I must admit that I felt that by now an open solution to instant messaging, based on the Jabber open environment, would be widely deployed. But no, it seems that Jabber is still finding it difficult to break out of its niche ghetto and interoperability is based on companies supporting the major players rather than interoperability through open standards. And from Googling for information about Goowy I found a Techcrunch company profile which reviewed the company in 2005 and a more recent Crunchbase profile of the company. But the most intriguing company profile was provided by the Web2.0list service. This provides a mashup of user statistics data provided by Alexa.com and compete.com with both graphs showing a decline in numbers from the start of the recording period. Goowy is not for me, I’ve decided. But the information provided by Crunchbase and Web2.0list can, I feel, be useful in helping to inform decisions on making use of Web 2.0 services. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: goowy | Edit 1 Comment »

IWMW 2007 - Call For Proposals January 28, 2008 This year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2008) will be 189 of 544

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held at the University of Aberdeen on 22-24th July 2008. The theme of this year’s event is “The Great Debate“. The event will provide an opportunity for members of the institutional Web management community to engage in discussions regarding the future of institutional Web services, particularly in a Web 2.0 environment. Can externally hosted services, as some suggest, replace some of the services currently provided in-house or is such out-sourcing dangerous for institutions, placing a reliance on unproven technologies and unsustainable business models? As well as the lively debates on the role of Web 2.0, the IWMW 2008 event will also provide an opportunity to reflect on the formative years of the institutional Web management community and to discuss how the community sees itself developing during its teenage years. The call for speakers and workshop facilitators for IWMW 2008 is now open. We encourage submissions which will contribute to the debates of the future of our Web services, including plenary talks (perhaps providing institutional case studies which describe changing approaches to the provision of Web services) and workshop sessions which provide an opportunity for more interactive and participative activities. And, as always, we also welcome proposals on other topics which may be of interest to or relevant to members of institutional Web management teams and facilitate sharing of best practices. Details of the call are available on the IWMW 2008 Web site. Note that the deadline for submissions is 29th February 2008. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, iwmw2008 | Edit 1 Comment »

Who Should Own The Social Networks? January 23, 2008

“With friends like these …” The Guardian recently featured an article entitled With friends like these … which Josie Fraser described as “a blistering critique of Facebook“. The article not only laid into Facebook but also social networks and communications technologies more generally. And, as can be seen from the concluding paragraph: “I want to reconnect with it. Damn air-conditioning! And if I want to connect with the people around me, I will revert to an old piece of technology. It’s free, it’s easy and it delivers a uniquely individual experience in sharing information: it’s called talking.” the author also seems to want to reject a whole raft of technologies including the telephone and letter-writing! Josie has written a critique of the article entitled Facebook: Neo-con social experiment? in which she responds to each of the points Tom Hodgkinson made in his article. I would very much agree with Joan Vinall-Cox’s comment: “Thanks so much for your rebuttal of Hodgkinson’s points“. Rather than revisiting this particular debate, however, I would like to pick up on a point made by Frances Bell in her post on Tom Hodgkinson’s rant on (or should I say about?) Facebook. Frances commented that she “found Tom’s 190 of 544

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article to be quite informative in parts but tiresomely Luddite in other part“. Frances main point was that the issue that needs to be debated was the ownership of social networks and the related privacy issues. She picked up on the comment that “By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States .. [which may be shared] with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies“. I feel that, along with Josie and Frances, social networks can be beneficial to our social, work and learning activities. And I would agree that there is a need to address these issues of ownership. Indeed I feel that this topics should be included as one of the topics in my recent call for a Web 2.0 debate.

Who should own the social networks? So who should own the social networks which large numbers of our society are now using? Currently the popular social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace are commercial services with, put simply, a remit to make money for the owners. And it is this commercial aspect which is causing concerns for many in the educational and wider public sector - and not just those who have doubts concerning the benefits of social networks, but also those who feel social networks can be beneficial to society in a variety of ways. But if we have concerns that such services may be owned by large companies (such as, in MySpace’s case, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp or, with Facebook, part ownership by Microsoft) or the uncertainties or private ownership (with Tom Hodgkinson’s article pointing out the links the venture capitalists have with the Republican party and the CIA), who should own the social networks? And as a follow-up, how realistic may such hopes be and how would a transition from private ownership actually occur? The initial response may be that the government should own social networks. But (a) is this really desirable and (b) is it realistic? I would suggest that if social networks were provided by a government agency that the concerns over links with security forces would be of greater concern than they are at present. And can we really envisage, in the UK, a Gordon Brown government nationalising social networks? It’s not going to happen, is it? Perhaps our organisations should run social networks for the employees? But surely an important aspect of social networks are the communications with people outside one’s host institution? And the notion that JISC could provide a social network for the higher and further education community could be difficult in working with groups outside that community and would probably fail to address the informal aspects of social networks which, it has to be admitted, have proved popular (although I’ve not played Scrabulous on Facebook, I know many people who have). And we also have to ask ourselves whether the user community would actually be willing to use social networks which are provided by our organisations. How easy, for example, might it be to be critical of the organisation if the organisation owns the communications channels and is responsible for the rules and policing such rules? The OCLC report on Sharing, Privacy and Trust in our Networked World, which I posted about recently, provided some interesting data which suggested that end users aren’t as concerned about privacy as we professionals think they should be (no surprise there) but, more surprisingly, they seem to be more 191 of 544

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willing to make their personal data available on commercial services (they understand that such data is needed to provide the services they find useful and, perhaps, younger people are more accepting of capitalist motivations than those of us who remember when the word ’socialism’ was used at Labour Party conferences and can complete the phrase “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, …”).

The need for realism It’s nice to be in opposition - all you need to do is to complain about things and suggested uncosted solutions, with no need to develop deployment strategies. But I think we need away from our comfort zone. In particular we need to ask how social networks will be funded - such issues are raised in the context of commercial services, with some people suggesting that Facebook isn’t economically sustainable in the long term. But, if they’re not provided by the commercial sector, how would they be funded? And this question has particular relevance in light of the announcement made shortly before Christmas that Curverider were closing the Eduspace social networking service as ”Running a community takes a lot of time and hard work, which we have no longer been able to give EduSpaces, and in that light, it seems both unfair and unwise to keep the site going” (although subsequently a Canadian not for profit company has announced that it will now host the service). Calling for the government funding (which really means calling for extra taxes) is unlikely not only for political reasons, but also in light of the recent shocks in the global financial markets, as described on the BBC News site: … huge declines in shares across Asia and Europe on Monday, with London’s benchmark FTSE 100 suffering its biggest one day fall since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, gripped by fears of a US recession. To revisit the questions which I feel need to be answered: Who should own the social networks? Should ownership of social networks be any different from other software services we use in our institutions (including VLEs such as Blackboard, Web 2.0 services such as Flickr or blogging services such as Edublogs Campus) How should a transition to a change of ownership take place? How realistic is the transition strategy? How do you know what this is what the users actually want? How will social networking services be funded under alternative ownership resources? And if the answer is increased taxes, how will you get that past the Daily Mail readership which seem to be influential in informing policy discussions for both the Labour and Conservative parties? And if you manage to solve this issue, perhaps you could suggest how we could reclaim our football teams from ownership of billionaires from the US, Russia and Thailand whilst, of course, still ensuring that you team gets into the Champions League (local self-made billionaires are probably acceptable). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Social Networking | Edit 13 Comments » 192 of 544

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Is Pownce The Answer? January 22, 2008 In the recent discussion about Twitter there was a feeling, from some, that it wasn’t well-suited for discussions. Indeed Andy Powell commented: i think you are right to question whether using Twitter for one-to-one or few-to-few conversations is the right approach. i (eventually) stopped Twittering on Friday cos it felt like we were mis-using it. And yet a few minutes ago I smiled at the following comments from Andy, Paul Miller and Pete Johnston: andypowe11 The moment i wake up / before i put on my makeup / i tweet a little tweet for you … about 1 hour agofrom im paulmiller @andypowe11 - makeup? about 1 hour ago from iTweet in reply to andypowe11 PeteJ @paulmiller: Company dress code about 1 hour agofrom im in reply to PaulMiller PeteJ @paulmiller: (senior staff) about 1 hour agofrom im in reply to PaulMiller Brilliant! I have to admit, I enjoy Pete’s witticisms. But if on Twitter you follow Pete or Paul but not Andy, you’ll miss the context and just get the two of them talking about make-up with the reference ot the Aretha Franklin song. The pithy one-liners are useful, I feel, but I’m not convinced that Twitter is the best tool for this. But also on today’s Twitter feed I received an announcement from TechCrunch saying that Pownce is now open to subscription, after a closed testing period. The Pownce About me page states that: Pownce is a way to send stuff to your friends. What kind of stuff? You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more. You can do it all on our web site, or install our lightweight desktop software that lets you get out of the browser. Now isn’t our requirement to send stuff (witticisms, jokes and useful snippets of information)? Time for experimentation, I think. And it might be useful to subscribe quickly - before your preferred user id is taken. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Twitter ·Tags: Pownce | Edit 4 Comments »

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The Background Friday turned out to be a day of experimentation with Twitter for myself and some of my Twitter friends including Andy Powell, Pete Johnston, Paul Miller, Owen Stephens and Josie Fraser. Friday actually began with an email discussion with fellow members of the Internet Librarian International advisory group over the theme for the conference. I expressed some reservations that the suggestions, which focussed on tangible benefits and return on investment, although important, could detract from the needs for experimentation and intangible benefits. I feel these points were accepted, and the conference organisers will shortly be announcing details of this year’s conference. In contrast, the discussions held on the Twitter micro-blogging service appeared to cast me in an alternative role in which I argued the need for guidelines on best practices to support use of Twitter. In response I received tweets (Twitter posts) along the lines of “The day we have best practice for Twitter will be the day I stop using it!” and “Global order is …boring. And massively unhelpful, sometimes“. So is it time to start developing guidelines or is it too early and will such attempts stifle innovation? I feel that there are some areas in which mistakes can easily be made and everyone would benefit from understanding the problems and solutions. One good example comes from Owen Stephens’ recent experiences in trying to integrate his Facebook statuses with his Tweeter posts. As Owen describes on his blog “What I actually wanted was to allow Twitter to update Facebook AND Facebook to update Twitter“. As can be seen from the image, this had an unfortunate side-effect - if you try and do this in both direction, you get a loop.

Architectural Issues That was a simple and easily understood and easily resolved problem. But on Friday the Twitter discussions led to aspects of the Twitter architecture which may be more difficult to resolve. Although a tweet may be a very simple resource, based on up to 140 characters, possibly including a hyperlink, tweets may have dependencies now only on the Twitter service, but also on the service used to provide the short force of URLs which are often needed to keep to the 140 character limit. So an individual tweet may have a dependency on two services, and if the TinyURL service is not as sustainable as Twitter in the long run, it may not be possible to resolve the hyperlinks. A problem, then, if future generations feel that Twitter records provide useful information on the topics we are talking about today. This is an area of concern which has already been identified in the blogging community, with one blogger having posted on URL Shorteners List and Why It’s a Mistake for Twitter. And as we look at the different ways in which Twitter can be used, we can spot 194 of 544

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other limitations in its architecture. Most tweets I have encountered use the Tinyurl.com service but the client I use, Twitteroo, uses the Rurl service: multiple dependencies on URL resolutions, then. Such concerns may be legitimate, but they are not specific to Twitter: these issues simply reflect the complexities of a Web 2.0 environment. Perhaps of greater interest to the majority of Twitter users and potential users are the ways in which Twitter is being used.

Twitter Usage Andy Powell recently drew attention to his Twitter followers in a tweet which pointed out that the emerging usage pattern amongst his Twitter friendswas infringing the Twitter Ten Commandments. In particular I think it’s fair to say that we were using Twitter like a private chat room. As I have 80 followers and follow 38 others (Andy has 92 followers and is following 120, Pete has 21 followers and is following 24, Paul has 186 followers and is following 182, Josie has 227 followers and is following 128 and Twitter newcomer Owen Stephens has 9 followers and is following 10 others) I would question the value of our use of Twitter for public messaging especially when most of the followers are likely to see only half of the conversation or when the messages are based on in-jokes. I do feel that we need to start to discuss the patterns of usage, why Twitter fans find it so useful and to be able to identify potential problem which may lead to Twitter failing to be sustainable in the long term. But I also realise that it is very early days for Twitter and attempting to mandate particular ways of working may stifle innovation. And there’s a denager that focussing on Twitter’s potential in a work capacity could lead to missing out on the informal banter, jokes and discussions which can improve the quality of the work place - for example, the tweet I’ve just received from my colleague Paul Walk “off to Nottingham. No.1 Son is concerned that I don’t run into that old Sheriff….” made me smile. I feel that the compromise position is to document experiences and encourage debate - as this post aims to do. I also feel that it would be useful to explore ways in which Twitter can support our professional activities. One area in which Twitter experimentation is taking place is to support conferences. Indeed Robert HC has blogged about JISC’s plans to use Twitter to support their conference. As he describes “so that we don’t all feel mega stupid about it, the Comms team is slowly turning into Twitterers (sigh) - with the fabulous results of us now knowing if we’re sitting on trains, waiting for offspring or having slugs creep under our kitchen doors - no doubt this will all be a prelude to something more useful and productive and we are just getting used to how it works…“ I think encouraging members of the organisation to use Twitter in this way is useful. It can help to gain an understanding of the issues and also of the things that can go wrong, prior to more formal use. From my experimentation, for example, I know that delivery of tweets via SMS can cause problems if there’s a lively Twitter discussion. On Friday evening, for example, I received an influx of 35 text messages - too many! But perhaps delivery of tweets to conference delegates via SMS can be a useful application for Twitter. In previous IWMW events we have invited delegates to provide their mobile phone numbers on the booking form, for use in 195 of 544

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case of emergencies (this decision was made after the London bombings on 7/7, which took place midway through the IWMW 2005 event). Might Twitter have a role to play as the delivery channel, I wonder? And could this be used for other purposes (e.g. notification of changes to the programme). And I think it would be fun, after the welcoming talk which asked everyone to set their mobile phones to silent mode, to send a tweet to check that everyone has done so

Your Thoughts I’ve given some suggestions for use of Twitter in one particular context. And I’ve suggested that Twitter users need to reflect on the strengths and weakness of Twitter, but that we need to have an open debate before rolling out rules for use of Twitter - and, like others, I would be worried if organisations required editorial approval before tweets could be sent. But we need to have the discussions. What are your thoughts? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Twitter | Edit 19 Comments »

Facebook Is So Last Year January 17, 2008

The Guardian’s Predictions For 2008 Facebook is so last year. It’s official - it was in the Guardian. It was back in May (2007) when John Kirriemuir picked up on the buzz which Facebook was generating, with his post Facebook: Social Networking grows up? describing how “there is now a social networking site that: (1) is based around people and their real social networks’ (2) looks quite good’ (3) isn’t full of inane people spouting inane conversation’ (4) is very easy to use and configure’ (5) has a growing number of add-ons, some with potential educational uses and (6) is expanding in terms of who is using it“. Well with the possible exception of (3) I feel John’s predictions for Facebook were true. But Facebook is now suffering from over-exposure - there are now tutorials on use of Facebook in a library context, which illustrates how mainstream Facebook has become. The cool guys are becoming excited by a number of emerging technologies. But what are they?

The Cool New Services For 2008 The Guardian suggests Twitter will be big in 2008. I recently echoed this sentiment and I’ve also noticed that JISC are making use of Twitter and intend to use it to support the JISC 2008 conference (but note that other micro-blogging tools such as Jaiku have their fans). Dopplr, which is also mentioned in the Guardian article, is another service I’ve been using for some time, to record details of my trips and to share this information with my contacts. 196 of 544

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Excluding Web sites aimed at kids, the other service mentioned in the Guardian article is Seesmic.com. I’ve not yet got an account for this service, but a Techcrunch article describes how this video-like Twitter service service: “Users can upload video directly from their webcam and post it to a personal page like with Twitter. They can also grab content from other sites such as YouTube by copying a video’s url and placing it in their stream. Additionally, videos that users create can be automatically linked to in twitter (potentially other platforms) and uploaded to YouTube.“

Whither Facebook? So there are several new services to excite the early adopters. But what does this mean for Facebook? Will it face a gradual, or even sudden, demise? I would suggest that this will not be the case. Rather, like Microsoft’s operating system, office suite and Web browser, it will be a part of the infrastructure, widely used by many and having a significant role to play within organisations. But it will not be sexy. And, just like Microsoft products, it will have flaws (the annoying email messages which some Facebook apps send out seems to have parallels with Microsoft’s little-lamented dancing paper clip) - such flaws do not necessarily lead to a downturn in a product’s usage. So the early adopters will be excited by the new generation of micro-blogging and multi-media blogging tools. But when people start to question Twitter’s financial viability and the mass media start to speculate on how it can be misused (being used by paedophiles, perhaps) or the services which make it easy to share travel information are used by burglars to target their house-breaking activities, it will be time for the early adopters to move on to the next generation of tools. Or to put it another way, when the early adopters begin to distance themselves from a tool, this may be when it has progressed on the Gartner curve from the early adopters to mainstream usage. And, for me, the mainstream usage of services is something to be welcome. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

UCISA Award for UK Web Focus Blog January 16, 2008 I’m pleased to report that the UK Web Focus blog was awarded a prize by UCISA (Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association). This blog will feature as a case study which will appear in a forthcoming UCISA Innovation and Communication best practice guide to be published by the Communications, Liaison and Information Working Group of TLIG (the UCISA Teaching Learning and Information Group). As well as the publication, UCISA is also organising an Innovation and Communication event which will feature the selected case studies. The event, which will be held on 14 February 2008 at the Coventry TechnoCentre, will also include presentations on A Blended Communication Approach (Nici Cooper, University of Wolverhampton), Hi Applicant Community website(Alison Wildish, Edge Hill University - but now based at Bath University), IT 197 of 544

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Communications (Derek Norris, University of the West of England) and The Teaching and Learning Network (Phil Riding, UCL) . I am particularly interested in the potential of blogs for staff in IT Service departments to both engage with their user communities and for communicating with their peers in IT Service departments in other institutions. The early adopters in IT Service departments include blogs from several senior managers (Michael Webb, University of Wales, Newport, John Dale, University of Warwick and, more recently, Chris Sexton, Sheffield University) with Mark Sammons (whose In-Cider Knowledge blog was established in 2004, and has migrated to WordPress recently) providing the perspective from a member of IT Services support staff. Last May I published a post on The First IT Services Blog? which suggested that the Core Services departtment at Edge Hill Univrersity might be the best IT Service department to have launched a blogging service. But are there now more IT Service departments who are making use of blogs to reach out to their users? And have blog policies and Web practices been established? I’d welcome feedback which I can make use of when I give my talk at the UCISA event. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Events | Edit 7 Comments »

Is Second Life Accessible? January 14, 2008 Is Second Life accessible to users with disabilities? If your views on accessibility are based on compliance with guidelines (especially WAI’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and you feel that all digital resources must be universally accessible to everyone, you may feel that an inherently graphical and interactive environment such as Second Life is unlikely to be accessible.

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If you share such views I would strongly recommend that you watch the Wheeling in Second Life video clip which is available on YouTube (or, if you cannot access YouTube on the Tips Dr.com or DotSub services). This video clip shows a user with cerebral palsy, Judith, using Second Life with a headwand. As Judith explains (which you can read on the transcript): “I’ve got a wheelchair in Second Life also. You can choose whether you want to be in a chair or not. You can have crutches, you can have whatever disability you have in real life in Second Life“. In response to the question “Do you think that this will be a really useful tool for people who are unable to get around, who have problems of mobility in real life?” Judith feels that “Yes, because you can have friends without having to go out and physically find them“. Should institutions really be developing policies which prevent use of services such as Second Life on grounds of inaccessibility? And who will explain the reasons for such decisions to users such as Judith? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility | Edit 11 Comments »

Standards For Data Portability January 11, 2008 In a recent post on Should Personal Data In Facebook Be Exportable I pointed out the potential dangers of allowing data to be exported out of an environment in which access control can be managed. I have previously suggested that in 30 years time potential new leaders of political parties will have their Facebook entries trawled by the tabloid press - I didn’t expect this to happen quite so quickly, but an Australian news site has the headline Benazir Bhutto’s son targeted on Facebook and the Guardian newspaper recently discussed the ethics of using data published on Facebook to support a news story. It is quite clear to me that the ‘data must be free and open’ line is too simplistic. And we are not in a position in which it is a simple question of social networking service providers supporting open standards. There are many important issues of gathering requirements, exploring use cases, discussing and arguing solutions, etc. which we now have a need to address. And these aren’t just issues for services such as Facebook to address - institutions be facing similar questions, especially if they provide social networking services (such as Elgg) within their institution. So it is good to hear that there are a number of new initiatives which have been announced recently. There is the Data Portability group which, as announced on Techcrunch, Facebook, Google and Plaxo have joined recently. And, via a comment on my blog, I discovered John Breslin’s blog, in which he recently posted on DataPortability.org, web standards, SIOC and FOAF. FOAF I’m familiar with, but SIOC is new to me. SIOC (Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities Project, but also the Gaelic word for frost - there’s a convoluted explanation on the SICOC Web site) does seem interested and there a SIOC 199 of 544

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tutorial has been accepted for the WWW2008 conference. John’s post concludes: It’d be great if we can get some of the DataPortability.org people to come to the WebCamp workshop on Social Network Portability in Cork in March. I do feel there is a pressing need for institutions to engage in the development of approaches for data portability. The relevant open standards aren’t available yet and, as many have argued, we will face difficulties in the future if we continue to grow large-scale walled gardens. Are there any readers of this blog who are planning on attending this event? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Social Networking ·Tags: SIOC | Edit 1 Comment »

Tower of WS-Babel January 8, 2008 You know where you are with standards, right? But who remembers OSI Networking Protocols? And whatever happened to Corba? And what is

happening to Web Service standards? There was a panel session at a WWW conference a few years ago entitled “Web Services Considered Harmful” 200 of 544

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which argued that Web Service standards were too complex to be successful. Interestingly in a recent post on Not a unicorn, nor Switzerland neither by my colleague Paul Walk he mentions that in Rail 2.0 “Significantly, the ActiveResource plugin which drops a full ReST framework into Rails is in, while the ActiveWebService functionality to support SOAP is out“. Will then, the Web Services stack be the next attempt at standardisation which fails by striving too hard to be too clever, eventually succumbing to a babble of conflicting opinions of the next steps? The accompanying image is available on Flickr. Is is taken from a set of images entitled The Web is Agreement. It was put together on behalf of Osmosoft for a BT Open Source Awareness Event to promote discussion on Open Source and standards. Towers of WS-Babel by psd,

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Should Personal Data In Facebook Be Exportable? January 7, 2008 On 2nd January 2008 I described various recent improvements to Facebook. I also pointed out that the research community has been developing tools for exporting data from Facebook for use in other applications. However my post added a note of caution: Has the problem of data being trapped within Facebook now been solved? I don’t think so - remember that this is an experimental prototype … Perhaps more interestingly, though, are the ethics of exporting personal data to other applications. The data I have received from my friends (their photos, contact details, interests, etc.) has only been made available once we have mutually accepted friendship invitations. Coincidentally the next day the blogosphere was full of discussions on this very topic, following an announcement (made initially on Twitter) that Robert Scoble had been banned from Facebook for using a scraping tool for exporting data from his Facebook account (”I got kicked off of Facebook because I was running a naughty script trying to get my friends info off of Facebook“). Paul Miller and Nick Carr (”Scoble: freedom fighter or data thief?“) were amongst many bloggers who expressed their views on this incident in the immediate aftermath of this announcement. My view if that it would be a mistake to portray this incident as a freedom fighter taking on the big evil corporate monster. I would also question the automatic assumption that people may have that they should be able to get out and reuse data they can access in networked services. I feel that the nature of social networking services needs us to rethink assumptions which may have 201 of 544

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been valid in self-contained systems. For example my email address and work details are freely available (on my Web site, my email signature, my business card, etc.) However I took a deliberate decision not to publish my Skype and my MSN IDs and my mobile phone number in order to avoid both dangers of misuse (spam) and inappropriate use (being contacted out of work hours or being inundated with messages). But sometimes it would be useful to provide such information to others, but in a managed fashion. I do this from time to time, giving out my mobile phone number when I’m organising events (and am speaking at an event) so that conact can be made in case of problems, In such cases there may be an implied understanding that the information is provided only on a short term basis. However such understandings which may be reached by humans will not necessarily be the case in the networked world. On Facebook when I befriend an individual this provides us with a mechanism for sharing information, which will include contact details as well as a wide range of other information. But, whilst this information is managed in a Facebook environment I maintain control over this information, and can change the access conditions or even, by defriending people, withdraw access to my data. And this is an important aspect of effective social networks. Circumventing such access control is therefore problematic, I feel. And this was the reason why I did not publish the FOAF file containing details of my Facebook friends. Of course there are dangers of data lock-in if data cannot be exported from systems. And if Facebook goes out of business there will be a lot of annoyed individuals if they cannot lose functionality and services they find useful. It needs to be acknowledged that there does need to be a debate on how we should best proceed in addressing such tensions. But this debate does need to be informed by an understanding of the diversity of requirements. I was very pleased, therefore, to see a news item in Facebook from Dan Brickley about a WebCamp: SocialNetworkPortability event to be held in Cork on 2nd March 2008. The event will look at “abstract approaches for social network portability”, “authentication methods for cross-SNS usage” and “giving permission for profile discovery on different social networks”. These are some of the important issues which need to be thrashed out. And Robert Scoble’s approach of simply running a screenscraper to extract personal data ignores these important issues. So Facebook should be applauded, IMHO, for stopping Robert from infringing Facebooks’ terms and conditions. And note that there is a Facebook aplication - Friendscsv- which allows contact details to be exported from Facebook. Aparently: This application has been created in accordance with the terms and condition outlined in the Facebook Terms of Use (May 24, 2007), Facebook Privacy Policy (Sept 12, 2007), and the Facebook Platform Terms of Service and Platform Documentation (July 25, 2007). The data exported from your cadre of friends is obtained in accordance with their Privacy Settings and does not contain any contact information. That sounds good. But: 202 of 544

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By using this application, you consent to allow the developers to create a basic entry for you on bigsight.org, a site they also own and maintain. Your use of this application represents your consent to the privacy policies laid out on bigsight.org. The developers of this application do not store any information (encrypted or otherwise) about your friends. So a company (Bigsight) has already been set up which allows your contact data to be exported, provided the data is also uploaded to their social network. Now Bigsight is currently in beta and, according to their directory, there are only nine people from London registered. But if a Facebook friend of mine uses this tool, will I find my personal details held on this service? Is this something to be welcomed? Or, to revisit the title of this post, should personal data in Facebook be exportable? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook ·Tags: Bigsight | Edit 5 Comments »

When Web Sites Go Down January 4, 2008 A colleague of mine has just alerted me to the fact that the University of Southampton Web site is down for scheduled maintenance from 2-4th January 2008. She had noticed this as she regularly visits the Web site to access the wide range of resources it provides on institutional repositories (note added on 4 Jan 2008 - the Web site is now available, ahead of schedule!). That’s no big deal, you may think, servers do need maintenance and the first few days after the Christmas break is probably the best time,with students still away and many researchers likely to take an additional few days holiday. I’d be in broad agreement with such sentiments (I used to work in IT Services, after all, and I’m aware of the complexities of managing IT systems). But have our expectations changed, I wonder? And rather than taking time off at this time of year, what if users have imminent deadline for papers and need to access such services? And who are the users of the University of 203 of 544

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Southampton Web site - no longer just staff and students at Southampton, I would argue’ rather at prestigious institutions such as the University of Southampton there is likely to be a significant national (and indeed international) user community. But how should we establish what reasonable practices may be in addressing user expectations of a 24×7 service availability, but without the business models to fund such requirements. Perhaps the debate can be helped by initially monitoring best practices within the community and making comparisons with other communities. In this respect the Netcraft service can be useful, as it provides automated analyses on public Web services, including profiles on Web server software usage and server uptime data. As can be seen from the graph, the main Web server at Southampton University has had an average uptime (based on a 90-day moving average) of 405 days. And this data compare very favourably with Sun’s data for which the equivalent figure is 34 days.

I suspect the University of Southampton will have a high rating with the UK HE sector for its server uptime. But, of course, that will probably not be appreciated by the user who tries to access the site on day 406 to gather data for a paper which needs to be submitted by day 407! Is it possible (or, rather, realistic) to improve the server availability for institutional services? Should we be replicating our servers (or our data)? Should 204 of 544

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we outsource the management of our services to companies such as Amazon, as an international company such as Amazon (with their data hosting S3 service) may be better positioned to provide 24×7x365 availability? But before responding to such questions I feel that institutions may need to ask themselves to whom they should be accountable. If institutional Web sites are now providing significant services to a global audience, how can we ensure that that global community is being provided with acceptable levels of service? After all, we ask these questions of externally-hosted Web services. But don’t we all act as externally hosted Web services to others outside our institution? Wouldn’t it be interesting to have server uptime data across all our institutions? And if the data for sector compares favourably with the commercial sector, then we will have something to be pleased with. And if the comparison is unfavourable, then this should help to inform our planning - and provide objective data to inform discussions on the relevance to our sector on services such as Amazon S3. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 3 Comments »

Will Twitter Be Big In 2008? January 3, 2008 Something IS Going On With Facebook! I said back in May 2007, in response to a comment made by John Kirriemuir, after he received a sudden influx of Facebook befriending messages. That was my first inkling that what had previously been a rather dull academic network might become the major talking point of 2007. The post came back to me yesterday after I received a similar influx of people who have have chosen to follow me on the Twitter microblogging tool. And a Techcrunch article published on 2nd January 2007 suggested that “Twitter has the potential of breaking into the mainstream this year“. The Techcrunch article described the Twitter Stats service which provides graphs showing an individual’s use of Twitter. This is likely to be only of interest to regular Twitter users. Of more interest are the range of other Twitter applications which have been developed over the past year and the excitement which Twitter seems to be generating. I normally use the Twitter Web site, but I have also used the Twitteroo client (illustrated) and have configured Facebook so that my Facebook status is updated by Twitter posts.

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But what’s new with Twitter? Looking at Techcrunch articles about Twitter it seems that the review of 2008: Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without includes Twitter as one of the new indispensable tools released in 2007. Another review of the year suggests that “Omnipresence was another big theme in 2007 with Twitter brining (sic) always on, always available communication to the masses … perhaps overall we’re all the richer for the networking Twitter delivers“. The uncertainties regarding the benefits of Twitter were acknowledged in a post on Can You Spare The Odd Pea For A Good Cause? “The benefits of Twitter may still be subject to heated debate amongst TechCrunch commenter’s, but very few would doubt that Twitter has created new relationships and taken social networking to new (and perhaps different) levels.” The post refers to a cause that’s hot on Twitter (Frozen Pea Friday): a Breast Cancer Awareness and fundraising day in support of well regarded blogger Susan Reynolds. Although in this case Twitter is being used by someone with a clear interest in use of Web 2.0, the way in which microblogging can be used hints at its potential for a wider audience. A Wikipedia article provides further background information about Twitter but the Twitter-fan wiki provides a more comprehensive list of Twitter applications and ideas for how Twitter could be used. I have started to think about the potential for Hashtags to aggregate microblog posts at an (amplified) event. I was also interested to see how Brooklyn Museum is making its blog available via Twitter. And software developers might be interested in use of Twitter by non-humans. Now what other interesting applications for Twitter might there be? And do you feel that it will take off in 2008? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Twitter ·Tags: Twitter | Edit 8 Comments »

Facebook Is Getting Better January 2, 2008 206 of 544

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Whisper it, but has anybody noticed the various developments to Facebook which seems to be making it a better environment to work in? There have been developments to the user interface, such as the Facebook status no longer has to start with “Brian is …” and messages delivered via email now contain the contents of the message, and not just the URI you have to go to in order to read the message. Simple developments, but much welcomed by many Facebook users, I suspect. It is also pleasing to see serious service providers providing access to their services through Facebook - just before Christmas, for example, Lorcan Dempsey commented on the availability of the Worldcat application for Facebook, which is illustrated below.

The research community is also engaging with Facebook. I have recently joined the Facebook: Academic Research group which describes itself as “A group for anyone conducting (or interested in) academic research into Facebook. This includes sociologists, computer scientists, psychologists, information scientists, computer scientists, educators, philosophers, etc.“ I also noticed recently that several of my friends had joined The Semantic Web Benefits, Education & Outreachgroup. I must admit that I was very pleased to see the pragmatic approach which is being taken by many of the Semantic Web evangelists in this group. One message addressed the question “Why create a facebook group to discuss the semantic web?“ by suggesting ”for the same reason tv shows are advertised on radio and tv schedules are listed in newspapers and magazines. You have to reach out to people where they are if you want to bring them somewhere new.“ In this group a thread on Getting FaceBook to open up provided a link to the Facebook Foaf Generator software which has been written by Mathew Rowe, a PhD student at Sheffield University. The Foaf Generator is “a tool that generates a Foaf file from your Facebook profile, compiled from the information that Facebook has stored about you. It also includes details about your friends, along with geographical placement of your current location or hometown“. 207 of 544

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As someone who has written a paper which explored the potential of

FOAF back in 2004 I was intrigued by the possibility of making my Facebook data available as a FOAF file and then using a FOAF application to view the data. So I installed the application and created a FOAF file of my Facebook contacts. I explored several FOAF viewers before deciding that the Tabulator widget for the Opera Web browser seemed to provide the richest interface, and a screen shot of this is shown. What, then, does this show? Well it does seem to be possible to extract data from Facebook and make it available for use by other applications. Has the problem of data being trapped within Facebook now been solved? I don’t think so - remember that this is an experimental prototype developed by a PhD student, so there can be no guarantee of the quality of the service or that it will be available on a long term basis. And one simple experiment isn’t enough to explore how sophisticated (or not) the data export capabilities are. Perhaps more interestingly, though, are the ethics of exporting personal data to other applications. The data I have received from my friends (their photos, contact details, interests, etc.) has only been made available once we have mutually accepted friendship invitations. Wouldn’t making a FOAF file of such data openly available infringe the implied privacy settings? Or to put it another way, although Facebook may be improving, could it become too open?

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A Call for a Web 2.0 Policy Debate December 22, 2007 A brief interview with me has just been published on the JISC Web site with the title ‘Information Professional of the Year’ calls for Web 2.0 policy debate. The article reflects many of the discussions which have taken place on this blog during the year: There are divergences in opinion within the sector over the most appropriate development and deployment strategies for Web 2.0,’ he claims. ‘Some argue that higher educational institutions should be installing Web 2.0 services locally whilst others would argue that externally-hosted services can be used to support institutional requirements, with this providing benefits of scale and acknowledges that such services will, in any case, be used by people in their social activities.’ My call for a policy debate on these issues is clearly very timely in light of the demise of the Eduspaces social networking environment, its subsequent rebirth and the lively discussions taking place about the migration of the Eduspaces environment and the sustainability of the community. I will be revisiting these issues in the new year. But until then I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Christmas - with the exception of readers in the US, to whom I pass on my seasonal greetings Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 9 Comments »

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do December 21, 2007 For many of us it’s easy to find ‘friends’ on Facebook. Once you’ve got started and added a few friends it can often be easy to find other people you know. And the more links you have the easier it is to grow your network. But how many of us have actively ‘defriended’ someone on Facebook? (And, incidentally, is this a word? The answer, it seems, is yes - see below). In real life we may lose touch with our friends, or chose not to have contact with them. But we probably haven’t publicly said ‘I’m not friends with you anymore ’since we were at school. What is the etiquette, then, of pruning one’s list of Facebook friends? If we defriend someone, is this displayed on our respective News Feeds pages? And will this cause intrigue? And what happens if others then start to defriend the same person? Will they lose face? Well I took the plunge recently, when I defriended someone for the first time. 209 of 544

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This was someone I had messaged, asking if she was the person I’d know when in Newcastle. It turns out that she wasn’t - but, as her message was ambiguous, I needed to befriended her to verify this. As we didn’t know each other, I defriended her - and felt slightly guilty as she only had one other Facebook friend. But at least this action wasn’t displayed on my page. I do think we will need to start to defriend our Facebook friends. It would be helpful if there was a Facebook application which could help manage one’s friends, perhaps in some automated way. But we will still need to grasp the nettle and let go at some stage. Perhaps we need a Letting Go Of Your Facebook Friends day? PS A Google search for defriend revealed several definitions, including this one from the Enclopedia Dramatica: To “defriend” is to remove someone from your LiveJournal’s Friends list; it is tantamount to “throwing down the gauntlet” and declaring one’s friendship at an end. Unsurprisingly, many people consider defriending a severe blow to their pride and reputation, and thus the act of defriending tends to stir up a lot of Internet drama. and this one from the Urban Dictionary (which demonstrates that the term pre-dates the popularity of Facebook): 1. To remove someone from your livejournal friends list. 2. the act of removing a friend on your Myspace friend’s list. 3. defriend smbd v , transitive de + friend; cf. befriend - to break off friendly relations (with smbd) I should add that, as Andy Powell has observed recently, the Urban Dictionary has also defined the term Facebook limbo to refer to “the electronic space between accepting and rejecting a facebook friendship“. Is it worse to be rejected or to be ignored, I wonder? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook, Social Networking | Edit No Comments »

New Open Data Licence - a Milestone for Sharing Data on the Internet December 17, 2007 Myself, Scott Wilson and Randy Metcalfe co-authored a paper on “Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access” which Scott presented at the ELPUB 2007 conference. The paper described the potential benefits of use of open standards and open source software and an open approach which characterises much of the Web 2.0 environment. We were aware when writing the paper, though, that there was a gap related to open data. I’m pleased to report that this gap is now being addressed with the launch by Talis and Creative Commons of a new open data licence, which the press release describes as “a milestone for sharing data on the Internet”. 210 of 544

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I was aware of Talis’s work in this area when I attended a session on Open Data at the WWW 2007 conference, which I wrote about some time ago. One of the questions I asked at the conference related to the governance of Talis’s Community Licence. I was assured that Talis aimed to get it established as an open licence governed by a trusted neutral provider and this was confirmed in a post by Paul Miller in September 2007. And now the results of that work is openly available. Talis’s press release is given below.

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Talis and Creative Commons are delighted to announce the release of the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence, the first output of a successful partnership with the Science Commons project of Creative Commons. Creative Commons is well known for its advocacy and licensing work in the arena of ‘creative works’ such as songs, images, and copyrightable text. In developing the Public Domain Dedication and Licence, Talis secured the efforts of Jordan Hatcher and Dr. Charlotte Waelde, asking them to build upon the principles of the earlier Talis Community Licence in ways that ensured its fitness for international purpose whilst aligning it more closely to the phrasing of Creative Commons’ overarching protocol. Talis Technology Evangelist Dr. Paul Miller commented, “At Talis we’ve been arguing for a more permissive culture around use and reuse of data for a very long time. Working with our partners at Creative Commons and elsewhere we now have a clear framework upon which to build, and in our Public Domain Dedication and Licence we have the very first licence to conform to that new Science Commons Open Access Data Protocol. With this announcement we provide a tool to those who already understand the value of unlocking their data. We can also use discussion of this first tool to carry a wider set of messages to those who remain unaware of the importance of data licensing to their own activities.” The legal environment within which data exist is radically different to that for creative works, and although there have been attempts to apply existing Creative Commons licenses to data, the legal validity of those efforts is questionable. In Europe we have Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament, and its various expressions in the laws of member states to define the so-called Database Right. These protections do not apply in jurisdictions such as the United States. A different approach is therefore required if we are to facilitate the widespread availability of data upon which the emerging Semantic Web will depend. John Wilbanks, Creative Commons’ Vice President responsible for the Science Commons project, commented “For a commercial organisation such as Talis, with a heritage in the business of creating and managing data, to recognise the importance of the ‘freedom to integrate’ says much about changing attitudes to the ownership and use of data. That they went beyond this recognition and did something about it with their licensing and advocacy work says much about them and the team with which they collaborated. The Open Data Commons Licence is the fruit of that collaboration. Both CC0 and the ODCL offer a sound legal basis upon which creators 03/10/2008 14:51

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can follow Talis’ example and recognise that there is far more to be gained by enabling access to data than by continuing to lock it away. Uniquely built for data, the Open Data Commons Licence approach furthermore implements the norms of data sharing for scientific data, providing the guidance for scientists to act as good citizens without exposing them to lawsuits and lawyers.” Jordan Hatcher, who completed the redrafting effort, commented, “Building an open data licence for the community is very much a collaborative process and we need everyone’s input to make the licence be the best it can be — including meeting everyone’s needs for open data. The project’s goal is to produce an easy to understand licence and that means having it user tested just like software. In the end, the Open Data Commons licence will provide a workable and easy to use solution for data integration that will take care of the relevant rights over data and databases.” The Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence is available for use from today. We are working with the Cambridge-based Open Knowledge Foundation in the expectation that they can take on the support and development of this and related licenses in the future, ensuring true community ownership of the licensing cornerstone upon which so much data will come to rely. The Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence is available for download from www.opendatacommons.org, along with the first set of documented Community Norms. Many congratulations to Talis for this work. Now that the licence is available, let’s start making use of it and share our data as well as our text, images and software. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in openness | Edit 2 Comments »

The Demise of Eduspaces December 16, 2007 I have just received the following email:

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Subject: Important EduSpaces news Hi All, We would like to inform all users of EduSpaces that we will be shutting down the service on Jan 10th, 2008. We have provided a mechanism for you to export all your blog posts in either an RSS format or HTML. To do this, go to your blog and select the submenu option you require. For those of you with files, you might want to download those as well. Thank you to everyone who has supported EduSpaces over the last 03/10/2008 14:51

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three years. So on 16th December I received notification that any content hosted on EduSpaces will be unavailable early in the New Year. Not much time to do anything, is it? And most unfortunate for anyone who is taken an extended break over Christmas. But at least they aren’t in breach of their terms and conditions: We reserve the right to modify or terminate the EduSpaces service for any reason, without notice at any time. We reserve the right to alter these Terms of Use at any time. If the alterations constitute a material change to the Terms of Use, we will notify you via an appropriate method. What is a ‘material change’ is at our discretion We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time. And Frances Bell (”Anyway thanks to elgg bunch, Eduspaces was nice while it lasted“) and Josie Fraser (”huge thanks to the whole Eduspaces team for the massive contribution and commitment they’ve made to demonstrating what’s possible, and to moving the discussion forward so much in terms of technology, and web 2.0/social technologies for education“) have both expressed their gratitude to the EduSpaces team. But what does this tell us about the sustainability of such services? And what lessons can be learnt? Was their policy on openness (”We claim no intellectual property rights over any material you provide to the EduSpaces service“) a contributory factor to the difficulties Eduspaces seem to have in finding funding to provide a sustainable service? In a recent post on The open source misconception Ben Werdmuner commented on the unrealistic expectations that people may have about services driven by open source software such as Eduspaces: “... software is not developed by magical elves. It doesn’t appear like water, for free. People have to put time and hard work into creating it.” He went on to add that “Elgg in particular has no funding beyond Curverider, despite a common misconception that it’s the recipient of public grants or affiliations.“ So did those of us who signed up to the service (including myself) fail in our responsibilities to our communities by not expressing concerns over the bluntness of the statement that “We reserve the right to modify or terminate the EduSpaces service for any reason, without notice at any time“? And as the service was relaunched on 8 October 2007 as “the world’s largest social network for education and educational technology” users of the service might be surprised at the sudden demise of the service. And what will happen after the service is shut down on 10th January? Will the domain name become available, and likely to be taken over by a domain squatting agency or a porn company? This would be rather embarrassing for people, such as Salvor at Brighton) who has links to what is currently legitimate posts about their elearning activities. (Of course, a clever porn company would ensure that blog RSS feeds continue to be served, but delivering information about Russians teenagers seeking western husbands rather than reflections of elearning strategies!).

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I’ve just discovered that I am not along in having such concerns. Mandy Honeyman has commented that “I used eduspaces as my portfolio for my teacher training and so it is quite extensive if not necessarily public. I have downloaded via the html option, but what a mess! I guess I could install my own elgg just for me, but I’m about to move hosting so that’s not really an option. I guess I could install elgg on the server at school, but that’s windows, so that’s not an option either. This is a pain.“ Or are such criticisms unfair - maybe we just have to accept that such services, which we do not pay for, will come and go and we need to spend more time and effort in planning for the demise of such services. And I think it is true to say that EduSpaces played a valuable role in introducing the benefits of edublogging and social networks to educational technologists around the world. For that, we should express our gratitude to the EduSpaces development team. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Social Networking ·Tags: eduspaces | Edit 13 Comments »

Me, Myself, I December 14, 2007 The OCLC report on ‘Sharing, Privacy and Trust In Our Networked World’, which I wrote about recently, introduces the report with a quotation from the Time “Person of the Year: You” article, published a year ago on 13 December 2006. Web 2.0 services, such as YouTube and Flickr, enable the individual to be active creators of content, rather than passive consumers as has been the case in the Web 1.0 world - which can be good for the citizen and good for the student. And in a report on the recent Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin conference, the Secret Plans and Clever Tricks blog Chris May reported that “Social == Me First. Social tools are primarily organised around self-interest, not altruistic participation in a community. Community, where it emerges, is a side-effect of the tools.“. But how do we reconcile the tensions between the power which many Web 2.0 tools provide each of us as self-interested individuals (now that I can blog, upload pictures and videos so easily) and the requirements of the institution where individuals work or study? How, for example, can the institution safeguard its reputation if individuals can create content without being validated by editorial processes which have been the norm in the past? How are copyright misuses to be addressed? And what about the legal challenges such as data protection, defamation, compliance with accessibility legislation, etc.? From my point of view I have been observing the pragmatic approaches which are being taken by people such as Michael Stephens on his Tame The Web blog (in particular with his Ray Of Light video) and John Dale at the University of Warwick, with his comments on the potential of YouTube and his willingness to write posts beyond his work-related activities. I think the approaches being taken by individuals is helping to set patterns of acceptable use of such technologies, which now bodies such as Intute are using 214 of 544

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(as can be seen from this recent blog post). Nothing new, perhaps - individuals were deep-linking to Web resources whilst the lawyers were still wondering about the legality of such actions. But I think, or I should say, I hope, that it is individuals who can be instrumental in setting in motion changes to outdated legislation. Who knows, we might even be able to rip our CDs and listen to our music collection on our iPods within infringing copyright legislation at some point (the Gower Report recommends this, but the required legislation has not yet been enacted)? However I should add that IANAL - and this post should not be construed as legal advice, or to reflect the views of anyone apart from myself. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit No Comments »

Will The UK Government Shut Down The Queen’s Web Site? December 13, 2007 In a post on All UK Government Web Sites Must Be WCAG AA Compliant I recently warned of the dangers that the UK Government’s blunt instrument of mandating that all UK government Web sites must comply with WCAG AA accessibility guidelines could be counter-productive as the current WCAG 1.0 guidelines are widely felt to be out-of-date and government departments which seek to comply with the guidelines may well result in Web design patterns which are now widely felt to enhance the effectiveness of Web sites but which infringe guidelines released back in 1998 being discarded. I recently viewed the Official Web Site of the British Monarchy (don’t ask) and spotted a visible tag preceding a news item about the Queen’s speeches in Uganda.

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Surely the Queen’s Web site isn’t using tags, I thought? The Queen can’t possibly have employed a self-taught Web coder who hasn’t updated their skills in over five years? But looking at the source code and validating the page my worst fears came true: 36 HTML errors, no DOCTYPE, spacer GIFs, unclosed tags (as I had spotted), tags with no ALT attributes, a mixture of XHTML and HTML elements, … Now this page clearly fails to comply with the UK Government proposed accessibility requirements. What, then, will happen if these proposals are accepted and the Queen fails to correct the errors by next year’s deadline? Will the Government attempt to shut down Her Majesty’s Web site? Will the Government take the Queen to court? But won’t “Regina vs Regina ” lead to a constitutional crisis? Will this lead to the demise of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic? Or will such a vindictive move by pedantic civil servants lead to a backlash, with the possibility of the Tower for the more extreme of the ‘accessibility standardistas‘? More seriously the British Monarchy Web site probably does provide a good example of a service (perhaps not quite a public-sector service, though) which would be improved by simply following the WCAG guidelines. So maybe my concerns would only apply to those Web sites which are seeking to be more interactive and user-focussed than the brochureware approach which the British Monarchy site provides. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, HTML | Edit 3 Comments »

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December 13, 2007 The flurry of posts about OpenSocial (from Michael Nolan, Andy Powell, Tony Hirst, Scott Wilson and George Roberts amongst those whose blogs I regularly read) reminded me about PeopleAggregator, the open social networking service I subscribed to a few months ago. PeopleAggregator was developed by Marc Cantor, who set up the company which developed Macromedia Flash - and “says he’s paying penance today for the role he played in locking users into Macromedia Flash“. As described in a TechCrunch article “PeopleAggregator is all about using open standards to prevent lock-in in one of the most important sectors of the new web - online social networking” and it will “share information with other services through common identity standards for our profiles and through APIs (application programming interfaces) for our writing, multimedia and contacts.“. PeopleAggregator would seem, therefore, to fit in with Ross Gardler’s beliefs that Communities can’t flourish in walled gardens. I would agree that the ability to get data out of services is important - although I also feel there’s a need to explore successful services in order to see what can be learnt from their success. So in the summer I joined PeopleAggregator - expecting to find this service being widely blogged about as an alternative to Facebook. But there has seemed to be little interest in the service - and revisiting it I find that a search for groups containing “web” shows 5 groups, the most popular, web3ers (on what’s beyond Web 2.0) having just 8 members. Why the lack of interest in PeopleAggregator (software which is available for downloading, enabling institutions to set up their own social networking environment)? And why, in contrast, is their such interest with Google’s announcement about their OpenSocial APIs and the companies, including Myspace and LinkedIn, who are supporting this initiative? Is this because we love Google and MySpace’s commitment to openness - or perhaps because, on this occasion, they are the underdogs (but underdogs with a chance of success)? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Social Networking ·Tags: PeopleAggregator | Edit 1 Comment »

OCLC Symposium At Online Information 2007 December 11, 2007 On the second day of the Online Information 2007 conference I attended the OCLC Symposium on Who’s Watching Your Space? The symposium provided OCLC an opportunity for OCLC to unveil their report on Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World which I’ve commented upon recently. The session began with a talk by John Naughton, journalist and academic at the Open University. I enjoy reading John’s regular column in the Observer and many years ago I read his book on A Brief History of The Future. So I was looking forward to hearing him speak for the first time, but was very disappointed by what I felt were his cynical views on social networks. It’s over-hyped and journalists always love to joy in with the over-hyping of popular trends, John argued, and there are no sustainable business model. His comments reminded me of the various comments people were making about the Web in 217 of 544

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1993 and 1994, and the scepticism people such as Jon Maber (original software developer of the Bodington VLE at Leeds University) faced when the idea of delivering teaching and learning services on the Web. It struck me that if journalists are guilty of over-hyping trends they also enjoy following this up with the doubts (”you build ‘em up, you known ‘em down”). I did raise this in the questions, but, as Tom Roper reported, John didn’t really answer me questions. But possibly, as Tony Hirst suggested to me during the drinks reception, I read too much into John’s critical remarks and as Tom described in his report on the symposium “He (John) thought there might be possibilities for harnessing social networking in education, in corporate organisations and in libraries“. (I suspect I was slightly annoyed that the explorations of the potential and best practices for making use of social networks in education context, which is being carried out by pioneers such as Tony Hirst and David White, and addressed in the recent UKOLN workshop on Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks seem to be invisible to John). The second speaker was given by Matt Brown of Nature Network. Matt described the various services which Nature have developed, such as Connotea. Now I’d be the first to congratulate Nature on the pioneering work on such tools and their early commitment to RSS - but this talk provided nothing new for me, and I was beginning to wonder whether I should have stayed at the Online Information Conference, possibly attending the session on Folksonomies vs Ontologies or Service Innovation - Tools and Resources for Library Users. However Cathy de Rosa’s highlights from the Sharing, Privacy and Trust in our online world report did make the session worth while, by providing much-needed evidence on the changing online environment, together with some surprises. The statistics that use of a wide range of online services (e.g. Web sites, social networks, instant messaging) has gown since their last survey was expected, but the decline in visits to library Web sites will, perhaps, have surprised people in the audience who might have expected a report commissioned by a library organisation to describe successes in the library domain. However if that statistic may have surprise some, the discrepancy between the (US) librarians’ views of their strengths and the users’ perceptions was probably shocking - librarians, it seems, place a high regard on their approaches to protecting the privacy of library users; the users, however, don’t feel that this is the case and also don’t feel that privacy is such an important issue. As Tom Roper commented “There’s lots in the report” for people to digest. And there will be a need to explore the validity of the findings (Tom pointed out that “the samples used seem a little small“) and the relevance in a UK context (I suggested to Rosa that she should make use of the SCONUL organisation next time to try to get a representative sample from the UK academic library sector). But at least we now have data and interpretations of the data to forward the debate. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Social Networking ·Tags: OnlineInfo2007 | Edit No Comments »

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Last week I attended the Online Information 2007 conference. I’ve participated in the conference previously - in 1998 when I participated in a panel on Enabling The User In the Quest For Quality and in 2002 when I gave a talk on Approaches to the Preservation of Web Sites. However I always felt that, as the conference had such a strong emphasis on areas such as knowledge management, Intranets and commercial solutions, the event did not reflect my main areas of interests and so wasn’t the most effective dissemination channel for me. This year, however, I was invited to moderate a session on Library 2.0: Fact or Fiction. And as the conference theme this year was Applying Web 2.0: Innovation, Impact and Implementation. I thought it would provide a useful opportunity to see how this particular conference and its target audience, which includes many from the commercial sector as well as librarians and information professionals in the higher education community, were responding to the opportunities and challenges posed by Web 2.0. What I discovered was a conference which is now embracing Web 2.0. I should have been alerted to this change when I was information that an Online Information 2007 Facebook group had been set up in advance of the conference and significant numbers joined this group (474 at present). The Facebook group seemed to provide the main forum for discussion prior to the event, in particular people who couldn’t attend the event asking for details of the conference bloggers (the tag OnlineInfo2007 was used as the official tag and a number of bloggers gave details of their blog on the Facebook discussion forum during the conference.)

Opening Plenary Talk By Jimmy Wales Jimmy Wales, chairman of Wikipedia, opened the conference with a talk on Web 2.0 in action:free culture and community on the move. I’d not heard Jimmy speak before, but I have to admit that I found his talk inspiring and very closely aligned with my views on openness and user engagement. And it seems I was not the only one, with a number of delegates raising their hands when asked if they had edited content in Wikipedia. Jimmy began his talk with a quotation from the Britannica editor Charles van Doren, who argued that the ‘encyclopaedia should be radical‘. This vision, Jimmy Wales suggested, has until recently, been lost. The success of Wikipedia has been due to a return to the radicalism, with Wikipedia being based on the notion of openness in the GNU sense: it is free to copy, modify and distribute. Jimmy’s new passion is Wikia, a free Wiki hosting service which aims to support the development of communities with shared interests. The example he gave was for communities built about shared interested in The Muppets! A trivial example, perhaps, but the Muppets Wikia site is found in Google’s first page of results and currently has 15,749 articles. How should we respond to such apparent indications of success, I wonder? I did look for information on Rapper Sword dancing in Wikia - no significant results, but I did discover the Morris Dancing Wiki, which was created in April 2007. Should the morris dancing community in the UK, where the morris dancing tradition originated, engage with this open community or leave it to morris dancers in the new world to appropriate our cultural traditions? Or, on the other hand, is Wikia just a fad which is unlikely to gain the sustainability that online services provided in a more traditional way (e.g. through funding from cultural heritage funding bodies)? We don’t know the answer to that question - but Wiki is definitely a 219 of 544

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service I’ll be paying closer attention to in the future. Jimmy’s final comment, as described in the IWR blog, related to the notion of trust and wikis, with a comparison with a real world example: when building a restaurant you don’t worry that the steak knives customers will be using are potentially dangerous, and such customers need to be in a walled garden to minimise potential risks to others.

Library 2.0: Fact or Fiction? Library 2.0: Fact or Fiction? was the title of the session I chaired, immediately following the opening plenary talk. Stephen Abram gave the opening plenary talk in this slot on Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and Librarian 2.0: Preparing for the 2.0 World. This talk was pretty much a repeat of his opening plenary talk at the ILI 2007 conference, although, unfortunately, he only had 30 minutes for this talk, rather than the 45 minutes he had at ILI 2007 (and even then he had to race through his presentation at a rate of knots). Stephen argued that the world has changed and the library community needs to embrace such changes (or get out, and stop trying to prevent the inevitable). Although the content of his talk was very familiar to me I was pleased that he mentioned the human aspect: “Librarian 2.0 is the guru of the information age” Stephen wrote in the accompanying paper. He concluded “It is essential that we start preparing to become Librarian 2.0 now. The Web 2.0 movement is laying the groundwork for exponential business growth and another major shift in the way our users live, work and play. We have the ability, insight and knowledge to influence the creation of this new dynamic - and to guarantee the future of our profession Librarian 2.0 - now.” The two other talks in this session (Lars Eriksson on Mina bibliotek.se - a library web site of the future and Philippa Levy on Web 2.0 and the Information Commons: a learning and teaching perspective) then provided examples of how the library and education professions is engaging with Stephen Abram’s vision: Lars’s talk described a Library 2.0 service which is being developed in Sweden and Philippa stepped outside the online world to describe the Information Commons, a “brand new, innovative building that combines IT resources, library facilities and a variety of study spaces to support a wide range of independent and collaborative learning experiences in a 24/7 environment.” This focus on the physical environment complemented Lars’s talk nicely, I felt. Library 2.0: Fact or Fiction? The feeling from this session was most definitely that it was a fact.

Other Sessions I was pleased to discover a similar positive approach to Web 2.0 in several of the other sessions I attended. After lunch I attended a session on Tools, Technologies and Costs of Web 2.0, with talks by Karen Blakeman and and Andre Bonvanie. Karen’s talk was familiar to me, as we have both spoken at a number of events recently. If you are interested in the contents of her talk I suggest you read the post on How Do You Start Your Day? on the InfoToday blog. Andre’s talk on RSS: The Glue for Enterprise 2.0 gave a more businessoriented presentation in which he described how RSS was the key technical component for Enterprise 2.0. 220 of 544

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The 2.0 meme continued in the final session of the first day on Web 2.0 In Action. I was particularly interested to hear that the promised benefits of Knowledge Management (KM) had failed to deliver, and that the Knowledge Management community is now exploring the potential of Web 2.0 within the organisation - and we heard that KM 1.0 is dead; long live KM 2.0! These ideas were discussed further in the first two talk on Calling all social media doubters:wiki@Vodafone keeps employees on the same page (use of Web 2.0 technologies by Vodafone) and It’s more than technology: how ERM (Environmental Resources Management) has embraced Web 2.0 to address environmental issues (whose content is described in the title). Jane Dysart has described these talks, together with the final talk in the session which provided top 5 tips for finding time for Web 2.0.

Conclusions Big business seems to be finally getting Web 2.0 - and this is a couple of years after the higher education community started to discuss these issues. There were a number of interesting talks on the human side of Web 2.0 and much discussion on these issues during the conference. The most interesting comment I heard was that well-qualified final year students and recent graduates are now expecting to make use of Web 2.0 technologies such as social networks in their first job, arguing that these technologies have helped them in their degrees and they would expect to be able to exploit these technologies and the social networks they have developed, in their professional lives. Now does this mean that graduates who have not had the opportunity to develop their social networks and to develop their skills in using such technologies will be at a disadvantage? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: OnlineInfo2007 | Edit No Comments »

The Way We Were December 7, 2007 Can you remember what your institution’s home page looked like when the service was first launched? And how did it evolve over time? Did you take advantage of frames when they were first released? Did you then exploit client-side technologies such as Java, JavaScript and Flash (and perhaps even ActiveX control)? And how long did they last before you realised the downside of such technologies? And did changes to the home page not only reflect changes in technologies, but also the department which had responsibility for the home page? Did the home page have a visual makeover when the marketing department took responsibility? More importantly, though, do you have a record of how the home page looked, and documented descriptions of the reasons for the changes? This could be a valuable part of your organisation’s digital history and it would be unfortunate if such information were lost. 221 of 544

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If strikes me that one of the lessons we should have learnt from our experiences with organisational Web sites is the need for such record-keeping. And these lessons should be applied to the approaches we are taking in a Web 2.0 environment, as we (as seems to be the case) set up institutional presences in Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc. How should we go about doing this? Should we take screen shots of the interface when substantive changes are made? Or perhaps at fixed intervals (monthly, perhaps)? And can we automated the process? Or should such data be a standard item in Web team reports? Or rather than capturing the screen interface, should we not be harvesting the HTML pages? And how easy will this be if the pages are dependent on the installation of particular applications? Has anybody started to address such issues? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 6 Comments »

CRIG Teleconference Chats On ‘Repositories And Other Services’ December 6, 2007 I recently took part in one of a series of teleconference chats organised by the JISC-funded CRIG (Common Repository Interfaces Working Group) project. The project organised a day of tele-conferences on 8th November 2007. The aim of the day was to facilitate a “discussion between members on how repositories might be improved (bluesky thinking)“. A recording of the discussions is available from the DigRep wiki. In addition, the project team created a series of mindmaps which helped to visualise the topics covered in the seven areas covered during the day. I took part on the final discussion of the day which looked at other services which may interface with repositories, with a particular focus on the role of externally-hosted Web 2.0 services. The mindmap for this session is shown below.

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The discussions revolved around the in-house development vs. use of Web 2.0 services which are a recurring topic of discussion. I did, however, find that the visualisation of the discussions provided me with the opportunity to revisit these issues from a different perspective. I’ll have to have another look at mindmapping tools, I think. And reading Mike Ellis’s post on Good web apps: Back of postage stamp… it would seem that MindMeister should be the first tool for me to look at. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Repositories ·Tags: CRIG, Repositories | Edit No Comments »

IWR Information Professional of the Year Award December 5, 2007 I am pleased to report that yesterday, at the end of the first day of the Online Information 2007 conference, I received an award for the Information World Review (IWR) Information Professional of the Year Prior to presenting the award Timothy Rinda, American Psychological Association said: “When I judge the IWR American Psychological Association Awards I look for someone who is, to my mind, the model IWR reader. That is someone who is really pushing the boundaries of information, of technology and developing the role of an information professional into something really exciting. For the 2007 award, I can see that my fellow judges on the panel did the same thing and it is with great pleasure to announce a winner who in his working life , lives to push the boundaries of information and has been involved in researching WiFi, Skype, podcasts and video streaming as information delivery methods. He is also author of one of the most popular blogs in the sector. His is of course Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus of UKOLN.“ Many thanks to Timothy for his kind words and the judges for selecting me as the winner of this prestigious award. But more importantly I would like to thank all of the people I have met over this past year at the many events I have spoken at and, of course, the online contacts I have made via this blog, on discussions lists and social networks such as Facebook, for sharing my enthuisiasm in building a richer and better online environment. And now the pub awaits … Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 9 Comments »

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The Opening Up Of Facebook December 3, 2007

Opening Up The Data Via the Are there 100,000 people for open data in Facebook? group on Facebook I found the statement that “We already know that Mark Zuckerberg has committed Facebook to opening up its data“. The group description links to an article in Macworld entitled “Web 2.0: Facebook wants to make members’ data portable” which begins with the announcement that “Facebook wants to make the data its members enter into the social network’s profiles portable, so that they can move that data to other online services if they want, the company’s CEO said Wednesday“.

Opening Up Development Back in March 2007 I wrote a post on Dapper - Web Mashup Development For All? which described how the Dapper Web-based can open up the development of Web-based applications. I recently discovered a FireFox extension called DapperFox which makes Dapper even easier to use. More importantly I have just been alerted to a Dapper post which announces that the Dapper Facebook AppMaker Now Open to Public: “What this will allow you to do is take ANY Dapp and turn it into a fully independent Facebook app. Use your own header, footer, background styling — really make it yours — and with absolutely no programming“. So now, it would appear, development of Facebook applications is opening up to, perhaps not the masses, but those with lightweight development skills or interests. And by taking data from public Web sites and making it available within a Facebook environment, you are not locking the data within Facebook, as the original data source is still available on the Web.

Enhancing Its Services Facebook started off as a social networking environment. But as I wrote on 9 November Facebook now allows entries for organisations to be created within Facebook. And now, less than a month later, the Open University’s Facebook page shows that the oprganisation now has over 2,000 fans and what appears to be the start of a thriving discussion forum. Phil Bradley recently provided a series of posts on a JIBS conference on Is library 2.0 a trivial pursuit?. One of his post described a talk on The British Library in Facebook. The British Library (BL) “sees the use of social networking sites as a way of getting out there, providing information in situations and places where people are”. They have set up a number of Facebook groups, including groups which support the exhibitions they are running and the BL’s business and SME support services, as well as a BL organisational pages and groups for internal use.

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It’s here; it’s popular; it’s still developing; authoring tools are being developed; it’s getting more open. Can any organisation seriously argue that they shouldn’t be considering how Facebook can be used to support organisational aims? And shouldn’t those involved in IT development also be looking at what can be learnt from Facebook’s successes? And shouldn’t the Semantic Web purists acknowledge the views which Paul Miller sums up with his comment on the Nodalities blog: “The noble vision of the Semantic Web is just that; a noble - and long term - vision. The years of seeking perfect answers to perfectly formed questions - a practice of which too many in the Semantic Web community are guilty - have not helped to move us nearly as far forward as we should have come. The over-reliance upon complex and impractically all-encompassing ontologies have bogged us down, and invited ridicule.” Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 4 Comments »

The Long And Winding Road November 30, 2007 I was recently an invited speaker at Intute’s first Staff Conference, which was described in a blog post on Intute’s newly launched blog service. The title of my talk was “What If Web 2.0 Really Does Change Everything?“. Before exploring the challenges which the range of externally hosted Web 2.0 service would pose to a JISC-funded service such as Intute I took the opportunity to revisit the early days of Intute, when, in the days of the eLib programe the services were known as Subject Based Information Gateways (SBIGs), before becoming known as the RDN (Resource Discovery Network) prior to their current name. What, I asked, was the key to Intute’s success? Was it, I wondered: ROADS: the open source software which formed the basis of services such as SOSIG in the early days? The lightweight whois++ distributed searching protocol supported by ROADS, which would allow users to cross-search across the various SBIG services? The MySQL database, which formed the core data management tool for ssome of the services? The PostGres database, another open source relational database management system, which provided richer functionality than MySQL? The distributed approach to development and hosting, which enabled a diversity of technical approaches to take place? From today’s perspective, we can see that the only technical component of the Intute service from the list given above which is still critical is the MySQL database. ROADS is now festering on SourceForge and the whois++ protocol seems to have dropped off the radar screen, having been superceded by the SRU/SRW cross-searching protocols which were designed for a Web environment. And the distributed development and hosting approach has been replaced by a centralised service, hosted at MIMAS. At the conference I argued that the success of Intute wasn’t due to the initial 225 of 544

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technical choices. Rather it was due to the effectiveness of their outreach activities, with staff from SOSIG, EEVL, OMNI and the other hubs regularly appearing at conferences, giving seminars, running training sessions and writing articles for many publications. There was, however, one piece of technical innovation which has shown itself to be sustainable, which was described in a short paper on “RDN-Include: Re-branding Remote Resources” by myself, Pete Cliff and Andy Powell published in May 2001 in the WWW 10 Conference Poster Proceedings. RDN-include allowed the RDN service to be embedded in third party Web pages. The initial development made use of a CGI script which needed to be installed on the institution’s server. However we realised that there was always likely to be a SysAdmin barrier (”no third party script to be allowed on my server”) so a lightweight JavaScript alternative was also developed, RDNi-lite. And, as described in a post on Integrate Intute content on the Intute blog, this service is still being provided, although under a new name and using, I believe, rewritten software. A focus on users? A lightweight approach to embedding content? This sounds pretty much like Web 2.0 to me. As I said in my talk, I think the success of Intute was due to the Web 2.0-style approach they took, before the term was coined. But in the light of what we now know, how might Intute have developed? We can see that the distributed approach taken initially wasn’t sustainable, and the emphasis on cross-searching would have been misplaced in a more centralised model. Looking at The History of Yahoo! it strikes me that, in an alternative universe Intute could have been the Yahoo! of the planet. We thought we were at the start of a long and straight Roman road in the days of eLib. Looking back, we can see that it was a long and winding road, and occasionally we’ll realise that we’ve been heading in the wrong direction and retrace our tracks. If we were starting all over again, which way would we go? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in jisc ·Tags: eLib, Intute, RDN, ROADS | Edit 2 Comments »

Transliteracy And Amplified Events November 29, 2007 In Matt Matchel’s report on the Eclectic Dreams blog entitled “Liveblogging : Exploiting the Potential of Blogs and Social Networks” he described the event as providing: A day of talks on the use of blogging in education, with live Second Life feed, web-cam and blog chatter… How very trans-literate! “Very transliterate!” What does Matt mean? Wikipedia cites the PART research group in its definition of transliteracy as

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At the event the plenary speakers were happy for their talks to be streamed live on the Internet and for the talks to also be made available in Second Life; several of the participants used the event wiki to keep notes during the session; a number of people took photographs and video clips during the event, which were uploaded to various photographic sharing services and there were a number of live bloggers at the event, some of whom also updated their Facebook status to inform their Facebook contacts that they were blogging. And as well as being comfortable in making use of the digital technologies, the participants took part in the discussions and socialising. It’s good to see that the ‘transliterates’ can include the digital migrants Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: blogs-social-networks-workshop-2007, transliteracy | Edit 2 Comments »

Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks November 27, 2007

The Event The UKOLN workshop on “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks” took place yesterday at Austin Court, Birmingham. This event was initially meant to be held in March 2007, with the title “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs“. However as we discovered a clash with the UCISA annual conference, we decided to postpone the event until November. And by the time we got around to selecting the talks it had become clear that it was the area of social networks which was exciting (and terrifying) many people. Providing a wider focus for the event proved popular with the event being fully-subscribed with 100 participants, rather than the 60-70 we had originally planned for.

The Talks The talks at the event provided a narrative which outlined the variety of approaches which institutions are taking in provision of and/or use of blogs and social network services. After my initial introduction to the workshop Stephen Clarke (University of Birmingham) gave the opening plenary talk on Blogging In A Managed Environment in which he described the benefits which can be gained by supporting student learning though use of a managed application environment (which, at the University of Birmingham, is Web CT). Melissa Highton (University of Leeds) focussed on supporting the teachers in her talk on Leedsfeed: a Blogging Service based on the Open Source Elgg Application, again through use of an in-house application. In contrast Alison Wildish (Edge Hill University) suggested that institutions need to Put Yourself Out There- and at her institution this means recognising that students (and potential students) will use services such as Facebook, and so the institution needs to respond to this by making its information available in such places. 227 of 544

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It was appropriate that Alison’s talk was followed by Tom Milburn, Vice-President, Education at the University of Bath Students Union. In his talk on The Student Perspective. Tom gave a valuable insight into ways in which students at the University of Bath are setting up Facebook groups which can “provide students with the support of their cohort in a structured environment, … provide constant support that is not bound by office hours and … ease pressure on staff with older students helping to ‘teach’ younger students.” Tom also described the pro-active approach being taken by the students Union in advising students of the potential dangers which may be posed by social networks. In particular he described the Facebook flyers (adverts displayed in Facebook) which were made available to students in the University of Bath Facebook network. Interestingly Tom concluded that effective use of social networks “will depend on how much effort staff put in and the culture of students on various courses“. At the University of Bath it would seem that students may welcome staff supporting their use of Facebook. After lunch there were two talks given the institutional IT Services perspective. Stuart Lee (University of Oxford) described The Hidden Dangers of Social Networks: You can log-on but you cannot hide. Interestingly the slides (which I had uploaded to Slideshare prior to the event) had been commented upon by Grainne Conole and AJCann, with the suggestion that IT services were scared of these dangers - although Stuart’s intentions (which he described in his responses to these comments) was to discharge the responsibility of a service department “to point out hidden pitfalls in some systems that users need to be aware of“. In the final talk David Harrison (University of Cardiff) described how the University of Cardiff is seeking to respond to Disruptive Technology and its Implications for University Information Services. David described how his work in this area began as “a response to a presentation from Brian Kelly and John Heaps at an earlier UKOLN Workshop” (Initiatives & Innovation: Managing Disruptive Technologies, a joint UKOLN/CETIS/UCISA workshop held in February 2006). An initial draft of a briefing paper was written in early 2007 for comment within UCISA Executive, and part 1 of the briefing paper is now available. David’s concluding remarks included:

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Users need protecting against their own foolishness - thus EDUCATION is the most important thing Institutions should begin to trust their staff and students more but be also prepared to use existing disciplinary codes where the trust is betrayed Must embrace and engage – to do otherwise would be counter-productive and make us look foolish – consider the concept of enablement Should consider a partnership rather than service provider role and be customer-centric

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The Participants’ Perspectives As with many of UKOLN’s recent events we encouraged participants to make use of the WiFi network to enhance their learning at the event, to make use of a wiki for keeping notes of the discussion groups and to share their blog posts, photographs, etc. related to the event. Chris Sexton, who kindly helped out in in the final summing up session, was very productive during the day, with posts of the morning session (part 1) , morning session (part 2) and afternoon session. Matt Machell, on his Eclectic Dreams Blog also provided useful summaries of the morning and afternoon sessions. If there are any further blog posts about the event which I’ve missed, please let me know and I’ll include details here (note I came across reports on the Digital Narratives blog, the DMU PatherFinder blog and Helen Newham’s blog after publishing this report). I should also add that a Wetpaint wiki site was used to support the event. The notes from the discussion groups may be of particular interest, both to the workshop participants and to those who could attend.

The Remote Participants UKOLN has been evaluating a variety of tools recently which can be use to ‘amplify’ the discussions and outputs of the events we run. Plenary talks at the IWMW 2007 event were streamed. At this event we went one step further, providing not only a video stream but also streaming the video into Second Life. I would like to thank Andy Powell, Eduserv Foundation for managing these video streams, and Veodia for making their streaming service available for us to evaluate during the event. We did have some hiccups with the service - due, we think, to the limited bandwidth for streaming out of the venue. However this was a valuable experiment, I feel. Andy has also provided some slides which review his experiences (and, after this post was initially published, gave his Reflections on a DIY streaming experience).

What Next? In a recent post on When Two Tribes Go To War I described the tensions between two communities of developers: those who believe that The VLE/LMS is dead and those who are engaged in providing a secure managed VLE environment. At this event we came across two communities in a slightly different guise: the IT service providers who feel that their institution should be managing its IT provision and those who feel that institutions cannot compete with the popularity of many commercially provided solutions. The good news, is there was very much a willingness to discuss the pros and cons of both positions, and an awareness that each side has its own weaknesses. There’s still a lot of mileage in this debate, I feel. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Events, Social Networking ·Tags: blogs-social-networksworkshop-2007 | Edit 1 Comment »

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November 22, 2007

Hostilities Commence Niall Sclater, Director of the OU VLE Programme at the Open University recently pointed out that the Slideshare service was down, using this as an “attempt to inject some reality into the VLEs v Small Pieces debate“. His colleague at the Open University, Tony Hirst responded with a post entitled “An error has occurred whilst accessing this site” in which Tony, with “beautifully sweet irony“, alerted Niall to the fact that the OU’s Intranet was also down. Similar differences of opinion are taking place at the University of Leeds. My former colleague Nigel Bruce send me a wall-to-wall post on Facebook some time ago in which he expressed the view that “Personally I don’t see the point in ISS (the IT Services department) running blogging servers unless we want to automatically create and populate groups based on modules. Why not just encourage people to sign up for an account with WordPress? It’s better than anything we could offer. Much better than Elgg. This area is moving so fast no Uni computing services can hope to compete or keep up.“ But Melissa Highton, a colleague of Nigel’s will give a talk on Monday at UKOLN’s “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs And Social Networks” workshop on Leedsfeeds: a Blogging Service based on the Open Source Elgg Application in which she will describe the benefits of running a local open source blogging service (Elgg) to support the aims of the institution and members of the institution. Two tribes with, it would appear, fundamentally differing perspectives - but not, I hope, about to go to war.

Two Tribes Meet At The CETIS Conference Myself and my colleague Paul Walk had been invited by CETIS to facilitate a half-day session on Responding to Change and Institutional Challenges at the conference on Beyond Standards - Holistic Approaches to Educational Technology and Interoperability. In our planning for the session it struck me that the tensions between the views held by Tony Hirst and those of Niall Sclater would provide a useful way of exploring the institutional challenges of the Web 2.0 characteristics such as ‘the network as the platform and commercial providers of services. I must admit, though, that I hadn’t expected both Tony and Niall to attend the session! This was an opportunity not to be missed, and so the session provided an opportunity to explore the tensions openly articulated by two of the participants.

Peace In Our Time? Niall Sclater has already written about the session in a post entitled VLEs v Web 2.0: is consensus breaking out? As Niall summarises in his post:

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at the JISC CETIS Conference yesterday (photo: Mark Power). Brian had spotted that I had been promoting the benefits of institutional VLEs while Tony is pushing the boundaries in the use of Web 2.0 software for learning… After the session I caught up with Tony over a pint and we looked at whether there is any common ground in our thinking and, not surprisingly, there’s plenty (though Tony may now deny it!). It was pleasing to see such mutual understanding being reaching - and Paul and myself can congratulate ourselves on the counselling work we carried out More seriously, though, participants at the session did actively engage in exploring the ‘gaps’ between the commercial and institutional provision of services (which I wrote about recently). And I have to admit that my previous thoughts that the gap needed to me addressing my policies, risk assessment, managing expectations, etc. have been modified as a result of the discussions at the session, and I now wonder whether it might be better to sometimes leave such gaps unfilled. For as ‘Webdunc’ recently commented “To oversimplify; I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a policy for what to do when you pass a peer/colleague/superior/lecturer/student in the street - why do we need one for online social behaviour?“.

Conclusions From The Session Facilitators of the workshop session had been asked to summarise the conclusions in a single sentence. I must admit that I’m not convinced how useful this is - although I would acknowledge that it can provide a useful exercise for the participants in seeking consensus. However when articulating the sentence it tends to appear bland. I feel this is the case with ours: “We need to think beyond the institution, beyond the sector, beyond the UK and beyond the short period spent in the institution - but we need to think carefully, widely and deeply.“ But although the conclusions may appear bland, I think they reflect the sentiments expressed by Oleg Liber, Director of JISC CETIS, and Sarah Porter, Head of Development, JISC, in the opening presentations at the conference. And, finally it is possible, I feel, to enhance the impact of this sentence. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: cetis-2007-conference, cetis-2007-conferenceinstitutional-challenges | Edit 6 Comments »

The Gaps Between The Owned And The Externally-Hosted Services November 21, 2007 Scott Wilson (JISC CETIS) and Andy Powell (Eduserv Foundation) has recently published a couple of interesting posts on their blogs. which reflects my areas of 231 of 544

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interest. Scott’s post on PLEs and the institution contains an image which depicts his thoughts on “the set of connections between what an institution offers and what individuals manage“.

I tend to agree with this vision which acknowledges that MySpace, Facebook, Slideshare, etc. will have a role to play in the services which are used to support institutional activities, but there will be a for the institution to “provide a coordination space“. It’s the gaps in Scott’s diagram which particularly interest me. As well as the technical aspects of the coordination space (which could include automated dumps of data held elsewhere, bulk uploads of metadata, etc.) there are also the implied questions associated with this space: Do we trust the services? Can we compete with them? Do we compete on all fronts or select the appropriate areas? What are our institutional liabilities if things go wrong? What are the risks to the individuals and what responsibilities do we have to safeguard the interests of the individuals in our institutions? 232 of 544

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Some of these issues were touched on by Andy Powell in his recent report on Eduserv’s OpenID event entitled OpenID - every student should have one. Andy argued that “the management of our online identities is increasingly a user-centric and lifelong activity - it doesn’t start and stop at the system-induced transition points of our lives (going to school leaving school, going to uni - leaving uni, getting a job - leaving a job, etc.). In consequence, there is a danger of us offering a poor fit to our user’s requirements if the approaches to identity management that we adopt are too rooted within particular sectors or phases of sectors.“ Andy identifies that there is a time dimension to the issue of the services institutions should be providing. Those of us who have been working in IT support or development within educational institution for some time with have been brought up with the view that it is an institutional responsibility to provide a quality, safe managed IT environment for members of the institution. But now we are starting to find that individuals will have their own digital identities when arriving at the institution, together with their own preferred applications (email, photo repositories, social networks, etc.) And this will not only apply to students arriving at our institutions, but also visitors, part time staff, staff on short term contracts, etc. The spaces in Scott’s diagram is starting to look very interesting, I think. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 3 Comments »

Thoughts On Animoto November 20, 2007

The Tool - Animoto Andy Powell introduced me to Animoto, after he produced a video clip for UKOLN’s “Exploiting the Potential of Blogs and Social Networks” workshop. Shortly afterwards he wrote a blog post about the Web-based tool for easily creating multimedia video clips by simply uploading photographs and letting the software do the donkey work. Andy had previously commented (in the context of providing a live video streaming for the workshop) that his aim was “to demonstrate the possibilities for video-streaming live meetings using cheap or free equipment and services.“

The Experiment Andy’s interest reflects mine which, in brief, are to explore:

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The appeal of successful Web 2.0 services. How the successes of such services can be applied to in-house development work. Whether such services can be used in a service environment. Animoto, “a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos using patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design“, was therefore worthy of investigation, as 30-second video clips can be created for free and just $30 per year for an “All access unlimited pass”. My initial

experiment was to produce a video clip entitled “Memories Of IWMW 2007“, making use of photographs of UKOLN’s IWMW 2007 event (on Flickr with the ‘iwmw2007′ tag) held at the University of York in July 2007. Upload the photographs, select the backing music and publish. Simple! My next experiment, based on Andy’s idea for the video preview of the Blogs workshop, was to make use of images contained in the speakers slides. Slightly more time-consuming, but nothing too difficult. The third experiment was to create a video clip using some of the key slides prepared by the plenary speakers. The JPEG images were created by saving the slides as images from within PowerPoint. And my final experiment was to take the key slides from my Introduction talk, and turn them into a 30 sector video clip. As one might expect, the Animoto video clips can be embedded in Web pages, as illustrated.

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What’s The Point? The more cynical reader - or perhaps the reader who has actually viewed the video clips and listened to the cheesy background music - might be asking what the fuss is about! After all, ever since Microsoft released PowerPoint 1.0 it has been possible to easily create visual presentations, and the accompanying clip arts, clip music and wizards have often led to cliched presentations. This is very true and, if Animoto takes off, I would expect such cheesy presentations to me the norm in the early days. However good presentations can be created using tools such as PowerPoint, Open Presents, etc, if you have the appropriate expertise and knowledge. And this takes experimentation. So I’d encourage experimentation and the sharing of failures and successes. Two ideas which spring to mind: Video clips summarising the highlights of an event such as IWMW 2007, using photos from Flickr, the presentations and perhaps music created by the participants. Using the 30 second video clip to reduce a presentation to its bare essentials, for the ‘elevator pitch’. After all Michael Nolan on the Echge Hill University blog recently mentioned Pecha Kucha: “20 slides; 20 seconds per slide. You don’t have time to bore the audience.” Rather than wasting 6 minutes 40 seconds of your life, why not save over 6 minutes? If such experimentation reveals that there’s nothing to be gained from such approaches, at least we’ve saved time being wasted in software development. Although it may be that limitations we encounter may be addressed in the commercial version of the service (perahps $30 per year might be worth the investment) or in new services which may be released in the future (the interface implies that a number of new features are due to be released). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: animoto | Edit 1 Comment »

The History Of The Web Backwards November 19, 2007 235 of 544

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The “History of the World Backwards” comedy was launched on BBC 4 on 30 October 2007. The joke is based on time being reversed: “Today’s opener sees Nelson Mandela enter prison as a sweet-natured Spice Girls fan, but emerge from a long incarceration as a terrorist bent on the armed overthrow of the state.“ How might this apply to the history of the World Wide Web, from its global success in 2007, through to its sad demise in the early 1990s? And what are the lomger term implications for its demise? Here are my thoughts. What are your views? And if anyone fancies writing their own blog post in this style, I’d suggest using the tag “ history-of-web-backwards” (or, indeed, history-of-foobackwards, if your main passion is in ‘foo’). The global pervasiveness of the World Wide Web in 2007 appeared to guarantee its long term success. Sadly the sceptics who argued that the Web was just a mere fad proved to be correct, with a steady demise over a period of ten years, leading to its complete disappearance by 1990.The WCAG 2.0 guidelines, which were due to be released in 2008, were expected to bring about the much-promised dream of universal success to Web resources, exploiting the potential of much richer (and usable and accessible) user interfaces based on Ajax, Flash and related technologies, whose popularity had been successfully demonstrated in a series of global experiments provided though the benevolence of companies such as Google and Yahoo! Sadly political changes in the UK led to the release of a government mandate which banned such technologies, in an effort by a socialist government to prevent the decline in use of public services. The lead taken by the UK government was followed throughout the rest of Europe with European legislation being enacted which suppressed any technological innovations which had not been approved by the the sinister-sounding WAI organisation. The EU also funded the development of an automated robot which would report on deviations from approved practices (the naming and shaming robot). Although these moves were initiated by the goverment, the side effects destabilised the commercial sector. Facebook, an incredibly successful social networking service in 2007, lost users from this peak and, despite the mass demonstration, coordinated on the THEY ARE TRYING TO SHUT DOWN FACEBOOK - PETITION TO KEEP IT! INVITE ALL! group (which had over 1.6 million users in November 2007) the uncertainty ultimately led to Facebook’s demise. The writing was on the wall when Microsoft’s withdrew its investment in the company in 2007. Facebook’s response was to return to its roots in the US, but failed to sustain its momentum across US universities, eventually choosing to provide a niche service at Harvard University. Even this proved not to be sustainable and, in despair, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founders, chose to go to university in order to try and find an alternative career. What nobody had expected, though, was the growth of the anti-globalist movement supported by left and right wing militant organisations. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft were found to be funded (using a possibly illegal manoeuvre known as ‘tax breaks’ ) by the US government, and where suspected of passing on secret data on an organisation known as Al Quaida (a terrorist organisation in the twenty first century who, to the astonishment of many, eventually received significant investment from the US government to help expand the US’s plans to open up a marketplace in Afghanistan). In contrast the right wing groups campaigned that social networks were leading to a breakdown of the family as a social unit. 236 of 544

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Despite Rupert Murdoch’s investment in MySpace (which proved to be a financial disaster) these combined pressures led to the demise of all of the social networking services. A mass campaign of disobedience by young people (who called themselves the ‘Hoodies’) resulted, with the protesters taking to the streets. This failed, however, and, in a remarkable consumer revolt, household throughout the country cancelled their broadband subscriptions. The demise of the broadband industry had predicted side-effects, bringing to an end plans to invest in high definition TV and digital TV. On a personal level, although critical of his invention many felt that the UK government was being rather unfair in ceremonially stripping Tim Berners-Lee of his knighthood. By 2000 the majority of users had abandoned their interest not only in social networks but other networked services. The Web eventually retreated to the walled ivory towers of academia. There was a renewed spirit of camaraderie within this group, who felt they were keeping alive the original vision of the Web, based on notions of user generated content and trusting the user. However the conservatives were in the ascendancy, and institutions responded by investing large sums of money in Content Management Systems (a phrase which caused so much consternation that the term ‘CMS’ had to be used as a euphemism). Organisations then mandated use of CMSs - which so disillusioned those involved who were working on the Web (”they’re forcing every page to look the same; it’s a Stalinist nightmare world we’re now living in“) that, by 1995 only a handful of stalwarts were still employed in the profession. By 1994 the writing was on the wall, and everyone knew the the Web would soon cease to exist. The W3C was formally wound up as a company and had vacated its US offices at MIT. The decision to delete all W3C documents did take many by surprise - although AltaVista did make a valiant attempt to index the few documents which remained on the Web. Not all was gloom, though. CERN made a discussion in 1994 to host the final international WWW conference - an event so significant that it became known as the ‘Woodstock of the 1990s’. By 1990 there was little interest in the Web. A small group did try to revive some aspects of the Web by developing Gopher. But this was simply a strictly hierarchical distributed menu system and - without even having any social networking capabilities - its short life span was inevitable. Life in the 1980s is certainly much simpler. But is this a better life? Or would people in the 1980s wish to return the the more vibrant and connected environment which was the norm in 2007? Possibly - but someone called Douglas Adams has just released a trilogy of five books (although the last two are no longer in print) which is shortly to be made into a radio series. And Douglas argues for a return to the simplicity of our live as apes - and is wondering whether the move from the ocean, 20 million years ago was, in retrospect, a mistake Please note that this parody of the BBC programme is meant to provide mild amusement. I do not wish to imply that the current UK government is socialist. The WWW conference in 2004 was, however, described as the Woodstock of the 1990s. I will leave it to the readers to determine for themselves examples based on fact and those provided for comic effect. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General ·Tags: satire history-of-web-backwards | Edit 1 Comment » 237 of 544

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Don’t Look Back In Anger November 16, 2007 In a post on Putting an official stamp on things Grainne Conole, professor of e-learning at the Open University responses to my post on UK Universities On Facebook, and reminisces about the problems she’d encountered in the early days of the Web: The powers that be in the institution began to get wind of this ‘Internet’ thing; suddenly it began to appear on senior management’s agenda. One of the deans apparently was particularly concerned that ‘some academics even had pictures of their cats on their web sites!’ – guess who? And once the powers that be had set up their working groups and established institutional policies, their decisions didn’t meet with Grainne’s approval: what followed was a period of stagnation and the creation of over centralized, bureaucratic, institutional web presences, with policies and procedures and dos and don’ts as long as your arm. But rather than getting despondent that we’ll be sharing a ‘groundhog day’ moment, I feel that we can learn from the past. My thoughts on this: The institutional Web team should have a remit which covers the institution’s presence ‘out there’ in the wild west of the Web, and not just manage its own Web service. The policies should be focussed on the needs of the user communities, which will include the needs of the institution. The policies should not be driven by technical issues. It should be acknowledged that there may be risks in managing presences ‘out there’ - the service may not be sustainable, for example. The risk assessment should include the risks of not doing anything and the risks of being left behind. There will be times when a light-weight ‘just do it’ approach will be appropriate. This would probably then lead to an institution initially claiming an organisational page on Facebook (possibly two, covering the ‘University of x’and ‘X University’ variants) but not necessarily publishing it immediately. This can then be followed by discussions over the purpose of the service. There should then be experimentation to identify Facebook applications which will enable content to be embedded from a managed source (note at present it seems only a small number of Facebook applications can be embedded on an organisational page). Finally mechanisms and responsibilities for monitoring user-generated content will need to be established. Does this make sense? Or would this approach simply repeat the ‘over centralized, bureaucratic’ procedures which upset Grainne and others in the past? My approach has been to set up a Facebook page for the social group I am involved with (Northgate Rapper) in order to gain experience. The aims of this service (besides gained experiences for professional purposes)?

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To provide a prescence on Facebook for people who may be interested in Northgate Rapper and rapper sword dancing. To allow people who see us to have an easily found location up upload photos and videos (”go to Facebook and search for ‘Northgate Rapper’. Then upload the video, and any comments you may have). To keep a record of where we’ve danced. To make it easy for other dancers to edit the page. The template I’ve used for the page (Clubs) isn’t ideal, as it is aimed at clubs as a venue rather than a social group. But at least I’ve created a page with little effort:

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 1 Comment »

Open Development And Amplified Events November 15, 2007

Open Development Ross Gardler, Manager of the JISC OSS Watch service, visited UKOLN yesterday to give a seminar on open development. Although OSS Watch’s main 239 of 544

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interest is in the application of this methodology within open source software development, as Ross made clear open development can also be applied in other contexts, including the development of content and in learning contexts. Ross has recently commented on the application of an open development approach by the JISC-funed WepPA project. I am very much in favour of the approaches which Ross described, and personally have been making much of the materials I have developed available with a Creative Commons licence for a couple of years. I have also participated in Wikipedia, creating a number of entries and helping to improve the quality of content created by others. This very much fits in with Ross’s views on open development, I think.

Open Development and Amplified Events UKOLN has been taking a similar approach to the exploitation of networked technologies at events over the past few years. Lorcan Dempsey coined the term “Amplified Conference” to describe events in which the content and the discussions aren’t restricted to the closed community of participants who are physically present at the event, but can be freely accessed by all. A paper on “Using Networked Technologies To Support Conferences“ presented at the EUNIS 2005 conference described our initial work in this area, which was subsequently followed up by a series of briefing papers which provide advice on best practices for doing this.

Open Development and UKOLN’s “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks” Workshop The UKOLN workshop on “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks” will take place in Birmingham on Monday 26th November 2007. Although the workshop is fully subscribed, with about 100 participants, we intend to allow remote participants to access the workshop materials and, we hope, either view a live video stream of the plenary talks or event view the video stream within Second Life. The live video stream and use of Second Life service will be provided by Andy Powell, Eduserv Foundation (sponsors of the workshop). Andy has described the plans for the technological infrastructure which will be used to make the talks available to a remote audience, so I won’t repeat this here. What is worth commenting upon from Andy’s post is the openness about the potential problems we may experience: “Sounds complex? Probably. Do-able? I think/hope so. It’ll be interesting to see how things work out.” But rather than having a low profile experiment with a closed group of friends, the approach Andy and myself are taking is to be open about this experiment (on both our blogs and on a number of mailing lists), which we hope will maximise the learning of the potential benefits of this approach, but perhaps also more useful, the problems we may encounter and the things we might do differently things next time. As well as the technical challenges which Andy will be addressing, there are also various non-technical issues which I have been focussing on. I have been in contact with all of the speakers informing them of our plans and getting their 240 of 544

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agreement to be streamed to a live audience (additional pressure on them, but I’m pleased to say that they are all willing). We have produced an Acceptable Use Policy document for the event, intended for participants who plan to make use of their laptop (or other networked device) during the workshop. And Andy and myself and currently discussing the best ways of providing real time chat during the talks. This can be used to support the remote audience, for example to inform them of the slide which is being displayed. But should we have separate channels for the various media - would the video streaming audience be interested in the Second Life discussions “nice avatar“)? And, of course, as well as the work which Andy and I (and my colleagues in UKOLN’s events team) are involved in, this open approach encourages input from potential participants and others who may have taken part in similar amplified events. Such open development also involves shared responsibilities (for example, we would expect remote participants to try out the various tools in advance of the event and to take responsibility for fixing any local configuration problems) and sharing the risks (being supportive if not everything works as planned). But the open source development approach of ‘release early, release often’ in order to maximise the feedback can also be provide benefits in many other areas. We welcome your thoughts. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, openness | Edit 2 Comments »

Managers Are Invading The Workers’ Social Spaces November 14, 2007 Which of the following reports is true:

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A recent report has shown that workers at many organisations are concerned about being ‘befriended’ by their mangers - who then have access to their Facebook details. “I was sacked“, said one anonymous ex-worker at a large organisation “for arriving late at work. It was due to transport problems. But my manager spotted that I’d been out drinking the previous night, and had updated my Facebook status when I got back from the night club. He used this as the reason for sacking me. I had been out with my mates - what’s wrong with that? But I would have arrived at work on time if the bus wasn’t late.“ The director of the CBI expressed concerns that workers had been ‘befriending’ their managers on the Facebook social network. “It would be churlish to refuse a request to be a friend of someone who works for me” said one manager. “But I hadn’t realised that he would see my status which said I had been out of the office playing golf one afternoon. He doesn’t seem to realise that business deals with our clients is often done on the golf course. This has undermined my credibility.“ “Teacher attacks students in online 03/10/2008 14:51

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satanic ritual” reports our education correspondent. “I introduced the children to Facebook as part of their Information Literacy course” Ms X. told us, close to tears. “We started off poking each other, and then moving on to tickling and hugging. Then someone installed the Vampire application and bit me. I, of course, responded in the same way. And now I’ve been suspended“. The head teacher informed us that, following complaints from the parents of one of the children affected by the incident, he had no alternative but to suspend the teacher (34), who cannot be named for legal reasons “We have zero-tolerance to cyber-bullying at this school.” (Note that we have published a photograph of Ms X’s vampire, but have removed the name of the victim). Get out of MySpace screams a headline in the Guardian, an extreme liberal British newspaper (which had been the focus of vehement attacks during the last US election for its misguided attempts to undermine a democratically held election by a seditious media organisation based in a foreign country). The article goes on to say “a research exercise carried out by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), called the Learner Experience Project, has just revealed, amazingly, that students want to be left alone. Their message to the trendy academics is: ‘Get out of MySpace!’“ The Get out of MySpace! post on the Kinda Learning Stuff blog cited the last example and commented that “there needs to be an increasing degree of contextual sensitivity by users and a subtlety in their development / use before they become really effective“. Tony Hirst’s post on Helping Students Make More of Facebook Without Stealing Control describes the software development activities he has been involved in which attempts to exploit the benefits of Facebook, whilst avoiding ’stealing control’. As the Kinda Learning Stuff blog suggests, Tony’s approaches to software development needs to be complemented by addressing issues such as information literacy, user education, negotiations and discussions and the development of acceptable patterns of behaviour in our online social spaces. And we need to realise that the potential tensions between students and staff and not peculiar to the educational community, but will be reflected in any social grouping in which there are hierarchical and power relationships. We need to have a much more sophisticated response to the cry to “Get out of MySpace” - whether this comes from the workers, the bosses, the students or, indeed, the academics - than abandoning these social spaces or setting up alternative social spaces without any guarantee that these will be successful. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook, Social Networking | Edit 5 Comments »

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November 13, 2007 A response on his blog by Matt Jukes (of JISC, but currently on secondment to HEFCE) reminded me that, in my post on The Power Of Information report, I should have mentioned that, as well as encouraging reuse of government data, the report also recommends: Working with existing user-generated sites rather than creating anything new ones. Researching what user-generated sites exist in the space and where there is duplication terminating or modifying the government versions. Encourage civil servants to become active in these communities. These recommendations, which have been endorsed by the government, would appear to reflect the conclusions of the OCLC report on Sharing, Privacy and Trust In Our Networked World, which I blogged about recently. So one part of UK government doesn’t want to compete with existing social networking services and the OCLC report suggests that libraries should seek to engage with existing services, rather than developing their own. And a post by Matt Jukes blog entitled More eGov ramblings cites a report from Richard MacManus at the Read/WriteWeb blog which is “pretty damning of the ‘one-stop portal’ concept (i.e. Directgov!) and supportive of the idea of reusable information supporting ‘mash-ups’ and the like through the use of web services (very similar to the Power of Information report)“. Is anyone listening, I wonder? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit No Comments »

Briefing Document on Facebook: Opportunities and Challenges November 12, 2007 UKOLN is running a one-day workshop on “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs And Social Networks” which will be held in Birmingham on 26th November 2007. The event is now fully subscribed. However we will be making the various materials for the event freely available to those who could not attend. A series of briefing documents will be provided in the delegate pack. This will include a document on “Facebook: Opportunities and Challenges” (written, incidentally, before it was possible to create organisational pages in Facebook). The contents of this document are included below. Comments are welcomed but please note that the documented is formatted as an A5 briefing document and it is not possible to add any additional content unless stuff is removed. I’d alway invite people who have already produced documents, course materials, etc. related to use of Facebook to share it. Note that a Slidecast (slides plus audio) I produced some time ago is available on Slideshare, and there is a Facebook group on Slideshare which provides access to other slides on this topic. Feel free to add URLs to comments to this post. 243 of 544

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About This Document This document was produced for the UKOLN workshop on “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs And Social Networks” held in Birmingham on 26th November 2007. The document summarises the opportunities which Facebook can provide, together with the challenges to be addressed in order for such opportunities to be realised.

Why The Interest In Facebook? Facebook has generated much interest over recent months. Much of the interest has arisen since Facebook announced the Facebook Platform [1] which enabled third party developers to build applications which could be used within the Facebook environment. Since Facebook was developed initially to support students it is not surprising that student usage has proved so popular. This interest has also spread to other sectors within institutions, with researchers and members of staff beginning to explore Facebook possibilities.

What Can Be Done Within Facebook? Social networks can provide a range of benefits to members of an organisation: Connections with Peers: The main function of Facebook is to provide connections between people with similar interests. (The term ‘friends’ is used to describe such relationships, but it should be noted that this does not have to imply a relationship based on friendship – a more appropriate term might be ‘contacts’.) Friends can then send messages to each other (either closed messages or open for others to read). Groups: Facebook users can set up discussion group areas, which can be used by people with interests in the topic of the group. Creation of details of events, which allows users to sign up to, is another popular use of Facebook. Sharing Resources: Many of the popular Facebook applications are used for sharing resources. Some of these replicate (or provide an interface to) popular social sharing services (such as Flickr and YouTube) while other applications provide services such as sharing interests in films, books, etc. An environment for other applications: The opening of the Facebook Platform has allowed developers to provide access to a range of applications. Newport University, for example, provide access to their MyNewport portal [2] from within Facebook. Many reservations about use of Facebook within an institutional context have been expressed. These include:

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Privacy: There are real concerns related to users’ privacy. This will include both short term issues (embarrassing photos being uploaded) and 03/10/2008 14:51

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longer term issues (reuse of content in many years time). Ownership: The Facebook terms and conditions allow Facebook to exploit content for commercial purposes. Misuse of social space: Users may not wish to share their social space with other colleagues, especially when there may be hierarchical relationships. Liability: Who will be liable if illegal content or copyrighted materials are uploaded to Facebook? Who is liable if the service is not accessible to users with disabilities? Sustainability and Interoperability: How sustainable is the service? Can it provide mission-critical services? Can data be exported for reuse in other systems?

Institutional Responses To Such Challenges How should institutions respond to the potential opportunities provided by Facebook and the challenges which its use may entail? The two extreme positions would be to either embrace Facebook, encouraging its use by members of the institution and porting services to the environment or to ban its use, possibly by blocking access by the institutions firewall. A middle group might be to develop policies based on: Risk assessment and risk management: analysing potential dangers and making plans for such contingencies. Note that the risk assessment should also include the risks of doing nothing. User education: developing information literacy / staff development plans to ensure users are aware of the implications of use of Facebook, and the techniques for managing the environment (e.g. privacy settings). Data management: Developing mechanisms for managing data associated with Facebook. This might include use of Facebook applications which provide alternative interfaces for data import/export, exploring harvesting tools or engaging in negotiations with the Facebook owners.

References 1. Major Facebook Announcement Thursday: Facebook Platform, Mashable, 21 May 2007, 2. MyLearning Essentials for Facebook, Michael Webb’s Blog, 11 July 2007, Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit No Comments »

UK Universities On Facebook November 9, 2007 Via a blog post on Michael Stephen’s Tame The Web blog I discovered that organisations can now have a presence in Facebook, which had previously been 245 of 544

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restricted to individuals. So which have been the first UK Universities to stake their claim in Facebook? A Facebook search for organisations containing the word ‘university’ revealed (on Friday 9 November 2007) a total of 76 hits which included, in alphabetical order, the following UK Universities: Aston, Cardiff, Kent and the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). This raises lost of interesting issues: who set up these pages?; was approval sought?; will there be battles over the ownership of the pages?; what trends will we see over how these pages look and the embedded applications they will provide?; how popular will they be?; will the look-and-feel and history of these pages be preserved?; etc. It’s just like 1993 and 1994 all over again. Have we learnt from our experiences when we first set up our first organisational Web sites, or are we doomed to repeat the mistakes - and perhaps, as a indication of progress, discover new mistakes that we can make? And this time, unlike the early 1990s, will it be the marketing people who are keen to establish a presence in this popular social networking service with the techies warning about the dangers of data lockin and lack of interoperability? In order to ensure that a record of what one of the first UK University pages in Facebook looked like shortly after this service was launched, here is a screen image of the most active of these pages: the University of Central Lancashire, on 9 November 2007.

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Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook ·Tags: Facebook | Edit 28 Comments »

Hey, Hey, We’re … In The Charts Again! November 9, 2007

The Background I was asked recently to advise a colleague at the University of Bath on how to 247 of 544

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raise the Google ranking of some Web pages. “Should I go to an SEO company?” was the question I was asked. A similar question was asked recently on the JISCMail website-info mgt list: “Can anyone recommend a training provider for Search Engine Optimisation and / or Search Engine advertising training?“ My response to such questions has always been that there is no silver bullet to getting into the first page of Google search results - if there were, the bad guys (the porn companies, for example, or the estate agents) would exploit such techniques. Rather, I suggested, you should follow well-established best practices for Web sites - have a static URI, ensure that it is persistent, that the page complies with HTML standards, that content is given as text and not in images and encourage people to link to it. These simple techniques can help to ensure that your pages are Google-friendly.

Getting Into The Top Google Hits When I sent the email I remembered that I’d recently given a talk, and subsequently discovered that the title of the talk was near the the top of the Google search results. Revisiting the search query, I found that pages related to my talk at the Inspiring The iGeneration event on Web 2.0 for young people on “We’re The Young Generation And We’ve Got Something To Say” now occupy the top four places.

The title of this talk, incidentally, I used after Ian Watson reminded me in March that I’d used this song title as a metaphor for young people providing 248 of 544

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user-generated content at the AUKML conference last year.

Discussion So it is possible to get your pages into the top set of results in Google without paying a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company a lot of money. But what relevance does this have to the organisation which wants to market its services: for example a university which wants to promote its courses (for a search of ‘top university Computer Science degree’) or facilities (’conference facilities in beautiful city’) ahead of its rivals (the University of Bath provided an excellent location for the IWMW 2006 event, but the University of York, another beautiful city, did likewise for IWMW 2007. I’m sure Bath would like to be ahead of its rival in the search engines). My findings were based on a series of words which would be in wide use on the Web (music sites, song lyrics, etc.) This then is similar to ‘conference facilities in beautiful city’ - which has 1,940,000 results, led by the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. The Web sites I used which were found in the top four results where the page on the UKOLN Web site (HTML page and PowerPoint presentation), a post on this blog (hosted on wordpress.org) and the slides for the talk, which were hosted on Slideshare.net. The UKOLN Web site I can understand (it has been in existence since about 1993, I think, and has static and relatively stable URI. The prominence of the two Web 2.0 services I found very interesting. Although they haven’t been around as long, they both provide clean URIs and both services are popular and are likely to have many inbound links to them - which will enhance their Google ranking. So what would my advice be to the conference office? Create some slides about the conference facilities you provide and upload them to Slideshare, making sure that you provide metadata containing the words you might expect people to search for and add a link back to your Web site. In addition set up a blog, perhaps providing updates about the events you are organising. And if you want to enhance the Google ranking, ensure that you use a popular blogging services (such as WordPress or Blogger) - as hosting it on your own site is unlikely to boost the Google ranking. Of course, as well as this advice being relevant to the business sectors of our institutions, the approaches I’ve described can also be used to help project Web sites to be more easily found. It’s interesting, I feel, that the approaches to making your content more easy to find in a Google world rely on hosting your content on a variety of popular sites, rather than hosting the content centrally especially on a Web site which is not widely linked to from other sites.

Ethical Issues Is this a desirable approach, some may wonder? Is it ethical? Could the success with “We’re The Young Generation” be regarded as spam for people who are searching for information about the Monkees’ song? That’s for you to decide (in this case I would argue that we shouldn’t resort to using unambiguous factual titles for our content, as this would be boring). And if I were evil I would suggest that it would be an interesting experiment to see if you could replace Edinburgh and Cambridge in the top Google places for a 249 of 544

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search for ‘conference facilities in beautiful city‘ ith your own city. But, as I know people in both of these prestigious institutions, I couldn’t possibly encourage people to take part in such an interesting experiment … And if you are seriously concerned about such ethical issues, perhaps you should pay an SEO company to do the job for you - the money they get will help to ease the guilt they may feel. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General ·Tags: seo | Edit 8 Comments »

Facebook Fears - It’s Nothing New November 8, 2007 Alison Wildish has recently written a post on “Fear of Facebook?” in which she comments on a recent article in The Independent entitled “Networking sites: Professors - keep out“. Alison says that The article highlighted a number of perceived issues with University staff getting involved in social networks. However I tend to disagree with the majority of them! I’ll not repeat her arguments, which I tend to agree with (and are supported in a post by Tony Keen). My take is that this is nothing new - IT developers have repeatedly had to respond to successful developments which have challenged their own development activities or beliefs in how successful software should be developed. I’d suggest that in the UK HE sector this may go back to the 1960s, when the view of the development of a successful IT environment was based on a political policy of buying British - with UK Universities being required, if my understanding is correct, to purchase ICL mainframe systems (this was, of course, before ICL became a Japanese company, being bought out by Fujitsu). In the late 1970s I studied at Newcastle University, where they were pleased at having procured an IBM mainframe which ran the MTS (Michigan Terminal System) operating system. In the Web environment, I can recall demonstrating the Web to a number of IT development groups in 1993 when I worked at Leeds University. Rather than the look of excitement which I normally got at that time, on two occasions the response was more like fear - I subsequently discovered that the developers were, independently, working on distributed information systems, and realised that their software couldn’t hope to compete with the Web. When I moved to Newcastle University in 1995 I came across another research group which was also involved in developing reliable secure distributed systems (Arjuna). Dave Ingham, who presented a couple of papers at WWW conferences, told me back then that his research group would never have released the Web, as it was fundamentally flawed: links broke when objects were moved, the user interface was very chunky, there was, back then, no client-side scripting, etc. However Dave and his colleagues also realised that, despite its limitations, the Web was a success and wouldn’t go away. They therefore adopted their research ideas to work in a Web context - and where so successful that the company they subsequently set up was eventually bought out by HP. 250 of 544

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I think we’re revisiting a similar set of fears that popular Web 2.0 services (not just Facebook) are challenging IT development plans. However rather than simply asserting limitations and implying that these are the overriding factors (with the “Web links are easily broken” argument being updated with various concerns over privacy, rights and interoperability) I feel that we need to engage with successful widely used services. Perhaps we might find that just as the Web does suffer from broken links but users are prepared to accept this, users may be willing to accept certain limitations which may shock the purist developer. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 3 Comments »

Why We Should All Use Externally-Hosted Web Services November 6, 2007 There may be an argument that in higher education we have no need to make use of externally hosted Web services, such as blogs, wikis, photographic sharing sites, etc. as institutions will typically have IT services departments with expertise in installing and supporting enterprise systems. And we also have a wide range of JISC services which can provide access to applications on a national basis, including services such as JISCMail which are used by all institutions, as well as more niche services aimed at the research community. However. although this view was probably true ten years ago, I feel that it ignores a significant change to the IT landscape over the past few years: the use of networked services outside of a work context and use by large numbers of people who aren’t members of the HE community. I suspect a large number of users of in-house IT services will also be likely to make use of IT services for social purposes - such as storing personal photographs and sharing them with friends and family. In such cases it may not be possible to make use of an institutional service. So we, as individuals, will need to learn how to use such services and evaluate the risks of such services. It is not only institutions which will need to safeguard access to teaching and learning and research resources individual members of the institutions, staff and students, will need to safeguard their precious digital assets. I also feel that we can also expect to see lecturers who use such services for personal use to explore the potential of such services in teaching. Indeed shouldn’t institutions be pro-active in this, in order to ensure that students (and staff) are experienced in such risk management issues when they leave the institution? Is this how institutions see things? Or do they focus on just providing a safe, managed, secure IT environment? And if the latter approach is taken, how can we expect staff and students to react when they leave the nest? After all, we no longer expect to me in the same jobs for life. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 4 Comments »

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OCLC report on ‘Sharing, Privacy and Trust In Our Networked World’ November 5, 2007 I recently received a copy of the OCLC report on “Sharing, Privacy and Trust In Our Networked World“. This is a report which I would recommend to everyone with an interest in the Web 2.0 world, in particular those who welcome evidence of the views of users of social networking services and discussions of the implications of such views. The report is available on the OCLC Web site (in PDF format). I should point out that the report is very large (about 250 pages, I think) with many colour graphics. I should also add that I received a hard copy of the report as I contributed to the report, being one of only two UK contributors (the other being Andy Powell from the Eduserv Foundation) who gave their views on issues related to sharing, privacy and trust. The report is based on a survey of 6,545 participants carried out between 7th December 2006 and 7th February 2007. The participants were from the US (a total of 1,801), Canada (921), UK (970), France (821), Germany (846) and Japan (804). An additional survey of 4,000 US library directors was also carried out, with 382 replies from library directors from academic, public, community college, school and special libraries being received. Interviews with selected information professionals (including myself and Andy) were also carried out. All in all, an impressive survey which helped to shape a fascinating report. I will not attempt to repeat all of the issues raised in the report, you’ll be pleased to hear. Some particular issues of note are worth commenting upon, however. There seems to be a discrepancy between the views of library directors concerning privacy issues and the general user community: librarians have real concerns about privacy, and are less likely to make use of social networks for relationship buildings and for fun. Ironically general users “do not rate most library services as very private” even though “the majority do not read library privacy policies.” Most users do, however, “feel commercial sites keep their personal information secure” but only “about half think library Web sites keep their personal information secure“. The nature of trust of commercial social network services is also increasing with use. These findings do surprise me. I had expected libraries to be the trusted organisations, with users having concerns regarding potential misuse of data held by commercial services. It seems that my views may perhaps reflect my personal prejudices, and that, as someone who is an information professional and who has spent his working life in the public sector, my views do not reflect those of the general public. Are public libraries (especially in the US) regarded as being too closely aligned with the government, with concerns over government snooping reflecting on the attitudes users have to making their personal data available in a library context? And do the reservations over use of personal data by academic libraries reflect concerns by staff and students over the relationships between the organisation and the individual? Such issues informed the conclusions of the report. The section on “Open The Doors” felt that “the library brand must go from institutional to personal“. The 252 of 544

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authors felt that the views they held a few years ago, which “conceived a social library as a library of traditional services enhanced by a set of social tools wikis, blogs, mashups, and podcasts” were mistaken, and their views “after living with the data, struggling with the findings, listening to the experts .. is [now] quite different“. It would be a mistake, the report concludes, “to create a checklist of social tools for librarians to learn or to generate a ‘top ten’ list of services to implement on the current library Web site“. They argued that “The social Web is not being build by augmenting traditional Web sites with new tools.“ They now feel that institutions should “Open the library doors, invite mass participation and relax the rules“. The dangers were acknowledged (”It will be messy“) but the rewards where felt to be worth it: “mass participation and a little chaos often create exciting venues for collaboration, creativity, community building and transformation“. The authors of the report invite feedback on the OCLC Web site. I too would welcome comments. In particular, how relevant is this vision within a UK context? And what are the implications for current plans for library development activities? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 ·Tags: oclc | Edit 2 Comments »

Guest Blog Post: Blogging Masterclass at ILI 2007: A Perspective November 4, 2007 In the second guest blog post of the month Eddie Byrne gives his thoughts on the Blog Masterclass facilitated recently by myself and Kara Jones. Eddie Byrne is Senior Librarian with Dublin City Public Libraries with responsibility for Web Services. A graduate of University College Dublin School of Library and Information Studies, he has worked for many years in the public library sector. From 2000-2002 he served as Metadata Project Co-ordinator for the Irish public service. Eddie’s review of the workshop, in which he describes the promotional video for the event, the structure of the workshop and the workshop materials, may be of particular interest to those who work in public libraries, museums and archives, as UKOLN is in the process of developing a series of events and briefing documents to support this community. It is particularly pleasing to receive this evidence of the success of the event. Having flown into London on the morning of Sunday, 7th October, the scene was now a familiar one for me, as I made my way from Heathrow to the Copthorne Tara Hotel in Kensington for the 9th Internet Librarian International 2007 conference. Familiar, as this was my third appearance on the trot at the conference, and familiar also as when I first came to London way back in the last century (!) having left school, I headed for my first ‘real’ job (read ’summer job’) and, where do you think it was, yes, in the Copthorne Tara Hotel in Kensington of course! Now the less said about that the better, let’s just say I was 253 of 544

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starting at the bottom! Three days there and I cracked! Peculiarly enough, my visits to the Copthorne Tara have on each occasion since also been of approx. three days duration. But those visits have been much more satisfying, let me add! I was attending the afternoon masterclass entitled ‘Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library‘ and being given by Brian Kelly (UKOLN) and Kara Jones (University of Bath). Brian of course I was familiar with from last year, and from following his blog; Kara was new to me, but her ‘performance’ in selling the course to me on a VCasmo multimedia announcement was, let me add, a determining factor! This class appealed to me largely because the blurb in the programme included the words ‘practical’ and ’sustainable’, and was also going to talk about ‘real user experiences’. Kara also mentioned in the VCasmo announcement others crucial elements such as ‘good practices‘ and ‘things that work and things that don’t‘. I was sold! The first thing I must say is that the class had an agreeable format, with Kara and Brian interchanging in order to keep us attentive and on our toes (or rather the edge of our seats, seats were provided)! I also welcomed the multiple handouts distributed during the class - it saved one having to take copious notes, thereby freeing one up to do some ‘active’ listening and actually participate. Simple but invaluable. Kara also introduced a little technological gizmo that allowed her to poll participants to get their input at various points, fun and functional at the same time. We involved ourselves in a number of exercises; one to identify possible blog uses and the benefits to be accrued, another to identify potential barriers, those we thought could be easily addressed, and those that presented greater challenges. The fruits of our labour were posted to the class wiki (in real time!), so I won’t reproduce them here, they can be seen over on the WetPaint wiki. Also, in this context, Kara’s presentation entitled “Why Have a Blog?” was particularly good in covering all the angles. It is worth saying at this point that what I found of particular value was Kara’s and Brian’s use of the Web as a delivery platform and as a means of networking with potential participants prior to the conference. The social network platfom ‘Ning’ was used in this context in order to illicit user experiences that would contribute to the substance of the class. Some of the presentations were available on ‘Slideshare’ prior to the conference and others on ‘Google Presents’ immediately afterwards; making presentations available in this manner can be of great advantage to participants preparing in advance or reviewing material afterwards. Many other topics were of course covered in the masterclass: blog basics; the technical issues in setting up and maintaining a blog (hosting, software, look and feel); launching and monitoring your blog (marketing, statistics); evaluation (role, policies, feedback); and more besides. What is of particular value in a workshop or masterclass such as this is that you are required to do some critical thinking, and you also get the invaluable perspective of others, those working in different areas, and therefore bringing a different perspective, as well as those who have tried something, been there, done that. I found it interesting to note that, despite the participants working in diverse areas and coming from different backgrounds, there was a commonality in terms of issues, concerns, perceived opportunities, and most of all a shared enthusiasm for using a tool that facilitates communication, user participation, user engagement, collaboration, and resource building. If I can refer to that word ‘practical’ again, this class was that. From forcing us 254 of 544

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to ask ourselves the ‘why’ of doing it, the ‘how’ to doing it, to the ‘watch out’ while doing it. I particularly liked Brian’s suggestion of having a documented blog policy - I think it becomes so much easier for you, your organisation and your users if you have it down on paper (remember paper?). It clarifies so much. Stating the purpose and scope of your organisation’s blog, the intended audience, policy on comments and third party use. I also welcomed the focus on demonstrating value, using evidence to justify the setting up of a blog in the first place: analysing your blog statistics and seeking feedback, asking the user for their views on the blog and how it may better serve them. Brian recently involved himself in such an exercise on his blog, and the results make interesting reading. He provided a handout with those too! The suggestion was put forward during the class that one should experiment with blogs for particular events or occasions. That to do so gave a taste of the strengths and opportunities of blogs. I would go further. They are more than just experimental, a one-off event of note, or a particular programme with a short-term lifespan, are ideal candidates of themselves for blogs in my estimation; they are relatively easy and quick to set up, involve little in the way of overheads, and are as easily de-activated should you want to when the event is over (I favour leaving the blog visible as a testament to the event and as a permanent record). And there is always a high profile event around the corner that merits its own blog. I indeed make widespread use of them in my library service. And whereas they do help inform and guide you in implementing other blogs in your organisation, their existence is no less important than that permanent presence you desire with your ‘lead’ blog. Is it contradictory to say that the temporary blog is here to stay? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post ·Tags: ili2007 | Edit 2 Comments »

Guest Blog Post: The ILI 2007 Blog Masterclass November 2, 2007

The Month’s Guest Blog Post The guest blog spot for November provides an opportunity to hear from participants at an event I have participated at recently. We start with Pernille Helholm’s reflections on the half day Blogging Masterclass facilitated by myself and Kara Jones.

About Me I work at a large company within the medical device industry in Copenhagen, Denmark. I am a (solo) librarian, information specialist and furthermore I attend The Master of Library and Information Science programme at The Danish School of librarianship. At work my tasks are providing competitor surveillance, scientific searches, patent searches, supplying our users with all kind of information in the form of journal, books, web pages, etc. and to guide them through the various systems. Furthermore (and very important!) I have to develop the library services all the 255 of 544

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time. I also have a blog at pnille.wordpress.com

The Guest Blog Post Last year at Internet Librarian International 2006 I discovered a new world of social software, new and easy ways of communicating, the concept of sharing and some great new aspects of librarianship. So this year I signed up for the ILI2007 conference without hesitation. It was obvious to me, that I should attend the pre-conference Masterclass on Using Blogs Effectively within Your Organisation facilitated by Brian Kelly and Kara Jones. During the past year I had explored many of the new social software tools and with the help of blogs, RSS, and online friends I constantly discovered new possibilities! And from all those tools I really find that blogging can be a very useful tool in an organisation like the one I work for. I can see that it would be an excellent way for people within the organisation to share ideas, look for solutions to old and new problems, generate and administrate new ideas that lead to innovation. Therefore, I decided that my goals for this masterclass were to bring home ideas and inspiration about blogging and share it with my organisation. But how, where and when do I begin? Brian and Kara’s masterclass was right on target for finding answers to my questions. And I am happy to say, it was an absolute highlight at the conference for me. I have made a list of things that I particularly liked: The practical angle and down to earth approach. Our hosts talked about their personal experiences with blogging, which made it easy to relate to. They managed to involve the attendants with “voting” and group assignments. The handouts! Very practical and condensed format. Not just copies of the slides! Useful! The laughs and the relaxed, personal attitude of the speakers. The many good points they had to convince management and co-workers. The wiki that Kara updated with our input. That sometimes, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than to beg for permission. I can find very few points for improvement, other than that it was much too short. I think that a full day with hands-on training would be very suitable. And for the next time I think it would be better to sit in an U-shape to improve interaction between the participants. I went back to my hotel with many thoughts in mind and I found that this Masterclass did give me answers to my questions of how, where and when to begin, plus a lot more! What I learned at the Masterclass has given me inspiration to start as soon as I get back to work As I already described, I believe that blogging will be great for the company. But now I can put words and action to my thoughts. And I think the right way to start will be to get rid of my old one-way-information-intranet-web page and replace it with a blog. I decided, not to wait for permission from our IT department. Practically, I will install a WordPress blog on an in-house server, so that I can 256 of 544

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keep the - often confidential - information between the walls of the company. I can use the features of a blog to share news otherwise distributed by mail and I can make additional pages for other content. After the initial launch of the blog, this will provide a great opportunity to start teaching my users about RSS in order to receive the library news on their desktop! In a way you could call it a pilot project for internal blogging. It is going to be a great showcase for my users, and I am so sure that it will make a lot of people interested in blogging as a tool for the company! And if anyone from the management or other sceptics will ask “What’s the big deal about blogging?” or “Why do we need one?” or “What’s wrong with e-mail?”, I will know what to answer! Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post ·Tags: ili2007 | Edit 1 Comment »

The First Year Of The UK Web Focus Blog November 1, 2007

A Look Back The UK Web Focus blog was set up on 1st November 2006. After its first year in operation I feel it would be appropriate to document some of the statistics, especially as I have previously promised to use this blog to document such quantitative data, for use by others.

Usage The blog’s Web site saw a steady growth in usage until March 2007, when usage stabilised at around 4,200 user visits per month, with a peak in July, due, I suspect, to visits from participants at the IWMW 2007 event.

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figures for the blog. The blog is also aggregated in several locations, including the My Blog Log service, JISC OSS Watch’s Planet Aggregator and the JISC Emerge Web site. The MyBlogLog service seems to be successful in providing access to, I suspect, a US audience, with 1,048 page views by 650 readers in the week of 23-28th October 2007.

Content There have been 264 posts during the year, with 1,045 comments. This average of about 4 comments per post seems to have been fairly consistent throughout the year (although, as Pete Johnston commented recently, this can be a slightly contentious metric for indicating engagement, potentially leading to accusations that typos are created deliberately in order to generate responses!). A total of 32 tags have been used to categorise the posts. I have to admit that looking at the tags reminds me that the content covered in blog posts probably doesn’t reflect my original intentions, which I thought would provide more posts on technical digital library issues. However, in order to make the most effective use of the time I have spend on the blog, I have used the blog to reflect my other work activities. As this year has seen a focus on supporting the museums, libraries and archives community, I have given a priority to reflecting their main areas of interest. And I’ve been pleased to see that the blog has been warmly appreciated within this sector, and has been successful in having an impact on the plans made by such organisations.

Looking To The Future A user survey of the blog was carried out recently and a summary of the responses has been provided. After a year of blogging and, on reflecting on the various feedback I’ve received, it seems to me that I’ll need to give some thought to perhaps creating a new blog, in order to address the diverse user community which UKOLN serves. I will also need to give some thought to the implications of the implications of this blog being aggregated elsewhere: at one stage I removed the blog from the JISC Emerge Web site, but restored it after complaints from members of the JISC Emerge community. How should, for example, one reconcile the tensions between providing views which some members of a community may find useful and being part of a bearded group of middle-aged blog spammers The other area I plan on devoting more time to in the forthcoming year are ways of measuring the impact of Web 2.0 services such as blogs, moving beyond the usage statistics and user evaluation. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 5 Comments »

The Power Of Information October 30, 2007 I attended a meeting recently at which a civil servant introduced a report which 258 of 544

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he was summarising as ‘exciting’. I had to stifle a yawn, thinking that what might be exciting for a civil servant would probably be very dull and boring. But I was wrong - the report on “The Power Of Information” is of much interest to those of us (and I include many readers of this blog) with an interest in promoting open access to information. The report (which is available as a PDF document - 280 KB, 57 pages) was commissioned by the government and published in June 2007, as described on the Cabinet Office Web site. The background to the report is an awareness of the popularity of Web 2.0, especially those which provide user generated content and how such technologies, coupled by a more open agenda, can enable information provided by government bodies to be reused in various interesting ways (Paul Walk recently commented on the phrase “The coolest thing to do with your data will be thought of by someone else“). The government’s response to the review (which is available as a PDF document - 610 KB, 20 pages) was very encouraging, broadly agreeing with all of the recommendations. Although this report is aimed at information produced by central government bodies (i.e. information covered by Crown Copyright) my view is that the publication of the report and its acceptance should be welcomed by those in the educational and cultural heritage sectors. The report can help to move the debate within these sectors on the reuse of data and encourage experimentation and sharing, rather than the conservatism we have seen in the past, with worries about loss of IPR and potential (though perhaps seldom realised) incomegeneration possibilities. A report worth reading, I feel. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in openness | Edit 3 Comments »

The UK’s Newest University October 23, 2007 What is the UK’s newest university? I thought that it was probably Edge Hill University. But I recently discovered that the University of Central England is now BCU - Birmingham City University. I’m assuming this is the UK’s newest university. What are the implications of changing the domain name for a well-established Web site (http://www.uce.ac.uk/) to something new (http://www.bcu.ac.uk/)? Do you lose your ‘Google juice‘ and have to start all over again in regaining your Google ranking? Or are there techniques you can use which will ensure that links to your old site will be transferred, not only to provide a seamless transition for users but also ensure that automated tools, such as indexing software, will migrate your site’s ranking data, and not treat this as an attempt to masquerade a porn site as a legitimate site. Anthony Colebourne has described his experiences in a post to the web-support JISCMail list, which summarised what happended when the Victoria University 259 of 544

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of Manchester and UMIST changed their domain names from www.man.ac.uk and www.umist.ac.uk to www.manchester.ac.uk and The University of Manchester was formed. However as this JISCMail list seems to require a JISCMail username and password I will include his comments here: We begin with a new www.manchester.ac.uk site running in parallel with the old sites. The old sites informed visitors of the change and provided a hyper link to the new site. Very quickly our new site rose up the results listings (without any special effort on our part) to a point where we were competing with ourselves. Some of our sub domains had setup Aliases of old domains to new ones. However many search engines saw the 2 domains as separate sites. So again these site were competing with themselves for position in search listings and also confusing our users too. 1) The longer domain achieved higher ranking in most cases, possibly this was due to the more relevant keyword in the domain ‘manchester’ as opposed to ‘man’ plus the new site was ‘better’! 2) Our local GSA also indexed everything twice, using up paid for page limits. 3) Our marketing people preferred that the domain in the users address bar to change (i.e. Apache Redirect preferred over Alias). We configured old addresses to issue Redirect Permanent (301). Firstly for individual sections as we were able, then for everything (/). We formally merged in Oct 2004, we took down our old sites home pages and redirected them in June 2005. We currently still receive around 500K hits a month to the old domains that get redirected to our new site. We are monitoring usage of the old domains and are not consider removing the redirects until usage drops significantly. Completely closing down our old domains is a huge task, when you begin to consider non web uses of DNS (email, desktop / server host names etc) and the dependences. It will be many years before our old domains are completely decommissioned. However to the outside world we are now manchester.ac.uk. These comments are, I feel, very valuable. But what is missing is the implications of a domain name change in a Web 2.0 environment. What will it mean if third party services are used to annotated page on your Web site? What will happen if you have embedded third party content in your Web site, and authenticated based on the URI of the page embedding the content is used? Similarly what will happen to data kept by Web statistics counters? Answers to these questions will be of interest to many readers, I think. It strikes me that the BCU change may provide a valuable opportunity for research on the implications of changes to a domain name and advice on best practices. An interesting student project, perhaps? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General ·Tags: bcu | Edit 11 Comments » 260 of 544

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Another One Bites The Dust October 21, 2007 I recently suggested that the English secretly prefer being failures, as we enjoy complaining about our failures and belittling the vulgarities of those who are successful, and that, while this is particularly true in the sporting field, in IT and Web development we find it easier to criticise successful services rather than to exploit their successes. And on a day in which England have once again failed to build on their previous success, having been beaten by South Africa in the Rugby Union World Cup final, I think it is timely to revisit successful Web services - and to draw some parallels with world champion sporting teams - and one loser. Apache is an obvious example of a successful Web application. Apache must therefore be the Brazil of Web software: it’s the people’s champion and the favourite of the neutrals.

Microsoft, in contrast, has to be (from an English perspective, at least) Germany: dull, methodical, lacking in flair, but you just know that you mustn’t write them off, as they often do well.

As for Facebook, well this has been a real surprise over the past few years. Nobody expected it to do so well, but, in its own way, it has its admirers. But is its current success likely to be sustainable? Or, just like England’s rugby union team, will it fade away when we thought success was guaranteed? Please note that if this post is appropriate, please read the post on We Are The Champions! And if you have received this post in a blog aggregator or via email delivery and you find the master copy does not exist, that is because it has been deleted. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit No Comments »

We Are The Champions October 20, 2007 I recently suggested that the English secretly prefer being failures, as we enjoy complaining about our failures and belittling the vulgarities of those who are successful, and that, while this is particularly true in the sporting field, in IT and Web development we find it easier to criticise successful services rather than to exploit their successes. But on a day in which England have, against all the odds, succeeded in beating South Africa to become the Rugby Union World Cup champions, I think it is timely to revisit the successful Web services - and to draw some parallels with 261 of 544

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world champion sporting teams. Apache is an obvious example. And Apache must be the Brazil of Web software: it’s the people’s champion and the favourite of the neutrals. Microsoft, in contrast, has to be (from an English perspective, at least) Germany: dull, methodical, lacking in flair, but you just know that you mustn’t write them off, as they often do well. As for Facebook, well this has been a real surprise over the past few years. Nobody expected it to do so well, but, in its own way, it has its admirers. Just like England’s rugby union team, I would suggest. And it is appropriate the England should be the holders of the Webb Ellis trophy Please note that if this post is appropriate, please read the post on Another One Bites The Dust! And if you have received this post in a blog aggregator or via email delivery and you find the master copy does not exist, that is because it has been deleted. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 4 Comments »

Should Open Content Be Open For Commercial Exploitation October 19, 2007 I suspect many of my peers who make their content available under a Creative Commons licence have, like me, chosen an Attribution, Non-commercial ShareAlike licence, which permits the content to be reused for non-commercial purposes provided acknowledgements are given and the same rights are applied to the derived materials. But should I be taking a more liberal approach, I wonder? Should I permit commercial exploitation of the content? This, after all, has been the approach taken in the open source world, which provides an environment for commercially-viable software vendors to thrive. From a macro-economic perspective, this approach should stimulate the economy and from a political perspective this would reflect the current political climes, in which the public and private sector aim to work together for the benefit of all (no cynical comments, please). Is it time to move to an Attribution ShareA Like licence? I’m beginning to think that this is desirable - I have suggested previously that allowing governmentfunded data (such as OS mapping data) to be made available for commercial exploitation by others would be beneficial to society; it strikes me that I’m being hypocritical if I fail to allow my resources to be reused in a similar fashion. What do you think? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 8 Comments » 262 of 544

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My Facebook Friends Do My Work For Me October 17, 2007 Last week I wrote about my preparation for a talk on What Can Mashups Offer? I was preparing for the JISC RSC 3.0 annual conference and invited readers to provide examples. I was pleased to receive a response from James Clay about the use of Yahoo Pipes at the ALT-C conference and, via the JISC Emerge manifestation of the blog post, further comments from Paul Mayes. On Sunday I was finalising my slides, and updated my Facebook status, inviting my Facebook friends to provide examples which I could use. I received several examples later that evening, and by Monday lunchtime I had included examples in my slides from Jane Stevenson (showing how the Archives Hub uses Google Maps to show the locations of contributors to the Archives Hub service), Paul Hollins, CETIS (on mashups in Second Life), Mike McConnell (on outreach services to potential students at Aberdeen University) and several examples from Tony Hirst, Open University. In addition Mark Van Harmelin suggested Scott Wilson’s XCRI mashup examples, but I didn’t have a URI to hand when I finished producing my slides. And, for the sake of completeness, I should add that Sebastian Rahtz, University of Oxford, also provided - via email - a number of examples of the prize-winning mashups he developed for the IWMW 2007 innovation competition. The various examples I used in the talk are bookmarked in del.icio.usand, thanks to another tool provided by Tony Hirst, a slideshow of these mashups is also available (as Tony described, a mashup of the mashups). So thanks to my Facebook friends for providing these examples. And for me, I’ve realised what a potentially valuable tool the Facebook status can be - a simple request can result in useful feedback, without the intrusive aspect often suffered by those who complain of email overload. And unlike more open communications tools, I’m inviting feedback from a selected group of my friends, colleagues and contacts on Facebook. Perhaps, in some cases, the most effective social network isn’t the open network but the trusted network? And, as promised in my previous post about my mashups talk, my slides are available, with a Creative Commons licence.

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Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook, mashups | Edit 5 Comments »

Using Facebook To Promote Events October 16, 2007 UKOLN organises many workshops, conferences and other types of events. We also speak at and support events organised by others, including our funders (JISC and MLA) and fellow services, such as CETIS, MIMAS, EDINA and OSS Watch. How should we most effectively promote our events, so that we maximise the audiences at the events and attract new audiences, whilst minimising the aggravation caused by event spamming. Organisers acknowledge this problem and try to defuse criticisms with the prefix “Apologies for multiple postings” but there is still a need to ensure that people don’t complain that they never knew an event of interest to them was being held. I seemed to have erred on the over-cautious side by failing to announce the one-day workshop on “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs And Social Networks” as widely as I should have done, with at least one speaker informing me that he hadn’t seen the event announced anywhere. I’ve tried to remedy this by some further announcements to email lists, and have kept a record on the event’s news page. But what can be done beyond email announcements, in a Web 2.0 world? In this case, I have created an event in Facebook which provides details about the workshop (as illustrated below). I have send an invitation to a small group of my Facebook contacts (avoiding the temptation to spam my Facebook friends who will have no interest in the event). The intention being that my Facebook contacts who I’ve not notified will see that I’ve created this event and, if it’s of interest to them or their colleagues, will then register. Viral marketing, without the intrusiveness of email, I hope. Anyway, that’s the 264 of 544

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purpose of this experiment - and your comments are welcome.

And for those of you who have read this far, the one-day workshop will be held at Austin Court, Birmingham on 26th October 2007. The workshop will provide a number of case studies which will describe a variety of ways in which institutions are providing blogs and making use of social networking services, including use of WebCT, Elgg and Facebook. The vent will also provide an insight into the student’s perspective of such tools and then review the challenges institutions will face in providing such services. Further details, including access to the online booking form is available at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/blogs-socialnetworks-2007/ The cost of this 1-day workshop is £85 which includes lunch, coffee, workshop materials and access to the WiFi network. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events ·Tags: Facebook | Edit 1 Comment »

We’re The Young Generation October 15, 2007 On Wednesday 10th October 2007 I attended the “Inspiring the iGeneration Web 2.0, teenagers and libraries” event which was held at the Wolverhampton Science Park.

My Opening Talk I gave the opening talk entitled ” We’re The Young Generation, And We’ve Got Something To Say” which provided an overview of Web 2.0 and outlined why social networking software, such as Facebook, are providing so popular, and the challenges which such popularity is posing. (The title of the talk 265 of 544

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referring, of course, to the popular hit by The Monkeys in the 1960s, which aims to provide an alternative cultural reference to social networks to “Dedicated Follower Of Fashion” which was picked up by Wikipedia).

It was pleasing to receive an email after the conference saying: “I very much enjoyed the conference yesterday. The first session from Brian Kelly was exceptionally good. It was thought provoking. A much better start to the day than cornflakes!!.“ although of course the subtext could have been “better than cornflakes - but not as good as a full English breakfast”

Other Talks The other talks at the events described a variety of approaches which are being taken by public libraries and related organisations in making use of Web 2.0 services to engage with young people. Interestingly, a Web 2.0 service which was mentioned by a number of the speakers was WetPaint - a wiki service I’ve been using for a year of so (including using it to support the Masterclass on ‘Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library’ at ILI 2007). A common problem which was raised throughout the day was how to manage inappropriate content for young people. This ranged from obvious problematic content (pornography, Viagra spam, happy slappy videos, etc.) to more contentious areas, such as mainstream advertisements. There were clear differences in opinions expressed, from those who argue that happy-slapping is a problem that society needs to address, and it is a mistake to overprotect children to those who feel that public sector Web sites must ensure that they provide appropriate materials. This debate will continue … The final comment I would make about the event is to applaud Paul Mayes, Teesside University for being willing to experiment with innovative Web 2.0 services at the event. Paul could not attend the event, so he videoed his talk ahead of the meeting. After this was shown, Paul and I made use of the TokBox video chat service (which I’ve commented on recently). Although there were 266 of 544

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some technical glitches, I felt the event benefits from Paul’s willingness to experiment, which was clearly appropriate for this particular event, with its focus on the willingness to experiment which many young people will have. And thanks to Dave Pattern for the photographs he took of the event, including one which shows me (on stage) having a video chat with Paul using ToxBox. Now what is the metadata for this photo? Which is the real me and which is just fantasy?

And if only I had produced a video of my talk at the ILI 2007 conference I would have avoided passing on my cold to Dave Pattern, Kara Jones and others - which Dave not only blogged about but also informed the world via his Facebook status:

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 ·Tags: tokbox | Edit 1 Comment »

All UK Government Web Sites Must Be WCAG AA Compliant October 14, 2007 The UK Government has published a Public consultation on Delivering Inclusive Websites document (TG102). This document (available in MS Word and PDF formats) states that all government Web sites must comply with the WCAG AA guidelines by December 2008. And failure to comply will result in the withdrawal of the .gov.uk domain. Great, you may think. At last the Government is doing something positive for people with disabilities. 267 of 544

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I would disagree - I think this is a flawed approach for several reasons:

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The WCAG 1.0 guidelines are widely acknowledged to be out-of-date and inappropriate for the technical environment and ways in which the Web is used today. And this is not just what I think. Michael Cooper, who works for WAI (who produce the WCAG guidelines) admitted this is a paper he presented at the W4A 2007 conference. As I described in my report on the conference Michael write: However, we recognize that standards are slow, and technology evolves quickly in the commercial marketplace. Innovation brings new customers and solidifies relationships with existing customers; Web 2.0 innovations also bring new types of professionals to the field, ones who care about the new dynamic medium. As technologies prove themselves, standardizing brings in the universality of the benefit, but necessarily follows this innovation. Therefore, this paper acknowledges and respects Web 2.0, discussing the issues and real world solutions. The WCAG 1.0 guidelines are flawed and ambiguous, as described in a paper on “Forcing Standardization or Accommodating Diversity? A Framework for Applying the WCAG in the Real World“. For example a strict interpretation of the priority 2 guideline which states “… use the latest versions [of W3C technologies] when supported” would mean that a WCAG AA conformant HTML 4 Web site would be degraded to WCAG A conformance overnight when XHTML 1.0 was officially released! There are similar flaws when one considers use of GIF (a widely used, but proprietary graphical format) and PNG (an open and rich, but comparatively rarely-used W3C graphical format). Use of a closed graphical format such as GIF would appear to break the WCAG priority 2 guideline which requires Web developers to “Use W3C technologies when they are available and appropriate for a task“. But is there any evidence that use of GIF rather than PNG is a significant accessibility barrier? It is unclear whether proprietary file formats such as MS Word and PowerPoint and Adobe PDF can be hosted on a government Web site. The document implies they can, provided the file formats are used in an accessible way. But doesn’t this conflict with the WCAG guideline given above? And if Word, PowerPoint and PDF formats can be used, what other proprietary formats can be used? Would a Flash-only Web site be permitted, prpvided accessible Flash was used? Although the document supports use of both automated testing tools and manual testing, I fear that time pressures will result in priority being given to automated testing, perhaps based on the EU-funded automated accessibility checking tool, the limitations of which I wrote about recently. The conservatism often found in the public sector will stifle initiative and innovation, even when this could provide more accessible services to people with disabilities. The difficulties of ensuring that user-generated content complies with WCAG AA guidelines (e.g. ensuring the abbreviations and acronyms are marked up when first used in a page) will discourage government bodies from providing services which seek to actively engage UK citizens. The requirement seems to ignore the benefits that can be provided within a particular context. A Web site featuring an anti-drugs campaign aimed at youths in the inner city may be more effective if it uses language likely to 03/10/2008 14:51

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be understood by the target audience. But the danger is that such an approach would not be allowed, as the language would not be universally accessible. The failure to address change control in the policy. When, for example, the WCAG 2.0 guidelines are released which, based on the current draft, are more tolerant of proprietary formats, JavaScript and invalid HTML pages, how are Web site owners supposed to respond? I fear the underlying rationale to this approach is based on the checklist approach which the government seems over-enamoured with. Sadly the requirements to comply with benchmark targets seems inevitably to lead to a fixation with addressing the targets themselves, and a failure to address the underlying issues. As I write the broadsheets are arguing that failures in hygiene standards are due to the NHS’s requirements to satisfy (and monitor) benchmark figures rather tackling the hygiene issues. After a series of useful government services are withdrawn because of the concerns that they may break dated guidelines, I predict a government minister will face the wrath of Jeremy Paxman - and Jeremy will be able to make use of an anti-EU argument, as the consultation document does admit that “In 2002, the European Parliament set the minimum level of accessibility for all public sector websites at Level Double-A“. A good question for Jeremy will be “Do you have any evidence that compliance with these dated guidleines brinks any benefits to people with disabilities? “ It seems that political expediency (a Brown government seeking to make a statement, perhaps) has failed to acknowledge the limitations of the checklist approach. And this despite participation from the COI at the “Accessibility Summit II: A User-Focussed Approach to Web Accessibility” in November 2007. As described in a report on the event Kevin Carey, Vice-Chair of the Royal National Institute of the Blind and director of digital inclusion charity HumanITy argued that “At the moment the government is following highly specific [WCAG] points. Some work, some don’t“. Sadly it seems that the recommendations of this group have been ignored. At least we’re not the only ones concerned about this new. In a comment on a post on New UK government web accessibility consultation on the Blether blo, Karls states that: I’ve been reading this document today and I agree with Jack - it needs to lose the checklist mentality, extend the deadline (I understand that the author probably had to put some date there) and get every website tested by our friends at RNIB / AbilityNet / Shaw Trust / Nomensa using some kind of joined-up (consistent) testing scheme. I might have missed a few other big players out there but the point I really want to make is I don’t want to see .gov.uk sites get sucked in by snakeoil salesmen. Your thoughts? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility ·Tags: Accessibility, WCAG | Edit 11 Comments »

On Thunderbird 269 of 544

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October 12, 2007 “Thunderbirds aren’t go” was the initial ungrammatical idea for the title of this post, based on an article in Thursday’s Online Guardian which asked “What future has the Thunderbird email program got?” in light of the departure of the two paid programmers who were working on the project (and discussed on the Guardian technology blog). I installed Thunderbird a couple of year’s ago with high hopes, as it comes from the same stable as Firefox. I quickly became disillusioned, though, partly because I didn’t like the interface and partly because of various bugs or limitations I encountered, but primarily because of its lack of support for a calendering tool. I soon went back to Outlook, which I use to synch with my PDA and mobile phone. I had been told that a calendering tool which would complement Thunderbird was on its way - but the Guardian article also mentioned that this product (Sunbird) has been discontinued. This feature has, sadly, been shown to be vapourware. Has Thunderbird shown itself to be a fad, without even being fashionable (in mainstream circles)? I think this would be an inappropriate response. As Ross Gardler pointed out recently, it can be counter productive to dismiss applications using phrases such as ‘it’s merely fashionable’ or ‘it’s just a passing fad’. Rather, some deeper thinking is needed - and maybe software which fails to become fashionable but works for particular groups in niche areas can have a role to play. Or perhaps, as Ryan Paul suggests, Thunderbird still has potential to fly despite developers leaving the nest. And interestingly the article suggested that Thunderbird’s focus simple on email might be a barrier and pointed out that the developers “had the team for developing … a stand-alone desktop e-mail application. But we didn’t have the complete set of people to address both that and the larger issues. Without some new impetus, Thunderbird would continue in a status quo pattern.” Thunderbird with a means of integrating with Facebook - now that would be an application I’d like to try out - and could leave Outlook in the dust. Speculation, open to discussion, I feel. What is less open to dispute is that the success of the FireFox browser has not been replicated in the email environment. And we do need to have decision making and selection criteria which recognises that success in one area does not necessarily guarantee success in another. Time to update the QA Focus document on “Top Tips For Selecting Open Source Software“. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General ·Tags: Sunbird, Thunderbird | Edit 9 Comments »

The Techshare 2007 Conference (2) October 10, 2007 I mentioned previously my talk on “Beyond Compliance - A Holistic Approach to Web Accessibility” which I gave at the Techshare 2007 conference. 270 of 544

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My talk was in complete contrast to the preceding talk on “EuraCERT“. This talk described the development of a European certification scheme for Web accessibility, which is based on the development of automated software which checks the compliance of a Web site with WCAG 1.0 guidelines. This approach seems to be based on the “Unified Web Evaluation Methodology”. This is available in HTML and as a PDF document (152 pages). The document contains hundreds of descriptions of tests of HTML pages; passing such tests, it would seem, will ensure the Web site can be certified as complying with the accessibility guidelines. An example is: 5.11.3.2.15 Test 12.3_HTML_15 This test is targeted to check whether the table rows need grouping.

Applicability criteria: Select the following combination of elements/attributes: table[not(thead) or not(tfoot) or not(tbody)] Test procedure: Do the table rows need grouping? Confidence level: Medium. User testing procedures: Not Available. The speaker described the WCAG 1.0 guidelines as “the bible”. During the questions I said that if this is the case, I must be a heretic It seems that a European certificate is being developed based on a set of guidelines which are known to be flawed and are being replaced. And this is to say nothing of the issue of the purpose of the Web site which I described previously. I have to say that I feel that accessibility is primarily about people, and that the emphasis being placed by techies on just the resource is counter-productive. What do others things? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, Events ·Tags: Techshare-2007 | Edit 3 Comments »

The Techshare 2007 Conference (1) October 9, 2007 Last week I attended the first day of the Techshare 2007 conference. I gave a talk on Beyond Compliance - A Holistic Approach to Web Accessibility, which reviewed the work on Web accessibility policies which has been published at the W4A 2005, W4A 2006 and W4A 2007 conferences. This work has described the limitations of the WAI approach to Web accessibility, with the flaws in the WCAG 1.0 guidelines becoming increasingly apparent over the years. In addition we (my co-authors have included Professors Helen Petrie and Stephen Brown, Lawrie Phipps, David Sloan, Patrick Lauke and Simon Ball) have argued that there’s a need to address the context of use - and that the approaches taken to ensure accessibility of informational resources are not 271 of 544

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necessarily relevant in cases in which the Web is used to deliver learning, provide access to a cultural experience, enable a user to assert their identity or simply, to have fun. Examples I’ve used to illustrate this include include surrealist paintings (how do you make a Salvador Dali painting understandable, for example) and my favourite sports headline “Super Cali Go Ballistic, Celtic were Atrocious’ - which brings a smile to many people’s faces, but not if Mary Poppins hasn’t been part of your cultural upbringing - in short, it’s not universally accessible. At the conference I described such ‘edge cases’ and explained why these needed to be considered (to avoid, as I’ve heard has happened, resources being removed from Web sites as they can’t be made accessible to everyone). I described the approaches we’ve developed, based on a holistic approach to accessibility, a stakeholder model and a tangram metaphor for describing the approaches. I was pleased at the response I received to the talk: despite it being the final talk of the day, several people came up to me afterwards and thanked me for the talk and described how useful they felt this user-focussed (as opposed to a checklist) approach was. I was especially pleased that a couple of people from the RNIB felt that this approach echoes their thinking.

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, Events ·Tags: Techshare, Techshare-2007 | Edit No Comments »

Results of the Evaluation of the UK Web Focus blog October 7, 2007 On 23 August 2007 I announced the launch of an evaluation of the UK Web Focus blog. The results of the evaluation, which was open for a period of four weeks, are now available. The evaluation, which made use of the SurveyMonkey software, have two main purposes: 1) to gain a better 272 of 544

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understanding of the tools used to read the blog (the platform and applications and 2) to gain feedback on the content of the blog, the publishing frequency and the length of postings. And in order to maximise the numbers of responses a follow-up request for feedback was posted on 11 September, in case readers may have missed the initial post, which was sent during the holiday season. O f the 30 completed responses, I was pleased to read that 38.% used aUK Web Focus › Create New Post — WordPress Web-based RSS reader and 20.5% using a desktop RSS reader, with a similar percentage (20.5%) visiting the main blog Web site and 10.5% reading the blog posts via an aggregator, such as the JISC Emerge Elgg community Web site or JISC OSS Watch’s Planet aggregation service. The most popular operating system environment was, unsurprisingly, MS Windows (64.1%), followed by Apple Macintosh (25.6%) and Unix (10.3%). Nobody admitted to reading the blog using a mobile device (whether wearing pyjamas or not ) Just over half (53.8%) of the respondents have given comments on the blog - it was pleasing that those who hadn’t were willing to give reasons why (”Worried about looking like I’m stating the obvious, I always feel I should have something new and original to offer“, “As of writing this, I’m not part of the blogosphere myself yet. Anonymous or dummy commenting doesn’t feel right” and “I haven’t commented (yet) because I haven’t felt I had anything sufficiently new/original to contribute“). Interestingly one person felt that blogs are not an appropriate medium for discussion: “I try not to make comments in blogs that require a response. For me blogs are for dissemination, they do not work well for discussion. I comment if I feel I can add something to the observation being made. If I want a discussion I will bring it up on a more appropriate location.“. The comments on the content of the blog were very pleasing for me: Invariably relevant and thought provoking. Informed opinion that is not opinionated. Entries and variety very interesting. Excellent, I can’t remember reading anything that I thought was a waste of my time. Informative and thought-provoking — it’s good to read a blog about ‘web 2.0′ that manages to raise interesting questions rather than being dogmatic about the ‘right’ way to do things. marvellous - timely, detailed, open, and invitingly humble! Many thanks for those comments (he says, humbly The question on the frequency of publication of the posts, again, seemed to indicate that readers were happy:

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beats expectations - at least daily, sometimes twice - always somehow useful As I understand Brian’s workload and the diverse calls on his time, I am amazed he has time to produce as much as he does. I am happy with frequency at present, much more would be too much. Amazing: don’t know how you do it. Short ones are easy, but a considered article I find a lot of work to make relevant and to avoid complete pratfalls (small pratfalls are acceptable in blogging, I think!) Ideal. Frequent enough to keep interested but not so frequent that it becomes a chore to keep up 03/10/2008 14:51

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although there were some divergences of opinion: I wish postings were somewhat more frequent. Perhaps it should be a more central feature of Web Focus dissemination? I think there are too many postings-I often ignore them because I simply don’t have time to read through such lengthy and frequent posts. Sometimes difficult to keep up with all articles! But I would prefer too many rather than not enough. The comments on the length of the posts also seemed to show that the current approach is working: Almost perfect. It is quite easy to get the gist of a post and decide whether to read in full. Good - enough detail usually to make it worthwhile. The writing style is good - waffle free. as long as they need to be in order to give appropriate detail - so just right - and effort made to embed examples very helpful Works well for your blog - other blogs work better with shorter news snippets but yours requires longer discussion to get point across I find the postings quite detailed - longer than several of the blogs I read, but the use of diagrams and screenshots etc breaks this up and prevents it from being an arduous read Shorter would be less useful (I think.) I also invited readers to give other comments and suggestions. These included: This blog is well written and presents ideas and technologies in a very clear way. It makes good use of links for finding our more. But it does not overwhelm either. A nice balancing act! keep up the great service - perhaps even take on a network of distributed apprentices to propagate subtleties of ethos which may otherwise be overlooked as a legitimate set of “higher” skills - professional or otherwise In general, I appreciate the blog and find it useful when I have time to read it! Thank you also for taking the time to survey your readers. Currently, your blog is one of the Top 5 that I follow regularly Two of them are in English - the other one is Lorcan Dempsey’s I think it’s great to have the range of info you have and to report back on events you have attended. This feedback has been very useful to me, so thanks to eveyone who responded. The main issues and suggestions which a number of respondents raised which I should respond were the technical level and intended audence for the posts and problems in reading some of the posts, due, for example, to problems in rendering images. It seems that some readers welcome the advice given to those new to blogging and Web 2.0, but other, more experienced readers, would prefer more technically-focussed posts. I am wondering, in light of the feedback we are receiving from our funders and our discussions with the museums, libraries and archives community, whether to set up a blog, perhaps focussing on blogging and mainstream use of Web 2.0 services, aimed at mainstream members of that community, who may be making the first steps with Web 2.0. I will float this idea at the Blogging Masterclass and with others in the Library sector I’ll be seeing on Monday and Tuesday at the ILI 2007 conference. But I’d most particularly welcome feedback on this from readers of this blog. 274 of 544

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Fashions In Internet Technologies October 5, 2007 The Apache server software saw steady growth in its use from its launch. But I never heard anyone criticise Web server administrators for being fashionable, or doom merchants predicting that the growth would come to an end and, therefore, there is little point in using the software. And yet such arguments are being made when other software, such as Facebook, becomes popular. Why is this, I wonder? In part, I think this is because services such as Facebook don’t fit in with the ideology of the ‘chattering classes’ - it’s not, open source, for example. And, unlike Apache, there is a lot of money associated with Facebook, with large companies (such as Microsoft and Google) looking to invest in the company. Such rampant capitalism again doesn’t fit in with certain ideological perspectives. In contrast, plucky underdogs, like Twitter and Jaiku are to be admired, even thought (or perhaps because) they seem not to have gone beyond the boundaries of the geeks and early adopters. I also feel that some people like to distance themselves from the vulgarities of profit and success. We’re British, after all; let’s leave the Americans and the Australians to boast about their successes, while we pride ourselves on heroic (or less than heroic) failures! My view is that, whilst we may wish to reflect our national characteristics in the sporting arena (and I’m writing this in advance of this weekend’s Rugby World Cup games) as professionals we should base our judgments on evidence, rather than beliefs and, if the evidence shows that our beliefs aren’t working, then we may need to modify our beliefs, rather than ignore the evidence. On the other hand, maybe Apache is starting to become unfashionable; after all as a recent Netcraft survey reported “its market share [is] declining closer to the 50% mark, as Microsoft … gained over 3 million hostnames“. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 10 Comments »

Using Your WiFi Network Whilst In Your Pyjamas October 4, 2007 You have a WiFi network at home. You also have a mobile device which supports WIFi - perhaps a PDA or a mobile phone? How can you exploit these two technologies before you’ve set off to work? I have started to get into the habit of, after getting up, switching on my mobile phone and refreshing the RSS feeds I’ve subscribed to. As I don’t intend to use my mobile for serious blog reading activities, I have subscribed to the RSS feeds 275 of 544

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for the comments for this blog. This enables me to spot if there any comments I need to respond to while I’m on this bus into work. Am I unusual in using my network while I’m still in my pyjamas? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Gadgets | Edit 15 Comments »

What Can Mashups Offer? October 3, 2007 I have been invited to give a talk on mashups at the annual conference for JISC Regional Support Centres (RSCs). To support my talk I have written a briefing document giving An Introduction To Mashups. I would welcome feedback on this document (the master copy of which is an A5 printed document, which provides a mechanism for keeping the content brief and to the point). Also note that a Creative Commons licence is available for this document, so feel free to reuse the content (and I hope anyone who may wish to use this document will be motivated to provide feedback). In addition to the document I am also interested in examples of mashups, primarily in educational contexts to help RSCs to succeed in their mission: to stimulate and support innovation in learning. I will, of course, make the materials I produce available under a Creative Commons licence. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in mashups | Edit 3 Comments »

The Blogging Librarian: Pragmatic, Connected and Visible October 1, 2007 In a guest blog post for November Michael Stephens gives his thoughts on the Blogging Librarian. Michael is well-known to many in the library 2.0 world through his Tame The Web blog and his participation at the Internet Librarian International (ILI) conferences. As the fall conference season gets into high gear, groups of librarians and information professionals will gather in conference centres and hotels all over the world to discuss issues and trends that offer challenges and opportunities for library services. Sadly, this year I can’t attend one of my favorite conferences: Internet Librarian International in London, England. Librarians from all over the world journey to London to exchange ideas, insights and, simply, talk. I’ve attended ILI the past few years, serving on the advisory committee as well as presenting and teaching workshops, including on dedicated to blogging in 2005. I was happy to see Brian Kelly and Kara Jones are carrying that discussion forward with two sessions: 276 of 544

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Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library and The Blogging Librarian: Avoiding Institutional Inertia I look forward to reading blog coverage of their presentations. Thinking about these presentations causes me to reflect on the history of the tool. In 2004, Merriam Webster online announced the most-searched word of the year was blog and noted that one of the most talked about online innovations of Web 2.0 was the use of blog software to create easily updated, content-rich Web sites. The early definition the site provided offers insight into blogs’ genesis as a personal journaling tool: Blog noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks provided by the writer. From personal journaling onward, we can trace the evolution of blogging from “what I had for lunch” blogs to the adoption of the tool for businesses, organizations, and of course, librarians and libraries. In 2007, the thriving biblioblogosphere includes multiple library blogs as well as hundreds of individuals sharing their voices via personal, professionally focused blogs. This summer, I completed my doctoral dissertation looking at those personal, professionally focused blogs. The research question centered around the motivations for librarians to write blogs. Based on the works of some library philosophers, I created and sought to prove my “Pragmatic Biblioblogger Model.” The model describes librarians who author a professionally focused blog beyond the scope of their job to find, share, and offer advice to others in the LIS profession. Constantly scanning via the tools of continuous computing, the pragmatic biblioblogger seeks to redesign library services in an era of enhanced technology. These librarians open comments and engage with other librarian bloggers to discuss and examine events, new technologies, and the LIS profession within a community they have created with a common goal: improving libraries. I was pleased that my study yielded support for the model. As a participant, observer and examiner of the bibliobogosphere, I’ve seen a lot of changes, discourse and dissension - all of which add to the evolving nature of the medium within our profession. When librarians blog for their institutions, it may seem that the mission is different, but it many ways it is most similar. Library weblogs, in all shapes and sizes from Ann Arbor District Library’s multiple blog presence to the smallest of the small “one person library” blog hosted at Blogger.com, sharing news and information is usually the number one goal. Pair this with what blogs do so well enable conversation via commenting, librarians can now connect with their users online the way we have done across the desk for years. These connections are playing out in some interesting ways in 2007: I’ve noticed the advent of administrator’s blogs, the extension of the blogging platform in some new and innovative ways, and the use of the tool as an educational vehicle for library staff to experience social software. What was once the realm of the techie librarian in the basement of the library has moved to cadres of blogging librarians for individual libraries (such as my 277 of 544

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former library, the St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, Indiana, USA) on up to the actual involvement of administrators and directors. Look no further than Darien Library in Darien, Connecticut, USA for an example of a director’s blog. There are definitely benefits to administrative blogging. It might be the library is about to launch a new initiative or fund raising campaign. The use of a blog as a communication mechanism to deliver transparent news and plans seems like a good fit. Properly marketed and utilized - key for an such project - the blog can be a visible means to connect users to library policy-makers. It would also set a good example for others in the library who may not want to participate. Top-down buy-in is so important for technology projects and organizational shifts to occur - and the voice of the director, shared openly and honestly, is a step in a good direction. Human discourse from the top might be very welcome in many libraries, internally and externally. Open comments would allow discussion. This also makes the library and staff visible on the Web. Other library use blogs and more blog-like social tools as a clearinghouse of all manner of online content and links to multimedia offerings as well. Check out Allen County Public Library’s 2.0 clearinghouse to see this in action or take a look at Pierce County’s round up of their 2.0 tools with this post at Flickr. Finally, no project has added more blogs to the Biblioblogosphere than Helene Blower’s Learning 2.0 course, used by libraries all over the world. As a means to acclimate staff to what blogs and other tools can do, there’s nothing better than actually doing it. Librarians and staff explore, play and report on their experiences via their blogs. Who knows how many may continue after the course is done - and how many may become vibrant voices within the Biblioblogosphere. Are you curious? If you’re attending ILI be sure to check out the blog presentations - there’s still so much to discuss about this transformative tool. And please have a cup of tea for me as you enjoy the sessions, networking breaks and evening meals. ! If you’re reading from afar, explore on your own what’s happening online with blogs and other social tools. we truly are in the middle of an ongoing shift in libraries, where anyone can participate. I am also very interested to hear what UK and other countries are doing with administrative blogs, 2.0 portals and Learning 2.0. Please share your comments here or email me. Michael Stephens Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post ·Tags: blog library | Edit 2 Comments »

Speculation on Microsoft Investment in Facebook September 29, 2007 A Techcrunch article on Microsoft May Invest in Facebook At $10 Billion Valuation was published on 24 September 2007. James Brown on the RIN Team blog has provided some interesting thoughtson the reasons why Microsoft are willing to invest $300-$500 million for a 5% stake 278 of 544

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in the company - which would place a valuation on the company of $10 billion. I was interested in one of the statistics James provided: Facebook has 42 million active users and, in comparison, Spain has a population of 45 million. Is Facebook really, as some have suggested, really a passing fad. Perhaps Spain is, as well And I wonder if, on 4 April 1975, anyone would have predicted the growth in Microsoft and when it stopped being dismissed as a fad? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook ·Tags: Facebook | Edit 11 Comments »

The RSCs In Scotland NewsFeed Blog September 28, 2007 Via a Technorati search for JISC I came across the RSC NewsFeed Blog provided by the JISC RSC Scotland North & East and RSC Scotland South & West services. This was launched on 28 August 2007 and since then then have been many postings, providing useful snippets of information, many of which describe various Web 2.0 services relevant to the teaching applications. I noticed that all of the posts were published on just three dates: 29 August, 11 September and 25 September. I then realised that the blog is published as a newsletter, with issue 3 having been released recently. I think this can be a useful approach to providing a blogging service, although I do wonder whether the sudden publication of multiple posts might act as a barrier to engaging readers in discussion via the blog comments (and the service does allow comments to be published). But on the other hand, it does strike me as a more environmentally friendly solution that the printed newsletter and much more easier to use and repurposable than simply published a PDF version of a paper newsletter. I’ve added this to my del.icio.us bookmarks of resources I’ll be using in the half day masterclass on “Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library” which Kara Jones and myself will be running on 7th October 2007. Does anyone else have example of blogs being used to provide access to newsletters? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 4 Comments »

A New Search Interface for HERO September 26, 2007 I have been reading the September issue of the HERO Headlines magazine, which provides “the latest news from HERO Ltd, the company behind the UK’s official online gateway to higher education and research opportunities“. An article in the magazine describes the release of a search tool which can be added to Internet Explorer and Firefox browser to enable the HERO.ac.uk Web 279 of 544

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site to be searched directly from the browser, without first having to go to the HERO Web site. Use of this search facility to search for articles about UKOLN is shown in the diagram.

At one stage there was a tendency in various Web development circles that browser-specific enhancements should be avoided, as they don’t necessarily provide universal solutions (in this case, users of the Opera browser may feel disenfranchised). I don’t go along with this argument - I feel that this provides a richer and easier-to-use solution for many users, whilst still allowing users of more specialist browsers (or old versions of Internet Explorer or Firefox) to search the Web site in the traditional way. Congratulations to HERO for this development. Now how many institutions are configuring their browsers with similar search interfaces for their institutional Web site, I wonder? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in browser, search | Edit 6 Comments »

The Future As Today, But More So 280 of 544

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September 20, 2007

My Background When I was young we didn’t have a TV and it wasn’t until I was 7 or so that my family caught up, and I discovered why my school friends were so excited about Doctor Who. And at that time we didn’t have a telephone, so when my parents wanted to ring their friends, it involved a trip to the public telephone kiosk opposite our house, until we got a phone installed (which, of course, was initially was on a shared party line). But we never had a family car. In more recent years I can recall being dismissive of yuppies and business men and their very large mobile phones. Nowadays, of course, the TV, the landline, the car and the mobile phone are mainstream consumer products, and households without them are in a minority. And I find myself in a position in which I’m no longer Star Trek Communicator behind the times, but am an early adopter of various examples of the current generation of technological innovations. I was an early adopter of digital TV (when Freeview was known as OnDigital) and I now have an iPod and a Nokia N95 mobile phone, which can be use as a digital camera, a video camera, a sound recorder, a music player, a GPS device, a radio, a TV, and, last but not least, a telephone. Truly, it seems, Star Trek technology has arrived as a consumer product (well, the Star Trek communicator at least). So just as, as a child, I eventually caught up with my peers with their 405 line black and white TV, I think we’ll see the devices I am currently using becoming ubiquitous in a few years time, as the prices come down, features become even richer, interfaces simpler and, hopefully, battery life improved.

Envisaging the Future Envisaging the future as the same as today, with the general population catching up with the early adopters, what might we predict? Let’s look at some of the things that I can do today and extrapolate their use (and the implication of such usage patterns) in a wider context: perhaps at school, at college and by the general public. The first point to make is that capturing content is easy, at least for sound and video. I’ve heard that recording/videoing lectures in Universities in the US is common (or at least in prestigous Universities in California). So rather than “can I borrow your notes for this morning’s lecture; I slept in” the updated version may be “beam me this morning’s lecture“. But we should remember that the old slogan that “content is king” is no longer necessarily true. Rather it could be argued that “communications, not content, is king“. Many of us, myself included, were surprised by the takeup of SMS text messaging, which, despite the poor user interface, has become incredibly popular, in the UK at least, and this takeup is reflected in the popularity of instant messenger applications such as MSN Messenger. 281 of 544

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Applying this approach within the content of more sophisticated mobile devices, we might see a growth in micro-blogging (as exemplified by Twitter) and podcasting / videocasting from one’s mobile phone. Indeed we can envisage how a voice message left while using a phone could easily be syndicated and accessed via a variety of platforms, in a manner similar to podcasting, without needing to be encumbered with the microphones and PC equipment which is normally associated with the creation of podcasts. And anything you can do with sound can also be applied to video, with the mobile phone acting as the camcorder. But rather than paying expensive rates using 3G technologies, a WiFi network with enable videocasting / videoblogging to be affordable - and even free in environments in which the user has access to an organisational WiFi network, such as is the case in many universities. So the content creation side of things is getting easier - and the services for accessing such resources is not longer restricted to the desktop, with, for example, Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook all providing access from mobile devices to their services. The popularity of Facebook will also lead to changing expectations regarding use of applications. We are finding with Facebook that users are treating applications as disposable: they are easy to install and, if you don’t find them of use, you thow away, like an unwanted toy. And this click-to-install, clickto-remove approach to applications is becoming the norm for mobile applications too. We seem to be rapidly moving towards both a blended environment (content can be both captured and viewed on a variety of platforms - and I’m conscious that I haven’t mentioned games machines) and a disposable environment, in which the application is no longer the important aspect. In this environment, we will find that the technology vanishes - with many users having little interest in the technological features for applications used on a daily basis; rather many people will make their purchasing decisions based on other factors, such as how cool it looks (and maybe David Beckham is still the style guru). And we shouldn’t be concerned at such developments. After all, we no longer regard the television or telephone as ‘technology’ and, for many, interest in purchasing hifi separates has disappeared, with the choice between buying a Sony or Philip HiFi system at Dixons being based on marketing and aesthetic considerations. Rather software developers should pat themselves on the back and say “job done” (except in niche areas and in the necessary back office functions which, like keeping the London sewerage system flowing, will still be needed but will be largely invisible).

Will This Happen? Will the future pan out like this? Probably not! Indeed, when I speculated a few years ago (July 2004) that the Netgem iPlayer (a digital TV box I use at home) will be a forerunner of Internet access via the TV, I was clearly wrong (or at least very premature in such speculations!) And the notion that software development will not continue to grow in importance will clearly be regarded as heresy by many readers of this blog (and has been predicted on many occassions previously, not least when The Last One application was released for the Commodore Pet in the early 1980s, if my memory is correct). 282 of 544

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And the notion that the future will be a simple extrapolation of currents trends has also been shown to be false (the streets of London are not covered in horse shit as was predicted in the nineteenth century). But, on the other hand, the blacksmith and related occupations have (almost) disappeared once the new technology of the internal combustion engine became popular. And, since I first started writing this post I have come across an update to the Nokia 95 article in Wikipedia which describes the Nokia N95 8GB device (increased memory and longer battery life) and read Apple’s announcement about the iPod Touch device which has WiFi support. So maybe the future is closer to realisation that I’m expecting. Although I’m sure that the future won’t be a linear progression based on what we have today. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Gadgets, General | Edit 13 Comments »

Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks September 20, 2007 In November 2006 UKOLN ran a day’s workshop on Exploiting The Potential Of Wikis which was held at Austin Court, Birmingham. The feedback for the event was very positive, with positive comments made not just about the content of the workshop but also the venue. This year, on 26th November 2007, we will be running a similar workshop on Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs And Social Networks. The event will have a similar format to last year’s workshop, with four institutional case studies in the morning, following by two talks which address the challenges which institutions will need to address after lunch. The talks will inform the group discussion sessions which will aim to identify the various issues which will need to be addressed (technical, legal, social, etc.) and ways in which institutions can exploit the potential of blogs and social networks whilst minimising associated risks. I’m pleased to say that the institutional cases studies will illustrate the diversity of approaches which are being taken across the higher education sector, ranging from use of blogging services in a managed VLE (WebCT), use of an open source solution (Elgg) and use of social networking services such as Facebook. In addition to the talks giving the views of the institution, I’m pleased to say that we’ll also be hearing about the students’ perspective, with a talk by Tom Milburn, Vice President Education at Bath University Students’ Union. The online booking form for the event is now available. The workshop fee, which includes workshop materials, lunch and coffee and access to the WiFi network, is £85. The closing date for bookings is Friday 26th October 2007 - but note that at last year’s event the workshop was fully subscribed two weeks before the closing date, so we would advise early booking. Technorati Tags: blogs-social-networks-workshop-2007 283 of 544

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Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Social Networking | Edit 3 Comments »

TokBox - A Useful Video-Conferencing Tool Or Something Sinister? September 19, 2007

The TokBox Video Chat Tool The TokBox instant video chat tool was reviewed by TechCrunch in August 2007. As with several of the Web 2.0 services I’ve mentioned on this blog, Tokbox is very easy to set up and use: simply register for a (free) account and, assuming you have a Webcam and microphone available, that’s about it. You can simply invite your friends to visit your area on the ToxBox Web site and they can then have a video chat with you, as illustrated below (in which I’m chatting to my colleague Paul Walk).

As is the norm for many Web 2.0 services, TokBox can be embedded in other Web pages or blogs. And ToxBox makes use of tagging for identification of users (I’ve used the ‘ukoln’ tag to identify myself). It also seems that ToxBox can support more than two users (the icon in the top right window shows the number of users).

The Hidden Dangers Last week when I started to evaluate TokBox I used it with a number of colleagues in. On one Later on Paul came into my office, telling me that he had been watching me and it was obvious that I was unaware that Paul had connected to my ToxBox account and was viewing the video and listening to me talking to myself! I had expected to approve anyone who wished to view my video feed, so I was 284 of 544

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surprised when this happened - although I realised that I would have missed a sound alert as I had turned down the sound on my loudspeaker.

Conclusions Should we be worried about the privacy implications of TokBox? My view is that this is an educational issue and, once we understand how the application works, we will use it in ways which reflect our particular requirements (indeed, one person commented on the TechCrunch article that TokBox is “going to force me to blog in something other than my pajamas.”). Although many video chat tools are available (including Skype) TokBox is interesting as it requires no software to be installed locally. Rather the integration with the Web browser is carried out using Flash. For me I think it could be a useful ‘just-in-case’ or ‘just-in-time’ communications tool, rather than something that I’ll use on a regular basis.I was also interested to read that a TokBox application for Facebook is now available. I was also interested to read a post on the Advercation blog which is “aggregating as many people’s TokBoxes as possible on one page” - an experiment which has some interesting possibilities. I have to admit that it reminds me of University Challenge, but I’m worried that, as a number of people have already commented, its killer use may be for the porn market :-(.

Technorati Tags: TokBox Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 13 Comments »

The ‘Me Too’ Web 2.0 Applications 285 of 544

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September 17, 2007 A few day’s ago I notice that Phil Bradley had updated his Twitter status with the comment “playing around with Trooker.com It’s really good… music videos galore!“. As I trust Phil’s views on Web 2.0 applications I had a look at Trooker. Sure enough, it’s another easy-to-use Web 2.0 service which provides access to video clips from services such as YouTube, allows comments to be provided, the video clips to be embedded in blogs and Web pages, etc. I know think that we are in now an era of plenty, with many Web 2.0 services providing similar approaches in the provision of access to multimedia resources, sharing resources, blogging, etc. (as an example compare Jaiku and Yappd). And I think this richness is to be appreciated - it is helping to demonstrate that there is a need for such services, and the variety of services available provides the user with choice, with features which are providing popular helping to open up the marketplace (who, for example, predicted the popularity of microblogging). Of course in a time when the harvest is bountiful, we need to make plans for the winter. For me, this involves ensuring that the data associated which such applications can be managed - and the approaches to the management can include hosting it locally or depositing it with a third-party service, having a just-in-time approach to data management (migrating the data if the licence conditions change) or even having a ‘am I bovvered?’ approach, which regards the data as playing a peripheral role to the needs of the service. This might be regarded as heretical in some circles but, to be honest, I’ve never bothered recording my phone calls, and just because I could record my Skype calls doesn’t mean I will. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 4 Comments »

Your Views On Externally-Hosted Web 2.0 Services September 14, 2007 I have found the My Questions Facebook application useful in getting focussed responses to questions I’ve raised. In the past few months I’ve asked for comments on Skype (most find it useful with only one person feeling it should be banned) and how institutions should respond to Facebook (almost everybody feels we should engage with it in some fashion, whilst being aware of possible dangers, and only one dissenting view from someone who feels it’s a fad). My question for this month is: Externally-hosted blogs, wikis, etc: (a) valuable solution for institutions which can save effort and resources; (b) to be avoided, as institutions need to be able to manage and tweak their own services or (c) an alternative view (please describe)? I’ve already found that asking this question has proved valuable, as Chris Adie 286 of 544

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has included a link to a document on Guidelines for Using External Services produced by the University of Edinburgh. Barry Cornelius, incidentally used the JISCMail mailing list to inform me of a document on Checklist for assessing third-party IT services which addresses similar issues and some time ago I wrote a QA Focus briefing document on Risk Assessment For Use Of Third Party Web 2.0 Services. What are your thoughts? If you can keep your responses down to 255 characters, you might wish to respond in Facebook; those who prefer to waffle on for longer than this may wish to respond to this blog post Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook, Web2.0 | Edit 8 Comments »

Amplified Conferences September 13, 2007 Matt Jukes, in a post about the JISC Services Skills Day, used the term “Amplified Conference” to describe the approach to be taken to the event. This term, which was coined by Lorcan Dempsey, describes a conference which exploits networked technologies to enable the topics addressed at a conference to be heard and influence a larger audience than would normally be the case. As I mentioned in a trip report, the JISC Services Day exploited the (excellent) network facilities at Said Business Business School by having a dedicated blogger, who produced a blog post in realtime for all of the plenary talks, and a tag for the event (’skillsday2007‘) which would enable the data created by users of other Web 2.0 tools - other bloggers, Flickr users (Stuart Yeates used this tag for the photographs he took on the day), people, like myself, who used del.icio.us to bookmark relevant resources, etc. - to be found and reused. And, incidentally, a photograph Stuart took of me managed to attract the attention of one person, with the comment “what a great portrait! full of life and twinkle. He looks like a good regaler.” (I’ll treat that as a complement!) In retrospect, however, it struck me that the approach taken merely amplified the voice of the speakers, by providing a transcipt of their talks. What we didn’t get was an amplification of the views of the participants at the event, or, indeed, the views of people who were unable to attend the event. At UKOLN we have been organising Amplified Events for some time. The technologies we have used include:

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Blogs: As with the JISC Services Skills day we have been lucky to have had a skilled writer (Owen Stephens) who has been comfortable enough with blogging technologies to provide real time blog reports which, as can been seen from the examples at UKOLN’s IWMW 2005 and IWMW 2006 events (and the UCISA 2004 and UCISA 2007 conferences) are readable and comprehesive, providing an excellent example of how to amplfiy talks at conferences. Skype: On a couple of occassions we have had remote participanmts who have listened in to an event using Skype (with Skype’s chat facility being used as a back channel, which allowed a local mentor to support the remote particpant). Wikis: At IWMW 2006 and IWMW 2007 we made use of MediaWiki 03/10/2008 14:51

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followed by WetPaint to support the brreakout groups. As can be seen from an example from IWMW 2007, this amplified the report of the discussion sessions which took place (moving away from the tyranny of the closed and non-interoperable world of flip charts!) Chat facilities: I feel that a chat facility provide the most democrat tool for amplifying an event, as it can be decoupled from plenary talks and discussion groups, allowing all participants an equal voice. The Gabbly service was used to provide a chat service at IWMW 2007, although other tools, such as IRC, have been used at other events. Podcasting and VideoCasting: Recording a talk or videoing a presentation can allow the content to be amplified in a time dimension, to complement the geo-spatial ammplification provided by the other tools I’ve mentioned. I should add that the benefits of this approach were brought home to me at the JISC CETIS Conference 2006, when, in the closing plenary talk on Blended Learning: Pragmatic Innovation, Jim Farmer (from the Center for Scholarly Systems Architecture, Georgetown University, USA) mentioned me in his list of people in the UK who had influenced his thinking. It turned out that Jim was referring to the recordings of the plenary talks for a joint UCISA/UKOLN/CETIS workshop on Initiatives & Innovation: Managing Disruptive Technologies event on I organised in February 2006. It seems that Jim listened to the recordings of the talks by Oleg Liber, Robert Sherrat and John Dale (but not my talk as I was unable to record my talk while simultaneously speaking!) during on long journey and cited the work described by these three speakers at various events and meetings over in the US. I think it is important to acknowledge that use of such technologires is not for everyone (as Matt Jukes recently mentioned, although he has several gadgets he enjoys using, at events he prefers to use a pen and paper for his notetaking. And not all events would be supportive of participants typing away at their keyboards while speakers are talking. We recognised this at IWMW 2005 (when we initially encouraged exploitation of the WiFi network at a UKOLN event) and ensured that we asked the participants for their feedback on this experiment. For this community the feedback was very supportive and we have built on this approach since then, although we still encourage feedback and seek to address the concerns of those who do find it distracting to be sat next toi people who are typing away during a presentation (perhaps we should have a quiet corner at such events, or perhaps a training course on how to type quietly! ) And note that UKOLN has published various briefing papers on the exploitation of WiFi networks at events, including ones on Exploiting Networked Applications At Events (briefing 106), Guidelines For Exploiting WiFi Networks At Events (briefing 107), Guide To The Use Of Wikis At Events 288 of 544

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(briefing 104) and Use Of Social Tagging Services At Events (briefing 105). These all have Creative Commons licences, so feel free to reuse the contents of the documents provided acknowledgements are given to UKOLN. Technorati Tags: skillsday2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events | Edit No Comments »

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting and All That September 12, 2007

The Event On Wednesday 5 September 2007 I attended a JISC Skills Update day on Exploiting Communication Channels which was held at Said Business School, Oxford. The event was very successful, as was clearly shown form the evaluation form for the event: the venue was particularly well-appreciated (over 75% of those who completed the online evaluation form thought that Said College was an excellent venue) and over 95% felt that the similar events should be held in the future. Other comments which were made included “This event was excellent and has provided us with lots of ideas for the future“, “I found the day excellent especially from the pov of networking face to face so another event like this would be useful! Really interesting to find the different models of use of web2.0 tools emerging” and “I found the day very informative and came back with many practical ideas for further investigation and discussion for implementation within our service“. The main focus of the event was on the potential role of Web 2.0 technologies (and Second Life) to support the communications infrastructure provided by JISC Service organisations - although the role of more well-established approaches (including email and both print and online newsletters) were also covered. It was pleasing that there seemed to be such a high level of interest in making greater use of technologies such as blogs and wikis within this particular community. Indeed several Web 2.0 technologies were used on the day itself, with live blogging of the talks and a scalable tag provided for the event (skillsday2007) which enabled resources related to the event to be easily found via Technorati. The issues that were raised during the questions seemed to be on “how?” (the best practices) rather than “why?” and there were some interesting questions raised about the different approaches to blogging taken by CETIS (blogs provided by individual CETIS SIG coordinators) and OSS Watch (individuals posting on a team blog). These are areas of interest to be (i.e. the broad question of deployment strategies for Web 2.0 technologies for national services) and will be something I will revisit in the near future.

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My Talk I was pleased that my talk on “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting and All That” was highlighted in the comments (”I thought Brian’s presentation was excellent!“) and appeared to be the most highly rated of the plenary talks with over 80% either agreeing or strongly agreeing. Note that, unfortunately the survey form was poorly designed and it wasn’t stated what they were agreeing with! But as one person commented “I hope that choosing “Strongly Agree” is interpreted as meaning I found the presentation strongly relevant and interesting (as I’m not sure from the wording of the questionnaire)” This is the interpretation I’ve taken too! In my talk I described my personal experiences in using blogs, wikis, multimedia and social networks. The slides are available on Slideshare and are embedded in this post (in suitably configured browsers and if you are viewing the original post).

In addition I created a brief (2 minute) video clip which is available on YouTube explaining why I use blogs, wikis and social networks. Again the video clip is embedded in this post.

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The video clip represents the initial experiment in use of my mobile phone for taking videos. I’m aware of some technical limitations (e.g. the lighting) - but I thought it would be useful to document the initial attempt. Technorati Tags: Technorati Tags: skillsday2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

Reminder of the UK Web Focus Evaluation September 11, 2007 As announced on 23rd August 2007, an evaluation of the UK Web Focus blog is currently being carried out, using the SurveyMonkey software. The comments received so far have been very useful in helping me to gain a better understanding of the reader community and the infrastructure which is being used for reading this blog. I have also received useful feedback on the aspects of the blog which readers find useful - and areas in which improvements can be made. The UK Web Focus has its first birthday on 1 November 2007. I am currently thinking about changes I could make which can enhance the service, so I would very much welcome feedback from readers who have not yet completed the (brief) evaluation. The evaluation form will be live until 22nd September. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit No Comments »

Butler Group Report: Rich Web Applications 291 of 544

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September 10, 2007

Summary of the Report I was recently invited to evaluate a Butler Group Report on “Rich Web Applications”. I was impressed by the quality of this report, which is very timely for those organisations which may be considering the development or Rich Web Applications (RWA) or Rich Internet Applications (RIA). And higher educational organisations which are involved in software development should, I feel, have a strong interest in this area, whether this is in applications which run within a Web browser (Google Maps providing a good example of a RWA) and Internet applications which do not require a Web browser (Google Earth is a good example of a RIA). This 267 page report suggests that RIA will provide the default approach to application development in the near future, with this approach currently in the transition from being used by the early adopters through to mainstream acceptance. Of particular interesting to those actively involved in JISC development strategies, including the JISC E-Framework, is the view that RWA and Web 2.0 ideas are being transferred to Enterprise Web 2.0. Similarly the report’s suggestion that importance of Software as a Service (SaaS) will be boosted by RWA is very closely aligned with the JISC’s Information Environment, and the well-established tradition of providing networked-based services for the academic sector. The report provides a useful overview of the different approaches to the development of RWA, ranging from Ajax toolkits and widget libraries and use of browser plugins (such as Adobe’s Flash player, Java applets and Microsoft Silverlight) and RIA development environments including Java or .NET. The report then provides an overview of the main development environments, suggesting that the Adobe Flex and Nexaweb platform are early leaders in the field, with Microsoft’s Rich User Experience (which seems to be a generic name which refers to Microsoft’s .NET Framework and Silverlight run-time browser plugin) and Sun’s Visual Web Pack and Netbeans IDE also worthy of consideration.

Implications for the Sector If the report is correct in its views on the importance of Rich Web Applications (and I suspect it is) then IT Service departments and other groups within our institutions which are involved in serious software development activities will need to make some significant decisions about the technical routes they should adopt. This report should help technical managers who will be involved in such decision-making processes. But I also feel that others involved in the provision and support of Web services need to have a better understanding of the implications in a growth in use of Rich Web Applications. At present I suspect many well-established institutional Web teams will have a development culture which is based on the notion of the Web as an informational resource, with policies based on the notion of a page-based service. But Rich Web Applications aren’t based a page metaphor. I suspect that we will find that existing policies and guidelines are likely to be 292 of 544

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irrelevant - but there may be battles to be fought before an appreciation of the richer Web environment is widely accepted. And one likely battlefield is likely to be the widely-held belief that JavaScript and/or browser plugins (which are required in order to deploy RWAs) cannot be deployed on Web sites which seek to be accessible. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit No Comments »

Guest Blog Post: The Eternal Beta September 6, 2007 Today’s guest blog post was written by Phil Wilson, who works in the Web Services Team at the University of Bath. Phil ran a workshop session at the IWMW 2007 event on “The Eternal Beta - Can it Work in an Institution?” in which he addressed the question of whether the Web 2.0 development phhilisophy of ‘always beta’ was applicable with the educational sector: Google’s famous for it, Flickr’s moved to Gamma, Moo are on an eternal 1.0 - yet still in institutions we plod on with a tired, slow-moving and opaque process for developing and enhancing applications. From our closed support lines to official notices on unread websites and applications mysteriously changing in front of a user’s very eyes we look staid and tedious. But it doesn’t have to be like that, we could be fast faced and interactive - but at what cost? Continuity? Uptime? I could ramble on about this for thousands of words, but I’ll try and keep it brief (for me): you take too long rolling out software you don’t do enough unit testing or user testing One of the leading ideas of eternal beta is small improvements all the time. It’s the preferred model for developing Web 2.0 applications (just look at Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and about a billion Silicon Valley startups). The essence is that if you’ve changed something small and you’re waiting for the next milestone before you release, you’re crazy - just deliver it. If it turns out to be wrong or broken in some way, you can just change it again. There are a couple of things people typically reply with: One of the big fears that it hasn’t been user-tested enough. Well, in institutions we’ve got thousands of technically-minded members - staff and students alike; what do you think the odds are on being able to make, say, twenty of them beta testers? (It’s critical to get testers from outside your team; your team are effectively the alpha testers) I mean, you’ve probably got bloggers, Facebook group founders and tech contacts everywhere. See who you can find to test your apps - it doesn’t have to be the same people for all of them, and make it worth their while either by delivering a better application to them than everyone else, or maybe some mark of kudos inside the application that everyone else can see. This does rely on being able to get good feedback from your testers - hey, you’d 293 of 544

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hope that if your software is good enough they’ll be telling you anyway, but you can use incentives or whatever floats their feedback-giving boat. The important part is exposing the feedback communication channel; maybe it’s a forum, maybe it’s blog where you post the new features and they add comments, maybe it’s a weekly meetup in the bar. Whatever you do, talking to those people and making sure that they can see that there are other active testers, whom you’re listening to and actually replying to is A1 critical. No trust == no good feedback. The other big fear is that this basically throws traditional software development and delivery out of the window (farewell, cruel Gantt chart). When a team suddenly has deliverable dates measured in the days rather than the months you suddenly discover that the priorities change and you start getting peoplefocussed software rather than something focussed on year-old requirements. This is where agile techniques start kicking in. Things like pair-programming, continuous integration, automated deployment are all your friends. Techniques like PRINCE2 and Scrum are there to pick up the rest of the slack. In the real world, although my team isn’t quite there yet (notably with the feedback), we’re trying hard and it’s paying dividends in terms of delivered software and happier users. Phil Wilson Web Services University of Bath Phil’s blog: http://philwilson.org/blog/ Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post, iwmw2007 | Edit 3 Comments »

Guest Blog Post: Web 2.0 and Sustainability September 5, 2007 Today’s guest blog post comes from Ross Gardler, manager of JISC’s OSS Watch service and a co-faciliator of a workshop session at IWMW 2007 on “Sustainable Services: Solidity based on Openness?”. At OSS Watch we spend a considerable amount of time highlighting sustainability as one of the key benefits of open source. There is no central organisation that can simply “pull the plug” on the product and its maintenance. Open source licences ensure that the software will always be available and, while there are active users of that software, it will always be maintained.This perpetual availability of open sourced software is only one of the key benefits provided by open source licences. Another is the ability to take that software and customise it for your own needs. To add new features and to disable features not important to your situation. In other words to take a “close fit” solution and mould it into a “better fit” solution.Web services that provide open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) present similar mix-and-match benefits, at least on the surface, that open source provides, but does it provide the same level sustainability in your solutions?This was the topic of a workshop session I hosted with Andrew Savory at the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 entitled “Sustainable Services: Solidity based on 294 of 544

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Openness?“. In this session we asked how participants measured the sustainability of their chosen software solutions. The list of criteria produced included items such as: reliability reputation scale of the provider significance of us as a customer data ownership and openness fashion community flexibility The full list was far too long to detail in this post, but a few were clearly more important than others. This became particularly evident when we proceeded to evaluate a number of well known Web services against the defined criteria. For example, data access was critical in most Web services. Was the data available in an open standard that made it interoperable with other services? Having put data into the service, could you get it out again? Flexibility was another major concern for the API approach. Did the API allow us to achieve what we want to achieve? I would argue, like Mark Pilgrim, that this should not be an issue, we should have access to our data, and all derived data, as a matter of course - it’s our data after all. Mark observes that “praising companies for providing APIs to get your own data out is like praising auto companies for not filling your airbags with gravel.“ Workshop participants also noted that there is no guarantee that a service will be provided in the future. A topic that Brian Kelly discussed here in this blog when Splashblog closed its doors. Brian suggested that such closures could be considered by some to be a clear justification for not making use of such external Web 2.0 services - a point made by a number of our session participants. Indeed, many services were marked down quite heavily since they are largely unproven beta services with no clear business model. Despite this healthy concern over the longevity of service offerings, workshop attendees felt that some services, such as Shibboleth, are more sustainable because they have public money behind them. However, as Brian goes on to observe, even public sector services are not guaranteed to be there forever. To support his point Brian cites a BBC news article describing the closure of 551 government Web sites and wonders what happens to data held by the AHDS when funding ceases. The overall conclusion of our workshop attendees was that Web services should only be relied upon for non-critical functions in your institution. Over time we may become more comfortable with relying on third party services, but for now we need to be careful. I liken it to the development of voice communications technologies. We don’t worry about having a dial tone the next time we pick up the phone, but the recent Skype outage shows we can’t rely on the newer voice communications services. The result is that Skype is not suitable for emergency calls.

Reaching Sustainability Through Openness In my opinion one way of moving towards more sustainable services at a sensible pace is through openness in the development of those services. That is, 295 of 544

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if a service uses open data standards, provides fully open access to all its data and its APIs and encourages users to participate in the ongoing development of the service, I, as a user, am more likely to stick with it past my initial, experimental, use. For example, I love the idea of Dopplr, but I haven’t gone past exploration because it fails to provide the data in format that is useful to my objectives (Editor’s Note: Phil Wilson pointed out that a Doppler API has recently been annouded at http://dopplr.pbwiki.com/. This comment was added at the request of Ross Gardler on 6 Septmeber 2007). Conversely, just 10 hours after the announcement of a beta API for OhLoh I had integrated OhLoh data into Simal, the OSS Watch project cataloguing tool. As soon as OhLoh produces an API for submitting data I’ll ensure the flow is two way, making both projects more likely to survive. However, openness should not stop at the data and the APIs. I need to ensure that the service remains aligned with my strategic objectives. I want to be able to contribute directly to the flexibility and sustainability of the service in ways that suit my needs. This is where Oh Loh falls down, it is not open source and so my contribution options are limited. Open source enables us, as users, to choose how to invest our resources in sustainable solutions. We can purchase related products such as support and hosting, or we can fund strategic development, or we can ensure our own staff help support and sustain the product through direct contribution of use cases, documentation, feature requests, bug fixes and even new feature implementations. All of these actions help ensure the product survives and continues to be available to our own organisation. Web service companies will gladly accept similar contributions from us. The big difference between the two approaches is that with open source we have the freedom to decide where our resources are invested. We can maximise the impact our investment has on our individual utilisation of the service, thus making the service more useful. We are even free to take the software and create our own version should our objectives diverge considerably from the originating service provider (although this can usually be avoided if the project is well managed and cultivates a healthy community). Most of us want the convenience of a service provider, but such convenience comes with the risk of potential lock-in and, even worse, the loss of a critical service. Having access to the source code means that we increase competition and consequently increase innovation in the code base. It does not prevent companies from differentiating themselves through the provision a more reliable and usable service within their chosen market niche. Given the choice, I will always use a Web service that makes its source code available under an open source licence, even if that service is less developed than closed competitors. In most cases I will still purchase the service from a provider, but I want to keep my options open in order to ensure my own offerings are sustainable. Our workshop participants largely agreed with this view, they too were more concerned about having control over their own organisations future in the long term than they were about the short term gains of adopting closed service models. Ross Gardler OSS Watch OUCS 296 of 544

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13 Banbury Road University of Oxford Oxford OX2 6NN OSS Watch Web site: http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/ OSS Watch blog: http://involve.jisc.ac.uk/wpmu/oss-watch/ Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post, iwmw2007 | Edit 13 Comments »

Guest Blog Post: The Web Community Discussion Group Session at IWMW 2007 September 4, 2007 Today’s guest blog post was written by Debbie Nicholson, of the Web Support Unit at the University of Essex. Debbie writes about the Institutional Web Management Workshop and the discussion group session she attended on “The Web Community” and the implications for the Web community. I didn’t sign up for this discussion group … I signed up for one of the Greener Web discussion groups. I got a bit seduced by the idea of the whole Web community though. Having written my workshop session extolling the virtues of social networking and facilitating community of practice, it seemed wrong to suddenly change sides and start rooting for the environment … Also, Mike McConnell was chairing the session and he offered me beer if I would take notes for him … fair exchange, or so I thought! From past experience, the discussion groups can be either really good or really bad. This year was no exception. I know of a few people who didn’t go back to their second discussion group session as they just didn’t think it was worth it. I know of one group where the chair turned up, said he wasn’t sure what they were supposed to be talking about, but that he wouldn’t be there the second day anyway… I think we actually had more people at our second session than the first. Word had obviously travelled that we were having a good discussion and really trying to come up with some answers … either that or someone had heard Mike mention beer. We went into our session and did the usual … little eye contact, talk to no one. I suggested moving the chairs from classroom style rows, into a more discussion friendly circle-ish shape … and all of a sudden people started smiling and talking, and making eye contact! Mike soon put a stop to that with the regulation and totally hateful ‘5 minutes to introduce yourselves to someone you don’t know’. Now this one is a little tricky… I’ve been going to IWMW for 6 years now. There are lots of people I don’t *really* know, but so many people I’ve seen around. So many names I’ve seen on documents and mailing lists, but like I say, I don’t really know them … but I almost feel as though I do. Once we started the discussion it quickly transpired that we had quite a bit to say on the subject … 11 pages of notes in fact. And that only included the stuff 297 of 544

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that I was quick enough to write down. I also discovered that it’s actually quite difficult to be part of the discussion and write the notes. I wanted to jump in so many times, however, by the time I’d written up what was being said, someone else had got in first - and I had to write up their comments (repeat as necessary)! After the conference I got the train back to London with Mike, his parting words were “thanks for writing the notes babe, just erm, type hem up and post them to me”. I sat at my desk about a week later looking at 11 pages of scrawl … Note to self: this just has to be easier if you do it straight away. Meaningless lines joining up one half a sentence with a whole load of words I couldn’t read, and some I clearly couldn’t spell… Only one thing for it… put the coffee on! I’m such a bugger for vacuuming the cat when there’s a rubbish job to be done. Some time later, the notes started to emerge. What was really lovely about doing this job, apart from finishing it obviously, was the enthusiasm of the session really came back to me. The fact that we actually came up with action points. Things that we wanted to achieve … nothing that could be classed as rocket science, just practical things hat we want to put in place to take the ‘Web Management Community’ from being an idea, to a reality. Maintain the Facebook for IWMW, either year by year or a general IWMW group that we can all subscribe to. Try to encourage as many people as possible to sign up and become a part of it, and to think how we can make it bigger (can we incorporate any of the ideas from the Innovation competition…?). Like I said, not rocket science, but at least doable, something we can put our hands on … unlike the beer I was promised!!! The mailing lists serve a purpose, they’ve worked well for many years to provide information, solutions, a point of contact … can we really call that a community though? When we go to the conference, we are only ever one drink in the bar away from making a fab new contact or a bloody good friend. With Facebook (or something similar) we can put a face to all the names we’ve seen around, or indeed a name to the face (how many people do we see year in year out and just can’t remember what they are called…?), we can post a comment, or make contact with someone we’ve wanted to speak to but don’t feel we know them well enough, we can invite people to gigs that are half way across the country … they might not be able to go - but god it’s nice to be asked (thanks Claire) … In short, we can create a community. IWMW was the reason I joined Facebook. I wanted to know who else was going to the conference, all the details and any gossip … It’s turned into so much more than that for me though, and clearly that is the case for others too. People are using it, posting work related questions, joining groups that will provide us with more information and more contacts. I’ve managed to get back in touch with people I haven’t spoken to in years, made some really useful contacts, and made some lovely new friends too. It’s scary to contact someone you don’t know for advice - how much easier is it to just get in touch and say “Thanks for turning me into a vampire, by the way, do you know anything about…?“ Discussion notes are available on the IWMW 2007 wiki at http://iwmw2007.wetpaint.com/page/Discussion_F Debbie Nicholson Web Support Unit University of Essex 298 of 544

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Debbie’s contact details are also available on Facebook. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post, iwmw2007 | Edit No Comments »

Guest Post: Post Your Favourite IWMW 2007 Video Moments September 3, 2007 The regular guest blog post this month features a number of articles about the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 (IWMW 2007) held at the University of York on 16-18th July 2007. In this month’s opening guest blog post Anthony Leonard, who coordinated the live streaming of the plenary talks at IWMW 2007, shares his favourite moments and invites readers of the blog to suggest their preferences. Brian has kindly asked me to write about our experiences in streaming the recent IWMW 2007 plenary talks. What I’d like to do is to ask readers of this blog what they considered their favourite moments from what was, as usual, a great event. Anyone can create a link to a specific point in the streams simply by clicking the “Link To Now” button during playback. Once clicked, a new browser window opens a special URL which starts playing the stream at the point you specified. Simply cut and paste this URL into a comment on this post, or anywhere else you feel like for that matter. (Neat huh? Now there’s something you can’t do on Google Video, yet!). For the record, here are my top three favourites: 1. Satisficing 2. PLEs digested 3. Caught on camera I’ve focused on the lighter side to get things going, but you might want to highlight something that made you think, learn, worry or recoil as much as smile or laugh - anything really that stuck in your mind and is worth a second look. So go on, if you’d like to, why not find your favourite moments from the IWMW 2007 videos, click on the “Link to Now” button and post the URLs back as comments to this blog post. Technorati Tags: IWMW2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post, iwmw2007 | Edit 3 Comments »

It’s A Walled Garden August 31, 2007 299 of 544

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What would you say about a service which: Replicated resources meant for sharing Had very little structure to be used for resources Had long, application-specific URIs Required the user to change the URIs of a resource if the appearance of the resource was to be modified Made repurposing of resources difficult Often hides resources behind an authentication barrier Uses proprietary software to host the service I have heard the expression “walled garden” used to describe services which, although they may be popular with their users, makes it difficult for the content to be reused. So what service and I describing here? The answer is the JISCMail service, which is based on L-Soft’s Listserv software, which is illustrated below.

In more detail, the ways in which the service acts as a walled garden, making interoperability with other services difficult include:

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The main entry point for list archives on the JISCMail Web site does not necessarily provide a citeable URI. For example if you go to JISCMail’s home page and search for the website-info-mgt list you are taken to the 03/10/2008 14:51

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address http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/quicktype.cgi?m - which does not provide the address of the list’s archive. The URI for individual messages changes if the structure of the list archive is reorganised. For example, as can be seen in the accompanying image access to archives in by year for 2006 and earlier. Unfortunately this change in the user interface resulted in links to messages before the interface was reorganised are now broken - thus resulting in loss of citation links to potentially valuable posts which may have been references in peer-reviewed publications. The lack of structure provided for list archives mean that off-line browsers, which enable related areas of a Web site to be downloaded to an off-line browser cannot be used. Links to individual posts break well-established guidelines which require URIs to provide resource locators which are independent of the technology used to access the resource. A typical URI for a post in a JISCMail Web archive is of the form http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin /webadmin?A2=ind0706&L=website-info-mgt&T=0&F=& S=&X=40A26C40166C54F05D&Y=b.kelly%40ukoln.ac.uk&P=155 Messages in JISCMail Web archives aren’t been indexed by indexing robots, resulting in potentially useful information being hidden from popular search engines such as Google. The content of the JISCMail mail archives is not being archived by the Internet Archive, thus resulting in the potential loss to a service which provides a global Web archiving service. Although RSS feeds are available for mailing lists, in practice their functionality is very limited, as (a) only the subject line of individual posts is provided, and not the full content or start of the content, as is normally the case, meaning that the user has to visit the Web site in order to see if the post is of interest and (b) authentication is often required in any case before the RSS feeds can be accessed. In addition to the limitations of the mail archive provided on the JISCMail Web site, use of email itself also has several limitations: Unneccessary duplication of information: e,.g. an attached file sent to a mailing list is replicated, leading to additional disk space usage and maintainance difficulties if the resource is updated. Email lists are prone to spam. Although JISCMail has a good reputation in filtering out spam, it appears that increasing numbers of users are turning away from email because of these limitations. Does this mean that JISCMail is of no use? The answer is most certainly, no. I am a member of several JISCMail lists, and have been a subscriber since the service was launched - and of its predecessor, Mailbase. And clearly JISCMail is well-loved by many of its users. But when the term ‘walled garden’ is used to refer to new services it is important, I feel, to apply a similar level of criticism to existing services. And, as with JISCMail, this is not necessarily a clinching argument, as there are factors such as popularity with the user community which need to be recognised. On the other hand, in response to a post on Email IS Dying the initial two responses felt that:

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I agree that email is dying. Many of our students no longer check their inboxes in the same way they don’t check their pigeon holes, but MySpace and Facebook (and Bebo) combined are small 03/10/2008 14:51

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potatoes in comparison with the traffic going across IM and SMS. Microsloth messenger was the “killer app” after Netscape. and I agree with this entirely. We’ve stopped sending out mass emails to our students because they simply don’t read them! Online noticeboards, forums and the social networking sites are much more effective. We don’t utilise IM and SMS as much as we’d like too (yet!) but this is certainly the direction we’re heading in to communicate with our students. So perhaps the lack of interest which seems to being shown by growing numbers of students, coupled with the limitations in interoperability provided by mailing list software means that mailing lists will soon meet Gopher and Usenet in a repository of obsoleted software. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 15 Comments »

Initial Experiences With VCasmo August 29, 2007 I recently wrote an article about Zentation, a Web 2.0 service which enables a video clip to be synched with a PowerPoint presentation. I received a comment on that post, suggesting that I should check out VCasmo. So I did - and I’m impressed. And my advice if thinking about using an externally hosted Web 2.0 service, is to look for more than one, so that you have an alternative if things go wrong.

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Although Zentation was easy to use, it’s interface did seem rather clunky. Vcasmo, by contrast, does seem easier to use and provides the facilities we nowadays expect from these type of Web 2.0 services. For example, rather than having to go to the service to view the presentation (which you can do) it is also possible, and will often be preferred, to embed the page in a Web page, as illustrated. Now this service is new (there are fewer than 200 resources which have been uploaded, and mine was one of the first in the Academic category). And using a Technorati search I only found one blog post about the service. But every service starts from scratch, and this one is definitely worth investigating. The steps I took in creating this resources were as follows. Firstly I took the video, using a Nokia N95 camera. I then uploaded the video clip to Google Video (together with YouTube). I then created a number of PowerPoint slides which summarised what Kara had said and uploaded the slides to both VCasmo and Zentation. After some simple editing to add the title and relevant metadata I synched the video clip hosted on Google Video with the appropriate slides, as illustrated below.

I will be making further use of Vcasmo, I think. Has anybody else tried it? Or are there alternatives worth considering? Technorati Tags: vcasmo Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

Blogging Masterclass at ILI 2007 303 of 544

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August 28, 2007 Last month I mentioned that Kara Jones and myself will be running a blogging masterclass, the day before the start of the ILI 2007 conference. We are about to finalise the materials for the workshop. We would like to include various examples of uses of blogs within the library sector, including academic libraries, public libraries and national libraries. We would particularly welcome examples of the various ways in which blogs are being used, descriptions of any barriers you might have experienced (or may be experiencing) in setting up blogs and ways in which you may have addressed such barriers and approaches you have taken to ensuring your blog is sustainable.

Many thanks to Tom Roper for giving his thoughts when I initially mentioned this masterclass. And thanks to my co-facilitator, Kara Jones, for agreeing to provide a video clip about the workshop session. This video is is available as a sidebar widget on this blog’s home page, using the Vod:Pod service and the Vod:Pod widget. Technorati Tags: ILI2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 2 Comments »

Further Experiments With Slidecasts August 27, 2007 I have been carrying out some further experiments with Slideshare’s Slidecast facility, which allows uploaded presentations to be synched with audio. In a previous post on the Slidecast service I was self-conscious of my ums and errs, perhaps because I was giving the talk along in my office and was thinking about both what I was talking about and the technology itself. For a more recent Slidecast on Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting and All That I prepared a script of what I was intending to say and used that as the basis of the talk (although I did not necessarily read the script faithfully). I am more pleased with the audio, this time, although whether this is because I am more comfortable 304 of 544

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with the application, and not necessarily due to me preparing the script is not yet clear. And I still need to work on the best ways for managing Audacity, the open source application I use for recording and editing the audio. I also discovered that the text included in screen dumps couldn’t be read in the Slidecast, so I’ll have to address that issue as well.

I recently discussed these issues with Andy Powell and Bernadette Swanson (nee Daly), both former colleagues of mine at UKOLN. A suggestion Bernadette made was to had a few drinks before recording the sound track, as this would put you more at ease. I haven’t (yet) tried this approach, but it might be something to bear in mind. How have others addressed the concerns that many of us probably have about how they sound on a recording? Technorati Tags: slidecast Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

An Embarrassing Image Bot August 24, 2007 An approach I’ve taken to maximising the impact of this blog has been register it (and its RSS feed) in various locations. One of these was the MyBlogLog service, as I’ve described previously. As well as providing access to the blog by visitors to the MyBlogLog service (and I notice there have been 600 visitors in the last seven days) this service also allows you to embed a widget in your sidebar, showing an image of recent readers (who obviously need to register with the service and provide an 305 of 544

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image). I have also felt that this can provide a useful way of getting to know your readers; it allows allows readers to see who else has recently been reading the blog. MyBlogLog subscribers can chose for themselves the image they wish to upload. In many social networking services we are finding that people upload caricatures of themselves, or an image which may reflect their interests (such as, as shown in the accompanying image, a cat). Last week, however, I noticed that the image for one reader showed a pair of buttocks. And this image appeared to stay for about a week. As the person’s own blog is called “Becoming A Pick-Up Artist” I decided that it was unlikely that this was a reader who had a legitimate interest in my blog, but is actually an interesting example of link spam (someone who seeks to increase traffic to their blog by providing links in other blogs, often via blog comments). Today I noticed that the image had been changed - it is now a portrait photograph of a man wearing a wig and a mask over his eyes. This image isn’t as embarrassing (or offensive to some) as the previous one, but it still is spam, I feel. So I have emailed MyBlogLog to inform them of this. More interestingly, though, are the implications of allowing images to be included in a blog without any form of moderation. Would the example I’ve described cause problems if used in the context of a school? And what if, for example, a groups of users had an image which included a poster giving the first letter of their name - and, first, Frank, followed by Ursula, followed by Connie and Kay read my blog. Nothing wrong with the individual images, but put together in a particular order … My take on this is that I will observe the patterns of usage, and ensure that I can remove such widgets if they display content which is illegal or causes real offence. However as someone who needs to be able to identify such issues and to advice others I will continue to make use of such services. Of course the image could only be seen by people who came to the UK Web Focus blog side and looked at the sidebar. Now that I’ve included an image in this post, it will be seen by readers who use a blog aggregator or an RSS reader. I hope the image isn’t considered offensive to anybody! Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 3 Comments »

Your Feedback On The UK Web Focus Blog August 23, 2007 What tools are readers of the UK Web Focus blog using - do you visit the host Web site (at ukwebfocus.wordpress.com) or use an RSS reader? Or perhaps you read the postings which have been aggregated elsewhere (such as on the JISC Emerge or Planet OSS Watch Web sites or within the Facebook environment). If the latter is the case, I may not be aware of any comments you may have 306 of 544

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given to my postings - and I won’t have access to any statistics about your visits. In order to try and get some information about the diversity of environments which may be used by readers of my posts, I have created a feedback survey. And, as well as you providing me with information about your environment, the survey also allows you to provide general feedback on your view of the blog, such as the content, the publication frequency or any other comments you may have. In order to ensure that the survey can be completed in a diversity of environments, it has been decoupled from the UK Web Focus blog environment. Instead a SurveyMonkey form has been set up which contains just seven questions: three about the tools you use for reading the blog whilst the remainder allow you to give your comments and suggestions. The survey is provided by SurveyMonkey (and is illustrated in the image). I look forward to reading your responses. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 4 Comments »

Use of Facebook in Primary Schools August 23, 2007 Back in November 2006 Andy Powell wrote a post on Building a Web 2.0 school Web site in which he described the approaches to had taken to support the development of the Newbridge Primary school in Bath, of which he is a school govener. As Andy described “the site is a mash-up of content pulled from Google 307 of 544

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Calendar (calendar entries), Flickr(images), Blogger (blogs), Del.icio.us (links) and Google Maps (maps)“. He went on to “The server-side and client code needed to make all this hang together is surprisingly light. A Javascript object here or there to pull in the Google and Flickr stuff. A simple ASP script and XSL transformation to process RSS feeds from Blogger and Del.icio.us into XHTML. Not a lot else.“ I thought at the time that the architecture for the Web site (which is illustrated below) was very appropriate for a school, which is likely to have very limited technical expertise. I also felt that this approach could equally be used in many other contexts.

The provision of a Web site for a school, of course, raises many ethical issues, As can be seen if you visit the school’s Web site there is no information about the children, and photographs on the Web site, which are hosted on the Newbridge Primary school’s Flickr account, are of the children’s art works and not of their appearances in, for example, the school’s Chritmas concert. A very sensible approach which ensures that the school has a simple to use and maintained Web presence, whilst avoiding the pitfalls associated with hosting personal information related to young children. I was therefore intrigued when I noticed that Andy had joined a Newbridge Primary School, Bath Facebook group. So I subscribed to the 308 of 544

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group to see how it it is being used. What I discovered was that the group contains access to photographs and discussions from current and former pupils, on topics such as who the school’s finest teacher was (and the discussion on the best hymn in “Songs of Praise” is not quite what one might expect. What we seem to have is a Web site based on an appropriate Web 2.0 technical architecture, with thought clearly given to appropriate content and the potential risks, and an environment provided in Facebook where the school children themselves create the content and discuss topics of interest to them. But if the children are uploading their photos (with video clips surely to come), what are the implications for the policies which apply to the school Web site? The parents will find the Web site useful (it has the prospectus for the schools, dates of school holidays and other information which the parents will need to know). But there seems to be little of interest to the pupils themselves. Will we find ourselves in a position in which the official Web site for a school takes a very conservative approach to access to personal information and provision of user-generated content, whilst such information and discussions can take place freely elsewhere? Technorati Tags: Facebook Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 1 Comment »

Predicting The Twitter Backlash August 22, 2007 I recently described Twitter and my initial experiments with it. I then, via a Technorati Twitter tag, I came across a post about Twitku, which integrates the Twitter and Jaiku micro-blogging tools. And I also discovered a mobile version of Twitter which can run on smartphones. 309 of 544

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All very interesting, and an example of the benefits of providing data in open formats which can be reused and providing open APIs, many would point out. But why do I feel that there will be a backlash against Twitter and other microblogging applications? We seem to find that after the early adopters and enthusiasts of a technology start to spread the word across a wider community that doubts are expressed. Some will be perfectly legitimate, but others may be based on personal preferences and concerns (”I don’t have time to learn something new”, “Why should I describe every detail of what I’m doing?”, etc.) , beliefs (”It’s not open source”) or perhaps organisational concerns (”But this undermines the software we’ve been developing”) . And other doubts may reflect one’s cultural background - we Brits, after all, tend to be sceptical of over-enthusiasm, perhaps restricting ourselves to grudging praise if something is demonstrably successful, but secretly preferring to grumble about our failures (in the sporting arena, many people, who have no memories of England’s World Cup success in 1966, expect a regular 4-yearly cycle of over-hyped expectations followed by the despondency). So what attacks might we expect to see on Twitter? We may have stories in the tabloid press about homes being burgled after the owner had twittered about going on holiday or how a house was wrecked when children organised a party when their parents were away (and this later example did hit the national press after an announcement was made on MySpace). And in response, if the take-up of micro-blogging has demonstrated that there is a significant demand for such services, we might see the development of managed micro-blogging environments (the KidsTwit or JISC-Twit services, perhaps). But isn’t this what the Facebook status field has sought to provide (although, as Paul Walk described recently, access to an RSS feed for the status field is freely available, so perhaps Facebook isn’t quite as closed as people have suggested). We do need, I feel, to be very careful and precise when we talk about open and closed services. And, returning to the specifics of Twitter, there’s a need to make it clear that just because some may find benefits (both professional and personal) in its use, this doesn’t imply an expectation that everybody should be using it - there may be need to inform others about its potential but this should not imply that it must be used. Now has anybody spotted any Twitter backlash? Technorati Tags: twitter, twitku Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Twitter | Edit 6 Comments »

Doomed Web Sites August 20, 2007 On 12th August I received an email which informed me that: 310 of 544

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.. the Splashblog service will be terminated on SEPTEMBER 10th, 2007. The Splashblog website, any uploaded pictures or content, and customer support will no longer be accessible after this time. I subscribed to Splashblog’s free service (which provides a mobile photo blogging service) in January, as the Splashblog application was bundled with a Palm PDA which I’d purchased. I never actually used the service, so the withdrawal of the service does not affect me. However having only a month’s notice to export one’s data did strike me as rather worrying. One could easily envisage a scenario in which a service like this is intended for use in a teaching course, but the lecturer is away on sabbatical during the summer and fails to stop this message and act on it, resulting in loss of the service and data. Clear justification for not making use of such external Web 2.0 services, you might argue. We should either be hosting our own services, or at least using services which are managed by trusted public sector organisations and aren’t subject to commercial decisions, takeovers, etc. But this isn’t necessarily the case, as struck me when I was reminded of the article published on the BBC News Web site in January 2007 on The doomed government websites which listed 551 government Web sites which are to be axed. What is the future of the data and services provided on these Web sites? What should be done to support not only the direct users of the services, but indirect use; perhaps, for example, these services could be used in an educational context. And if you work in one of the affected government agencies, what steps should you be taking now to (a) inform your user communities; (b) ensure that access to data and services which will still be required can be found and accessed by the users and (c) ensure that resources which may have some historical relevance are preserved? These issues have been brought to my attention by the headlines in the BBC News article. But the issues are also very relevant in other sectors: what will happen to the data and services provided by the AHDS when their funding ceases; what happened to the data and services provided by universities which have merged in recent years (for example, University of North London and London Guildhall University)? If we don’t have answers to these questions, we mustn’t use the demise of the Splashblog service as an excuse to ban use of externally hosted services provided by the commercial sector. After all, Google has a lifespan which is longer than, for example, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which was only established in June 2007. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 9 Comments »

Tweet Twerp August 18, 2007 Some time ago I heard that there were two types of Twitter users: those who had 311 of 544

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used it, didn’t get it and had given up and those who used it, didn’t get it, but were still trying. I’m now beginning to get it, I think, as I’ll describe. For those who haven’t come across Twitter, it is described in Wikipedia as “a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, email, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific“. Unlike conventional blogs (which can be used in isolation), I feel the important aspect aspect of Twitter is its social aspect: you write a short summary (which is beginning to be referred to as a tweet) of what you’re doing or thinking, and that is integrated in a Web page with the tweets from the twitterers (the term which is being used to refer to Twitter users) you have chosen to follow. I met some fellow twitters at the IWMW 2007 event (Paul Boag and Phil Wilson) and in the pub on a rainy night before the event started Paul and Phil described some of the advantages they have found in twittering what they are doing. Paul described how useful it was when working in a distributed organisation: it provides a virtual water-cooler, which enables people to say what they’re doing, their plans for the weekend, etc. Phil then described how it has enabled him to receive help and support from his fellow twitters: his tweet might say how frustrated he is getting an application installed, and a fellow twitters might read this and provide advice. This discussion convinced me that I should make greater use of twitter myself, to see if I found any benefits. So after returning from IWMW 2007, then going to a conference at Cardiff I was about to head off to Newcastle, on the day after the floods had arrived. And a minute after writing this, Pete Johnston responded, warning me that it was not possible [added this in response to Pete's comment which pointed out I'd omitted this] to go by train to Birmingham. Fortunately I was flying, but this demonstrated to me the potentially usefulness of Twitter.

One advantage, I feel, is that it is not as intrusive as email or instant messaging. These thoughts came back to me as last night I was reading a post by Andy Powell on the eFoundations blog and I think respond to Andy’s post (and Pete Johnston’s confession) by paraphrasing Middle of the Road’s lyrics:

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Last night I heard Andy Powell singing this song Ooh wee chirpy chirpy tweep tweep Chirpy chirpy tweet tweet Tweet twerp

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Are there any fellow twitterers reading this blog? Have you found any useful benefit? Technorati Tags: twitter Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Twitter | Edit 6 Comments »

TechWatch Report on XML-based Office Document Standards August 17, 2007 A JISC TechWatch report on XML-based Office Document Standards (TSW0702) has just been published. As described on the TechWatch Web site: This TechWatch report explains these issues and some of the standards involved. It proposes that although the UK higher and further education sector has, for a long time, understood the interoperability benefits of open standards, it has been slow to translate this into easily understandable guidelines for implementation at the level of everyday applications such as office document formats. As far as education is concerned, the use of modifiable office document formats has now reached a crucial stage. There is an urgent need for co-ordinated, strategically informed action over the next five years, if the higher education community is to facilitate a cost effective approach to the switch to XML-based office document formats. The report, written by Walter Ditch, (and featured in The Register and on ZDnet) provides a very useful background to the needs for open document formats, a discussion about what openness means in this context (which references two of my papers on “Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access” and “A Contextual Framework For Standards“) and provides a summary of the strengths and weakness of the Open Document Format (ODF) and the Office Open XML format (OOXML). The report argues that it is now timely for the HE sector to address the issue of how we should move away from use of proprietary office file formats. The report doesn’t make a recommendation on which format(s) we should adopt or on the deployment strategies we will need - and I think the report is wise in this respect, as any decisions taken now may be made redundant by decisions to be made by ECMA regarding the standardisation of OOXML in the near future. However the report does provide very useful information which will help to inform future discussions. Recommended reading for a topic which, as Paul Anderson, the technical editor of the report, says on his blog there is ”a searing debate about which particular XML format all these software packages should make use of and which standard they should use“. Paul goes on to say “It’s an indication of how deeply these issues are felt and how bitter the XML standardisation battle has become. It really is a war of words.” Paul’s editorial role and the peer-reviewing process for this report have helped to ensure that the content of 313 of 544

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the report provides a neutral summary of the background to the standardisation processes. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit No Comments »

Facebook: Engage with it or leave it alone? August 16, 2007

The Question Do institutions (a) need to engage with Facebook as our students like it or (b) it’s their social space, so let’s leave it alone? This was the question I asked using the My Question application in Facebook. The question was launched on 31 July and by 10 August I had received 18 replies, the first ten of which are shown in the accompanying image. Nigel Bradley seems to have summarised the consensus quite nicely: “embrace it but don’t be intrusive”. And I have found the other responses have provided me with useful background information as to how my peers regard Facebook.

The ‘My Questions’ Application I have used the My Questions Facebook application to ask a couple of questions 314 of 544

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previously, including “What is your favourite Web 2.0 application?” and “Skype: evil proprietary bandwidth hogger which should be banned or popular easy-to-use application which institutions should support?“ The first question (to which I received 5 responses) introduced me to Zimbra, whilst the second question (to which I received 11 responses) indicated broad support for Skype, although Nigel Bradley confessed that he is “brainwashed by our networks guy” and feels it should be banned and Ross Gardler, rather more ambivalently, feels that “As a supplement to telephone - useless. As a cost saver - fantastic. Therefore needs to be fully integrated in the organisation to be useful (divert cash from one infrastructure to the other) - otherwise ban it.“ I must admit that I am beginning to find this Facebook application very useful as a way of getting rapid feedback from my Facebook contacts on areas of mutual interest. The questions, and the responses, are limited to 255 characters which helps to ensure that a brief response is provided. And the application is proving popular, with 103 of my Facebook friends having installed the application (and 6,073,960 Facebook users in total). I think I’ll ask one work-related question a month, and see whether the responses I get prove useful. In the meantime, I invite readers of this blog post to respond to my current question. Technorati Tags: Facebook Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 3 Comments »

Comment Spam On This Blog August 15, 2007 This blog has now received more spam comments than blog views, with the Akismet spam filter having blogged 33,946 spam comments since the blog was launched on 1st November 2006. The blog Web site has been viewed 33,809 time with today, I believe, being the first time that the number of spam comments has exceeded the number of page views. It is clear to me that managing this blog would be much more difficult without the Akismet spam filter, which is included as part of the standard WordPress.com hosted solution. In the early days of this blog I would check the Akismet incoming spam comments to ensure that no legitimate comments had been incorrectly filtered (and this did happen on a number of occasions). However this became increasingly time-consuming, so I no longer do 315 of 544

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this, allowing Akismet to delete comments it has identified as spam (with an example of the spam I received shown at the bottom of this post). It would be possible for me to disable comments to my posts or to require registration, but I feel this would act as a barrier to people who may have valuable comments to make. So I will continue my current policy of relying on Akismet. What I would do if WordPress stopping providing this service free-ofcharge is another question, though.

Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 3 Comments »

Slidecast on Facebook And The Institution August 14, 2007 There was a lot of interest in the potential for Facebook at the recent Institutional Web Management Workshop, with Alison Wildish’s plenary talk on 316 of 544

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“Let the Students do the Talking…” plenary talk generating much discussion, some of which has been captured in a wiki page used for notes in the discussion groups, with Debbie Nicholson’s notes being particularly relevant. This discussion is of interest here at the University of Bath, and I have been invited to give a talk about Facebook, including ways it which it may be beneficial to the University and the potential dangers that may be associated with its use. As I have recently mentioned various tools for producing multimedia presentations, I thought I’d use the preparation for this talk as an opportunity to try our Slideshare’s Slidecast service, which Adrian Stevenson introduced me to. I have written the first draft of my slides, which I have uploaded to Slideshare. I then recorded a rehearsal of the talk, and ‘mashed-up’ the MP3 file with the Slideshare presentation.

The technology was very simple to use - but I have to admit that I hate having to give such rehearsals and listen to my own voice. Feedback on the content of this talk (or on the Slidecast service) is welcome but not, please, on the hesitations, deviations or repetitions! At least if I’m reluctant to listen to myself, seven Slideshare users, so far, have added this slidecast to their list of favourites and over 580 users have viewed it Technorati Tags: Slidecast, Facebook Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 2 Comments »

Integration Of Community-Led Activities And A Diversity of Web 2.0 Services August 13, 2007 I’ve recently mentioned the videos of the plenary talks at UKOLN’s annual 317 of 544

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IWMW 2007 event. I’ve also mentioned my experimentation with the Zentation service which integrates videos (served by Google Videos) and accompanying uploaded PowerPoint slides. Adrian Stevenson, a participant at IWMW 2007, videoed the opening plenary talk at IWMW 2007 (”From individuals to networks and sustainable communities?” by Steven Warburton) and uploaded this video to the Google Video service. I was then able to integrate this video with Steven’s slides and make it freely available on Zentation. I have also embedded this on the relevant page on the IWMW 2007 Web site:

It strikes me that Adrian’s involvement in this is a good example of a community-led activity - an approach to development which the JISC Emerge project is seeking to support within the JISC development community (as can be seen from a recent presentation I gave on this topic). It also occurs to me that as well as the creation of data from within the community, this example also illustrates use of a number of external services for providing access to the data: Google Video and Zentation have been mentioned previously, and, in addition, the slides are available from Slideshare. This example illustrates the move that we are seeing from use of monolithic services to use of a variety of distributed applications. Within the large-scale enterprise environment an approach based on Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) is growing in popularity, which seems to have many parallels with the lighter-weight approach which is taking place in the Web 2.0 world. With both of these approaches there are many issues which will need to be addressed such as the risks associated with use of third party services, ongoing performance and security issues, rights issues, long term preservation, etc. I’ll explore some of these issues at a later date. Technorati Tags: zentation Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0, iwmw2007 | Edit 2 Comments »

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August 10, 2007 A post on Mind maps & Wiki on the 2coach blog introduced me to the Wikimindmap tool. This provides a visualisation of information provided on Wikipedia. And a post on the Web2learning.net blog illustrates how a search for “Library” is displayed, but I was more interested in searching for my hobby in the analogue world - “rapper sword”.

(click on image for full size view) Although text on the home page implies that the service may not be sustainable (”Due to high request, WikiMindMap will soon be available as intranet solution. Please come back here to keep you informed.“) I was more interested in this service as an example of how making your data available for reuse by others (content in Wikipedia has a Creative Commons licence) and providing access to the data can allow applications to be developed which the original developed may not have considered. My colleague Paul Walk mentioned this recently in a post on “The coolest thing to do with your data will be thought of by someone else“. Is this interface of use? Perhaps it may be considered somewhat gimmicky - but I do wonder if this type of graphical interface to an encyclopedia might provide accessibility benefits? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

Is Facebook Really Closed? August 9, 2007 It recent posts Andy Powell and Graham Attwell have seemed to argue against use of Facebook as Facebook is a closed platform. These are all people I know, whose blogs I read and whose opinions I respect. But in this case I feel the situation is not as simple as they make out. Andy argues that “Facebook appears to be pretty much useless if you want to 319 of 544

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expose any content you upload into it (photo albums, wall writings, notes, etc.) for aggregation by other services” whilst Graham asks “How can learners get their data from Facebook into their Portfolio. As far as I can see they can’t”. I feel, though, that the situation is rather more complex than such comments might indicate. I have, for example, added the Facebook Docs application which is described as “the world’s largest library of schoolwork and other documents“. As can be seen from the image, it is possible to download documents from Facebook Docs (which is an interface to the Scribd service which I’ve discussed previously).

It is possible to download the document in various formats, including PDF, MS Word, plain text and as an MP3 file. Other Facebook applications, such as del.icio.us and Twitter, similarly provide an interface to applications which allow the data to be accessed in various formats. It is possible to regard Facebook as a closed interface to data which is openly available in other places. From this respect Facebook may be regarded as a useful aggregation of services, which has some parallels with adding various tools as FireFox extensions or plugins. So rather than having a binary view of the openness of services such as Facebook I would suggest that there is a spectrum to openness. And we (as developers, advisers or whatever) need to have an open approach to how we respond to both the nature of the openness of such services and the values which users might attach to such issues (it would be inappropriate, for example, for an institution to ban use of Facebook because some of the applications may not allow data to be easily exported). What approaches might be appropriate for addressing possible limitations in exporting data from Facebook applications? I would suggest the following:

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applications which don’t allow the data to be reused elsewhere. Tools: Searching for or developing tools which will enable data to be exported. Metadata: As illustrated in the screen shot, it is possible to include details of alternative locations of the data associated with Facebook applications. I have been using this approach for some time with Powerpoint files I have created: the URL of the master copy is included on the title slide and the notes page which enables the digital master to be accessed if only a paper copy of the slides is available. I have built on this approach when I upload my slides to Slideshare, including the address in the description metadata field. Acceptance: Being willing to acknowledge that there may be cases in which users may be prepared to accept data lock-in e.g. cases in which the applications and data may be regarded as ‘disposable’. Recontexualisation: Regard Facebook as the equivalent an Adobe PDF file or a Firefox plugin: providing a useful service to end users without needing to be fully open and reusable in themselves, as they form a small part of a bigger and more open picture. I should also add that Michael Webb has also recently given his thoughts on Facebook and openness in a post on More about MyNewport and Facebook in which he suggests that, if users find the services provided from within the Facebook environment useful then “It seems to me utterly irrelevant to be ideologically concerned about whether Facebook is open or not“. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 16 Comments »

Video Recordings Of Plenary Talks At IWMW 2007 August 8, 2007 As an experiment which built on last year’s use of Access Grid technologies, the plenary talks at the IWMW 2007 events were streamed live and a recording of the talks made which were made available shortly afterwards. The display of Alison Wildish’s talk on “Let The Students do the Talking …” is illustrated and the video recording can be played (note Flash support is needed) .

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The IWMW 2007 WetPaint Wiki was used to obtain feedback on the video service. The feedback indicated that the service was appreciated, with various suggestions provided on how this service could be improved:

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Really good service but would have liked the time displayed somewhere so I could point people to things that were said at a particular time - it’s basically impossible right now (a killer for those 90 minute sessions!). One of the people asking questions explicitly turned down use of a microphone - I think because the acoustics in the room are good and everyone physically present could hear. More awareness is needed and probably briefing the chairs to be strict, if that’s what helps online viewers follow the discussion 03/10/2008 14:51

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Some thoughts on how to make this even better: 1. Better camera work - the camera being pointed at the podium means that I have lost the the speaker from time time 2. Audio - generally really good - but the panel discussions and audiene questions were not so easy to hear at times - where are the microphones, BTW? 3. Lighting - Good lighting on the speaker at the podium - but again the panel discussions were poorly lit. But all in all, a very welcome add on to the conference Many thanks to Anthony Leonard for providing this service. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2007 | Edit 3 Comments »

What To Do When Workshop Facilitators Go Missing August 6, 2007 I previously posted about Contingency plans for disasters when organising an event. On a less drastic scale, what approaches can event organisers take when a facilitator becomes unavailable at the last minute? I tried to cater for this at the IWMW 2007 event by preparing an “unconference” session (although the term “unworkshop” is probably more appropriate) based on various ideas developed my myself, Graham Atwell and Steven Warburton for an unconference session at a recent JISC Emerge event. The details of the session are available. In brief they suggest the following possibilities: The ten minute slot: Ten minute presentations of work and ideas in progress - possibility followed by discussions Critical enquiry: Present an idea for a project, a software tool, etc. and be prepared for a critique from an expert panel (made up of other participants) Poster time: Another ten minute slot for you to explain ideas provided on a poster Ask an expert: Request that someone else introduces on a topic you wish to learn something about. The rant: A controversial view expressed, leading to discussions which might not normally take place. ‘Gong show’: Participants may introduce and discuss own ideas for a short, specified period of time. A gong is rung when the time is over. I think for future events I organise I’ll have something along these lines prepared in case of difficulties (such as workshop facilitators being unable to travel due to floods) . Do any readers have any suggestions on other approaches which could be used? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) 323 of 544

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Filed in Events | Edit 3 Comments »

Use Of Open Standards In JISC Development Programmes August 3, 2007 A recent update sent to the E-Framework JISCMail list contains the following summary of a paper written by myself, Scott Wilson (CETIS) and Randy Metcalfe (formerly of JISC OSS Watch) :

Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access June 2007. Anyone wishing to make achieve a better understanding of the “open” agenda in higher education should read this recent paper by Brian Kelly, Scott Wilson, and Randy Metcalfe presented at the ELPUB2007 Conference on Electronic Publishing in Vienna. The “open” word is of course used by all of us in incredibly different contexts and as the authors note: “For national advisory services in the UK (UKOLN, CETIS, and OSS Watch), varieties of openness (open source software, open standards, and open access to research publications and data) present an interesting challenge.” More information at: http://elpub.scix.net/data/works /att/140_elpub2007.content.pdf This paper, which was presented by Scott Wilson at the ELPub 2007 conference, builds on previous work which has sought to address the tensions between the potential benefits which open standards can provide and the dangers of using standards which fail to gain acceptance in the marketplace, are too complex, are superceded by alternative approaches or are used too soon. The paper argues that there is a need to be flexible (in order, for example, to avoid repeating the mistakes made when the UK higher education community was committed to use of Coloured Book networking protocols as a stepping stone to OSI network standards - a decision which was eventually overturned by the success of Internet networking standards). The paper describes the parallels with pragamatic and user-centred approaches to use of open standards with the selection and use of open source software and providing open access to scholarly publications and data. In all these cases there are clear benefits to be gained by the sector, but there are also a whole host of complications which would be foolish to ignore. These issues are very pertinent to the current JISC call for projects in its Capital Programme. The JISC Circular 02/07 document (MS Word format) clearly states JISC’s commitment to open access: B21: JISC supports unrestricted access to the published output of publicly-funded research and wishes to encourage open access to research outputs to ensure that the fruits of UK research are made more widely available. and goes on to demonstrate a pragmatic approach to use of standards: 324 of 544

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B25: JISC mandates the deposit of the native version (Word, PPT, etc.), with PDF as well if wanted, but certainly with a format from which usable xml can in principle be derived (not PDF). The approach to use of open standards which JISC requires projects to take is clearly stated: B29. The institution and its partners must use the technical standards stipulated by JISC and where unstipulated open standards wherever possible, Any deviation should be justified in the proposal and any alternative be designed with re-use by others in mind. Easy of interoperability between systems is key to the provision of next generation technologies for education and research, and projects are expected to work with JISC to address this issue. It is the responsibility of the lead institution to inform its project partners accordingly. Relevant standards can be founded in the JISC Standards Catalogue http://standards.jisc.ac.uk/. This paragraph provides the flexibility needed to address potential problems which use of open standards may cause. The requirement to document any deviations is important, and reflects the approach developed by UKOLN in its work (with AHDS) in providing a technical advisory service to support the NOF-digitise programme. As described in the paper A Contextual Framework For Standards for that programme a documented report on deviation from mandated open standards was required as part of the reporting process, and an accompanying FAQ was produced. I hope this post will be of use to anyone who may be considered submitting a proposal to this call. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit No Comments »

Guest Post: A Sense of Community August 1, 2007 A regular guest blog post at the start of every month aims to provide an fresh insight into issues which are covered in the UK Web Focus blog. The month’s guest blog post comes from Kara Jones, Research Publications Librarian at the University of Bath. Kara explores the idea of ‘a sense of community’. Futurelab made the observation, in a report last year that learning is moving towards the three Cs - community, collaboration and communication. These are concepts that go further than just learning - particularly building communities, which has become central to our professional interactions online with blogs, wikis and social networks keeping us up to date and involved in conversations with peers. In light of this, I see two important issues: (1) how to build a community and (2) how to find and join a community. Let’s take a look at these two sides.

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Building a Community How does a community evolve? They develop for many reasons - to share research thoughts, to work collaboratively, or to create social networks. How each of these communities grows can depend on the intention of its developers. Here are a few examples:

The Serendipitous Community Craig Laughton’s Gooseania is a maths blog that grew into a community sharing experiences of undertaking a PhD. This community developed organically as Craig used his blog as a reflective journal to chronicle his studies, and apparently found himself answering questions and engaging in conversations with others undergoing the same process.

Communities of Interest Developing a community around a subject or topic, such as this blog from Brian takes a concerted effort, and there’s been some discussion (and will be more discussion at a session to be held at the Internet Librarian International (ILI) 2007 conference on the struggles building a blog community, and measuring success and return on investment.

The Extension Community Other times a physical group of people will create an online community to broaden their communication efforts. Take for example, the team at SHERPA who are developing a community of institutional repository managers. This is a concerted effort to pull a formal group together for the purposes of sharing experiences, and to add weight to statements with a collective voice. They are in the process of developing a wiki for members to add their details in a central location to share with others.

The Socially Networked Community Often like the extension community, but also including online only contacts, this type includes not just Facebook or Myspace, but social networking sites such as Academici (for finding researchers with similar interests), Ning (with the Library 2.0 network of clued-in librarians) and most recently Nature Networks for scientists.

Finding a Community So developing a community using blogs, wikis and social networking sites is one half of the story. Recently I delivered a training session for post-graduates about keeping up-to-date, expounding the value of social technologies for efficient and effective information management. I had the question asked of me, ‘How do I find a good blog or develop a list of useful feeds in my subject area?‘, and as a librarian it presents a bit of a dilemma. Mechanisms for exploring and joining new communities aren’t particularly sophisticated. Where do you start to look for the conversations of your community of practice? To actively seek out web 2.0 communities in new subject areas is an exercise in learning how much you take for granted. I have a set of blogs, RSS feeds and 326 of 544

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social network sites that I’ve collected over the years. It’s an organic, evolving thing, which is quite personal with familiar voices and occasionally a new face/avatar/etc. To purposefully seek to join or create a new community is a time-consuming process. How to find out what’s out there? What do I expect to be discussed? What am I missing? And of course, how do I evaluate what I find, on what authority does the author write, do they have a particular bias and what are their sources? I’ve tried this both ways - the traditional structured way of literature searching, joining mailing lists, and so on. On the other hand I’ve just plunged in, searching Google, Technorati, following links and blogrolls. At the end of the day, it’s recommendation and reputation, with a heavy dose of evaluation that helps in finding a community, such as the following: Take refereed literature and track back for authors who might blog D-Lib and Ariadne are great examples of this for information topics. Looking the old-fashioned way - following reference lists and citation searching. Personal recommendation from other experts. Sites which are valued by others - blogrolls, trackbacks. Reviews, social bookmarks, favourites (Slideshare has been great as a resource discovery tool). I’ve thought about setting up an OPML file of useful feeds, or a collection of blogs on the subject specific resources pages for the departments I liaise with at the university but I’d like to get away from this idea of lists to constantly maintain. With folksonomies, tagging and social bookmarking we’re personalising resource discovery and I would suggest this is a skill to be developed using the approaches above. Perhaps understanding why communities are developed, how they evolve and how to use a good community to discover others is the key. What do you think? Kara Jones, Research Publications Librarian, University of Bath http://myselfarchive.wordpress.com/ Technorati Tags: guest-blog Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post, Social Networking | Edit 3 Comments »

The Innovation Competition At IWMW 2007 July 31, 2007 One of the new aspects of this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2007) was, appropriately enough, the Innovation Competition. The aims of the innovation competition were to provide an opportunity for workshop participants (and the wider community) to have an opportunity to experiment with lightweight development activities. The key criteria on which submissions were judged were (a) being user-focussed, (b) being lightweight and (c) being ‘cool’. Although many of the submissions were examples of ‘mashups’ it should 327 of 544

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be noted that the competition did not actually require submissions to be based on software development - real world innovations (a song-and-dance routine, perhaps) could have been submitted. The best submissions were selected by Jeff Barr, Amazon, Scott Wilson, CETIS and Stephen Emmott, LSE - with the audience deciding who the winner was. The audience selected (by an overwhelming majority) Sebastian Rahtz, Oxford University Computing Service, as the winner of the competition for his Alternative course discovery using calendars and maps. This entry allows people who want to attend Oxford University continuing education and computing service courses to find what they want using Google calendar or Google Maps (illustrated) as well as the usual methods.

In second place was Michael Nolan, Edge Hill University who submitted three entries, with the Hi from Edge Hill and How To Find Us submissions being particularly appreciated by the judges. The Community Focus Mashup submission by my colleague Paul Walk and the Mashed Museum Directory by Mike Ellis were also felt to have noteworthy features by the judges. All four of these submissions have been awarded Amazon gift vouchers (and many thanks to Jeff Barr and Amazon for donating the prizes for the competition). The evaluation forms for the IWMW 2007 event confirm the success of the Innovation Competition, as can be seen from the following comments:

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Innovation competition - great idea. Would be good to also showcase 1-innovative thing from University websites each year. Let’s take a look at what we’re all doing. Can we get speakers from 03/10/2008 14:51

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Flickr, Facebook, Google? Inspire us!!! Innovation competition - good idea but wish I had more time to do stuff! Innovation comp great idea Innovation comp worked very well, a serious but firm look at technology And if anybody would like to watch the summary of the final session at IWMW 2007 in which a summary of the submissions was given, then a video recording of the session is available. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2007 | Edit No Comments »

JISC Capital Circular 2/07: Call for Proposals July 31, 2007 The JISC Capital Circular 2/07: Call for Proposals was announced on Friday 27th July 2007. This circular invites institutions to submit funding proposals for projects in the following areas: Enterprise architectures e-infrastructure Users and innovation Proposals may be submitted by HE institutions funded via HEFCE and HEFCW, and by FE institutions in England that teach HE to more than 400 FTEs. Further information is available at at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities /funding_calls/2007/07/circular0207 The “Circular 02/07 appendix F: Next Generation Technologies and Practices call” MS Word document in particular includes a variety of issues which relate to the topics which have been addressed, including the role of standards in emergent technologies, accessibility, risk assessment, etc. I’ll discuss some of these issues in more depths in forthcoming posts over the next few weeks and months. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in jisc | Edit 2 Comments »

Experiments With Zentation July 30, 2007 I recently came across a reference to the Zentation service, which describes itself as the place “where video and PowerPoint meet on the Web“. This seems to be a relatively new service, which was featured in a Techcrunch article on 329 of 544

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28th July 2007. As the Techcrunch article describes “Using Zentation is simple. Users upload their video to Google Video, log into Zentation and copy and paste the URL of the Google video, then upload a PowerPoint file. The final step involves using the “ZenSync” tool to provide precise start timings for each graphic in the presentation“. I’ve tried this with a recording of Michael Webb’s talk on “Developing a Web 2.0 Strategy” at the IWMW 2006 event. We has videod this talk and my colleague Marieke Guy uploaded it recently to Google Video. It was very easy to upload the PowerPoint slides to Zentation and then to sync the video with the corresponding slides, as illustrated.

What I find particularly interesting with this application is that it separates the streaming of the video (provided by Google Videos) from the synchronisation with the PowerPoint slides. It should also be noted that, as with many of these services, the interface can be embedded within Web pages. I’m not the only person to be impressed with initial experimentation - a post published last week entitled “More than one way to share your presentations” on the dalebasler.com blog summarises a talk given to a meeting of the National Congress on Science Education on the basics of online communication which concluded that “Zentation appears to be the best tool“. I’ll be experimenting further with Zentation for the videos of the plenary talks at the recent IWMW 2007 event. Technorati Tags: zentation Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 5 Comments » 330 of 544

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Blogging Librarians July 30, 2007 Way back in December 2006 I asked Where Are The Blogging UK Librarians? There were a number of replies to the post and, since, then, I’ve touched on a number of issues related to the use of blogs within a library context. And I’m please to announce that myself and my colleague Kara Jones (who works in the Library here at the University of Bath) have had a proposal accepted to facilitate a half-day workshop (or ‘masterclass’ in the official parlance) at the ILI 2007 conference. I think the blogging UK librarians are to be found in many more places than when I first asked my question. So the issues Kara and I would like to address in our workshop include how are blogs being used; what strategies were used to get blogs deployed within the organisation (did you encounter any barriers and, if so, how did you overcome them?); what is the technical architecture for your blog (what software do you use and is it hosted externally or installed locally); how is you blog managed; do you have any metrics to demonstrate (or perhaps justify) the success of your blog and what advice would you give to others who are just starting on this path? Note that the resources we will develop for the workshop will have a Creative Commons licence to allow their reuse by others. Thoughts, comments, etc. will be appreciated. You can add comments to this blog post. Alternatively, as part of an evaluation of the Ning social networking environment, Kara and I have set up a “Using Blog Effectively In Your Organisation” discussion area within the Library 2.0 area of Ning. Feel free to the discussions in that environment. Technorai tags: ili2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, library2.0 | Edit 3 Comments »

“Your WordPress Is In My Facebook” July 27, 2007 As announced last week on the WordPress blog, a WordPress application is now available which allows WordPress to be embedded within Facebook (and thanks to my colleague Nitin Parmar for giving me details of the Photo Matt announcement).

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The application can be primarily regarded as an interface to WordPress embedded within Facebook, although one aspect of the integration with the Facebook’s social network is the ability to see WordPress blogs provided by your friends (as illustrated). Although it could well be argued that this provides little benefit for users (especially experienced users) it could also be argued that users may welcome the way in which their popular application can be integrated within a common environment. And many of the 135 responses (to date) to the initial announcement seem to be very positive, with the application getting a four-star rating from the FaceReviews Web site. My view is that we need to gain evidence of whether this approach will appeal to users - and the best way of gathering evidence is to carry out the experiments. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 6 Comments »

Contingency Plans for Disasters July 25, 2007 In the conclusions of the IWMW 2007 event I described how UKOLN will be seeking to enhance its processes for 332 of 544

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managing our events in order to enable us to response to disasters. The first time I started to consider how technologies could be used to address problems at events was at IWMW 2004 when a bus which was meant to take delegates from their accommodation went missing before everyone had been transported. One of the plenary speakers was included in those left some distance from the venue, but fortunately as he had the mobile phone number of our event organiser, we were able to be informed of the situation and change the running order for the event. This incident led us to add a field on the workshop booking form to allow participants at the event the following year to include details of their mobile phone number. And as that second day of the event (which was held at the University of Manchester) coincided with the London bombings on 7/7 this brought home to us the need to explore contingency plans in case of disasters, and not just inconveniences. Various Web 2.0 technologies (such as mashups), the wide variety of communication tools and the increasing sophistication of various mobile devices is now making it more feasible to be able to inform participants at events of possible problems and to react more quickly. This was very much in my mind when I started to prepare my conclusions for the IWMW 2007 event. My current thinking is that for future events we should seek to: Invite participants to provide mobile phone numbers to enable us to contact them in case of last minute emergencies. Have mechanisms in place for bulk sending of text messages (for example using JANET’s new JANET txt service). Provide location maps of where delegates will be travelling from in order for us to make plans in case or disasters such as the current flooding over large areas of the south of England (the location of participants at IWMW 2007 is illustrated). Integrate content from services such as the BBC weather and travel pages and appropriate train services into our event pages (especially for events which may attract overseas participants who may not be aware of these services). As someone who attended the JISC Digitisation conference in Cardiff on 19-20th July 2007 I am very much aware of the problems and uncertainties that can happen (in my case, I was fortunate in being able to return home after the conference had finished - but I did meet speak to several participants at Cardiff 333 of 544

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and Bristol Temple Meads stations who didn’t know where they’d be spending the night). Has anyone other suggestions on how technological innovations may be used to in case of such problems? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General, iwmw2007 | Edit 4 Comments »

Talk on “Globalisation of Social Networks” July 21, 2007 I attended the JISC Digitisation Conference held at St David’s Hotel and Spa, Cardiff on 19-20 July 2007. On Friday I was the facilitator and speaker at a session on “Transforming the Users Experiences - How Can Institutions Develop Innovative and Affordable Tools to Engage Increasingly Sophisticated Audiences“. I introduced the session by making use of a scenario planning approach (which I learnt about from a JISC Users and Innovation event some time ago) based on a scenario in which Web 2.0 wins, and users and institutions are making incresing use of externally-provided services. The title of my talk was “Globalisation 0f Social Networks” and the slides are available on Slideshare.

Following my talk Adrian Arthur, Head of Web Services at the British Library, described the importance of Web 2.0 to the British Library (it is mentioned in the British Library’s strategic vision document, for example, and it enables them to make best use of scarce resources). Adrian then provided some example of services provided by the British Library which make use of Web 2.0 services such as Google Maps. The third speaker was Alistair Russell, developer on the MSpace project, based at the University of Southampton. Alistair reminded us of the popularity of easy-to-use Web 2.0 services such as YouTube, and also highlighted the 334 of 544

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relevance of simple Web 2.0 development tools such as Yahoo! Pipes and Popfly. Alistair suggested that the next development after Web 2.0 would be the integration of much richly structured resources with the popularity of the Web 2.0 approach. He speculated that Web 2.0 + the Semantic Web could lead to Web 3.0. There appeared to be little dissent from the audience from the views given by he speakers. In my conclusions I suggested that the next steps should be to address the issues of risk assessment and risk management and embracing openness which I described in a poster which is included in a recent post on Just Do It But How?“ I should also add that I was pleased to note that the conference made use of a Wiki prior to the event (to allow participants to give their contact details and summarise their interests and to sign up for the parallel sessions) and that a blog was used during the event to keep notes of the various sessions and to invite feedback from both conference delegates and others who weren’t physically present. In addition the various talks were recorded and a Podacst will be provided shortly. Perhaps the one thing that seemed to be missing was a tag to enable the photos and blog entries provided by participants to be easily integrated with the main conference blog. So the conference was a success - but the journey home was a nightmare, due to severe flooding in the south of England. I managed to get back home - but I did spot various people at Cardiff and Bristol Temple Meads stations wondering whether to book a hotel for the night, or try to get a taxi or rent a car back to Oxford, London and Birmingham. I hope the conference blog manages to capture some of the stories about the journeys home. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

A Backup Copy Of This Blog July 19, 2007 Casey Leaver has raised an interesting issue on her blog on the University of Warwick blog service: In the middle of August I will be leaving Warwick (to be the new Corporate Communications Manager at the Open University). … But, given that I will have to migrate my blog, where is the best place to go? Blog migration is likely to be important not just for departing staff and students who make use of a blog service hosted at their institution, but also potentially users, such as myself, who use an externally hosted blog. What will I do if, for example, WordPress change the licence conditions for their hosted blog service? John Dale suggested the Vox service - especially as it provides control over access to blog posts which appears to be a valuable aspect of the Warwick blog service. And as John is someone whose opinions I value I thought it would be worth trying out Vox. So I signed up for the (free) service, selected a look-and-feel and (after first 335 of 544

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temporarily changing the number of RSS feeds served from the default of 10 to 200 so that all of my postings could be accessed) used Vox’s import option to import all of the posts. And, within 10 minutes, I had a functioning backup copy of this blog, as illustrated

As a backup of my main blog I could have restricted access to the Vox blog. However it occus to me that the copy could provide a testbed for various blog experiments. So the blog is available at the address http://ukwebfocus.vox.com/ (although I reserve the right to change the access conditions). An initial experiment is to revisit the experiments with Technorati I carried out shortly after I launched this blog. And, as can be seen when the blog was created it was ranked as number 3,485,803. This was interesting in itself, as Technorati claims that there are over 70 million blogs. Why did my new blog appear in the top 4 million blogs, I wonder? And even mopre perplexing was that two days later it was rated at number 7,702,784. I also noticed that when I claimed the Vox blog in Technorati that I now have to be able to demonstrate that I do actually own the blog (either my signing in to the blog or my adding code to the blog). This addresses a limitation that Paul Walk mentioned to me recently when he discovered that his original blog had been claimed by someone else, and Paul need to track down and contact the 336 of 544

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person in order to be able to access statistics about his own blog. I have also registered the Vox blog with the Blotter service. This should provide a graph showing how the Technorati ratings for the blog change over time. As the blog is intended as a backup copy I would expect (hope) that links are made to the master WordPress copy, so there should be no reasons for the Technorati rating to fluctuate greatly. It will be interesting to see if this is the case. (Also note that currently the Blotter service does not display any image; instead it gives the message “Exception: Exception Message: Technorati returned no results for this blog”; it is rather unfortunate that a display of a broken image is given.) I have noticed that comments made on the blog have not been imported to the Vox service. In addition I have also noticed that internal links in the blog (i.e. links I have made in my posts to other posts) link to the original WordPress blog. And images are also hosted on the WordPress blog. So the 10 minutes I spent importing the blog (less time than it took to write this post!) did not provide a service which will be fully functional if the WordPress blog is deleted. However the process has been useful in making me aware of various issues which I hadn’t considered previously. And, of course, there are lots of other issues which I’ll still need to explore - such as how to keep the backup Vox blog up-to-date as I continue to wrote new postings on the UKWebFocus.wordpress.com blog (if, indeed, I choose to do this). The Vox blog service also allows greater freedom in adding widegets to the sidebar than the WordPress.com service - so this will enable me to carry out various blog experiments that I can’t do on the master copy of my blog. And while I experiment with using Vox as a backup for my WordPress blog I notice that Casey Leaver has moved her blog from the Warwick service to http://caseyleaver.wordpress.com/ (and she has successfully migrated her blog comments too). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 11 Comments »

Video Streaming of Plenary Talks at IWMW 2007 July 16, 2007 The IWMW 2007 event has now started. It seems that the live video streaming of today’s plenary talks was successful. If anyone would like to see the plenary talks for tomorrow (Tuesday) feel free to go to the link to details about the video streaming. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2007 | Edit 2 Comments »

Three Innovation Submissions from Edge Hill University 337 of 544

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July 16, 2007 Michael Nolan, Edge Hill University has (to date!) submitted three entries to the IWMW 2007 innovation competition. And not only does he does this development work he also has a blog and contributes to the Web Services team blog at Edge Hill University. Michael first submission is a “How To Find Us” service which uses Google Maps to locate the various campuses at Edge Hill University. His second submission builds on the experiences gained with the first submission. The example integrates with the backend user system to allow users to store their own location using the Google Geocoder to help them find their location more easily. The third submission enhances the services provided to support the IWMW 2007 event by aggregating the various RSS feeds associated with the event. Michael’s first two submissions illustrate, I feel, the type of service which all our institutions would benefit from exploring. We all need to provide location services for our institutions - and Michael is happy to share his development experiences and the 20 lines of code he used. And we will all be looking at ways in which we can engage our users more actively with our services, so the potential benefits of his second example may be worth exploring. And I very much appreciate the RSS aggregation service Michael has developed. This may well form the basis of a service for the IWMW 2008 event. (Note this post is one of a series which describes submissions to the Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event, to be held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007. Further information about the series of posts is available in a post published previously.). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

MyNewport - MyLearning Essentials for Facebook July 16, 2007 Andy Powell commented on a blog post on Facebook and the Institutional Web I published recently which he followed up in a post on Facebook application growth which described some of the reservations he had concerning certain types of developments using the Facebook platform. Similar reservations were expressed in Paul Walk’s post on Playing in the sandpit, while the novelty lasts and Paul Miller explored the issues of The Platform and the Web - what can Facebook and Talis tell us? in Talis’s Nodalities blog, which highlighted the dangers of use of a closed platform. Whilst agreeing with many of these points, I still feel that we can’t ignore technologies which appear to be successful (let’s not ignore Microsoft Windows, for example). So I very much welcomed “MyNewport - MyLearning Essentials 338 of 544

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for Facebook” - Michael Webb’s submission to the IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition. MyNewport is the VLE/portal used by staff and students at Newport College, which includes access to course material, news, blogs, forums, library access etc. MyNewport is a Facebook application that allows students to access to MyLearning Essentials resources from Facebook. In effect this allows students to start creating their own personal learning environment in a platform other than the one provided by the University. Newport College have targeted Facebook at the moment as it’s the fastest growing community, but if the users like the idea but want to work in another environment then that is fine - as applications can be created applications for them as well. Apparently it took about a day and half from conception of the idea and joining the Facebook developer community on 10th July to launching it as a viable application for our students to use (or comment on) on the 11th July. It was straight forward as the college’s VLE is built from components that can easily be repurposed and uses open standards such as RSS to allow information to be passed to the Facebook application. Further information on this submission is available on the Submissions page of the IWMW 2007 Web site. (Note this post is one of a series which describes submissions to the Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event, to be held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007. Further information about the series of posts is available in a post published previously.)

(Click image to see full size version) Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook, iwmw2007 | Edit 4 Comments »

Whack A Speaker! July 15, 2007 339 of 544

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Not all of the submissions to the IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition have a serious intent. The “Whack A Speaker” game developed by Dan Wiggle, University of York demonstrates how easy it may be to create Web applications these days (this example apparently took around 30 seconds to put together!). This example makes use of the Microsoft Popfly service which Dan feels is “an impressive drag-and-drop mashup builder”. And I have to admit that I l like this unexpected submission to the competition, which is wonderfully politically uncorrect. <joke>Perhaps this ex Further information on this submission is available on the Submissions page of the IWMW 2007 Web site. (Note this post is one of a series which describes submissions to the Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event, to be held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007. Further information about the series of posts is available in a post published previously.)

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Debate Making Use of a YouTube Mashup July 15, 2007 Not all of the entries to the IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition consist of mashups of text and images from various sources. Graham Attwell, a member of the JISC Emerge project team, has created a mashup of two video clips (the JISC cartoon about the E-Framework and a talk 340 of 544

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given by Graham at the ALT-C 2006 conference) which allows users to see the argument for approaches to development of e-learning services from two different viewpoints - that of institutional management as epitomized by JISC and the learners viewpoint as explained by Graham Attwell. This, I feel, provides an interesting example of scholarly debate which makes use of YouTube. Further information on this submission is available on the Submissions page of the IWMW 2007 Web site. (Note this post is one of a series which describes submissions to the Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event, to be held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007. Further information about the series of posts is available in a post published previously.)

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A Searchable Repository Map July 14, 2007 Last month Andy Powell, on the eFoundations blog, asked whether the digital library development community was heading in the right direction in its approaches to digital repositories. Andy suggested that the “environment is changing, largely because of Web 2.0“. In a response my colleague Rachel Heery suggested that “there is potential for institutions to push out their repository content to other services that have a more up to minute Web interface“. A submission to the IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition from Stuart Lewis, University of Wales Aberystwyth provides a response to this discussion, providing a Web 2.0 style interface to data gathered using the OAI-PMH 341 of 544

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protocol from the RAOR and OpenDOAR services, mashed up with Google Maps. Further information on this submission is available on the Submissions page of the IWMW 2007 Web site. (Note this post is one of a series which describes submissions to the Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event, to be held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007. Further information about the series of posts is available in a post published previously.)

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Mashed Museum Directory July 14, 2007 342 of 544

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The entry to the IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition submitted by Mike Ellis provides a great example of innovation that is taking place in the msueums sector. The Mashed Museum Directory entry, which mashes up data from several sources, is based on work which initially took place at the UK Museums on the Web mashup day facilitated recently by Mike. Mike has recently given a summary of this update. Further information on this submission is available on the Submissions page of the IWMW 2007 Web site. (Note this post is one of a series which describes submissions to the Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event, to be held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007. Further information about the series of posts is available in a post published previously.)

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A Data-Driven Interface To A Conference Web Site July 13, 2007

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Paul Shabajee (ILRT/HP Labs) has submitted an entry to the IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition which is intended to demonstrate a data-driven Web site for an event (the event in question being the UK Museums and the Web Conferences held in 2006 and 2007) using a tool by the Simile project called Exhibit. Paul’s motivation in producing this was simply to play with Exhibit and see how it works and how easy it was. Paul chose the UK Museums on the Web conference data simply because he was attending the event later that week. Further information on this submission is available on the Submissions page of the IWMW 2007 Web site. (Note this post is one of a series which describes submissions to the Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event, to be held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007. Further information about the series of posts is available in a post published previously.)

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Use of Yahoo Pipes with IWMW 2007 RSS Feeds July 13, 2007 The third submission to the IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition was also from a colleague at UKOLN. As I’ve commented previously Julie Allison made use of the software to process various RSS feeds associated with the IWMW 2007 event. As I’ve described Julie’s submission previously, I’ll not repeat it. What I would say, though, is that the description of Julie’s work clearly inspired one reader, with AJCann (a frequent contributor to this blog) subsequently announcing that he is a Pipes Virgin No More. For me this is a good example of one of the aims of the competition - encouraging others that it may be worth ‘just trying it’. (Note this post is one of a series which describes submissions to the Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event, to be held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007. Further information about the series of posts is available in a post published previously.) Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2007, rss | Edit 1 Comment »

IWMW 2007: Delegates and their Tags July 13, 2007 My colleague Paul Walk has submitted an entry to the IWMW 2007 innovation competition. As Paul has described in his blog this example takes the locations of the host institutions of the participants and displays them in a Google Map. This is a very mainstream use of Google Maps (indeed a variety of maps of the location of previous IWMW events and the location of the speakers and facilitators at recent events are available on the UKOLN Web site). The value-added approach taken by Paul is to integrate this with a cloud map of the topics which the delegates are using in their blog posts, del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr photos, etc., based on the data which a number of the delegates provided when they registered. Paul used this exercise as an opportunity to gain expertise in use of Ruby and in the various APIs provided by the various Web 2.0 services. The data he used was then made available so that it could be used by others. And this also helped us to think about the data capture and work flow processes we may wish to enhance to support future events. Further information on this submission is available on the Submissions page of the IWMW 2007 Web site. (Note this post is one of a series which describes submissions tothe Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event, to be held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007. Further information about the series of posts is available in a post published previously.)

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A Timeline For All IWMW Events July 12, 2007 In response to a post in which I announced that Data Available For IWMW 2007 Competition I received a comment from Tim Beadle (a Web developer in Bath) who suggested I look at Timeline from MIT. So I did and started to put together a timeline of IWMW events. However after the 30 minutes I allocated to this task I found that after I’d added my data the script wouldn’t run. I then sought help on the web-support JISCMail list and Owen Stevens not only quickly spotted the problem (an error in the dates) but also enhanced the interface. A good example of collaborative work, I feel, and an example of use of a lightweight technology. I suspect there will be growing interest in use of timeline interfaces. Whether the Simile Timeline software is the tool to use is uncertain (there are problems with intergrating the data with the JavaScript software, I feel). However at least we now have something which enables us to engage with 346 of 544

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our user community - and explore whether this is an approach which may be of interest or not. Further information on this submission is available on the Submissions page of the IWMW 2007 Web site. (Note this post is one of a series which describes submissions to the Innovation Competition at the IWMW 2007 event, to be held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007. Further information about the series of posts is available in a post published previously.)

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Submissions to the IWMW 2007 Competition July 12, 2007 I have commented previously that one of the innovations at this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2007) is the innovation competition. The aim of the innovation competition is to provide an environment for participants (and other interested parties) to provide examples of lightweight 347 of 544

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innovations which may be of interest to workshop participants. We hope this will provide an opportunity for those who submit examples to benefit from the staff development his may provide and the feedback which may be received. We also hope that the examples which are provided will provide a context to stimulate discussion about the relevance of such work within an institutional context. Will the examples be sustainable, for example, and will they scale up to large scale usage? And what about the implications of copyright, data protection, etc.? I’m pleased to say that, to date, we have received eleven submissions. In order to gain feedback from a wide audience and open up the discussions I will be posting a series of articles will a brief summary of the submissions and invite your comments. Note also that we are still accepted submissions, so if you have something to contribute, please view the submission template and provide the relevant details (I suggest as a comment to this post in the master UK Web Focus blog). Please, though, do not simply submit an example of work you have already completed this is unlikely to pass the “cool’ criteria! You should also note that the title is “innovation competition”. You do not necessarily have to submit a mashup, or even an IT solution. A witty solution, a joke, etc. might work - how about, for example, a pastiche of last year’s social event (featuring your’s truly). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2007 | Edit 5 Comments »

Clever Spam Comment July 12, 2007 There have been over 22,000 spam comments which have been submitted to this blog since it was launched in November 2006. Most have been filtered automatically by the Akismet spam filter, but a small number do get through and require me to delete them manually. This is normally not a problem, as they can be spotted easily. However yesterday I noticed a comment which appeared to be legitimate - it mentioned Roddy MacLeod (a regular contributor to the blog) and appeared to give acknowledgements to some references which had been provided). However closer inspection revealed that the reference to Roddy was spurious and the submitter’s details included a link advertising Tokota cars. I assume this is a clever form of automated spam ( taking the name details of someone who has commented previously and using this in a message containing some bland comments). Sadly it seems that even closer inspection of comments will be needed in future

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Transliteracy - Breaking Down Barriers July 12, 2007 On Tuesday (10 July 2007) I was a co-faciliator of an ‘unconference’ session at a JISC Emerge meeting which aimed at helping to consolidate the Emerge community of practice. Until a few weeks ago the term ‘unconference’ was new to me - indeed, as I joked at the event, I thought myself and Graham Atwell, my co-facilitator, had been invited to facilitate a UN-style conference, acting as peace-keepers between warring projects Fortunately this turned out not to me the case. Wikipedia was my friend and helped to provide a definition of an unconference: “An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants, generally day-by-day during the course of the event, rather than by a single organizer, or small group of organizers, in advance.“ So Graham and I had to prepare for an event driven by the participants and not by ourselves. The approach we took was to prepare for a number of ways of stimulating discussion, if this was needed. However on the day it turned out that this was not needed as two interesting discussions took place in our two sessions: one on transliteracy and one on the ethical aspects of use of social networks (a 349 of 544

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topic I’ll revisit in the future). Professor Sue Thomas of De Montford University introduced the ‘transliteracy’ topic. Again looking at Wikipedia I find the definition of Transliteracy given as “The ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.“. (This has been taken from the PART (Production and Research in Transliteracy) Group Web site). Although the term was new to me, it struck a cord chord with many of my interests, such as papers I’ve written on blended / holistic accessibility, in which myself and my co-authors have argued that, in the context of e-learning accessibility, the important aspect is the accessibility of the learning outcomes, rather than the accessibility of the digital resources. I was thinking some more about transliteracy when I came across a recent blog post on “Battle lines” on the SINTO blog. This post suggests there’s a “battle raging for the hearts and minds of the library profession” between the “the Webbed [advocates] featuring General Phil Bradley and Karen Blakeman” who march under the slogan “Just do it” and “the web sceptics gathered around Field Marshall Tim Coates. Their battle cry is ‘Libraries are synonymous with books and reading. They always have been and they always will be’.“ I would agree with the SINTO comment that “On reflection however, I feel that this image of a direct conflict is misleading. On the whole the webbed are not anti-book … Similarly the web sceptics are not all anti-computer“. It is possible to engage with both the analogue and digital worlds - and anyone who has seen my collection of books, LPs and CDs will know that I am comfortable in living in both of these universes And this holistic approach reflects many aspects of our lives, I feel. For example, when I travel I might walk, take the bus, car, train or fly. I do not class myself as a ‘driver’ to the exclusion of other forms of transport. Many of us will have a broad view of issues - although in the context of this example, Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson would be an exception. And maybe the are times or contexts in which we will take a narrowly focussed approach to issues. As someone who has worked in IT for many tears years I am familiar with 7-layer models and the benefits of clear separation of functions when developing software. But don’t we now need to take a more holistic approach to development work, I wonder? And what are the implications of this? I’m now pleased at having participated in the Unconference session and that Sue introduced me to ‘transliteracy’ - without the unconference, I suspect I would not have had the opportunity to hear this term and discuss its implications. And returning to the tensions discussed in the SINTO blog post, perhaps the transliteracy community can give their thoughts on the arguments of the”Web 2.0: Just do it” and”Libraries are about books and reading (just read it?)” camps. Technorati Tags: transliteracy Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 10 Comments »

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How Large Is Your Facebook Network? July 11, 2007 How large is the Facebook network at your institution? The network at the University of Bath has 10,199 members (on 7 July 2007). This sounds impressive, but the numbers aren’t as large as those for the University of Leeds (26,944). Manchester (25,644) , Nottingham (24,021), Sheffield (19,939), or, up in Scotland, Edinburgh with 21,396 members. These figures are impresssive as members need to opt-in (unlike, say, the numbers of users who may be automatically registered for in-house applications such as email or Blackboard). On the other hand these figures don’t provide any indication of the active numbers of users. And the figures will be inflated as, unlike registrations for in-house services, members will not be removed once they leave the institution. So how might be go about benchmarking use of Facebook, in order to monitor trends, which can help institutions to identify whether Facebook might be an appropriate platform to support learning activities and communications with students - and also to make comparisons with the take-up of similar in-house and national services (such as JANET’s forthcoming national Collaborate project)? An initial stab might be to get the statistics available on Facebook on the size of the networks in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. A technical approach might be to write a screenscraper to gather these statistics (assuming they are not available via an API), but a collaborative approach might be to engage the community in finding their own statistics and documenting the figures in a wiki (or, more appropriately, perhaps) in a shared Google Spreadsheet file). But how do we get an indication for whether the networks are actually being used? Perhaps we could look at figures for the numbers of new groups which are set up, the numbers of posting to groups, the numbers of applications installed and the size of personal networks. But how easy if it to get such statistics? We need to find out if such information is available via Facebook APIs. An alternative approach would be to interview students. But if we do this we’ll need to remember that the findings may not necessarily be valid across the sector - Facebook seems to be popular in some institutions but not others. And it might be interesting to explore the reasons why this may be. The University for Warwick, which provides a blogging service for all its students, has 15,637 users on its Facebook network. Are these two services in competition with each other, I wonder, or do they provide complementary functionality? Or perhaps the popularity differs across different departments? Other, tangential, approaches might be to look at the size of popular crossinstituional networks, such as them The Great Facebook Race - British network, which currently has 52,497 members, or to look at the number of Facebook page impressions, which according to an article on Opening Up Facebook Registration Fuels 89% Jump in Traffic published on 8 July 2007:

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In terms of pages viewed, the number of pages of content viewed at Facebook.com in May 2007 increased to 15.8 billion, up 143% versus May 2006 and 121% versus September. An average visit to the site lasted 186 minutes in May 2007, a 35% increase versus the 03/10/2008 14:51

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same month last year. Some interesting research possibilities, I think. And also valuable data which is needed before institutions start to make significant decisions about use of Facebook or deployment of alternative services in-house. Technorati Tags: facebook Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 8 Comments »

Universities, Not Facebook, May Be Facing Collapse July 9, 2007 When I wrote my post on Facebook WILL Die I never expected to read a headline article on the front page of the Guardian which gave a Secret List of Universities Facing Collapse. But that was the headline of Saturday’s Guardian (7 July 2007). The article listed almost 50 institutions which are “at risk of financial failure” although HEFCE responded by saying that the information was out-of-date and many of the institutions have taken action to address their financial difficulties. But it does make me realise that we must not take the sustainability of educational institutions for granted. And if a university did go under, or, in the face of severe financial difficulties, departments were closed and staff left, how might this affect the intellectual property and networked services housed within the institution? Might not outsourcing the management of IT services, such as an institutional blogging service, be an appropriate strategy for an institution on the list? Technorati Tags: Guardian Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 4 Comments »

Facebook WILL Die! July 8, 2007 Yes, you heard it here first - Facebook will die! This may be in a year’s time; perhaps we learn that Facebook is a money-laundering operation for the Mafia. Or it may be discovered that many of the Facebook groups and photo-sharing services are used for pornography. Or maybe the Facebook owners get bored or decide that social networks are unhealthy for society and so shut it down (after all Stanley Kubric chose to ban showings of Clockwork Orange in the 1970s after accusations that it was responsible for copycat violence). Or maybe Facebook dies after MySpace responds to the threat to its core business which Facebook is providing by opening up its APIs and succeeds in regaining lost ground. 352 of 544

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Or maybe Bebo will surprise everyone by trumping Facebook I’ve heard people say that it is growing in popularity and maybe institutions will find that the large numbers of registered Facebook users include many dormant accounts as users move away from a service which becomes increasingly institutionalised. And maybe it takes 10, 20, 50, … years for Facebook to die. Should this worry us? And how should we respond to such scenarios, even if some of them are pretty unlikely? My view is that we do need to carry out such risk assessment. But we also need to take a similar approach to the things we do normally including in-house developments or developments work funded by public sector bodies. Let’s acknowledge the risks that in-house development work could potentially not be sustainable if the project developer leaves. Similarly project funded work may result in software which may be left to rot on SourceForge. And even services provided by the government may not be sustainable, not because the government will go out of business, but because of government reorganisation (as we’ve seen recently following Gordon Brown’s move to number 10 and subsequent changes to his Cabinet). Yes, services will rise and fall. And we have to have mechanisms in place to cater for this. But let’s remember that this can also happen to the services we develop and may care about today. And we have seen this recently in the UK HE sector, following the AHRB’s decision to cease funding the AHDS and the JISC’s response that it cannot afford to fund AHDS on its own. Technorati Tags: facebook Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 4 Comments »

Just Do It - But How? July 5, 2007 I recently posted about the call to “Just do it” made by Lynne Brindley in her opening plenary talk at the Umbrella 2007 conference; a rallying cry which has been echoed by others. In his blog post about the conference (and echoed in his trip report) Pete Smith asks “How useful is ‘just do it’ as advice?” The answer to that question is simple: it’s not useful advice, because it’s not intended as advice! Rather this rallying cry is meant to indicate that the debate has moved on and we should now be asking how we deploy technologies such as blogs and wikis, how we syndicate our content, how we go about engaging with user-generated content and how we address the broad issues of openness - and not whether we should. And must definitely not “we can’t do this because Web 2.0 is just a marketing term”. I feel we are at a stage which has many similarities to the position in 1993-4 when there was a realisation in the university sector that Gopher wouldn’t make it and the answer to the question of whether to use a home-grown campus wide information system, Gopher technologies or the Web was “It’s the Web. Just do it!” As Pete suggests, the question we need to address is ”how?”. And, of course, 353 of 544

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this question will need to encompass the intended purpose, the scope, the legal issues and questions about sustainablity and business questions. And these are issues UKOLN has started to address. And I’ve summarised some of the bigger questions in the poster shown below which I’ll be displaying at a JISC Emerge meeting on Tuesday. I’ll follow up on the issues hiughlighted in the poster in future posts - and look forward for comments, querstions and criticisms.

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The ‘Just Do It’ Meme July 4, 2007 Mike Ellis, in a recent guest blog post, urged us to ‘go forth and mash’. Mike informed us that ‘Anyone who’s had the misfortune to hear me speak will know that I’m a big fan of a “just do it” attitude to Web development’. And, indeed, 354 of 544

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Mike and I were co-authors of a paper on Web 2.0: How to Stop Thinking and Start Doing: Addressing Organisational Barriers which expanded on this notion of ‘doing it’. At the recent Umbrella 2007 conference, Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library, in the opening plenary talk also urged us to ‘just go and do’. Or, as Pandora’s Blog described it Lynne “spoke of the need to engage with the Net generation using Web 2.0 technologies - If they don’t come to us, we should go to them on their terms, in their spaces“. And I’ve just noticed a post by Peter Murray-Rust who, back in May 2007, told us that the chemical semantic web has arrived! just do it NOW. The infrastructure and the standards are in place, lightweight tools are available and the early adopters have demonstrated the concepts - it’s now now for the rest of us to just do it. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 12 Comments »

Clarifying The Openness Of Slides July 4, 2007 At the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 we’ll be encouraging the speakers and workshop facilitators to maximise access to their resources by providing a Creative Commons licence for their slides and other related resources. But how should the speakers go about this? The approach I have taken is to include a Creative Commons logo on the title slide and also on the handout page. In addition for the past few years I have included the location of the PowerPoint file on the title slide and also on the handout page. This is illustrated in the image.

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This approach enables anyone who wishes to reuse the content to easily find the master source. In addition it allows the slides to be downloaded during a presentation, if a network is available. This can provide accessibility benefits if a user cannot read the slides for whatever reason. I also use the title slide to give a summary of the Acceptable Use Policy which will apply to the talk I give (I normally give permission for the talk to be recorded, for example). The slide also contains hyperlinks to various resources, which can be followed if the slides have been downloaded. For the title slide this normally included a link to a del.icio.us tag which bookmarks resources mentioned in the presentation, together with clarifications of the Creative Commons licence (which normally states that not all images may be covered by the Creative Commons licence). Feel free to make use of this approach if you think it might be helpful to you and users of your slides. Technorati Tags: iwmw2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General, iwmw2007 | Edit 5 Comments »

From The DNER To Web 2.0 July 3, 2007 My former colleague Andy Powell was one of the key developers of what was 356 of 544

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originally known as the DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource) and was later rebranded as the JISC Information Environment (IE). Andy produced a diagram of the IE architecture, an early version of which is illustrated. This diagram (and subsequent versions which further developed the initial model) illustrate how JISC’s development strategy recognised the importance of the network as a platform for providing access to services across the higher and further education communities. I was involved in some of the early discussion about the JISC IE. And the following diagram (taken from a talk on The Web In The 21st Century given at the JUSW 2001 workshop on 4-5th September 2001 at Loughborough University) gives my interpretation of how the JISC IE might develop.

It should be noted that in this diagram I floated the idea that the JISC IE could be enhanced to include access to application services and not just middleware services such as authentication. It is interesting that my vision was for access to lightweight services such as spell-checks and bookmarking services. The idea came to me after reflecting on services such as HaL’s Web-based HTML validation service which was announced way back in 1994 and was subsequently mirrored on the (now defunct) national HENSA mirror service. It struck me back then that this concept (based on simple REST interface) could be applied more widely. Back then I didn’t envisage that it would be possible to deploy networked versions of full-scale applications such as a word processor. But this is now available, as the Google Docs service (and many other competitors) clearly illustrate. I also did not foresee that the service we use within the higher and further education communities could be provided by the commercial sector. But del.icio.us, and many other social book marking services, also clearly 357 of 544

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demonstrate that the model of networked access to bookmarking services, which I suggested in my diagram, can be deployed on a global scale. On reflection I think the vision for the JISC Information Environment, which was devised and developed by UKOLN and JISC colleagues including Andy Powell (who now works for the Eduserv Foundation) and Liz Lyon (UKOLN) and Rachel Bruce (JISC), can be seen as an architecture which has strong connections with Web 2.0. The JISC IE vision, however, probably missed out on the importance of social networking and user generated content and, indeed, generating interest which will encourage users to adopt new technologies (indeed, as Andy Powell commented recently “One of the … problems with the JISC IE diagram is that it was largely technology driven“). But the initial technical architecture that was devised (especially syndication using lightweight technologies such as RSS) seems to have been validated by the success of Web 2.0. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General, Web2.0, jisc | Edit 3 Comments »

Web Owner vs. Web User Tensions July 2, 2007 My colleague Marieke Guy has organised a panel session entitled “Dealing with the Commercial World: Saviour or Satan?” at the IWMW 2007 event. The abstract for the session begins “With the introduction of variable fees Universities have entered what education secretary Ruth Kelly called “a new era”. Financial departments have had to find more creative ways to meet the sector’s growing competitive demands and those working within universities have had to take a more business-like, customer-focused approach to many aspects of their work as they compete for students.“ The aim of the panel session is to address the tensions which often seem to occur within the higher education sector when dealing with commercial companies. Marieke has asked me to take part in the panel. My view is that the commercial vs. non-commercial software is no longer a major philosophical debate: we are all New Labour in our thinking, these days. And the open source debate is primarily about fitness for purpose, rather than open source ideology. More interesting, I feel, is the owner versus user dimension. I’ve tried to illustrate this in the accompanying diagram, where I suggest there may be four sectors of interest: A: An emphasis on the service owner, using 358 of 544

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non-commercial tools. The extremes of the sector may represent the view of the ‘open source fundamentalist‘. B: An emphasis on the service owner, using commercial tools. The extremes of the sector represent the view of the ‘vendor fundamentalist‘. C: An emphasis on the user, using non-commercial tools. This is where the user-focussed open source developer would like to be positioned D: An emphasis on the user, using commercial tools. This may be the sector in which an organisation which makes use of commercial products sees itself. However rather than reducing these sectors to such simple divisions, of more interest might be to explore the tensions between organisations will a user focus and those which take a more managerial approach.

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Quality content: Members of institutional Web management teams have always prided themselves on developing systems and deploying software which can ensure that the content on the Web site conforms with a variety of rules. Quality experience: However we are starting to find that some institutions are now emphasising the importance of providing a quality experience for its users, and, providing the content is not illegal, give less of an emphasis on the quality of the content. Compliance with accessibility rules: Institutions may have policies which state that all corporate pages will comply with WCAG AA guidelines for Web accessibility. They may feel that this policy will ensure that they will not be sued under accessibility legislation. User-focussed approach to accessibility: However some institutions may feel that WCAG guidelines are dated and, in some areas, inappropriate and will be willing to infringe the guidelines if this can enhance the accessibility and usability for their target audience. Mandation of use of open standards: Institutions may insist that Web services comply strictly with HTML and CSS standards. Pragmatic approach to use of open standards: Other institutions may prefer to use Web services which comply with HTML and CSS standards, but may be willing to drop this requirement if the service can provide a useful function for the institution. Bans based on ideology: In a recent discussion on the web-support JISCMail list there was a suggestion that HTML email should not be allowed as it is often used for marketing purposes. Providing flexibility: In a response to the discussion on use of HTML in email others argues that (a) marketing is an acceptable activity and (b) it is desirable to allow end users choice on how they wish their email to be delivered. 03/10/2008 14:51

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Of course the situation is much more complex than pictured here, and there are many cases in which strict compliance with rules may need to be enforced. But the boundaries are shifting, I feel. Much of the talks and discussions at previous IWMW events, for example, have covered areas in which Web management teams would like greater managerial control (with Andrew Aird famously suggesting back in 2002 that “Web Team has ultimate say-so. No buts“). There’s a need for the Web management community to rethink its values and the approaches we have traditionally taken. We’re not living in the 20th century any more, after all! Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0, iwmw2007 | Edit 5 Comments »

Guest Post: Go Forth and Mash! July 1, 2007 A regular guest blog post at the start of every month aims to provide an fresh insight into issues which are covered in the UK Web Focus blog. The month’s guest blog post comes from Mike Ellis, who posts on the Electronic Museum blog. Mike was also the lead author of a paper on Web 2.0: How to Stop Thinking and Start Doing: Addressing Organisational Barriers presented at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference, which I contributed to. Recently, Ross Parry from the University of Leicester Museum Studies Department asked me to help put together a “mashup” day as part of the Museums Computer Group conference. I was delighted to be involved. Anyone who’s had the misfortune to hear me speak will know that I’m a big fan of a “just do it” attitude to Web development. We spent a day producing some interesting stuff which made us all think in new ways. We purposely ignored the constraints; we didn’t think about the politics. These are debates which happen quite enough elsewhere across our sector. In this session, we just wanted to do, to be naive, to see what we could come up with, with only 6-7 hours of focussed development time. Some people will claim that we were just playing, and to a certain extent that’s true - but R&D time for anyone working in this field should 360 of 544

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be rigorously defended. Furthermore, I believe that you can only produce great Web applications with two key approaches: 1. by providing frameworks and project structures which are wholly driven by - and tested with - your users. 2. by challenging what you’re doing, and have done before, with left-field, iterative, Darwinist style build and testing. Often, these approaches are used in isolation to each other. The first is often seen as process-heavy; the second as belonging to the institution mavericks. I take the line that actually they complement each other beautifully. On the one hand, if you don’t listen to what your users want; if you don’t understand exactly who they are, you’ll never, ever achieve anything of any use. On the other, if you fail to innovate or to challenge the erstwhile status quo, you’ll never find better, cheaper, more innovative ways of doing things: you fail to embrace the whole point of technology. The Web itself is a huge user-centred experiment - a sprawling, evolutionary, grungy mess. It has no vision, no roadmap, no sustainability plan, no overall purpose, no governing body. And that’s what makes it such an interesting, dynamic ecosystem. Mashups echo this wilderness, and by that very fact, they’re immensely challenging: They’re challenging for IT types because they’ve spent their entire careers building and encouraging systems which are stable, known, specified and tested. They’re challenging for academic types because they are based on new paradigms of authority. They’re challenging for people who sell stuff because they define a model of shared ownership which at first seems at odds with any concept of profit. For many others, “mashing” simply isn’t a way of thinking which is familiar. And that’s difficult, too. At the same time, the mashup approach give you unprecedented access to a limitless pool of data, services and ideas. It is liberating to work in this way. It is also (reasonably) easy, and usually free. You can read more about what we did, and why I think mashups are important over on Slideshare. I’m really excited to see that UKOLN are hosting a similar opportunity the at IWMW 2007 event (and gutted that I’m on holiday when it’s on..). The museum and HE sectors have many similar traits. On the plus side we have brains, content and ideas. On the minus, we’re famous for our “Institutional Treacle”. The more we can do to challenge the latter and do justice to the former by JUST DOING, the better. Go forth and mash! Technorati Tags: guest-blog Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post, Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

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June 29, 2007 Whilst attending the Museums Mashup which preceded the UK Museums and the Web 2007 conference recently I spotted the following notice which was pinned on the wall in several of the PC cluster rooms (and thanks to Jim O’Donnell for taking this and other photos at the event).

As someone who used to work in a number of IT Service departments I’m aware of potential security implications. But the tone of this notice strikes me as inappropriate. And it also seems to be out of sync with the trend towards more user-focussed IT Service departments, articulated in the introduction to the UCISA IT Support Staff Symposium 2007 given by David Harrison, UCISA chair who argued that IT Services departments need to stop saying that they are user-focussed and actually mean it. Michael Nowlan, Director of Information Systems Services at Trinity College Dublin made a similar point at the TERENA Networking the Network 2007 conference recently. As can be seen from his opening three slides in a session on The Weakest Link? - a panel discussion on campus networks Michael suggested that the IT Centre might actually be the weakest link within an institution, focussing on its role in protecting the infrastructure by denying access to services to the detriment of the user community. And Michael challenged the 362 of 544

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notion of bans on technologies such as Skype and prohibitting students from attaching devices to the campus network. In an email Michael recently summarised what being user-focussed means to the IT services department at Trinity College Dublin: Yes before No Allow before disallow Open rather than closed Connect to the network on a device-agnostic basis I think this is a great summary of what “IT Services 2.0″ should be about. And personally I think it should be strictly forbidden to put up notices containing the words “strictly forbidden” on campuses Technorati Tags: ukmw07 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 6 Comments »

Yahoo Pipes and IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition June 28, 2007 In order to support the Innovation Competition which is a new feature of the annual Institutional Web Management Workshop we are providing access to a variety of RSS feeds, including feeds of the location of all eleven IWMW events and the location of the host institutions for plenary speakers at all of the events. In addition RSS feeds for the plenary talks and workshop sessions for recent events are also available. And as well as the data provided by the event organisers, there are also links to various related feeds, such as bloggers at the event and feeds from services such as del.icio.us and Flickr. This data can be used by delegates at the event who may wish to submit an entry to the Innovation Competition (and we also invite submissions from people who can’t attend). The Yahoo! Pipes application would appear to be a tool worth exploring in this context. And I’m pleased that my colleague Julie Allison has developed an application based on this tool which takes the last 10 Flickr, del.icio.us and Technorati tags and mixes them with the IWMW 2007 news feed. This is illustrated below.

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Julie informs me that this simple use of Yahoo! Pipes took her about 15 minutes to write (if ‘write’ is the correct term to use for a graphical development tool). And as the source of this application is available it can form the basis of richer applications. An opportunity for someone, I think. Technorati Tags: yahooo-pipes Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0, iwmw2007 | Edit 4 Comments »

Web 2.0: Opportunity Or Threat For IT Support Staff? June 27, 2007 On Thursday 21st June 2007 I gave the opening plenary talk on Web 2.0: Opportunity Or Threat For IT Support Staff? at the UCISA SDG IT 364 of 544

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Support Staff Symposium. The symposium was opened by David Harrison, Assistant Director of Information Services at the University of Cardiff and the current UCISA chair. In his introduction David argued strongly that IT Service department needed to be user-focussed, and this time they need to mean it as otherwise the user community will go elsewhere. Steve Gough, Assistant Director of IT Services at the University of Reading and chair of the UCISA SDG Distributed IT Support Staff sub-group, welcomed delegates to the event and described how a Facebook group had been set up for the symposium, which would provide an opportunity for delegates to gave an understanding of the strengths and weakness of Facebook. These two brief talks provided a much welcomed context for my talk, in which I argued that Web 2.0 can be a valuable opportunity for IT support staff, as well as for our user community. However in order to maximise the benefits, we need to make use of Web 2.0 technologies to support our activities - which will also provide us with an opportunity to understand the limitations and to develop strategies for addressing any concerns.

My slides are available on Slideshare and I’ve noticed that within a few days 5 Slideshare users had added the presentation to their list of favourites. And one user, sleslie, (who describes himself on his blog as “an educational technology researcher and emerging technology analyst … at the BCcampus Learning Resources Centre“) gave his comments on the slides.

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And perhaps more importantly, how should institutions support such cultural change? Or, as indicated by the opening remarks at the symposium, perhaps we are already well advanced in the UK, and it is universities in North America which face greater problems. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events | Edit 7 Comments »

Slideshare Available From Facebook June 26, 2007 My colleague Nitin Parmar, a Learning Technologist at the University of Bath, has just alerted me to a post on the Slideshare blog which has just announced that SlideShare is available on FaceBook! I’ve just tried it and uploaded a few of my slides to my Facebook account. The interface is shown below.

The Slideshare blog posts admits that “While the Facebook application is not an exact replica of SlideShare, we have tried to include the core features“. It goes on to say that “We plan to gradually add more functionalities to the SlideShare-Facebook application“. I welcome the fact that Slideshare are engaging their user community in early user testing and that they encourage users to “give us your feedback and let us know how we could enhance its appeal. ” As the open source community often say “release early and release often”. Technorati Tags: Slideshare, Facebook Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 366 of 544

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Accessibility and Innovation June 25, 2007 “I’m looking into the potential of Web 2.0 / mashups / Second Life / … for our museum’s Web site. What do others think about this?“ This, in various guises, is a question which surfaces from time to time on the MCG JISCMail list - and I’m sure the question will be raised in other sectors. A common response seems to be “We believe in complying with Web accessibility guidelines and we won’t let ourselves be distracted by use of technologies for this own sake.“ But what if this actually means “We can’t be bothered trying anything new“, “We don’t understand any of this new stuff, but we feel uncomfortable admitting this” or “We’ve just deployed an expensive new CMS which doesn’t provide such functionality, so I feel threatened by any suggestions that we’ve missed out on an important alternative service. It would be difficult to make such suggestions on a mailing list, especially as such a response would seem to avoid the accessibility issue. But what if many of the new technologies can be demonstrated to enhance accessibility? What if the Web Accessibility Initiative’s new draft version of their guidelines recognises this and removes some the outdated guidelines. And what if a holistic approach to accessibility can be taken which can help museums to engage with new audiences? This was the message I gave in a talk on The Accessible Web at the Web Adept: Museums and the Web 2007 conference which was held on Friday at the University of Leicester.

I pointed out the flaws in WAI’s model and the WCAG 1.0 guidelines and described how the WCAG 2.0 draft guidelines have been updated to remove 367 of 544

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some of the flaws in the original version of the guidelines and to embrace many new approaches provided by Web 2.0 technologies. I also pointed out that, as I’ve described previously, the limitations of WAI’s approach had been admitted by Michael Cooper in his paper at the W4A 2007 conference. And finally I argued that museums should take a holistic approach to accessibility, which covers the range of services provided by an organisation rather than focussing on individual services. Michael Twidale, who gave a talk on Second Life at the conference, provided a great example of this approach when he described how a paraplegic user, who may not be able to walk or control a computer could, with the help or a carer, be able to fly in an immersive environment such as Second Life. This example, taken from a book on Second Life, provided a great example of how Second Life may be empowering for some, and why simplistic approaches to Web accessibility, based on a hard-line interpretation of accessibility guidelines, can do more harm than good. There seemed to be general agreement at the conference that this is an approach which would appear to be of particular relevance to the museums’ community. And it embraces many of the ideas which were described by other speakers at the conference, which are summarised in blog postings about the conference written by Mike Ellis and Seb Chan. We do need to move on in our thinking about accessibility - and, I feel, we should stop using dated views on accessibility guidelines as an excuse for failing to engage with innovation. Technorati Tags: ukmw07 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility | Edit 6 Comments »

The ‘Cities Visited’ Facebook Application June 22, 2007 Over the past year or so I have been geo-located the talks I’ve given. This involves using Google Maps top find the latitude and longitude of the venue and adding this to an RSS feed for my talks. This gives me the ability to display maps of my forthcoming events and talks I gave in 2006 and 2005. However effort is required to do this, especially locating the talks I gave prior to 2005. So although I would find it useful to be able to have a map showing when I’ve spoken since I started at UKOLN, I decided it would take too long to process the required data. But then I noticed the Cities I’ve Visited application in Facebook. And I 368 of 544

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realised that I could simply type in the names of the places I’ve been to in order to add them to a map (and as it uses a n AJAX interface I didn’t even need to type in the full name). And I didn’t need to repeat the process for every time I’m been to an event at London. So I could very quickly create a map of the 64 towns and cities I’ve spoken at. When I used the application I became aware of some of its limitation: its coverage of towns and cities is not universal (so I couldn’t include details of my talk at Gregynog in mid-Wales) but perhaps more importantly (without wishing to offend the Welsh!) is the inability to export the data. Andy Powell, in a post on Be aggregated as you would aggregate unto others published raised this issue recently on the eFoundations blog. But as I suggested on the eFoundations blog, this can be regarded as an example of “embracing constraints“. And rather than having to wait for the application to be fullyfeatured but it is released, releasing the software early and gaining feedback might actually be a more effective approach to development. After all, as Andy himself pointed out, Slideshare originally didn’t allow uploaded slides to be downloaded, but this limitation was removed shortly afterwards. And as a user of this application, I have decided that even if data export functionality is not added to the software, my risk assessment of the application leads me to be prepared to accept this limitation, in order to benefit from the service it provides at little effort to myself. To summarise my views:

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Software development is a process The process may include releasing early and releasing often in order to engage users in the process Users may be prepared to embrace the constraints of an application, provided they are aware of such constraints and the implications. There can be a missed opportunity cost associated with not using a service because it doesn’t do everything. Similar issues related to embracing constraints and the dangers of missed opportunities apply even more so to developers, as getting the perfect software out after the user community has embraced flawed applications may result in having to write off the investment in development costs of 03/10/2008 14:51

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that perfect, but little used application. Technorati Tags: Facebook Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 2 Comments »

Search Engines On University Web Sites June 21, 2007 A few years ago I carried out periodic surveys of search engine usage on University Web sites. The surveys were carried out at about 6-monthly intervals from 1999-2003, with an additional (partial) survey, using data provided by Lucy Anscombe of Thames Valley University, being published in 2005. The surveys provided an opportunity to monitor trends, which informed discussions within the community, on mailing lists such as web-support .

The data for the initial survey, carried in summer 1999, show that the open source ht://Dig software was the most popular. There was a diverse range of search engine software found, but also a high proportion of instituional Web sites which did not have a search engine. Over the years ht://Dig grew in popularity, and there was a consolidation in the range of applications used. At some point, however, the Google externallyhosted service began to be used. This initially led to debate on the possible 370 of 544

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dangers of relying on a third party service for an instituional search engine, and the possible limitations of a proprietary application when open source serach engine tools, such as ht://Dig, were available.. By 2003, however, it would appear that the community felt that the benefits provided by Google outweighted possible risks, with a Google search engine was the most widely deployed solution, as shown in the Table (although note that the Table will include uses of the Google Search Appliance, and not just the externtally-hosted service). Search Engine Google Other ht://Dig Inktomi / Verity Ultraseek Not working / not found Google search appliance Thunderstone Total

No. 44 24 21 10 5 5 2 109

It would be interesting to explore the position today (and a community-led survey would overcome the resource costs of having to carry out this survey centrally). Of greater interest, though, might be exploring how search engines are being used. Are they being used to provide richer types of searching, browsing and other functions - are are they still simply a search box to be found near the top of a University’s home page? What’s the situtuation at your institution? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 2 Comments »

Embracing Constraints June 20, 2007 When you are involved in development work it seems that you need to ensure that every possible contingency is catered for, all relevant standards are used, the software is repurposable, the service complies fully with accessibility guidelines, can be used by every browser and on every platform, etc., etc. No wonder software seems to take so long to be developed! But is this the only approach which can be taken to software development? My colleague Paul Walk recently introduced me to the concept of “embracing constraints“. This approach was used by 37Signals in the development of the Basecamp Web-based project management service, and they have described why they chose this approach:

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Let limitations guide you to creative solutions 03/10/2008 14:51

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There’s never enough to go around. Not enough time. Not enough money. Not enough people. That’s a good thing. Instead of freaking out about these constraints, embrace them. Let them guide you. Constraints drive innovation and force focus. Instead of trying to remove them, use them to your advantage. When 37signals was building Basecamp, we had plenty of limitations. We had: A design firm to run Existing client work A 7-hour time difference (David was doing the programming in Denmark, the rest of us were in the States) A small team No outside funding We felt the “not enough” blues. So we kept our plate small. That way we could only put so much on it. We took big tasks and broke them up into small bits that we tackled one at a time. We moved step by step and prioritized as we went along. That forced us to come up with creative solutions. We lowered our cost of change by always building less software. We gave people just enough features to solve their own problems their own way — and then we got out of the way. The time difference and distance between us made us more efficient in our communication. Instead of meeting in person, we communicated almost exclusively via im and email which forced us to get to the point quickly. Constraints are often advantages in disguise. Forget about venture capital, long release cycles, and quick hires. Instead, work with what you have. This seems to be a development philosophy which is being adopted within the Web 2.0 development world. For example Jon Udell has commented on Dabble DB which is “a web-based workgroup database that, in the style of 37Signals, focuses on simplicity and embraces constraints. Dabble doesn’t aim to do full-blown database application development, or sophisticated query, or heavy transactions. Its mission, instead, is to enable teams to easily manage and flexibly evolve modest (say, 30- to 50-megabyte) quantities of structured data.“ This makes me wonder whether current approaches to development within the public sector are too heavyweight and we shouldn’t start to ‘embrace constraints.’ Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 7 Comments »

Monitoring Web Server Usage Across A Community June 19, 2007 372 of 544

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How many public Web servers are there at your University? And how have the numbers changed over the past 5 years? Are you running more servers, as the range of services you provide grows, or have the numbers of servers decreased due to rationalisation in order to avoid duplication of efort across the institution? I published an article on A Survey Of Numbers of UK University Web Servers in June 2000, with a follow-up article on An Update Of A Survey Of The Numbers of UK University Web Servers which was published in March 2002. The survey was carried out using the online Netcraft service, by using a wildcard (*.ox.ac.uk) to obtain details of the numbers of Web servers in, in this case, the Oxford university domain. This process was repeated manually for all (~160) UK HEIs. A histogram for the results of the 2002 survey is illustrated. How have things changed in the past 5 years? It would be possible to repeat the manual survey - as can be seen, the online Netcraft survey service is still available. However in a Web 2.0 environment in which many lightweight Web-based tools are available it would not be sensible to repeat the methodology. It strikes me that the Netcraft results page is well-suited for screenscraping (immediately after the “Results for *.ox.ac.uk” text is a line which says “Found 356 sites“. So while this interface remains, the data can be programatically extracted, stored and displayed, possibly in a graphical format). The Dapper application could, perhaps, could be used for this purpose. After all, as I’ve described previously, Dapper has been used to create Blotter, which scrapes Technorati ranking data on a daily basis, stores this data and display the trends graphically. But rather than doing this myself, I’d like to suggest that this might be a suitable example for the IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition - this should be lightweight and user-focussed (providing data which can detect trends across the community). It could be possible to provide an interface for a user to supply their own domain name, although another approach might be to take the domain names for the community (or perhaps a regional subset of the community) and display variations across the community - that, I think would be cool (and ‘coolness’ is one of the criteria for the competition). 373 of 544

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Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0, iwmw2007 | Edit 4 Comments »

Are W3C Crazy? June 18, 2007 Phil Wilson recently reported on his trip to the XTech 2007 conference. Phil’s report included a bullet point which said that “The W3C are crazy”. In response to my request for clarification Phil said that: There seemed to be a couple of big fat W3C elephants in the room. The first was that the w3c are doing stuff for use in five or ten years’ time whereas most of the other talks are about things you can do today or next year, which makes them seem like futurologists. The other is that they really didn’t seem that happy that HTML5 was going ahead, and what the hell was wrong with XHTML2 anyway? It must be nice to work in a standards organisation where everything you do meets some Platonic Idea of perfection. I think it is clear that W3C have had a very purist approach to the development of Web standards. Indeed Chris Lilley admitted in a talk on HTML Reloaded at the WWW 2007 conference that “99.99999% of the Web was invalid HTML. W3C pretended that didn’t exist. “ The W3C’s purist position is under pressure from companies such as Mozilla and Google, who feel that it is foolish to ignore that Web environment as it is today and build a new version of XHTML which is incompatible with HTML 4 and XHTML 1. Instead these companies, together with others who wish to build on existing tehcnologies, have been pushing evolutionary development of HTML 4, under the name HTML 5. Under such pressure, the W3C has been forced to back both camps, with the chartering of a HTML Working Group (which will develop HTML ‘classic’) and a XHTML 2 Working Group. Despite this concession, I feel that there is a culture at W3C which is uncomfortable will the need to address real world constraints and, as Phil describes it, prefers a world which conforms to a “Platonic Idea of perfection“. Are W3C crazy? No, not crazy, I would say, but idealist - and perhaps teasing the user community with a vision of perfection which is unlikely to be realised. And when Phil states they are “doing stuff for use in five or ten years’ time” it would seem he underestimates the timescales, as the WHATWG FAQ states, in response to a question on when HTML 5 will be finished: ”Around 15 years or more to reach a W3C recommendation (include estimated schedule)“. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit 2 Comments » 374 of 544

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Facebook and the Institutional Web June 15, 2007 One of the advantages that use of a social networking environment such as Facebook can provide is the ability to see the Facebook applications that one’s peers are deploying. This was how I spotted that John Kirriemuir had added the UIUC Library Search application to his Facebook account:

“What does this do?” I wondered, before deciding that it was worth investing about a minute of my time to find out. So I installed the application and voila:

So I now have a simple interface for searching the UIUC Library catalogue. Not much use for me, here at the University of Bath - but potentially very useful for students (and staff) at UIUC. Should we be doing something similar within our own institutions, perhaps providing search interface not only to the library catalogue and other local services but also to national services such as Intute? Some might argue that this is unnecessary as a search interface is available on the service’s Web site and that developing additional interfaces for platforms such as Facebook)will require additional efort. I would disagree with the first part - I feel we should be making our data and services available where our users are and expecting them to come to our services may be risky. On the issues of the effort needed to do this, well we need to explore how much effort is required. Perhaps work which can be linked to the IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition? Anyone fancy developing Faacebook applications which provide access to a range of JISC services? Technorati Tags: Facebook 375 of 544

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Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 16 Comments »

Open Standards - Are We There Yet? June 14, 2007 When will all the open standards we need be finalised? What will happen when that day arrives? And are we there yet? Daft questions, you may be thinking. But if that’s the case - and we’ll never arrive at a position in which the open standards we need are all done - what does this mean for the development community? Is the seemingly never-ending development of standards simply a way of providing ‘jobs for the boys’ - so that software developers and standards developers will be guaranteed of a job? Or, to ask a related question, are the standards which are available today good enough for most uses. Andy Powell, in the eFoundations blog, raised this issue recently when he commented “I’m very mindful of the tension between the relatively complex … and the relatively simple, tag-based, approaches taken by Web 2.0 repository-like applications such as Slideshare and Scribd.“ Andy went on to admit that “Unfortunately, I lean uncomfortably in both directions!“ I think that many of us involved in development work would admit to similar doubts - and perhaps those who have no doubts are those with a blinkered vision who were responsible for leading the UK HE sector down the cul de sac of Coloured Book network protocols in the 1980s. What should be done? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit 1 Comment »

Tim Berners-Lee, Order of Merit June 14, 2007 An email I have just received:

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It is my pleasure to inform you that Queen Elizabeth II, Head of State of the UK, has appointed Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web, to be a member of the Order of Merit. Founded in 1902 by King Edward VII, the Order of Merit [1] is conferred by the sovereign of the United Kingdom to “such persons, being subjects of our Crown, as may have rendered exceptionally meritorious service in Our Crown Services, or towards the advancement of the Arts, Learning, Literature and Science or such other exceptional service as We see fit to recognise.” [1] http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page1880.asp

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Some other points to note: The OM is one of the few British honours that is in the personal gift of the Sovereign as opposed to her government. As well as being the personal gift of the Queen, only 24 living people are allowed to hold the OM. Previous holders of the OM include Florence Nightingale, Edward Elgar and Winston Churchill. It’s good to see this honour being awarded to the person responsible for a great British invention which changed the world; no, not football or cricket, but the World Wide Web:-) PS The joke going around the W3C (coined by TV Raman) is: Q. Why doesn’t the Queen use the Web? A. Because it’s a royalty-free Web. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 1 Comment »

Google Email for TCD - And It’s My Fault! June 13, 2007 A recent BBC News headline entitled “Google’s e-mail for universities” states that “Trinity College Dublin has switched to Google’s e-mail - with other universities considering such a switch“. A news item on the Trinity College Dublin (TCD) Web site gives their perspective - and this has also been discussed by Alison Wildish on the Edge Hill University’s Web Service blog. And I have discovered that I was influential in Trinity College Dublin making that decision! Michael Nowlan, Director of Information Systems Services at Trinity College Dublin informed me in a Skype message last night that “at the Terena conference a couple of weeks ago I stated publicly that Brian Kelly’s talk at EUNIS changed my attitude totally.” Michael reminded me about two talks I gave at the EUNIS 2005 conference: one “IT Services - Help Or Hindrance To National IT Development Programmes?” and another on Using Networked Technologies To Support Conferences. Michael went on to say that my talks “led me to talk about disruptive technology at [the HEAnet Conference 2005] and here is the talk (WMV format) at least partly plagiarised from you!” Why was I making such predictions over two years ago? Well IT Service departments have been at the forefront of network developments, with the UK University sector having promoted the benefits of network services for many years (and let’s not forget that the UK has funded the provision of applications services, such as those hosted by MIMAS, EDINA, JISCMail and other national services). And the provision of such services by a commercial company is simply the application of mainstream political and economic orthodoxies within an IT context. We’ve got the network - so this is surely no big deal? What are your thoughts? Is having a diversity of providers of IT solutions (which 377 of 544

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need not be restricted to email) a good thing, in that it provides the user community (staff and students) with greater choice and can also help to ensure that the default IT provider (the IT Services department) is user-focussed (i.e. driving out the ‘IT fundamentalist”). Or is this Thatcherite privitisation of the educational sector which must be resisted at all costs, as it is likely to lead to a deterioration in the quality of the services as the commercial provider seeks to maximise its profits and ignores the specialist requirements of the educational sector? And as I’m giving a talk on “Web 2.0: Opportunity Or Threat For IT Support Staff?” at the UCISA SDG IT Support Staff Symposium 2007 next week I’m very interested in people’s views on this matter. Will I get lynched at the conference, I wonder? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 4 Comments »

Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education June 13, 2007 Via posts on the DigitalKoans and Record Management Futurewatch I came across references to a new JISC-funded report on “Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education” by Tom Franklin and Mark van Harmelen. This 27-page long document provides a series of recommendations to JISC on how it should respond to the challenges posed by Web 2.0. The recommendations include:

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Recommendation 1: Guidelines should not be so prescriptive as to stifle the experimentation that is needed with Web 2.0 and learning and teaching that is necessary to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by this new technology. Recommendation 4: JISC should consider funding work looking at long-term access to student created content once they have left the university with the aim of developing good practice guides. Recommendation 8: JISC should consider funding studies looking at the risks to the institution associated with internally and externally hosted Web 2.0 services, and ways in which the risks can be controlled and mitigated. This could be done within the wider context of examining risks associated with Web 2.0, web services and Service Oriented Architectures. Recommendation 17: JISC should consider commissioning studies to explore i) the accessibility issues of various commonly used Web 2.0 technologies, and how any limits can be overcome, and ii) case studies on how Web 2.0 technologies can enhance accessibility. Recommendation 9: JISC should consider funding projects or case studies that look at different methods for integrating Web 2.0 into the overall university information and information technology environment while retaining flexibility of use across teaching, 03/10/2008 14:51

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learning, administrative and other areas of university activity. All sensible stuff, I feel, which reflect some of the discussions we’ve been having on this blog (e.g. the current discussions about use of Facebook within our institutions address the issues raised in Recommendation 9). I should point out that Tom and Mark made use of Web 2.0 technologies in the production of their report. In particular they hosted a virtual conference which discussed a range of Web 2.0 issues, based on briefing papers produced by Tom and Mark. I spoke on Content Creation: Web 2.0 Is Providing The Solution at the virtual conference - and I must admit that I was somewhat surprised that the consulation process was not described in the report. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 5 Comments »

Evaluating Facebook June 12, 2007 How should we, in our institutions, go about evaluating the potential of Facebook? How can we gain a better understanding for the benefits it may provide to our students? How should we explore its limitations? And should we be pro-active in providing access to our data (our search facilities, our RSS feeds, our applications) from within Facebook? I’ve come across a number of posting on the potential of Facebook, including one from John Kirriemuir’s Silversprite blog, Mike Ellis on his Electronic Museum blog and, for those who like puns, some witticisms provided on Mark Sammons’ In-Cider Knowledge blog. And while the University of Keele has been banning Facebook, the University of Waterloo has been discussing how Facebook can be used as a tool to communicate with the 22,000 members of the University who are regiastered on its Facebook network. But these postings seem to be taking place in isolation, and missing out on the benfits of wider discussion and debate. Alison Wildish, a plenary speaker at IWMW 2007, wrote a guest blog post about social networking

environments recently, in which she described the approaches to social networks which are being taken at Edge Hill University. And Alison has set up an IWMW 379 of 544

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2007 Facebook group which aims to provide a forum for discussion about such issues. Feel free to join (if you have a Facebook account) and participate in the discussions. Note that the group has been set up to provide a forum for focussed discussions prior to the IWMW 2007 event which takes place on 16-18th July. One of the aims of the group during this period will be to explore whether the Facebook group should continue in its current form or migrate to an alternative environment. As you can see from the accompanying screenshot, the debate has already begun, and we are discussing whether Facebook should be banned or should be supported - or whether this debate is irrelevant, as students are likely to increasingly do their own thing anyway! Technorati Tags: Facebook Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Social Networking | Edit 2 Comments »

Video Clips To Launch An Event June 11, 2007 This year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop, at the University of York, starts after lunch on 16th July 2007. Back in 2004, when the event was held at the University of Birmingham, I opened the workshop by showing a video clip of “Steve Ballmer’s [of Microsoft] crowd pleasing repertoire of the grotesque“. It was a great light-hearted way of opening the event (and worth watching if you’ve not seen it before). Should we do something similar for this year’s event, I wonder? A few month’s ago I posted about Viral Marketing from Store Wars to Web 2.0. Several amusing video clips were mentioned, including, with an IT theme, the well-known “Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us” and the less well-known “Response to the ‘Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us’. A favourite of mine is “Introducing the book” and recently Mike Wald told me about the “Apple Irack” video clip. All worth watching - but are there any others which might provide a fun start to a three day event aimed at members of institutional Web management teams? Or are any of the ones I’ve mentioned worth showing? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2007 | Edit 2 Comments »

Amazon Links From Library Web Sites June 8, 2007 I noticed recently that the Perth College 380 of 544

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Library Webspots blog published a a post back in April which included links to Amazon for further information about books held at the library. I think this is a useful service - the books are mentioned in context, and the Amazon link enables further information about the book to be obtained. And if the user wishes to buy the book, they can do so - and any income which the institution gains from this referral link will be useful, although this is no likely to be substantial. But I have heard that some libraries would not allow such services to be deployed. Some of the reservations which libraries may have over deployment of various Web 2.0 services are described in the Web 2.0: Addressing the Barriers to Implementation in a Library Context QA Focus briefing document. This document includes the comment: “However, information professionals may feel uneasy about appearing to be promoting the use of Amazon as a commercial service to their users. This might potentially damage relationships with on-campus bookshops, or leave the Library service open to criticism from users that the Library is encouraging students to purchase essential materials rather than ensuring sufficient copies are provided.“ Is this a legitimate concern? Are libraries which include Amazon referral links likely to causing such problems? Or is this very much horses-for-courses, with different libraries making a variety of decisions, based on various local factors. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in library2.0 | Edit 11 Comments »

Guest Post: Marketing Man Takes Off His Tie June 6, 2007 Today’s guest post is from Peter Reader, Director of Marketing and Communications at the University of Bath. Peter will be giving a plenary talk entitled “Marketing Man takes off his Tie: Customers, Communities and Communication” at this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (which, incidentally, is now fully 381 of 544

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subscribed). And, as you’ll see from Peter’s post, he will be address a hot topic of the moment, which has been the focus of recent discussions on this blog - the role of social networking environments such as Facebook. When Brian invited me to speak at IWMW 2007, little did I know what was to follow. I’ve very much a data immigrant, but I’m also an ideas person and, for example, I treat my PC as I treat my car. I plug it in and switch it on - and I expect someone else to be able to turn my ideas into reality, just like I expect the garage mechanic to know that ‘it’s got a little rattle’ means exactly what needs fixing. But I still know what I want. Where my approach differs is that I don’t want to pay garage bills for my ICT. I am absolutely convinced of the importance of e-communications and e-marketing, not just for the recruitment of students but in all the other markets in which universities operate. As my University’s Marketing Director, never a day goes by without me being offered one package or another, including advertising of course. What’s more, it is clear change is taking place ever faster. Take the media - remember when the Times Educational Supplement was, in effect, a listing of all teaching jobs in the country. Not any more; it’s now a magazine. And The Higher, trade paper for universities, is also seeing its advertising revenue disappear; is that, maybe, why Murdoch sold The Times supplements? PR and marketing used to be all about campaigns, controlling the message, managing the communication channels and promoting the product. Product, Price, Place, Promotion. All neatly defined. But these old ideas of ‘control’ look more and more unrealistic. Now the talk is of focusing on the idea, ‘influence’, public reactions and not public relations, viral marketing, students as customers, B2B, client management and CRM, with the web and web technologies seen increasingly as the university’s most important marketing tools. As for social media, when most of our students arrive at university with a Facebook account, why are universities bothering to think about our own sites? Most prefer to use their own email address; the vast majority have their own account when they arrive and the old idea of universities offering email accounts is no longer any big deal. And, too, the idea of there being one youth market is just rubbish. Superbrands, such as Nike, are giving way to technology brands, such as Google, which has just been voted one of the top 10 companies for whom students would like to work. And all the time there is the staggering growth in user-generated content.How can universities harness this opportunity to best advantage? The product is still the key, but we have to give the customers, including our students and potential students, something worth talking about, to differentiate themselves. And universities are not very good at doing this; evidence from the Open University is students cannot tell the difference between institutions. What about their Web sites? We need to innovate, but universities are just so conservative. I said I’m an ideas person; what about yours? Technorati Tags: “guest-blog” Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post, iwmw2007 | Edit 4 Comments »

Guest Post: The Promise of 382 of 544

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Information Architecture June 5, 2007 Today’s guest post is written by Keith Doyle, who will be giving a plenary talk on The Promise of Information Architecture at this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop. I have been asked to present a plenary session at this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop on The Promise of Information Architecture. But what are promise, information and architecture? According to www.etymonline.com: promise (n.) c.1400, from L. promissum “a promise,” noun use of neuter pp. of promittere “send forth, foretell, promise,” from pro- “before” + mittere “to put, send”… information 1387, “act of informing,” from O.Fr. informacion, from L. informationem (nom. informatio) “outline, concept, idea,” noun of action from informare … Meaning “knowledge communicated” is from c.1450… architect 1563, from M.Fr. architecte, from L. architectus, from Gk. arkhitekton “master builder,” from arkhi- “chief” (see archon) + tekton “builder, carpenter”… The word promise is usually positive. Otherwise the session might have been called “The Despair of Information Architecture”. For a circular definition: information is knowledge communicated, and knowledge is information with judgement. But information does have context which gives meaning to data. A paragraph is data; a blog post is information; a link to a blog post is knowledge. Literally, the architect is the master (sic) builder, the one who might be present at the building site, but doesn’t engage in bricklaying, plastering or interior design; who does make the plans and does ensure that they are implemented as visualised by the commissioning body. With extreme etymology, the plenary will offer a “declaration about the future impact that master building will have on contextual data.” The architect gives shape to a building so that it may serve its purpose. The information architect gives shape to the content framework so that the content might be findable, useful and used. Keith Doyle Web Content Architect University of Salford http://consequencing.com/ Technorati Tags: “guest-blog” Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post, Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

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Guest Post: Social Participation for Student Recruitment June 4, 2007 This week sees a number of guest blog posts from plenary speakers at this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop, which will be held at the University of York on 16-18 July. Today’s guest blog post is by Paul Boag. The title of the post is “Social participation for student recruitment“.

Social participation renaissance I am really looking forward to attending my first IWMW this year. In particular I am excited about the number of sessions touching on the subject of social participation. Not that social participation is anything new. I remember writing my dissertation on a virtual community called “The Well” back in 1994. In fact the Web itself is very much about social participation, the idea of sharing information in a peer-to-peer manner. However, it is certainly true that “community” is experiencing a renaissance. Sites like Flickr, Digg, Delicious, and MySpace are appearing all the time, each dedicated to user generated content and social interaction.

Business is quick to capitalize The business community certainly recognizes the value of social participations, sinking millions of dollars of venture capital into these yet unprofitable businesses. In fact business has always been very switched on to the value of peer-to-peer recommendation. They are acutely aware that a recommendation from a unbiased third party (such as a friend) is worth considerably more than endless TV commercials or billboard advertising. It is therefore unsurprising that we are seeing elements of social participation such as ratings, reviews and recommendations, appearing on ecommerce sites like Amazon.

Student recruitment Even higher education websites are beginning to embrace the social participation phenomena with a growing number of institutions giving students blogs and encouraging participation in wikis, forums and other social software. So does the “social participation revolution” offer a new and unique way of reaching prospective students? In my opinion it does, but I believe there are many opportunities to move beyond the current approach being used by many 384 of 544

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institutions. As I see it there are two ways the social participation movement is currently being used by higher education institutions. The first is implementing social networking facilities of their own sites and the second is driving traffic by participating in existing social networking sites like YouTube or MySpace. In both these scenarios I would suggest that a slight change of approach would bring substantially improved returns.

Encouraging internal social networks One of the factors that has spurred the explosion in social participation is the ease with which community software can be implemented on a website. Giving students a blog or implementing other similar tools is relatively straightforward but technology is not what drives social interaction, people do that. Empowering existing students to speak to prospective students is a powerful (if slightly scary) way of promoting your organisation. As in business, HE institutions are recognizing that peer-to-peer recommendation is worth considerably more than any amount of traditional marketing. However, simply adding some technology to your site is not going to make that interaction spontaneously happen. It has to be nurtured and encouraged by one or more individuals dedicated to the task. Although building a community and social interaction cannot be forced or controlled, it can be encouraged. In many ways it is like tending a garden. In the early days it needs a lot of feeding and protection. As it grows it can require pruning and at times it may even need dead wood removing. The garden metaphor aside, a good community is the result of a lot of effort behind the scenes to make it a reality. Currently I get the impression that many website owners (not just those in the HE sector) have the impression that if you build community tools, then the job is done.

Leveraging existing social networks I am seeing similar first steps being made in the HE sector in leveraging existing social networks. I know of Universities who have posted videos to YouTube and other institutions who are exploring the use of social sites like del.icio.us, MySpace or third party forums. However simply utilizing these sites does not guarantee you will reach your audience effectively. Successful Guerilla marketing using social networks involves two key factors that are largely missing from the HE campaigns I have seen.

Quality The quality of the message being conveyed is fundamental to its success. Its not about how “slick” your message is, rather it is about how well it engages with your potential audience. Let me share an example of what I mean. I recently came across a University who had submitted a promotional video to YouTube. It was a well-produced 385 of 544

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video, which was professionally put together. They also had the foresight to submit it to YouTube rather than just put it on their own website. However, despite this it was unlikely to grab anybody’s attention. In order for a video like that to succeed on YouTube, people have to want to associate with it. By voting for a video or passing it on to a friend they are saying that they approve of, or associate with, that piece of content in someway. Different groups of people like to be associated with different values but it is fair to say that prospective undergraduate students likes to be associated with what is funny or “cool”. If your content doesn’t meet these criteria then people are not going to want to be associated with it. They are not going to vote for it or pass it on and so other more popular items will crowd out the content.

Trust When it comes to other social sites like Digg, MySpace or even posting on forums the issue of trust and reputation comes to the fore. With so many individuals and organizations effectively spamming these sites in order to promote their business or product, it is important to build a reputation and relationship, which in turn earns you the right to post about your course or institution. The primary way you build this trust is by contributing content of worth over a period of time and ensure your promotional messages are left firmly in the background. Over time the audience you are communicating with will naturally start enquiring more about what it is that you offer. I myself am a member of several communities made up of prospective clients who maybe interested in my web design services. However, it is extremely rare for me to promote the services I offer in these communities. Instead I answer questions and help out in anyway I can and yet I regularly receive leads because of my contributions. No hard sell is required.

A call for resourcing A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and I believe that nowhere is that more true than in the realm of social participation marketing. I often encounter management who perceive marketing through things like social networks as a “cheap option”. After all there is no media spend and no print costs. However, although the costs in these areas are extremely low there is an enormous overhead in time and manpower. If HE institutions want to see student recruitment through social participation as a viable reality they need to invest properly in the human resources to achieve it. Building peer-to-peer communities, encouraging student ambassadors, seeding forums, and contributing to social websites all requires time. Too often this work falls to somebody from within the web or marketing team. This person almost always has far too much on his or her plate to do the job effectively. Only when adequate resources are dedicated to the task will we begin to experience a real return on investment.

About The Author 386 of 544

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Paul Boag is a user interface designer and long time advocate for virtual communities. He runs a web design company in the south of England called Headscape and is a prominent blogger at boagworld.com. He also hosts one of the biggest web design podcast currently online, as well as writing for publications such as .net magazine and Think Vitamin. Technorati Tags: “guest-blog” Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post, iwmw2007 | Edit 2 Comments »

Further Thoughts On Blog Metrics June 3, 2007 In response to a recent post on “Blogging And Learning From One’s Peers” I received a comment from Wendell Dryden who asked: Is popularity and/or hit counting a measure of good practice? Asked another way: what’s the objective of the blog, and did it reach that objective? That’s a good question - and one which I’ll be revisiting in the future (I’m running a workshop on blogging in October, and that’s one issue I’ll need to address). If your blog is intended to have a wide appeal, then measuring popularity would appear to be sensible. And if you are part of a community which aims to have a wide appeal, then aggregation of visitor statistics would appear to be sensible. And we find this currently in the Web 1.0 world in which civil servants have an interest in the answer to the question “How many people visit online museums?” Of course the hidden aspect to this question may be “It’s costly - can we afford it?” or “It’s costly - if we reduce funding, what will the political impact be?” However there is still a need to collate such data - even if it may be flawed. The same argument may be made with many other metrics - TV viewing figures (the TV may have been on but nobody was watching it) and , indeed, figures on visits to the library or museum (the numbers may have been up, but was that because of the bad weather). But Wendell is quite right to suggest that we also need to complement such figures with a range of other data - and we shouldn’t just discard quantitative data because of flaws in the data … as this cartoon suggests:

(Note click on the image to get a full-size view). And I should point out that I got the idea for this cartoon from one of Wendell’s blog postings. This informed me of the Make Beliefs Comix Web service for 387 of 544

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creating cartoons. So I think this is an example of a softer approach to measuring the impact of blogs - did it result in readers doing something in response to a post. In his case, it did. Thanks Wendell. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit No Comments »

Guest Post: Let The Students Do The Talking June 1, 2007 This week I’ll be publishing a number of guest blog posts, from plenary speakers at this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop, the theme of which is “Next Steps for the Web Management Community“. I should also add that there are still a small number of places available - but we would advise you to book a place quickly (the cost, incidentally, is £355 per person which includes 2 nights’ accommodation). The guest posts begin with Alison Wildish, who will speak on the first day of the event. And during a week in which there has been much interest and discussion on the role of social networking services such as Facebook it is clearly timely for Alison to introduce her plenary talk on “Let The Students Do The Talking” - and please feel free to respond to Alison’s post. Alison is Head of Web Services at Edge Hill University where, for the past seven years, she has led a team responsible for the development of the corporate Web site(s), intranet sites and Web services (which include the Web Services blog). Prior to joining Edge Hill, Alison was developing Web applications in the commercial sector. Most recently Alison has led the University portal project, the development of applicant and community Web sites, and has contributed to IDM and Single Sign-On implementations. In my abstract for my “Let the Students do the Talking” session at July’s IWMW I talk about social networking and how “we’ve re-developed our thinking and systems to take advantage of this“. Whilst I stand by my statement it now feels somewhat naive almost as if I imply we have the answers when in fact the opposite is true. I firmly believe that student support should sit right up their alongside teaching and learning at a University and I believe it is the ’support’ arena where social networking can have the biggest impact. During the recent shootings at Virginia Tech in the US students flocked to Facebook to inform friends of events - a platform that students have adopted as their preferred communication tool. When students have been disgruntled about staff or services, within a University, Facebook has been used by the students to air their views. So what can Universities learn from these behaviours? A lot. Whilst we “think” we’re in touch with the students needs unless we’re adapting in line with their behaviours we could be missing a trick. With this in mind I certainly favour the “if you can’t beat them join them” approach. The majority of our ‘traditional’ students come to University equipped with a range of online skills, preferences and identities. When we questioned our students at last years Freshers Fair more than 95% of them had a MySpace, Facebook or Bebo account and used it regularly. We took the view that as students were familiar with these less formal environments we should adopt 388 of 544

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some of the same principles for the University supplied services and we did.In September last year we launched the “Go” portal for students which embedded some social networking and user-owned technologies with our institutional systems. We included a discussion forum which has proved hugely successful in allowing students to build and develop their own “communities” and a web notice board which is managed by the students themselves.Following on from this we launched a website for our applicants (Hi) in March which again is based around the community theme. The site allows our applicants to chat with our students (who also blog on the site) directly giving them an informal route to find out more about University life. So have we really re-developed our thinking? Well yes and no. I’d like to say we’re getting there and listening to the student voice and adapting our services and systems accordingly. We’re in the process of re-developing Go to provide greater integration with social networking sites and allow for more customisation and integration of user owned technologies. From a student perspective its great and we feel it gives us additional routes to provide student support, maintain the engagement with the University and ensure our messages can be communicated to them. On the other hand though we’re a University, a “new” one at that, and we’re working hard to establish our brand and reputation, social networking sites and user owned technologies allow our students to choose the information they engage with and their channels of choice. They have the freedom to develop these informally, outside of University constraints, and whilst that’s incredibly empowering we do need to consider the impact this has in relation to enforcing a code of conduct, the message this gives to our prospective students (outside ‘Marketings’ control) and how this can be utilised within (or distract from) the teaching and learning. So are we really that confident and prepared to “Let our students do the talking…” – that is a debate to be had! Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Guest-post, Social Networking, iwmw2007 | Edit 4 Comments »

Blogging And Learning From One’s Peers May 31, 2007 One of the aims of this blog was to explore best practices for setting up and sustaining blogs within the educational and cultural heritage sectors and to share experiences across these sectors. Of course I myself learn from observing successful blogs published by others, especially my peers with whom I have shared interests and audiences. As this blog has now been live for six months I though it would be useful to compare the status of the blog, based on data provided by Technorati, with the eFoundations blog, provided (initially) by my former colleagues Andy Powell and Pete Johnson, who now work for the Eduserv Foundation; Scott Wilson, a well-established educational who works the JISC-CETIS service and, to make comparisons with a blog provided by a commercial company, the Panlibus blog, which is written by staff at the UK-based library vendor, Talis, with regular contributions from Paul Miller, another former colleague who used to work at UKOLN. 389 of 544

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And, in addition to the Technorati rankings, I also thought it might be useful to summarise the data provided by another service - the How Much is Your Blog Worth? Web site (which I’ve mentioned in a previous post). At the time of writing (22nd May 2007) the Technorati rankings and estimated value to the blogs (final column) were as follows: Blog UK Web Focus blog eFoundations blog Scott Wilson’s blog Panlibus blog

Authority Rank

Date Created

Check

Estimated Value

81

57,542 1 Nov 2006

Check $46,856

78 64 91

59,754 11 Sep 2006 Check $44,034 59,754 17 Jan 2005 Check $44,034 50,089 16 Aug 2004 Check $56,454

The Blotter application (described previously) is being used to display rolling graph of the current data taken from Technorati (although it should be noted that, (a) probably due to changes to the data provided on the Technorati Web site, this display is not as rich as it was originally and (b) the data for the UK Web Focus blog gives a better indication of the medium term trends as this blog was registered with Blotter before the others): UK Web Focus blog (and current Technorati statistics):

Scott Wilson’s blog (and current Technorati statistics):

eFoundations blog: (and current Technorati statistics):

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Panlibus blog, Talis (and current Technorati statistics):

The initial conclusion that one can make from this data is that in order to have a high-ranking blog, you should set it up before your peers (your competitors?) and you should post to it regularly. However the factors which influence the sustainability of such ratings are not readily apparent. Should one seek to post frequently (daily perhaps) or will less frequent postings (which can allow more time to be spend in preparing the post) be a better alternative? Will the ratings drop if postings cease for a period (e.g. holidays)? And what factors can help in enhancing the rating of a blog? I hope this data will help to inform these issues - and I also hope that the blogs I’ve mentioned all succeed in maintaining and enhancing their current ratings and that any best practices we discover from analysing this data will be useful to others within the educational and cultural heritage sectors. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 8 Comments »

Data Available For IWMW 2007 Competition May 30, 2007 This year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2007), the eleventh in the series, will be held at the University of York on 16-18th July. We always aim to make this event, which is aimed at members of institutional Web management teams, very participative in nature with an emphasis on the workshop sessions, discussion groups, debates, etc. with the plenary talks providing a shared context for the event. 391 of 544

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This year we are extending the participative aspect of the workshop by inviting workshop delegates to take part in an innovation competition. Submissions to the competition should be user-focussed, lightweight and ‘cool’ - we hope the competition will provide an opportunity to try out some of the lightweight Web 2.0 services in a friendly, informal environment. In order to provide some data which can be used in the competition (although there is no requirement to use this data) we have provided a number of RSS feeds related to the IWMW events. This includes the news feeds for recent events, syndicated content of the various sessions for the last three years, blog postings for last year’s event, the location of all eleven of the events and details of the plenary speakers at all of the events. In order to illustrate how this data can be used, we have a map showing the location of this year’s plenary speakers. A better picture of the geographical spread of the speakers at all eleven of the events can be seen from the map showing the location of HE institutions of the speakers since 1997. The RSS feed contains the speakers’ names and biographical details, the location of their host institution and the date on which they spoke, with the ACME GeoRSS Map Viewer service processing the data. Anybody fancy doing anything else with the data? A tag cloud, perhaps, or even using the date field (which I’ve not used) to show the distribution for different years. Or even, if you’re feeling adventurous, a timeline based on the data. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2007 | Edit 4 Comments »

Something IS Going On With Facebook! May 29, 2007 “Something is going on with Facebook” commented John Kirriemuir yesterday in response to my “Death Of Email Debate Continues in Facebook” post. Well he was right. A post published in a Guardian blog today entitled “Why Facebook is the new Apple” links to the announcement of Facebook’s F8 platform - a development which lets users embed other services inside their pages in Facebook. The Facebook Developer’s site states that “The Facebook Platform is a standards-based web service with methods for accessing and contributing Facebook data. We’ve made the methods as easy to understand as possible, and included full documentation to help you learn more“. I suspected something was happening to Facebook when I viewed ajcann’s Facebook page yesterday and noticed that it contained an embedded video clip (a teaching clip about some aspect of microbiology). So I added the Splashcast application to my Facebook account (this has only been available since 25 May, incidentally). I also noticed a whole range of additional applications which are available, so I added my del.icio.us feed and the Scribd repository service, as illustrated below.

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What does this provide us with? Well I think we can regard Facebook as now providing an operating system environment which can provide access to a whole host of applications to support teaching and learning And it’s popular with students - and a lot cheaper than Blackboard! Good news then? Technorati Tags: Facebook Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 2 Comments »

Death Of Email Debate Continues in Facebook May 28, 2007 On Friday I received several email invitations from people wishing to add me to their list of Facebook contacts. It struck me that this must be due to 393 of 544

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someone promoting the benefits of Facebook within the IT Services and Web research communities (these being the sectors from which I received the email invitations). Shortly after accepting the invitations I received further email alerts informing me that messages had been posted to my Facebook account. The messages I discovered, were made in response to a post in this UK Web Focus blog, which can be viewed from within the Facebook environment - and, as I discovered, responses can be made in Facebook, although they will not be visible on the main UK Web Focus blog site. So there is a separate chain of discussion taking place within Facebook (which includes a number of my typos, I’ve just discovered, which I can’t edit). It could be argued that this is fragmenting the discussion - but, to be honest, I often find that I would welcome fragmentation of discussions in emailing lists. So here we have the potential of a discussion from the perspectives of IT Services managers (Dave Surtees and Chris Sexton work in IT Service departments in the University of York and Sheffield respectively). And their anecdotes are in alignment with the comments made by ajcann, Alison Wildish and James Brown. And I have discovered the advantages of syndicating the UK Web Focus blog to other places where there are likely to be lots of users. Has anyone else added their blog to Facebook - where it has the potential of being viewed by 25 million users (according to Wikipedia)? Technorati Tags: Facebook Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Facebook | Edit 10 Comments »

W4A 2007 May 28, 2007

About The W4A 2007 Conference 394 of 544

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I recently attended the W4A 2007 conference (the 4th International CrossDisciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility), which was held in Banff, Canada prior to the International World Wide Web 2007 conference (WWW 2007) which I have posted about previously. The theme of the conference (which is now a fully-fledged international conference.) was Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: Hindrance or Opportunity? Please note that this is a long report. Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, w4a2007 | Edit 3 Comments »

Email IS Dying May 25, 2007 I gave a talk entitled “Email Must Die!” at the ILI 2005 conference in London back in October 2005 and followed this up with an Ariadne article with the rather more hesitant question “Must Email Die?“. I can recall that the title of the talk was felt to be rather controversial at the time. So I was interested to read an article entitled “Firms to embrace Web 2.0 tools” in the Computing newsletter (which was also picked up by IT Week) on a recently released Gartner report. The report states that: ‘MySpace and FaceBook are the most successful community environments on the planet because they have pulled people away from email, which is the one thing that nothing else has managed to do so far’. I should add that I was the not the only person to predict this trend. In a UCISA Poll on Instant Messaging a correspondent from the University of Bath stated that “mail seen by younger people to be ‘boring’ ‘full of spam’, IM and SMS immediacy preferred” - and this was back in 2004. Are mailing list services just for old people, I wonder :-)? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 8 Comments »

Report On The ARLIS/UK Study Day May 24, 2007 Yesterday (Wednesday 23 May 2007) I gave a talk on “Building (and Sustaining) Impact for your Web Resource” at an ARLIS/UK & Ireland Study Day on “Dip’ping Your Toe In The Water: Digital Image Projects, Where To Begin And How Not To End“. The ARLIS/UK & Ireland society is new to me. It is an educational charity which seeks to promote all aspects of the librarianship of the visual arts, 395 of 544

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including architecture and design. The aim of the study day was to provide advice for members who are involved in or planning digitisation projects.

Institutional Case Studies The first two talks described case studies in use of (proprietary) software used to manage collections of digital images. It was particularly interesting to hear the case study from Birkbeck University, which described the approaches taken by the London Architecture Online (LAO) project which aims “to create a searchable, high quality collection of c.2000 digital images on architectural developments in London during the 17th and 18th centuries.” It struck me during the presentation (unfortunately the planned demonstration could not be given due to access restriction problems) that many institutions will probably be going down the route of multiple provision of repository services, such as departmental digitisation of key resources (as in this case) together with institutional learning repositories, eprints repositories, media repositories, perhaps provided by AV departments, etc, as well as the various national repositories, such as JORUM. We have started to have discussion here at the University of Bath on the duplication of effort as well as the potential problems this can cause to the end user community, who will potentially have multiple repository services they may need to access. I don’t think the solution to this problem is for institutions to decide on a single application for all uses; rather there is a need to ensure that the various repository services which are deployed are interoperable, allowing, for example, for the metadata to be harvested by other services in order to allow a single (and possibly personalised) interface to be provided to multiple repository services. This is also an opportunity for me to mention the JISC-funded RSP Project which has the remit to encourage the reuse of repository content, which will include support for institutions in exploiting interoperable services. UKOLN is one of the partners in this project, which is led by the University of Nottingham.

The Bigger Picture The three other talks provided a bigger picture. Grant Young, TASI, in his talk on “Going Digital: Overcoming the Barriers to Digitisation” summarised the findings of a recent survey he had carried out on the barriers which the ARLIS community faced in digitisation work. The biggest barrier was copyright, followed by various resourcing challenges (finance, technical expertise, etc.). Grant also mentioned his involvement in discussions on future developments to the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) copyright licence. After lunch I gave my talk on “Building (and Sustaining) Impact for your Web Resource“. I described (and demonstrated) how various Web 2.0 services could help to overcome barriers due to limited technical expertise an, in response to a query which had been raised in the morning session as to why users who may be willing to make use of Flickr, did not, in some cases, seem to be interested in making use of similar services provide in museums, I suggested that many users who have gained familiarity with the popular Web 2.0 social networking services, may not be interested in services which did not provide annotation and discussion services or the lonely ghettos which can be found in over-managed social networking services. I concluded by suggesting that the emphasis on users and trust which underpins much of the thinking on Web 2.0 is close to the hearts 396 of 544

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of the cultural heritage and educational sectors (”You mean that I can borrow resources for free and browse an art gallery with often unhindered viewing of priceless paintings, but you don’t trust me to leave a comment in your online visitors book” - to paraphrase a recent discussion on the topic of “Radical Trust”). The final talk of the day was given by Mike Pringle (current) director of the AHDS Visual Arts service. Mike gave a talk entitled “From Analogue to Digital: the Slide into Total Immersion“. Mike’s talk complemented mine nicely, and, as I discovered in the panel session at the end of the day’s event, he endorsed the paper by Mike Ellis and myself which Mike presented at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference: “Web 2.0: How to Stop Thinking and Start Doing: Addressing Organisational Barriers“.

Next Steps For ARLIS I found the ARLIS study day very enjoyable, not least for the willingness which I felt that the delegates and ARLIS committees members appeared to have for engaging with the Web 2.0 world. One of the committee members is already a del.ici.us user and several people expressed an interest in supporting an ARLIS blog It would be great to see ARLIS follow the example set by the CILIP South East’s Hampshire and Isle of Wight sub-branch who recently set up a blog to implement the new CILIP’s president’s call for member organisations to “Encourag[e] member activism“. Feel free to add a comment to this post when the service is available. And feedback for participants at the ARLIS Study Day is also welcomed. Technorati Tags: ARLIS Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events | Edit No Comments »

Enhancements to Dapper May 23, 2007 I noticed recently that Tom Roper had spotted my posting about Blotter and has announced that he’s using this service himself. This motivated me to revisit the Blotter Web site - where I discovered that the service seems to have been enhanced (or perhaps I missed these options originally). As well as a number of options to manage the display of the graph, it is also possible to change the time period from its default of one week to either a month or indefinitely. As can be seen below, the indefinite display gives a much better visualisation of the trends for this blog, with a noticeable leap in the Technorati ranking in March 2007 (which I commented upon at the time). UK Web Focus blog:

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As I mentioned recently Technorati statistics can also be obtained for standard RSS feeds, and not just for blog feeds. So I’ve included a graph showing the trends for the UKOLN feed since this was registered at Technorati. UKOLN Web site:

Again we can see a big leap in the numbers of links in early May - but I’m not sure why this is. And, despite this leap, the overall Technorati trend is downwards. I suspect that this is because Technorati is meant primarily for use with blogs and its algorithms will be flawed when used with conventional Web sites (i.e. I suspect it will be looking for links from blogs rather than conventional Web sites). Technorati Tags: Dapper Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit No Comments »

Innovation Competition at IWMW 2007 May 22, 2007 I’ve mentioned previously that bookings are open for the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 (IWMW 2007), the annual event organised for members of institutional Web management teams (and note that this year the capacity is limited to 180 participants, so early booking is recommended). This is the eleventh in the series. As regular attendees will know, every year we seek to introduce something new to the event, in order to provide an opportunity to demonstrate examples of Web and related IT developments which may be 398 of 544

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new to participants. Last year, for example, we hosted Brian the Brain Chatbot, a speaking avatar which provided information about the event. And at IWMW 2005 we exploited the WiFi network which was available for workshop participants by providing access to a range of networked technologies, including chat facilities and a wiki. We will be continuing to innovate this year. However, more importantly we are encouraging workshop participants to take part in the Innovation Competition. IWMW 2007 participants are invited to submit lightweight examples of innovative uses of Web technologies which may be of interest to fellow participants. This could include: ‘Mashups’ which integrate content from multiple sources. Informative, educational or entertaining use of multimedia (e.g. podcasts, YouTube videos, etc.) Informative, educational or entertaining use of 3-D virtual environments such as Second Life. Seamless access to content using technologies such as OpenID. The criteria for the competition are: User Benefits The benefits to users i.e. what users will gain from using this innovation. Simplicity How easy it was to develop and deploy the innovation. Coolness! Innovation which is cooler than other submissions. For example, submissions which get people talking over coffee or which they will seek to deploy once they return to work. Alternatively examples which make other participants laugh might be rated as cool. At the time of writing we haven’t finalised on any prizes for the competition we would prefer participants to compete primarily for fun and to share their work with others, rather than for mercenary reasons. However we will be providing a prize (or prizes) as an appreciation of the work done. We will also be providing data which participants may like to make use of in the competition. A page containing access to a variety RSS feeds and structured geo-location data for previous IWMW events is available - together with a link to a mashup of the location of all eleven of the IWMW events, to illustrate how easy it can be to create a Google Maps mashup. We look forward to receiving your submissions Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in iwmw2007 | Edit 1 Comment »

Building (and Sustaining) Impact for your Web Resource May 21, 2007 How should you go about “Building (and Sustaining) Impact for your Web 399 of 544

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Resource“, especially if you have limited resources and technical expertise? This is a topic I’ll be talking about on Wednesday 23rd May 2007 at an ARLIS study day on “Dip’ping Your Toe In The Water: Digital Image Projects, Where To Begin And How Not To End“. The aims of the day are described in the abstract for the event: This study day is aimed at librarians, ‘ACADIans’, visual resources curators & other professionals working in HE, FE, art colleges, museums, galleries and art collections, as well as anyone involved in managing digital images. Three years ago, slide libraries and image collections were moving towards a ‘digital future’. Now it has arrived, are we getting any closer to achieving the transition from analogue to digital? This study day will give some practical guidance on how to manage and, just as importantly, sustain such a project. I will be describing some simple simple search engine optimisation techniques which can help to ensure that Web resources can be found using search engines such as Google. I will also describe ways of finding out who is linking to your service and, moving on from usage statistics to impact analysis, exploring ways of discovering what people may be saying about your resources and your service. I’ll conclude by suggesting that a way of maximising the impact of your service would be to engage your audience with your service, and that Web 2.0 techniques such as use of blogs (to talk about the service and to encourage feedback) and syndication (to allow details of your service to be more easily used by others) should now be considering by organisations who may just be starting to provide Web services. I ‘ve discussed this previously, but primarily in the context of higher educational services. However the ARLIS organisation is new to me. Looking at their Web site I find: ARLIS/UK & Ireland is an independent body, founded in 1969, which became an educational charity in 1995. It aims to promote all aspects of the librarianship of the visual arts, including architecture and design. The Society welcomes as members all those involved in the documentation of these fields and represents the profession to the outside world. I would welcome examples of Web 2.0 approaches from anyone who may be involved in librarianship of the visual arts, which I could demonstrate in my talk - thus maximising the impact of your service :-). My current set of slides are available on my Web site and are also available on Slideshare. Technorati Tags: ARLIS Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events | Edit No Comments »

Further Thoughts On WWW 2007 May 15, 2007 400 of 544

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I have previously described how, for me, Linked Data was the highlight of the WWW 2007 conference. But what else was of interest?

Web History As well as looking forward, this year the conference had a Web History track which included an exhibition of artifacts from early days of the Web and a series of presentations and panel sessions which discussed various aspects of the development of the Web. If I had had more time prior to the conference I would have brought various items that I have in my possession from the time I became involved in Web activities starting back in December 19992, including the Running An Institutional WWW Server handbook I wrote, various newspaper clippings and memorabilia from the Web conference I have attended. However Bebo White did invite me to take part in a panel session which reminisced about World Wide Web conference series, together with Professor Wendy Hall. Following the session, Marc Weber of the Web History Centerasked if I would be willing to be interviewed (and recorded) about my involvement in the early days of the World Wide Web, and, in particular, the promotional activities I was involved in across the UK higher education community (when everyone else seemed to be convinced that the future lay with Gopher). Marc was a very successful, non-intrusive interviewer and the 30-45 minute interview I had expected actually lasted for about 90 minutes. Marc and his colleagues appreciate the need to preserve such key moments in the development of the Web - and there are close links with the work of the DCC (Digital Curation Centre) which UKOLN is a member of. So I’m looking forward to building on my initial contact with Marc - and perhaps finding others within the UK HE sector who were active in the early days of the Web (for example, the UK Active Map of UK Universities at Wolverhampton University). And, incidentally, isn’t in unfortunate that the sector has lost the archives of the web-support Mailbase list which was the prime discussion service used by the community back in 1994.

The Keynote Presentation The keynote talk which had the biggest impression was given by Dick Hardt. Dick, CEO of SXIP Identity, gave a performance, which, while lacking in implementation detail, was never dull and did seem to stimulate many of the delegates. This talk is one Dick has given at other conferences, and a recording of the talk on Identity 2.0given at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention is available on YouTube.

Other Aspects There was a lot of interest in the talk on Yahoo Pipes in the Developer’s Day track. A live demonstration was given which showed how Yahoo Pipes can be used to very quickly generate an application which processes structured information, such as, but not restricted to RSS. I’ve previous looked at Yahoo Pipes, but I know I should spent a but more time in familiarising myself with it, as I do think it has a lot of potential. Further information on the talk is given in a blog posting by Peter Murray-Rust. But the best thing about the conference was the people I met, the ideas we exchanged and the (very friendly) discussions and arguments that ensued. When I return to work some of the people I’l be getting in touch with in order to 401 of 544

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follow-up on our discussions include Marc Weber, Peter Murray-Rust, Glen Newton, Tom Heath, Stephen Coast, Christian Bizer Freie, Danny Ayres and Denny Vrandecic. And finally it was flattering - and rather embarrassing - when I met one of the conference volunteers who works at a UK university who, when she found out who I was, described me as the “God of the Web in the UK”. After having recently been described as a “well-honed athlete” I suspect there will be a lot of disappointed people who read these postings and then meet me in the flesh Technorati Tags: WWW2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in www2007 | Edit 2 Comments »

Technorati Rankings For Web Site Feeds May 14, 2007

Technorati Ranking For RSS Feeds As well as finding resources in the blogosphere, Technorati can also be used to measure the number of inbound links to blogs. The corresponding Technorati ranking can be useful in giving feedback on the effectiveness of dissemination strategies for a blog. I was surprised, however, when I discovered that Technorati also gives a ranking for the UKOLN Web site (but not one of the two other Web sites I tried).

On subsequent reflection I suspect that this will have happened as a consequence of using Technorati’s ‘ping service‘ on the UKOLN’s RSS feed which can help to ensure that Technorati indexes UKOLN’s latest news.

Recording Trends Using Blotter It struck me that it might be useful to make use of the data provided by Technorati to measure certain aspects of UKOLN’s Web site. And rather than having to do this manually or commission software to support this task, I have used the Blotter applications (which, as described previously, I use to give a rolling snapshot of the rating of this blog). The snapshot of the numbers of links from blogs to the UKOLN Web site, the numbers of blogs which have links and the Technorati rating, is shown below.

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A Suggestion If we want to maximise ways of findings our organisation’s news feeds, we should probably ping the RSS feed in Technorati. This will help ensure that Technorati knows about the existence of our feed. If we are interested in trends in the blogging community’s links to our organisation’s Web site it is probably worth visiting the Blotter Web site and getting the simple HTML element which will create the above graph: or elements) and possibly on the difficulty in understanding. Interestingly enough a similar example came up in the Accessibility 2.0 Professional Forum at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference which I’ve mentioned previously. How should institutions address accessibility issues when end users add comments to a blog posting or contribute to discussion board? As we can’t expect that they’ll provide the necessary semantic markup (and, in many cases, the software doesn’t allow them to do this) does this mean we can’t deploy systems for users to create their own content? The example given above, taken from the W3C Web, illustrates that W3C itself takes a pragmatic approach to this problem. They will take ‘reasonable measures’ to ensure resources on their Web site are accessible - but if that can’t be done, they don’y take the approach that they can’t provide the service at all. And the IRC channel itself provides a valuable aaccessibility aid, especially for participants who are ‘geographically-challenged’ and can’t attend the meeting. So if your accessibility hardliners are using accessibility issues as an argument for not providing such services, feel free to use this as example. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility | Edit No Comments »

This Blog Is Worth …. April 25, 2007 The Business Opportunities blog contains a post on How much is your blog worth? The answer for this blog is given below:

My blog is worth $34,436.94. How much is your blog worth?

Another gimmick, similar to the Are You an A-List Bloglebrity? tool described in the Metrics For Measuring The Effectiveness Of Blogs posting? Or a valuable service which may be able to identify whether an organisation is getting a 417 of 544

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satisfactory return on investment (ROI) on its commitment to providing a blogging service? I would suggest that this tool may be useful in thinking about metrics which may be useful in measuring ROI, subject to all the useful caveats. This services states that it is based on an applet which “computes and displays your blog’s worth using the same link to dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal.“ From this we can speculate that the worth of a blog could be indicated by how much the blogging service would be worth if it was taken over by another company, subject to a weighting based, perhaps, on the numbers of in-bound links, numbers of postings, etc. Another approach might be to simply host advertisements on the blog and if the income generated was in excess of the costs taken to deliver the service, then the service could be regarded as providing a satisfactory ROI. And, thinking about my recent posting about using Dapper to screen scrape Technorati in order to give a graphical visualisation of Technorati rating trends, it also occurs to me that Dapper could also be used to screen scrape the ‘How much is your blog worth?’ figure, and possibly fed into other Web 2.0 services, such as Google Spreadsheets, in order to deliver a spreadsheet into the inbox of one’s funder! Could this approach be applied to the blogs listed on the Museums Blogs.org Web site, I wonder? Technorati Tags: mw2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, mw2007 | Edit 4 Comments »

Accessibility of MW 2007 Papers April 24, 2007 Papers from the Museums and the Web 2007 conference are available online on the MW 2007 Web site. That’s great - but are the papers accessible, one might ask. And are they available in a variety of formats, to suit the end users preferences - including, perhaps, as a MP3 file? The papers may comply with Web accessibility guidelines, but in general the answer to this question will be ‘no’ - and for perfectly understandable reasons: there is a cost associated with converting documents into a variety of formats, and there is probably no great demand for this. But what if such conversion could be done easily, including conversion to MP3 format? And what if the he effort in doing this was devolved to the authors, rather than expecting the conference organisers to take responsibility for yet another task? I’ve been looking at this recently, and have been evaluating the Scribd document repository service. As an experiment I have uploaded my papers on Addressing the Limitations of Open Standards and How to Stop Thinking and Start Doing: Addressing Organisational Barriers to Scribd. What this provides is a nice interface to the document in a variety of formats including MS Word, PDF, plain text, HTML and even MP3. The service also provides n annotation services and 418 of 544

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various statistics for me, as the author. The paper can also be embedded in third party resources, thus helping to maximise the impact of the ideas in the paper by simply embedding the following HTML code into a page: And although some may have reservations over the use of Flash as an interface to the resource, it should be noted that the MS Word, PDF and MP3 files can all be accessed directly. All good stuff, I think. So wouldn’t it be great if, at the MW 2008 conference, successful authors were invited to upload their paper to Scribd and to use the ‘MW2008′ tag to allow all papers to be easily found? It could be suggested that this process could be the responsibility of the conference organisers (and they might benefit from being able to include MP3 versions of papers to enrich the accessibility of the conference). But I feel that encouraging the authors to do this may help to embed an understanding of Web 2.0 technologies and the ease of use of such services more widely. What do you think - potential authors of papers for MW 2008 conference, and perhaps the ichim07 conference? And, perhaps more importantly, what are the views of the conference organisers? Technorati Tags: mw2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, Events, mw2007 | Edit 4 Comments »

Blotter And Museum Blogs April 23, 2007 As described by Nate Schroedr the session at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference on Radical Trust: The state of the museum blogosphere by Sebastian Chan and Jim Spadaccini, was “One of the most anticipated sessions of the conference for me — and more than a few others, judging by the size of the crowd!“. And you can include me in that sentiment. In the session the facilitators spent some time discussing Technorati ratings for blogs, and how to build and sustain one’s rating. This was based on the observations of museum blogs and manual analysis of their ratings and monitoring of trends. As I subsequently suggested to Seb, wouldn’t it be useful to make use of Web 2.0 services to support this process of monitoring the state of the museum blogosphere. I suggested that Blotter could have a role to play - a service I’ve commented on previously. So I thought I’d demonstrate this tool, applying to to the blogs which have 419 of 544

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impressed by at the conference: the New Media Initiatives blog at the Walker Art Centre, the Museums Blog.org service, the Ideum blog, the Brooklyn Museum Dig Diary, the Smithsonian’s Eye Level blog and the Fresh and New blog at the Powerhouse museum. I’ve included the rolling 7-day graphical representation of the Technorati ranking of these blogs with, as a comparison, the details for this UK Web Focus blog: UK Web Focus blog (Technorati ranking of 69,782 on 21 April 2007): Walker Art Center New Media blog (Technorati ranking of 98,648 on 21 April 2007): Museum Blogs.org (Technorati ranking of 74,158 on 21 April 2007): Ideum blog (Technorati ranking of 89,517 on 24 April 2007): Brooklyn Museum’s Dig Diary blog: (Technorati ranking of 474,425 on 21 April 2007) Smithsonian’s Eye Level blog (Technorati ranking of 51,006 on 21 April 2007): Powerhouse Museum’s blog (Technorati ranking of 75,598 on 21 April 2007): Now it is trivial to do this for your own blog, as described on the Blotter Web site. And I would recommend this to blog authors as it can provide a useful visualisation of trends (it has helped me to spot sudden jumps in my Technorati ranking). But what, I think, would be more interesting would be to explore how Dapper, the application which drives Blotter, could be used across a community of blogs, such as the museum blogosphere. Perhaps next year’s paper on the state of the museum blogosphere could be based on use of an application such as Dapper. And, as Dapper seems to be a lightweight application, perhaps this is an example of work which can be carried out by an enthusiast working in a small museum. An opportunity for someone, I think. Technorati Tags: mw200, Dapper Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Events, mw2007 | Edit 4 Comments »

Radical Trust? We’re Doing It! April 19, 2007 I mentioned recently that one of the sessions at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference I found very useful was entitled”Radical Trust: State of the Museum Blogosphere“. I have to admit that when I decided to attend the session, I was rather confused by the title: I realised that the speakers would be likely to review developments with blogs in a museums’ context, but what did ‘radical trust’ mean? 420 of 544

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I was told that this term had been coined to describe how the commercial sector was starting to engage more actively with its user community. I subsequently found the Radical Trust blog which states that: For years, marketers have been asking consumers for trust in making informed purchase decisions. The trick to conventional marketing is knowing what to say, and what not to say to create and influence the largest possible persuasion in purchase decisions. Today, however, the consumer can become a segment expert overnight and can own and control the key brand information independent of the manufacturer. The tide has turned and now marketers must radically trust the consumer to build the brand based on the information that is most relevant to them. It strikes we that this radical approach may be needed by the commercial sector (they advertise on broadcast media such as the TV and radio and expect consumers to ring premium rate numbers when the goods or services we’ve purchased don’t work). But within the educational and cultural heritage sectors, surely user engagement is what we’re about. We may need to think through the implications of moving from a Web 1.0 to a Web 2.0 environment, and assess the risks in making use of new services. But the principle of user engagement is deeply ingrained within many aspects of our organisational culture, I would suggest. And the term ‘radical trust’ could well endanger moves towards greater use of services such as blogging: we should be arguing that such technologies can support our core mission - s, indeed, the two speakers from the Brooklyn Museum did, with the Powerhouse blog describing the impact of the talk as “everyone was floored by the efforts of the Brooklyn Museum who have managed to build a strong user community around their online presence“. In addition, I feel that the term ‘radical trust’ could be interpretted as being somewhat elitist - “We’re cool; we’re into radical trust! You’re not - you must be dull and boring”. So I’m afraid I would disagree with Michael Casey’s LibraryCrunch article and the visually appealing but misleading photograph on Darlene Fischer’s Blog the Side posting. Radical trust? Let’s encourage the commercial sector to engage more with their consumers - but let the education and cultural heritage sectors extend their engagement with their users beyond the real world and do even more in the networked environment. Technorati Tags: mw2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Events, mw2007 | Edit 3 Comments »

UK Museums and the Semantic Web Thinktank April 18, 2007 421 of 544

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Background The Arts and Humanities Research Council funded a Thinktank with the remit to engage with a variety of experts on the potential for making use of the Semantic Web in a museum’s context. I attended the launch meeting and the final meeting of the group. One suggestion I (supported by Paul Shabajee) made at the initial meeting was that the group should set up a blog rather than a mailing list as a mechanism for discussion and dissemination. We were therefore very pleased when we found the UK Museums and the Semantic Web blog. This blog provides a very valuable summary of the six meetings held with a variety of experts and the various discussions and shared resources.

Reflections Initially I suspect that there was a feeling that various Semantic Web experts would describe the role of Semantic Web standards and technologies such as RDF and OWL. In reality discussions on the difficulties and complexities of Semantic Web technologies were surfaced, and there were debates on its applicability, especially for the smaller museums, and the timeliness of the debate, especially in light of the wider interests in Web 2.0 in a cultural heritage (and wider) context. My feeling is that museums should be experimenting with and debating the issues associated with use blogs and wikis, opening up access to their data and making use of popular services such as YouTube, Flickr and iTunes for maximising access to their resources, in parallel with discussion about legal issues, sustainability of services, etc. Whilst development programmes to provide services based on Semantic Web technologies should be left to the research community until the benefits of this approach have been proven and the technologies and standards have matured.

Further Thoughts Ross Parry and Jon Pratty gave an update on the Semantic Web Thinktank at the Museums and The Web 2007 conference. Jacco van Ossenbruggen (CWI, Amsterdam) provided some fresh insight into the work of the Thinktank - and something that emerged from the discussions was the different areas of interests of the members of the Thinktank. The focus of my interests is in the provision of services to the end user community; others, however, were more interested in developments to the internal processes within museums, including enhancements to systems used to manage museum documentation. It then dawned on me that a Semantic Web approach may be relevant in updating the systems used to manage documentation of museums collections from an architecture based on early database principles to a Semantic Web environment. An advantage in this context is the widespread usage across the sector of the SPECTRUM standard, so there is not the competition of a variety of different approaches that we find in services targetted directly at end users of museum services. The meeting at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference was therefore useful in developing my thinking in this area - and many thanks to Jacco for his contributions to the discussion. There will still, however, be a need to manage expectations and to develop the risk assessment and risk management approaches which will be needed in any new areas which are likely to require significant investment in resources. 422 of 544

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Technorati Tags: mw2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Semantic Web, mw2007 | Edit No Comments »

Museums and the Web 2007 Conference: Day 3 April 16, 2007

Saturday 14 April 2007 The final day of the Museums and the Web 2007 Conference - and it’s a Saturday with, again sessions starting at 08.00 (I don’t think this would happen in similar conferences held in the UK).

Bookmarking Session This morning I chaired the session on “Bookmarking”. David Bearman, the conference co-chair, described this as the ‘Brits Session’ when he invited me to chair the session, as the main authors of the two talks, on Visitor-constructed Personalized Learning Trails and Bookmarking in Museums: Extending the museum experience beyond the visit?, were based in the UK. When I met the two speakers, however, I found that the speakers, although working in London, were from the US and Italy (and Jonathon Bowen, who was supposed to speak, unfortunately could not attend the conference). Despite only having two talks (most of the sessions had three) this was a content-rich session, and I had to draw questions to a close at the end of the 90 minutes. I have to confess that I was initially puzzled by the theme of the session, as bookmarking to me meant either recording my favourite Web pages in my browser or, in the context of social bookmarking, on a service such as del.icio.us. Kevin Walker’s talk described what was meant by bookmarking in a museum’s context. It seems that the term refers to the ability for users to record details of their visit to a museum Web site (or, indeed, the museum itself) for subsequent use. This is often achieved not, as I assumed from the term, by recording details on a Web browser within a museum, but by sending the information to the user in their home environment. The information may be recorded in a variety of ways (recorded as a personalised trail, on a PC, by recording the visitors physical location using Bluetooth, by recording their aural comments as they view exhibits, etc.) And the information may also be delivered to the visitor in a variety of ways, including email, SMS messages, etc. Kevin also explained why such bookmarking can be beneficial, particuklarly in terms of enriching the learning experiences of a visit to a museum. Following Kevin’s broad overview, Silvia Filippini-Fantoni questioned the success, or not, of bookmarking services in libraries. It seems that bookmarking services are not very widely used. This, in part, is due to the low visibility of such services and also the confusing terminology. Such issues can cleary be addressed - and there is a feeling that bookmarking is not necessarily for everyone (and is likely to be of particular benefit to repeat visitors to a museum). 423 of 544

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Small Museums In the afternoon I attended a session on Small Museums which was chaired by Ian Edelman, Hampshire County Council. Joy Suliman gave the opening talk on Facilitating Access: Empowering small museums in which she described the centrally-provided content management system and hosting service provided by the Collections Australia Network (CAN) which is proving very popular for many small museums in Australia. The second talk on A Family of Solutions for a Small Museum: The case of the Archaeological Museum in Milan described an open source tool which can be used for developing multimedia stories about exhibits in a museum, which can be accessed either using a Web browser or as a Flash application. The final talk by Peter Gray, East Lothian Museum has the title Who are you calling cheap?. This was a great talk, describing how a consortium in Scotland had been successful in developing a variety of services without needed significant resources to support the development environment. This approach very much reflects my views on the approaches I think are currently applicable in a variety of areas. Technorati Tags: mw2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, mw2007 | Edit 5 Comments »

Museums and the Web 2007 Conference: Day 2 April 14, 2007

Background Day 2 of the Museums and the Web 2007 Conference (Friday 13 April, I need to remind myself) began with Birds-of-a-feather sessions which started at 08.00. I didn’t attend any of these session, partly as I’m not staying at the conference hotel, but more importantly Stephen Brown and I needed to sort out the final details for our Professional Forum on “Accessibility 2.0: A holistic and user-centred approach to Web accessibility“. And as this was the most challenging day for me (facilitating workshops can be much more mentally draining that giving talks, I find) I even missed out on a meal with fellow delegates last night, returning to my hotel at 9 pm last night and in bed soon afterwards.

Professional Forum: Accessibility 2.0 I’m pleased to say that the Professional Forum seemed to go down very well. About 50 people attended the session and they participated fully in the breakout groups, in which we asked them to discuss how the approaches they are taking to Web accessibility, the difficulties they are experiencing and any successes they have. Stephen facilitated the report back, while I kept notes in a wiki. Stephen did well in pulling about the various approaches which are being taken, from use of automated testing tools, provision of accessible HTML and CSS 424 of 544

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fragments for reuse across a web site through to user testing, including involvement by people with disabilities. During the feedback the issues of the rich content museums hold, the interactive services they are seeking to provide, the use of user-generated content and the limited resources smaller museums may have were raised. This provided an opportunity to describe the approaches to e-learning accessibility I have been involved in, with a focus on the accessibility of the learning outcomes, and not necessarily the e-learning resources - an approach which we have described as ‘blended accessibility’. We then described how we are seeking to build on this user-centred approach within a broader cultural heritage context, and also within an international context. An example I gave of the difficulties of addressing accessibility within a cultural context was of a Salvador Dali painting. This example was particularly appreciated by several people in the audience, who are faced with similar challenges, within a legal framework which is felt to mandate compliance with WCAG guidelines. However shortly before the workshop started I spoke to several attendees, and found that most were from the US, Canada, UK and the Netherlands, with one person from China. Stephen quickly found the legal requirements across a number of these countries, and found that in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK the legislations requires organisations to take reasonable measures. This is great, as the approach we have been developing is based on use of WCAG guidelines when they work, but a willingness to take alternative approaches when the guidelines either don’t work or compliance would require unreasonable measures to be taken. We concluded by described the Accessibility Summit II and the manifesto we are developing. Several people expressed their willingness to become engaged in developing this manifesto further - and I’d extend an invitation to readers of this blog. Either add a comment to the blog, or send me an email. Also note that my friends on the New Media Initiative blog have given their thoughts on the session and Majawat concluded that MW2007: Accessibility ain’t so hard.

Radical Trust: State of the Museum Blogosphere After the Professional Forum I attended the session on Radical Trust: State of the Museum Blogosphere. This was a very popular session, illustrating the clear interests in the provision of blogs within a museums context. Again I’ll point to the New Media Initiatives blog entry for their thoughts on the session (there’s a team contributing to their blog, and they won’t be jet-lacked, I should add!) The discussions on approaches to deploying blogs and ways of measuring, maximising and sustaining the impact of blogs reflect a number of the postings on this blog. And it was very interesting when one person commented that the museum community was way behind the library sector in making use of blogs with one person responding by pointing out that the library sector is much larger than the museum sector. So I would hope that the issues discussed on this blog will be of interest to the museum community - and I’ll try and contribute to blogs such as the Walker Arts Center’s Off Center museum blog (which has the wonderful byline “outside ideas from inside the walker”). Technorati Tags: MW2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) 425 of 544

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Museums and the Web 2007 Conference: Day 1 April 13, 2007 The opening plenary talk at the Museums and the Web 2007 Conference was given by Brewster Kahle if the Internet Archive. Brewster spoke on “Universal Access to Human Knowledge (Or Public Access to Digital Materials)“. This was a great inspirational opening to the conference, with Brewster arguing that “universal access to global knowledge is within our grasp”. He argued that the costs of the digitisation and storage of text, sound and video resources was achievable - and that society had a responsibility for rising to these challenges. After coffee there were three parallel sessions. I attended the session on “Web 2.0″ where Mike Ellis presented our joint paper on “Web 2.0: How to stop thinking and start doing: Addressing organisational barrier“. As I was on stage during the talks it was difficult for me to make notes of the session. Fortunately I’ve managed to find a post on the session on the New Media Initiatives blog. As described in this report, the first speaker in the session described a managed approach to the use of blogs within a museum, with a formal workflow process for identifying topics for blog postings with editorial processes to ensure posting complied with institutional policies on the scope, writing style, etc. The second talk, by Shelley Bernstein and Nicole Caruth (Brooklyn Museum), in contrast, described how the museum was encouraging use of third party services such as Flickr and MySpace in areas related to the interests of the museum, such as public grafitti. This approach was very much based on the museum’s mission, which emphasises the importance of engagement with the user community. Mike’s talk, which closed the session, went down very well, with Nate Schroeder commenting on the New Media Initiatives blog “Really good ideas, another one I want to chat with over a beer later“. The other interesting comment made on this blog was “[Mike] touched into a lot of the phobias many people have about technology and change in general. I can understand concerns people have in this regard, but Mike is right in that if many of us don’t adapt and move past them, we’ll be left behind and become largely irrelevant. Technology moves too fast for us to sit on our hands“. Unfortunately further comments on the day’s events were hindered by problems with the WiFi network. As the the New Media Initiatives blog commented “Advance apologies - this post sort of fell apart as I went. Internet access at the conference has been spotty at best, it seems like DNS lookups are failing or being blocked upstream. Very frustrating. If I get a chance I’ll clean it up in a bit, but for now I want to keep the “liveblogging” thing going so it’s time to hit post!“. As I spoke in the afternoon session it was not possible for me to keep a record of the afternoon sessions. And as I’m co-facilitating a Professional Forum tomorrow morning, I’ll be having an early night tonight. So I’ll give another pointer to the New Media Initiatives blog for their views on the Alternative Realities session which I attended. One comment I would add is that the talk on Second Life (which generated most of the interest) featured two examples from the UK - Andy Powell’s ArtsPlace work (including a comment on use of Library of Congress exhibits as their licence permitted such reuse) and Talis’s Cyberia Second Life presence. 426 of 544

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Model For Making Use Of Third Party Web Services April 12, 2007 When I spoke recently at the AoC Nilta conference, I attended a session given by Randy Metcalfe of the JISC-funded OSS Watch service on “Comparison Shopping Evaluating Open Source Wikis and VLEs“. One interesting aspect of the session was the brief description Randy gave of the Business Readiness Rating approach to assessing the appropriateness of open source software for use in the enterprise. OSS Watch have published a discussion paper on this topic. This paper mentions the OBRR Web site which states that “Business Readiness Rating™ (BRR) is being proposed as a new standard model for rating open source software. It is intended to enable the entire community (enterprise adopters and developers) to rate software in an open and standardized way.“ It struck me that this approach might be applicable when wishing to select Web 2.0 services for use in the enterprise. On this subject I am a co-author of a paper on “Web 2.0: How to Stop Thinking and Start Doing: Addressing Organisational Barriers” which has been accepted at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference. Mike Ellis, the lead author, will be presenting the paper on 12th April 2007 (and I have uploaded a draft copy of his slides to Slideshare). The paper argues that it is now timely for museums to start deploying Web 2.0 technologies and makes a number of suggestions for addressing various barriers, including understanding organisational barriers, encouraging enthusiasts, identifying ‘low-hanging fruit’, developing a risk assessment and risk management strategies, etc. My work in supporting take-up of Web 2.0 has included publication of a number of briefing papers, including one on “Risk Assessment For Use Of Third Party Web 2.0 Services“. It does occur to me that the suggestions given in this document, and the ideas outlined in our paper, could be used in the development of a Web 2.0 Business Readiness Rating. To provide a context for this, imagine you are considering deploying a blog service, but don’t have the technical expertise to install software in-house. You have heard about the WordPress blogging service, which hosts this service. You’ve also heard some positive comments about the Elgg software and the (recently renamed) Eduspaces hosting service. What factors do you think need to be considered if you wish to decide which, if either, of these services is ‘Business Ready’ for your library, museum or educational service? Technorati Tags: MW2007 427 of 544

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Museums and the Web 2007: Day 0 April 11, 2007 I am currently in San Francisco, for the Museums and Web 20007 conference. I was pleased to be invited to be a member of the Program Committee last year, as I am seeking greater involvement with the museums sector. It was therefore appropriate for me to make a number of submissions to the conference - and I was pleased that all four submissions were accepted, although the proposal for a half day workshop was cancelled due to only a small number of bookings for the workshop. I’ll describe my other contributions to the conference in other postings. I have just registered for the conference, on the day before the conference officially starts. Various half day and full day workshops are being held today and I find it very interesting that so many are addressing Web 2.0 issues e.g. “Beyond Blogging: Is it a Community Yet?“, “Museum Mashups“, “Planning Social Media for Museums“, “Power To the Pod People: Design Your Own Podcast“, “Leveraging The Internet Video Book in a Museum Context“, “Web 2.0: Technologies and Design Strategies for Robust Online Applications“, “Real Science 2.0: Interacting with Scientific Imagery and Live Data“, “Remixing Museum Education through Online Participatory Learning“, “Exploring RSS in a Cultural Content“, “Creating Interactive Content and Community in Second Life” and “Vodcasting: 5 Easy Steps to Film an Interview and get it Online in a Day!“. It seems that eleven of the twelve half-day workshops cover Web 2.0 technologies or user-created content and only the three full day workshops cover traditional Web topic areas (CMSs, online learning and usability testing). Perhaps this might explain the lack of interest in our half-day workshop on accessibility - all of the workshop participants want to learn more about Web 2.0 (indeed all of the morning sessions were fully subscribed when I registered this morning. I’ll be very interested in the talks on use of Web 2.0 within a museums context over the next few days. I’ll try and give a daily report from the conference - although the WiFi network in my hotel is very flaky. Technorati Tags: MW2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, mw2007 | Edit 2 Comments »

Accessibility 2.0: A Holistic and User-centred Approach to Web Accessibility April 10, 2007 428 of 544

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Web accessibility, just like open standards may be regarded (like motherhood and apple pie) as concepts which one could not possibly argue against. But what if the traditional approach to Web accessibility, based on ensuring Web resources comply with WCAG 1.0 guidelines, doesn’t work? And perhaps one interpretation of the poor levels of conformance is the case with the SiteMorse automated survey of compliance with accessibility guidelines for various disability support bodies in the UK. SiteMorse’s news article, entitled How can everyone else be expected to achieve website accessibility, if the experts can’t?, focusses on the findings of an automated test and fails to acknowledge that accessibility may be more complex than that. As myself and colleagues at the JISC TechDis service pointed out in a response to SiteMorse’s news item, a more holistic approach to accessibility is needed which focusses on the importance of satisfying user needs rather than simply following a checklist. In November 2006 UKOLN and TechDis organised the Accessibility Summit II meeting (which followed on from the first Accessibility Summit held in 2005). As described in a report on the meeting the participants called for the development of a holistisic approach to the development of Web services which addresses the broad set of issues which need to be addressed in order to provide quality Web services, including factors such as usability, the purpose of the Web site, interoperability, cultural and resource issues, as well as accessibility. The meeting also called for an evidence-based approach to demonstrating viable approaches for providing accessible Web services and for a clear recognition of the need to take into account various contextual factors. Our work in this area continues and on 13th April 2007 myself and Professor Stephen Brown from De Montfort University will be facilitating a professional forum on “Accessibility 2.0: A Holistic and User-centred Approach to Web Accessibility” at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference. The abstract for this session, a briefing document and the slides to be used in this forum are available online. Technorati Tags: MW2007 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, mw2007 | Edit No Comments »

Addressing The Limitations Of Open Standards April 5, 2007 Open standards are great - they can provide machine- and applicationindependence, thus avoiding vendor lock-in and they can help to ensure services are interoperable and are widely accessible. Unfortunately open standards don’t always work - they can be too ambitious, fail to gain market acceptance, may be too costly to implement or be superceded by alternatives. So how do development programmes ensure they make use of open standards which will be successful and avoid making costly mistakes when selecting standards? This is the theme of a paper on “Addressing The Limitations Of Open Standards” by myself, my colleague Marieke Guy and Alastair Dunning, AHDS which will be given at the Museums and the Web 2007 Conference on 12 April. The paper and accompanying slides are available. Your comments are welcome.

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Rediscovering My Past April 4, 2007 I will shortly be moving offices (along the corridor from where I’m currently based). The process of sorting out my files is providing a valuable opportunity to get rid of out-of-date papers. It is also very intriguing when I find various old papers, providing an opportunity to reflect on the past and the views we had back then of the future. Some things which have brought back memories:

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An ALT workshop on Hypertext In The Unix Environment held at the University of Kent at Canterbury in September 1993. This was intended as a roadshow for the Guide hypertext systems which was developed at the University of Kent, I was invited to talk as the organisers were aware that the Web was generated a lot of interest. I remember enjoying giving that talk, as I was confident that the Web would be a winner and Guide would probably die off or just have a niche role. Does anybody know what happened to Guide? A copy of the Newsletter published by the Computing Service, University of Leeds in November 1993. I was editor of the Newsletter at the time and this issue featured online information services, in particular the Web, with a colour front cover showing screen shots of XMosaic and example of use of the Web. Unfortunately, although the Newsletter was published on the Web, in appears to be no longer available (the online issues date back to 2004). A mention in the University of Leeds’ Report newsletter of my talk on Global Publishing on the world wide web at Oxford University on 2 March 1994. I remember the room being overflowing and the audience being fascinated to discover that third parties had created Web interfaces to cultural resources hosted (on an FTP server) at Oxford University. I discovered a few weeks later that the talk generated much interest within the University, with the help desk receiving requests from users wishing to have the Mosaic browser installed on their PCs and others who wished to set up departmental Web servers. This caused consternation, as apparently a committee had decided that the University’s future lay in the provision of a Gopher service for the University. Slides from a trip report of the first World Wide Web Conference (W3 as it was referred to in May 19994). This conference, which at the time was referred to as the Woodstock of the 1990s (the Gopher crowd were the squares, I assume), attracted 380 delegates, including 46 from the UK. A photocopy of an article about the Internet published in the Yorkshire Evening Post on 6 June 1994, just after I got back from the first Web conference. The article’s sub-title was “Greenpeace use it, supermodel Claudia Schiffer hates it and Bill Clinton thinks it’s wonderful. Tim Power explores Internet - the new Information Superhighway“. I remember the journalist quizzing me about Internet pornography and despite my protestations (”there’s pornography in print and on films; why 03/10/2008 14:51

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focus on Internet pornography?”) that was the angle taken (” Bulletin boards within the ‘Net have become ideological grounds for anti-facist and hard-right racists groups. Paedophile rings and pornographers are also weasling their way around the ‘Net …“). Also the photographer asked me to look upward and to the right; I discovered why when the article was published, as I was looking up Claudia Schiffer skirt! Still I managing to get the local angle in: “Computer wizards at Leeds where quick to spot the potential. They helped develop the World Wide Web or W3 a kind of universal language which lets ‘Net users find their way around tis digital labyrinth.“ This brought back memories of some of the things we were doing with the Web at Leeds University in 1993 and 1994. But is this memory being lost? Should the University of Leeds seek to capture some of the stories of its early involvement with the Web? I should also point out that the Computer Science department has recently celebrated its half-centenary and a feature article in the Alumni newsletter using this as an opportunity to reprint photographs of female computer operators in miniskirts! And as well as the relevance for the University of Leeds, it does strike me that if we lose the early history of the Web we may repeat the mistakes made back then. This is of particular importance at present, with the current debates of the merits (or not) of Web 2.0 and of the challenges our institutions are facing in seeking to exploit such technologies. Let’s not forget that the Mailbase archives for the web-support list, which was set up in 1993 or 1994, disappeared when this service migrated to JISCMail Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 2 Comments »

Guest Post: UK Library Blogs - What Do We Think We’re Doing? April 2, 2007

Background Roddy MacLeod was invited to launch the guest blog spot in the UK Web Focus blog by giving his views on issues which have been raised on this blog. Roddy’s posting addresses the use of blogs in the UK Library community.

UK Library Blogs - What Do We Think We’re Doing? Brian doesn’t need to twist my arm for me to say that UK Web Focus is one of my regular reads. Several UK LIS-related blogs, such as UK Web Focus, Karen Blakeman’s Blog (which moved on the 19th February of this year to this new site), Phil Bradley’s Weblog, Chris Armstrong’s info NeoGnostic and Peter Godwin’s Information Literacy meets Web 2.0 have emerged as very welcome sources of information, advice and opinion for the rest of us information professionals, as many of us are still finding our feet in the blogosphere. Brian’s Blog Experiments are also useful in this respect. 431 of 544

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In the UK, we appear to be lagging behind the USA somewhat in terms of uptake and exploitation of blogs. Brian recently warned about the limitations of blog statistics and so I don’t want to make too much of this, but LIS bloggers in the USA seem to have a much larger following than their UK equivalents. According to Technorati, UK Web Focus is today ranked 81,591 and according to Bloglines has 55 Bloglines subscribers. Phil Bradley’s Weblog is ranked 41,011 with 136 Bloglines subscribers. Compare this to The Shifted Librarian ranked 4,320 with 44,734 Bloglines subscribers, and librarian.net ranked 6,740 with 3,734 Bloglines subscribers, and you can clearly see the discrepancy between the two sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps this is only to be expected, given the size of the respective communities, but it’s therefore very good to see the recent emergence of a number of UK library blogs, and the swapping of ideas between those involved in them. Thanks to Duncan Chappell, Glasgow School of Art, there’s now a LIS-Bloggers JISCmail list which already has over 250 subscribers, and there’s a British Librarian Bloggers Google Group. I’ve also been noting new UK library blogs in the Blogorama section of each issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter. There are too many to list them all here, but some of the UK university library blogs which I monitor because they cover the same sort of technology-related subjects that I deal with, or appear interesting for other reasons, include LRC Blog from the University of Glamorgan, Engineering Info @ Imperial College London Library, ILS Matters from the University of Worcester, Library and Learning Resources from the Glasgow School of Art Library, Shush! from the University of Northampton, Library News for Applied Sciences from the University of Huddersfield, University of Bath Library :: Science News and Library News for Maths and Computing from the Open University. There’s also our own collaborative blog at Heriot Watt University Library, called spineless? (sadly, currently ranked only 1,313,575 on Technorati ). Even a cursory glance at some of the blogs mentioned above, or other UK library blogs, reveals new ideas and considerable innovatory thinking. For example, as you might expect, GSoA’s Library and Learning Resources is full of good images and design ideas (Duncan Chappell recently wrote an article in Information Scotland (February 07, Vol 5(1)) which mentioned some of the ideas behind the Glasgow School of Art Library blogs - this is not available on the Information Scotland Web site at the time of writing, but check back in the future). There’s a fitting use of an image and another nice one (ILS Matters incorporates particularly impressive photos). It looks as if Perth College Library sees its blog as an opportunity to do some information literacy as well as resource announcements. The University of Bath puts human librarians in the picture which is nice, and thought is being given to categories or tags for classifying posts. So, with respect to these and other UK library blogs, what exactly do we think we’re doing? What is the purpose of these library blogs? What are their aims? It was recently suggested by Nicholas Carr, writing in the Technology Guardian that an important function of blogs was simply to act as a kind of global echo chamber by commenting on comparatively few original items published elsewhere, or by replicating items appearing on other web sites. I would anticipate that most UK library bloggers are capable of much more than this. There may be good reason for occasional items, such as the appearance of a particularly good new resource, to be posted on numerous library blogs within hours of each other, and as each of these blogs has its own targeted audience, 432 of 544

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this ‘duplication’ causes no problems, but there are many more things we can write about as well. Another issue is whether, or to what extent, library blogs should be ‘linkers or thinkers’ i.e. is it the place of a library blog to pass comment on something, or simply report the facts? In this respect, library blogs are probably quite different to librarian blogs, where opinion is almost certainly both welcome and essential. Our blog at Heriot Watt arose out of a suggestion that the library newsletter needed updating, and after considerable discussion, we decided to create a blog instead of a print/online newsletter. A blog was seen as a potentially good way to help market the library, its resources and services as well as keep our community informed on other matters. Early on, therefore, we decided that it needed to contain more than simply postings about library opening hours or this week’s long list of new books. In planning spineless? we had no intention of writing an overly formal strategy, or of creating a blueprint straight-jacket, but we did end up with a document which sets out its general purpose and style. The following are some extracts from this document, and is offered here for discussion (not for instruction). I hope that it, and this post, will generate comments and examples from elsewhere, plus the sharing of experiences, so that we are all better able to answer the question “What do we think we’re doing?” Who is the spineless? blog for? All staff and students of Heriot-Watt University What is the purpose of spineless? To distribute information about the Library’s resources and services Market and promote resources and services User education Encourage more involvement and feedback from library users. Lend a human voice to the Library and try to create a sense of community Transparency, consult with users Suggested posts for spineless

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Information about new services or resources. Posts to market the Library’s services and resources, e.g. Subject Librarians can feature a particular resource in their subject area. Refresher information, i.e. what is Athens, how to get started with e-resources. Posts to inform of changes/developments in resources or the delivery of services. Posts inviting feedback, e.g. on a proposed change to a Library service, resource or trial. Answer frequently asked questions, e.g. a weekly: “Ever wanted to….” column where we take a common question from the enquiry desk and do a generic answer. Perhaps an occasional feature on a member of library staff, to explain what they do, and how their work assists the library in its purpose. Responses to comments in the satisfaction survey. Publicise user comments/suggestions/complaints and answer them. Find a friendly student we could feature every now and then on the blog showing how they find/use/discover material in the library. 03/10/2008 14:51

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Other items meeting the purpose of the blog which will spark interest in the library and its resources. etc. Posting style for spineless? Mostly informal, friendly, jargon free, interesting, user focussed, encourage a conversation with Library users, informative, user focused titles/headings. Try to create posts from a user perspective. This is sometimes easier said than done, and in some cases may not be appropriate, but here are some suggestions: Think hard about the title. How can it be made to appear interesting and relevant to readers? E.g. “BSI release Interface ver 3.12″ might become “New British Standards Online interface makes it easier to find full-text Standards”. Try not to assume that readers know anything about what is under discussion. It may often be necessary to include reminders - e.g. “IEEE Xplore, the full text access technical literature service in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics.” Rather than just “IEEE Xplore” If appropriate, explain who the service/item is aimed at, and what subjects it covers. The above is concerned with content and style. With respect to the design of library blogs, I personally prefer a simple approach. I recently did an infoskills session with 20 MSc students, and not one of them had heard of RSS, Bloglines or feedreaders. Whilst many students are obviously familiar with MySpace, Podcasting and other Web 2.0 initiatives, there are loads who are not yet even aware of Google Scholar, and this is one reason we kept the design of spineless? as simple as possible. Other library blogs (e.g. Library and Learning Resources) have taken a different approach. There’s no right or wrong here, I would hope, and we can all learn from experience and sharing ideas. Please feel free to post comments below on this topic of “UK Library blogs What do we think we’re doing?“ Thanks. Now I need to go and blog on spineless? Roddy MacLeod Senior Subject Librarian Heriot Watt University Technorati Tags: blogs Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 20 Comments »

Guest Bloggers April 1, 2007 A new blog experiment which is being launched on 1st April is the Guest Blogger. The aim of this is to allow a fellow blogger to give their views and thoughts on a topic area covered by this blog.

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I hope that this will provide some variety to the blog. The experiment is also intended to provide exposure to a fellow blogger. The first Guest Blogger is Roddy MacLeod of Heriot-Watt University. Roddy’s posting, which goes live on 2nd April 2007, will address the issue of blogging within a UK librarian context. Depending on the success of this experiment I will look to have a regular Guest Blogger. So feel free to get in touch if you’d like to contribute. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Guest-post | Edit 1 Comment »

Snap Preview Facility March 30, 2007 A WordPress feature which is enabled by default is the preview of the destination of links, which is displayed when you move the mouse over hyperlink. This feature, which is illustrated in the screen shot, is provided by Snap.

That’s cool, I thought when I first came across this. And I still find it useful: I get a feel for the destination of a link before clicking and waiting for the page to be retrieved. However a couple of people have commented on this blog that they don’t like Snap. And on 22 February 2007 the Guardian’s Online supplement featured an article entitled Is Snap Preview the most hated Web 2.0 function ever? The following week the letters page contained several letters in agreement with this sentiment, with just one, from the director of Snap, which sought to make a case for Snap.

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I’ve argued previously about the benefits of giving users options to choose their preferred settings, rather than the the service provider making the choice on behalf of the user community. So how should I resolve this dilemma? It does seem to me that the Snap facility does allow the user to select various configuration options (the time before the popup display occurs, its size; etc.). In addition Snap can easily be disabled by clicking on the clearly marked Disable option. So users do have choice. But if I were to disable this feature on the blog (as I am able to do) wouldn’t I be removing choice from the users? What should I do? Do I respond to the loudest voice? Or the largest numbers (and maybe persecute a minority)? Is there a fair and equitable solution? Technorati Tags: snap Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 8 Comments »

Scribd - Doing For Documents What Slideshare Does For Presentations March 29, 2007 As I’ve recently described, a couple of months ago I uploaded PDFs of a few of my papers to Slideshare, and wondered whether there was a business opportunity for Slideshare in extending its remit from providing a repository of slideshows to include documents in general. Well last week I came across Scribd - a Web 2.0 service which provides this functionality, describing itself as “YouTube for documents”. I registered for the service (although, strangely, you don’t need to be registered to upload documents) and uploaded several of my papers. And I have to admit that I’m very impressed with the service. I could upload my papers in several formats (including MS Word, PDF, MS PowerPoint and MS Excel) and, when I uploaded an MS Word document, alternative formats were created, including PDF, HTML, plain text and even an MP3 file which provided a computergenerated sound file for the paper! As well as the accessibility benefits which this may provide, being able to download various formats means that the service cannot be accusing of ‘fake sharing’ - a term coined on the lessig blog and discussed on the O’Reilly Radar and eFoundations blogs.

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The interface seemed very usable; as well as allowing the paper to be viewed in a variety of formats Scribd, as seems to be the norm for these type of services, allows resources to be bookmarked (’favourited’ seems to be the word used to describe this), usage statistics are provided and, as with Slideshare, the resource can be embedded in Web pages. Has Scribd raised the bar in users’ expectations for digital repositories? In some respects, I feel it has. However there are concerns which need to be recognised:

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Poor quality resources which are hosted: there is no guarantee of the quality of the resources which are hosted on Scribd. And there are copyrighted publications (including those from O’Reilly) which have already been uploaded. Sustainability of the service: As will all of these type of services, there is the question as to whether such services are sustainable. Techcrunch reported on 6 March 2007 that the service “is coming out of private beta this morning with a fresh Angel investment of $300K on top of their 03/10/2008 14:51

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original Y Combinator nest egg of $12,000.“This may keep the service running for a short time, but will it be around in the medium to long term? And what will happen if copyright holders, such as O’Reilly, take the service to court for their misuse of their copyrighted resources (as Viacomm have recently done to YouTube). Lack of a interoperable resource discovery architecture: The approach taken by Scribd is not interoperable with the approach being taken by the JISC development community, which is looking to support the development of distributed interoperable digital repository services which make use of OAI-PMH. So perhaps Scribd might be felt to have no relevance to those involved in digital repository development work. I, however, feel that it would be a mistake to dismiss Scribd. We can’t guarantee that the service would have a role to play in the long term, but the approaches it has taken are worth exploring. Indeed, as I commented on some time ago in a posting about the accessibility of PDF resources in digital repositories) I feel that we should be exploring ways of improving the accessibility of repository services, and it is interesting that this commercial service, rather than one developed with the academic community, is taking a leading role in providing MP3 versions of papers in the repository. And rather than just trying out Scribd to see what features might be worth implementing in our own repository services, is there an argument for making a deal with Scribd to host our scholarly resources in a managed fashion? Technorati Tags: pdfcoke Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Repositories, Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

Slideshare Repository and PDFs March 28, 2007 I recently discovered that the Slideshare service (a repository service for slides in PowerPoint or Open Office formats) also allows PDF files to be uploaded. This makes sense as PDFs can be used as a presentation format for slide shows. I then wondered whether Slideshare could be used as a repository for papers in PDF format. So I uploaded a PDF version of a paper on Contextual Web Accessibility - Maximizing the Benefit of Accessibility Guidelines (a paper presented at the W4A workshop in Edinburgh in May 2006). As can be seen, the PDF file has been successfully uploaded to the service (with over 200 views since the document was uploaded).

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Why am I doing this? If you access the resource you will discover that the text is too small to read unless you zoom in, and if you do this, you will have only a small screen area to read the paper. The file may be inaccessible (a Flash interface to a PDF file) , an issue discussed recently, and the PDF file is not easily printed, downloaded or reused (as Andy Powell commented a while ago, Slideshare is an example of ‘fake sharing’). However such reservations are based on Slideshare in its current form. If the company felt there was a business case for hosting papers in PDF format, it would surely not be too difficult to provide a more appropriate user interface, and perhaps also providing access to printing and downloading services. And even if Slideshare felt this was an inappropriate use of their service (and they could, of course, ban papers in PDF format for being hosted by the service) there are still a number of interesting issues which evaluating the service in this way can help address: ease of uploading rapid prototyping architecture (URIs, APIs, …) additional functionality the pros and cons of allowing only quality publications to be uploaded But since I first drafted this post, there have been further developments in this area - which I’ll address shortly. Technorati Tags: slideshare

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HTML Email - Views From The Grizzled Techies And Evil Marketeers March 26, 2007 “One of our web officers has been asking about whether there’s any good, reasonably priced training in creating HTML mails. If anyone has any experience with this, would you let me know?“ That message, sent recently to the web-support JISCMail list seemed a reasonable request for information. So I was surprised to see responses saying “I can give you a complete course right now. Don’t do it“, “If people learn to write they don’t need HTML to spice their text” and “the people that want it are the very last people that should be allowed to have it. To me, the reception of HTML email from an organisation is a great big hint that I never ever want to deal with that organisation.“ Well, there are some unequivocal positions! And loo0k at that last comments: “the people that want it are the very last people that should be allowed to have it.” What happened to having a user-focussed approach to Web development? Fortunately there were other responses to the debate which took a more holistic view: “Don’t just say ‘No’, say ‘Let US do it’, or at least ‘Let us get involved’. Take control if possible. Otherwise they’ll just do it anyway, and quite possibly do it (very) badly.“ The debate seemed to polarise the “grizzled techies” and the “evil marketing managers”. One of the latter gave his reasons for making use of HTML in email: As the resident evil marketing manager on the list I’ve tried to restrain myself but can’t hold back any longer… We always use HTML based e-mail for our marketing (we send multipart e-mails with a text version so that most users should see something on their screen). All our e-mail marketing is opt-in and we give an unsubscribe link on every message sent, partly because that’s the law, but mainly because it’s polite - we’re happy that our unsubscribe rate is reasonably low.e developed a set of corporate templates which were thoroughly tested with Outlook, Outlook express, Hotmail, Gmail, Mac mail, et al (if you think getting HTML to render in a variety of browsers is fun wait until you start developing HTML e-mail!). Every message we send is sent to test accounts using a variety of e-mail services before we send in bulk. It does strike me that there are two polarised communities. Coincidentally around the time this discussion was taking place I attended the Aoc Nilta conference, at which, as described in a posting by Scott Wilson, personalisation was one of the key themes of the conference (and, as described recently by the BBC, is also on the Government’s agenda). My view? I’m on the side of providing flexibility for the user community - and if 440 of 544

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the marketing community are the ones who try to respond to the users’ needs, then we should be working more closely with that group, rather than the dated technical views of the grizzled techies! Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in HTML, Web2.0 | Edit 9 Comments »

Further Comments On JISC 2007 Conference March 21, 2007 I recently mentioned that the highlight of the JISC Conference 2007 for me (and, it would seem, many other participants) was the final plenary talk on BBC 2.0. The organisers of the conference should be pleased with the success of this talk, and also with the organisation of the event itself. No doubt the organisers will receive detailed comments when they analyse the conference evaluation forms. However at events link this, which will expect to attract participants who are IT literate and many of whom will be users of Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, it will often be possible to obtain more immediate feedback by using various search tools to see what people have been saying about the conference. I have recently used the following searches to find comments about the conference: Technorati search for “jisc conference“ Technorati search for postings which link to the URL http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2007/03/ (and below). Google Blog Search for postings which link to the URL http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2007/03/event_conf_0307.aspx What strikes me for the blog posts? There are examples of further confirmations of the success of the talk on BBC 2.0: “Finally the inspirational talk of the day was given by Tom Loosemore from the BBC. He runs their whole online operation by the sound of it and mercifully sounds like he really has his head screwed on. ” (Sam’s Work Blog). “Tom’s principles [about BBC 2.0] were very much in the spirit of Web 2.0 and just the kinds of things that Brian Kelly and others have been banging on about for ages, but it was nice to hear the same messages coming from outside the community.” (E-foundations blog - thanks Andy). The conference organisers will be pleased with comments on the role that the conference plays in providing networking opportunities: “an excellent opportunity for networking and meeting up with old friends” (E-foundations blog) although the organisers may wish to reflect on comments about the lunch:

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disappointed to see both veggie options contained mushrooms. I ended up with a plate of potato salad and wild rice, not very nourishing.” (Vashti’s Blog) and workshop facilitators should find it useful to get feedback on their sessions: “I went to an hour long session about the JISC e-Framework, SOA and Enterprise Architecture in the morning. I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed by the lack of any mention of Web 2.0. Err… hello!.” (E-foundations blog). “The session was supposed to be a workshop and I thought they might just do a real demo to show how it works… but no this is another death-by-powerpoint moment.” (Sam’s Work Blog). Of course, as well as reading such comments and reflecting on them, there is also the opportunity to respond to such comments for those blogs which allow comments to be made, and engaging in discussion and debate. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events | Edit 2 Comments »

Blog Policies March 20, 2007 I was interested to see that the Blog Policy for this blog (and the rationale behind it and how it can be applied elsewhere) has been picked up and adopted by the Blogging@UoD blog (”A Blog on blogging in Higher & Further Education from the University of Derby”). I would expect to see further developments in this, as universities, libraries, etc. begin to make greater use of blogs to support their activities. It would be interesting, therefore, to see how such policies shape up, and to observe patterns in their approaches. Feel free, therefore, to include links to policies you come across or have developed, as comments to this posting. In addition, I’d suggest that the tag “ blog-policies” is used to tag postings on this subject, to enable the postings to be found more easily in search engines such as Technorati (I notice, incidentally, that Technorati currently finds 43 postings using this tag). Technorati Tags: blog-policies Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 2 Comments »

Being Informed Of New Comments March 19, 2007 442 of 544

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When a new comment is made on this blog I receive an email alert. And details of the last 5 comments are included in the sidebar widget. But how can readers of this blog find out about new comments made to postings of particular interest, especially if they miss the information in the sidebar (which can happen if several comments are made in quick succession, if they don’t visit the blog site regularly or, indeed, if they use an RSS reader, email delivery of postings, etc. This occurred to me after receiving a comment on the FireFox - The Researchers Favourite Application? posting from Peter Miller, in which he mentioned that Mike Kaply, the Firefox Operator guy, is blogging on enterprise deployment. There has been a fair amount of interest in this topic (indeed the post is in the list of top postings in this blog) so it would be unfortunate if people missed this useful link on developments in this area. WordPress does provide an RSS feed for new comments. Perhaps I should provide a link to the feed in the sidebar. But, as has been discussed previously, many users don’t know what to do with RSS feeds, so should I provide a link to an email delivery of RSS feeds? But won’t this be confusing - what will receiving notification of a comment mean without the context? Or do they applications provide information about the context? And do RSS readers solve this in any case, so there’s no need for me to make any changes (and to add more clutter to the sidebar)? What do you think? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in rss | Edit 8 Comments »

Sudden Jump In Technorati Rating March 19, 2007 I noticed recently that this blog had jumped up in the Technorati ranking, from about 110,00 to 80,535. This was due to n increase in the numbers of links to the blog and blogs linking to this blog, as illustrated in the graph (taken from the Blotter application I posted about recently).

What was responsible for this sudden rise? Had I posted an article which caused a flurry of interesting across the blogging community, I wondered? Alas no further investigation revealled that a blog hosted by the LibraryThing service had picked up on a post I made about LibraryThing and that this blog was being replicated using several domains (http://hu.librarything.com/buzz.php, 443 of 544

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http://cym.librarything.com/buzz.php, http://fi.librarything.com/buzz.php, etc.). These domains provide access to the LibrayThing service in different countries (and in appropriate languages) but their blog entry is simply replicated across the Web sites. I think this is further evidence of the limitations of blog statistics. But the worrying aspect is how easy it would appear to be to artificially inflate one’s Technorati rating by replication of links from multiple blogs. I don’t feel that LibraryThing have acted unethically - but, sadly, others will. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 2 Comments »

BBC 2.0 March 16, 2007 On Tuesday 13 March 2007 I attended the JISC Conference 2007. As always, this is a valuable opportunity to meet people from the sector and catch up with gossip, developments, etc. There are also a number of plenary talks and workshop session to attend as well A great development this year was the provision of the speakers slides and a commentary on the sessions, which was provided shortly after the conference had closed. Many thanks to the organisers for doing this. As these materials are available online (from the link given above) I will avoid duplicating this work. Instead I will mention the highlight of the conference for me - the talk on “BBC 2.0″ by Tom Loosemore, project director of BBC 2.0. Tom described a review of the BBC’s involvement in the provision of Web sites which was initiated in 2004. As a result of this work, the BBC had identified 15 key principles which underpin their approach to the provision of Web services. And with the widespread acceptance of the “Web 2.0″ phrase, this enabled them to coin the “BBC 2.0″ term to describe their lightweight user-focussed approach to Web development. The 15 key principles are summarised below: 1. Build Web products that meet users needs, is the first principle. 2. The best Web sites do one thing really, really well. For example, the BBC news site attracts 5.5m users per week and answers the question – what’s going on right now. 3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves… link to other high-quality sites yourselves. A good example of this is the John Peel Day Web site, which brings together an enormous number of concerts and festivals run in the late DJ’s memory. Interestingly the BBC make use of the Flickr photographic sharing Web site to enable photos taken by music lovers at these events to be uploaded to the Flickr website and tagged with the keyword ‘John Peel’. The Flickr community can then chose their favourite photographs, which can help the BBC to chose photographs to be uploaded to the BBC Web site from this short list. 4. Fall forward fast… make many small bets. By this Tom means making small developments and testing them to identify successes. An example which was given was the Catalogue site (but it should be noted that the success of this site ironically causes performance problems and the site is not currently available!) 444 of 544

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5. Treat the entire Web as a creative canvas. The best example of this is an ABC programme which spent three times more on sites away from its own ‘Lost’ site than it did on the ‘Lost’ site itself, including ‘Lostpedia’, and the commissioning of a book which was available on Amazon. Note I use the term ‘blended Web sites’ to describe this approach (based on the ‘blended learning’ phrase) and I recently coined the phrase ‘blended blogging’ to refer to online and offline relationship between this blog and use of the content in my talks. 6. The web is a conversation… join in. Adopt a relaxed conversational tone (rather than telling people). Admit your mistakes. 7. Any Web site is only as good as its worst page. Rigorous processes are needed in developing and editing websites. 8. Make sure all content can be linked to forever. Linking is what is key to the Web. 9. Remember your granny won’t ever use ‘Second life’. If you focus only on early adopters then you’re missing many potential users; too much on everyone and you will lose the urge to develop web sites and cutting edge services. 10. Maximise routes to content. Develop as many aggregations as possible reflecting as many people, places topics, channels, networks and time as possible. Optimise your site to rank high on Google. BBC sites do this extremely well. 11. Consistent design and navigation needn’t mean one size fits all… Architecture should reflect interaction. 12. Accessibility is not an optional extra. The www.traintimes.org.uk Web site, for example, is the result of a passion on the part of the developer to ensure that everyone could use the Web site. 13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes. YouTube is an excellent example of this. 14. Link to discussions on the web, don’t host them… Only host web-based discussions where there is a clear rationale. 15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent. Respect your users’ data. I’ve heard many people saying how useful they thought the talk was. For me it was great to hear that an organisation like the BBC (with its expertise in Web site development and large budgets) makes use of third party services like Flickr and has moved away form developing services such as bulletin boards. This has been a theme of several of my recent postings - so I was pleased to hear that this view seems to be mainstream thinking within the BBC. Technorati Tags: bbc2.0 Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit No Comments »

I’m A Dedicated Follower Of Fashion March 16, 2007 Around Christmas time, I think it was, I was talking to my colleague Paul Walk (in The Star, probably Bath’s finest pub) about ways in which we can communicate effectively complex ideas. We discussed the JISC e-Framework strategy in the context of the animated cartoon which seeks to explain the 445 of 544

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Service Oriented Approach (Feb 2007). We then discussed aspects of Web 2.0 - and suddenly the Kinks’ song “Dedicated Follower Of Fashion” came to mind. How do you explain the concept of social networks and services which become better as the numbers of users grows? “Dedicated Follower Of Fashion” sums that up nicely, I thought. However last week I noticed that on the programme for the UCISA Management Conference that Gill Ferrell, JISC infoNet, is giving a talk with the title “Are you a Dedicated Follower of Fashion? (Designing technology rich learning spaces for the future). Damm, beaten in coining of this analogy, I initially thought. But no, on reflection I realised that now I really am a dedicated follower of fashion (oh yes I am!), whereas Gill is clearly the leader of the gang (she is). Now what other songs can help communicate aspects of Web 2.0? “I am the eggman they are the eggmen I am the walrus Goo goo g’ joob” struck me as providing an interesting biological mashup, with perhaps some character encoding problems at the end. But I’m sure you can do better than this! Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 7 Comments »

IT Services Reinventing Themselves March 15, 2007 I gave a talk on IT Services: Help Or Hindrance? at the UCISA Management Conference 2006 held in Blackpool on 8-10th March 2006. The UCISA Management Conference is aimed at senior managers in IT Service departments (and also attracts those involved in related support service departments, including the Library). I was very pleased to be asked to speak at such a high profile conference, which attracted over 300 participants. The conference was also highly successful; as Owen Stephens summarised in his Overdue Ideas blog: How often do you leave a conference feeling inspired, and then end up getting dragged back into the daily grind? I think that this year the UCISA conference has challenged me to make some changes. So - I want to go back and do at least one thing that has been mentioned during the last 3 days. It could be changing the way I engage with students, (Stephen Heppell), having an evening meal with my colleagues (Tim Smit), developing partnerships with the community (Michael Ahern and Craig Hickson), or by working with the students rather than against them (Brian Kelly), or something else that has been inspired by one of the speakers. So - a challenge for me to go back and do something differently. And a challenge for all UCISA delegates (and others reading this) change something about the way you work, or deliver a service. If you want, leave a comment to say what it is. At the JISC Conference 2007 which I attended earlier this week I had the opportunity to talk with a number of the UCISA staff, and was able to obtain a summary of the feedback from last year’s UCISA conference. I was very 446 of 544

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pleased to discover that my talk received a rating of 3.2 for the content and 3.4 for the presentation (with a rating of 4 for excellent). The talk received the third highest rating (and I hope I’m note infringing anyone’s privacy by reporting that Tim Smit received the highest rating, scoring a perfect 4 for the average for his presentation on Creating Dreams). It was particularly pleasing that my talk received such high ratings as, as indicated by the title of “IT Services: Help Or Hindrance?“, I was suggesting that the traditional approaches taken by IT Services to the provision and support of IT may no longer be applicable in a Web 2.0 environment. The feedback indicated that, rather than IT Service managers acting like turkeys voting for Christmas, they are, in fact, aware of the need to reinvent themselves. This realisation struck me after being invited to give a follow-up presentation to IT Service managers in universities in the East Midlands back in November. It struck me that that I didn’t really need to labour the point of the need for change; rather, the participants were rather more interested in how IT Services should go about implementing change. I’m not the only person thinking along these lines. Yesterday Mark Sammons, a Senior Computing Officer at the University of Edinburgh (and contributor to this blog) published a posting on IT Services 2.0 on his blog. Mark predicted that “ In 5 years time, IT Services will be almost completely unrecognisable to how they are now.” Rather than feeling threatened by such changes, Mark is very optimistic about the future: “I see a great opportunity with this new world, this “IT Services 2.0″. I’m pleased that Mark has coined the term “IT Services 2.0″ to refer to a modernisation of IT Services to reflect the changing environment. And I heartily support his vision for change: The real challenge therefore, will be for IT Services to adapt, to provide services to help end users collaborate or communicate and help each other, and to offer more value to the organisation. Of course, there will be casualties such as support staff who can’t learn to develop new services will be increasingly marginalised, will be increasingly redundant, but in many ways, it is exciting - the chance to move from an environment of being reactive to providing increasingly rich new services is much more interesting (to me, at least). I’m pleased to find increasing evidence that IT Services are adapting rapidly to a Web 2.0 environment. But where does that leave the Library? The term “Library 2.0″ has already been claimed to refer to use of Web 2.0 technologies within a library context, so we may have to coin the more clumsy phrase “Library Services 2.0″ to describe the re-invention of the Library. But are Library Services 2.0 to be found or are they behind IT Services 2.0? Or, on the other hand, is this term redundant as the Library has always emphasised the importance of the user, and all that is need is minor refocussing? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 3 Comments »

Talk on Deployment Strategies For Web 2.0 March 14, 2007 447 of 544

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Background On Monday 12 March 2007 I gave a seminar on Deployment Strategies For Web 2.0 at the University of Nottingham, following an invitation from Stephen Pinfield, Deputy Chief Information Officer at the University I received the invitation from Stephen following a similar presentation (entitled Web 2.0: How Should IT Services and the Library Respond?) I gave in November to senior managers in library and IT service department at East Midlands Universities. The aim of this presentation was to engage with a wider range of staff responsible for the delivery of services in support service departments. About 100 people signed up for the seminar, which included staff from several of the local universities. I was particularly pleased when I arrived at the University to discover that the talk was being videoed to China! Apparently the University of Nottingham Ningbo Web site. So a video link was set up to enable IT support staff at the Ningbo campus to attend the seminar.

The Talk The talk gave an introduction to a variety of aspects of Web 2.0, with a particular emphasis of its applications within a higher education context. A new development to this talk was the addition of links to relevant postings published in this blog. This aims to provide access to additional reading materials, but, more importantly I would argue, access to comments about the posting and the ability to engage in those discussions. In particular I updated one of my slides which suggested that encouraging take-up of the FireFox and various FireFox plugins can provide a simple means of engaging with various Web 2.0 services. Following the comments made by Mark Sammons and Phil Wilson to my posting on FireFox - The Researchers Favourite Application I now describe the difficulties in managing FireFox across a large organisation and invited the participants at the seminar to engage with the issues made in the comments. Another new aspect of the talk was in extending the discussion on strategies for deployment of Web 2.0 technologies within an organisation. A set of new slides suggest the need to develop a risk assessment and risk management approach to using Web 2.0, with the advice that this approach should also be applied to defending the status quo (there are risks associated with doing nothing) and in sticking with the traditional approach of use of licensed software from well-established software vendors (we have seen company takeovers which can affect published roadmaps and, of course, companies may also go out-ofbusiness).

Reflections In my talk I argued that some of the traditional assumptions that made have been made are no longer necessarily true. In particular I suggested that in a Web 2.0 context, we no longer need to own the applications which are used to provide services to our user communities. I sunmmarised this view by suggesting that “Ideology is dead; pragmatism rules“. Rob Kirkwood, a former colleague of mine at Loughborough University, responded by suggesting that “Ideology may not be dead, but a greater emphasis need to be placed on pragmatic approaches to the provision of IT services” - a less snappy conclusion, but one 448 of 544

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which is more accurate, I would feel. The other interesting aspect to this talk was the videoconferencing link to China. I was very pleased that this worked so well ()and one aspect that I introduced shortly before that talk started was use of a Gabbly chat facility to allow that participants in China to have a mechanism for providing comments and feedback). It helped that the opening slide for my presentation explicitly stated that I granted permission for my presentation to be broadcast, as illustrated (and can be seen from the slides which are available on Slideshare). It would have been unfortunate if I had not given permission for my talk to be made available to a remote audience (which I would legally be allowed to do) or for the talk to be recorded (which I would have been happy with, although, in this case, the talk was not recorded). We are likely to see much greater take-up of communications technologies to allow users at various locations to participate in meetings, seminars, etc. so there will be a need to address the technical issues and also, and more importantly, I feel, the non-technical issues associated with maximising the benefits to a distributed audience. UKOLN has published a briefing document on “Guidelines For Exploiting WiFi Networks At Events” which covers some of these higher-level issues. One additional area that should be added to this document, based on my experiences at Nottingham, are ways of engaging effectively with both the local and remote audiences: at the start of my talk I mentioned that remote audience and received feedback from them (using Gabbly) on who they were and what they hoped to get from the session); however at the end of the talk, I moved nearer to the audience for the questions and discussions session, forgetting (until I was reminded by the AV technicians) that the remote audience then couldn’t see anything and couldn’t hear the questions and my responses.

Feedback I would welcome feedback from participants at the seminar on any of the issues raised during the talk, or more general issues related to deployment strategies for Web 2.0, engagement with remote audiences, etc. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit 8 Comments »

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Benefits Of Uploading Your Image To Technorati March 13, 2007 How do you ensure that your blog stands out in a page of search results? A well-established way of doing this is to associate an image with your Web site. For a blog the image could be a photograph of the blog author or a relevant icon. This struck me whilst using Technorati. I noticed how links to my blog from bloggers who have added a photograph when they registered with Technorati stood out from the crowd. In the example shown the small image of the author of the poster on the RIN Team blog and Sam Ruby drawn attention to their comments.

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There may be reasons why bloggers may not want to upload a photograph of themselves when they register in Technorati (and related services) - but uploading some form of image (a caricature or an image related to the purpose of the blog, perhaps) might provide dividends. This could also help the end user in remembering blog authors whom they have previously found helpful. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 1 Comment »

Wikipedia - Can We Provide Open Access For Training Materials? 451 of 544

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March 12, 2007 Melissa Knighton, who works on the Staff Development Unit at the University of Leeds, and I took part in a workshop at ITCP held in Trieste a couple of years ago. So I was interested to rediscover her Elgg blog recently. Her posting on Wikipedia - a resource for learning and teaching? described s staff development course on the role of Wikipedia in learning and teaching. Further exploration of the Elgg blog service at the University Of Leeds led me to a posting on Wikipedia: What the critics say by Angela Newton, the Information Literacy Team Leader in the Library at the University Of Leeds. Angela’s posting summarises Wikipedia’s strengths and weaknesses - issues which, I’m sure, will be addressed more fully in the staff development course. But how much time and effort will be spent in duplicating the development of similar materials across the library and information sector? The Library sector, in particular, should appreciate the benefits to be gained by providing open access to resource, and such benefits need not be restricted to research publications Creative Commons licences can also be used with document and training materials. This is an argument I made in a paper on Let’s Free IT Support Materials! which I presented at the EUNIS 2005 conference. Which will be the first Library to provide a Creative Commons licence for its documentation and training materials? And have a Creative Commons logo on slides used in training courses? Or is this already happening? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in openness | Edit No Comments »

Does Web 2.0 Herald The End Of In-House Development And Provision Of IT Services? March 8, 2007 A while ago I submitted a proposal for a talk entitled “Does Web 2.0 Herald The End Of In-House Development And Provision Of IT Services?” to The Shock of the Old 2007: Shock of the Social conference. The proposal was accepted, but by the time I had received confirmation, other commitments had cropped up. Fortunately this topic is of interest to my colleague Paul Walk and, as he has described in his blog, Paul is very keen to receive input from readers of his blog about his talk. This is an approach I’ve adopted recently, as I described in a posting on Web 2.0: What Can It Offer the Research Community. On that occasion, I received some useful examples of use of Web 2.0 technologies in a research context. And yesterday when I gave the presentation I encouraged the participants to visit the posting and, if they felt motivated, to engage in discussions and debate themselves. I coined the term ‘blended blogging‘ to describe the process of using a blog to inform the production of slides for a presentation and to allow the blog post to provide a channel for discussions afterwards. Returning to Paul’s presentation at the “Shock of the Old 2007: Shock of the Social” conference, the title of the talk is intentionally controversial, intended to challenge conventional thinking regarding software development. This was an issue I raised recently with my posting on Dapper - Web Mashup Development 452 of 544

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For All? Clearly, Web 2.0 won’t herald the end of in-house software development. But to what extent does it challenge the norms of software development? At one stage there might may have been a belief in some quarters (perhaps within further education colleges, for example) that institutions didn’t have the expertise or resources to engage in software development, and needed to purchase commercial off-the-shelf software. However many institutions are now reaping the benefits which development using open source software within an open source community environment can provide. But where do Web 2.0 services fit in with this approach? And with a model of ’software as a service’ does it really matter how the software was produced? Will making use of open source software be the equivalent of purchasing electricity from green providers - one might feel good about this, but it is just one of the factors to consider when seeking a solution for one’s needs? And what about the provision of IT services? Do institutions need to do this? And could we see the debates that one still encounters within IT services over whether, for example, to migrate email from an open source environment to a Microsoft platform (or vice versa) being made redundant by institutions simply renting email services from a company which gains benefits of scale (perhaps Google, for example)? Or, as Slideshare have done, purchase storage capacity from Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage Service)? Quite clearly there are many issues which need to be addressed. But rather than getting bogged down in the details, what are the merits of such an approach? And what are the major concerns? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit 5 Comments »

Talk On Web 2.0 At PPARC March 7, 2007 Earlier today I gave a talk on “Web 2.0: What Can It Offer The Research Community?” at PPARC. I mentioned the concept of ‘blended blogging’ - and would like to invite any of the participants at the talk to give their feedback. Did I convince you of the potential benefits of Web 2.0? What are the main barriers you foresee? And how do you think you may try to address such barriers? Note that details of my presentations are provided in an RSS feed, which includes location details. You can view a dynamic map of talks I’ve given this year and future presentations. As I mentioned during my talk today, the location data I have is not always sufficiently accurate. I notice that that was true for today’s talk, as you can see (or am I going off the rails?)

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Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit 4 Comments »

10,000 For 100 And Counting March 7, 2007

Statistics For The Blog This blog was launched on 1st November 2006 and today, 18 weeks later, the blog has received its 10,000 visitors and this is the 100th posting. The Akismet spam filter has caught over 1,300 spam comments, although I’d estimate that about 20-30 of these have been legitimate comments (if there had been about 300 spam comments fewer there would have been a nice symmetry to these figures!)

The Spam Issue The blog has also received 382 comments. I’ve very pleased with this figure, as it indicates that the blog is succeeded in its aim in actively engaging with the community. This policy has been to allow unmoderated 454 of 544

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comments for all postings. This has worked well, allowing people to see their comments immediately, and others to read them and perhaps respond even when I’m not around to manage the blog (on a handful of occasions legitimate comments have been held by Akismet and I’ve had to manually authorise them). It is clear from these figures that the blog would not be functioning as a forum for discussion without the Akismet filter - the comments area would be full of spam comments giving links to Web sites selling Viagra or providing pornography or, alternatively, I’d be spending significant time and effort in filtering the spam. Akismet is free for personal use and there are special rates for educational institutions and non-profit making organisations. In light of my experiences I would suggest that some mechanism will be needed in order to avoid spam. This will be of particular importance if a purpose of the blog is to encourage feedback. Something I will have to consider is what to do if the Akismet filter fails (unlikely, I hope) or WordPress.com changes their licensing conditions for use of the filter (I have no reason to suspect this will happen, but it is a possibility). I may also need to have some contingency plans for when I am away on holiday and not in a position to manage the blogs (e.g. if legitimate comments are caught in the spam filter).

RSS Statistics I should note that the figures given above relate only to visits to this blog Web site. A significant number of readers of this blog appear to use an RSS reader, I’m pleased to say (in light of previous discussions on the importance of RSS!) Interestingly, as can be seen from the graph, it would appear that RSS readers were discovered on 19 February as prior to that date there were only a handful of accesses to the RSS feed, but since then there appear to be over 200 accesses following every new post.

And The Rest As has been described previously this 455 of 544

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blog has been registered with the MyBlogLog service. The free service is being used, which provides access to a limited set of statistics, which are shown (note statistics for ‘click-thrus’ are note available in the free version). The figures have shown a consistent pattern for a number of weeks. There seem to be about 50 readers who read new posts over the weekend and around 70 who read new posts during the week. From these figures can we conclude that MyBlogLog is successful in ensuring that postings are found by members of that community? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 5 Comments »

JISC TechWatch Report on Web 2.0 March 6, 2007 A JISC TechWatch report entitled “What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education” (TSW0701) is now available on the JISC Web site. The JISC Web site contains the following information about the report: This TechWatch report was commissioned to investigate the substance behind the hyperbole surrounding ‘Web 2.0’. It reports on the implications this may have for the UK Higher and Further Education sector, with a special focus on collection and preservation activities within libraries. The report establishes that Web 2.0 is more than a set of ‘cool’ and new technologies and services, important though some of these are. It has, at its heart, a set of at least six powerful ideas that are changing the way some people interact. Secondly, it is also important to acknowledge that these ideas are not necessarily the preserve of ‘Web 2.0’, but are, in fact, direct or indirect reflections of the power of the network: the strange effects and topologies at the micro and macro level that a billion Internet users produce. The report argues that by separating out the discussion of Web technologies (ongoing Web development overseen by the W3C), from the more recent applications and services (social software), and attempts to understand the manifestations and adoption of these services (the ‘big ideas’), decision makers will find it easier to understand and act on the strategic implications of ‘Web 2.0’. Indeed, analysing the composition and interplay of these strands provides a useful framework for understanding its significance. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 4 Comments » 456 of 544

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What IS a Web Site? Who Should Manage the Web Site? March 5, 2007 What is a Web site for an organisation such as a University? And what is the remit of the body charged with managing the Web site? I used to think we knew the answers to these questions: a large organisation would have multiple Web presences (organisational, departmental, Intranets, etc.) with a combination of centralised and devolved approaches to managing such resources. And many members of the community would meet up at UKOLN’s annual Institutional Web Management Workshops to learn about ways in which organisations have gone about developing best practices and to hear about some of the latest innovations. However I’m now beginning to think that this consensus is breaking down. With my involvement in Web 2.0 technologies and engagement with JISC development programmes the emphasis that I see focusses on the Web as a highly interactive, collaborative and distributed environment; members of institutional Web management teams may, however, continue to regard the Web as primarily a delivery mechanism for quality institutional informational resources. We do, of course, need our institutions to continue to provide such services. But I’m beginning to wonder whether the institutions should rethink their priorities. Back in the mid 1990s in many institutions the University Web server was the responsibility of the IT services department and, initially, control of the hardware and software enabled the department to stake a claim for responsibility for the content (back then, PR and marketing departments didn’t understand Web technologies, and when they became involved initially they provided graphic-intensive and inaccessible Web sites). However over time PR and marketing departments developed a better understanding for Web design principles, resulting in many attractive and accessible institutional Web sites. However I am concerned that a new conservatism is blighting the institutional Web. And just as the Web was dismissed as a technological toy for the geeks in the early 1990s, there are dangers that same dismissive approach may be taken to Web 2.0. I see this conservatism manifesting itself in the view of the Web site as a static informational resource, rather than the richly interactive and collaborative environment which was Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision for the Web. From this perspective, we might regard the Web as an operating system environment which can be used for a wide range of applications: blogs, wikis, messaging, discussions, e-learning, e-research, oh and information. The informational aspect may then be regarded as the help system for the institutions operating system (click here to find out about the university, the courses it runs, etc.) - all important stuff, but not the area in which the significant development work is likely to happen. Or, to put such thoughts in a bite-sized chunk “Content isn’t king; rather, communication is king“! Or, to generalise this point, it’s not just about the resource (and all of the processes associated with publishing quality resources 457 of 544

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and it’s not just about the user (user needs analysis; stakeholder analysis; usability; etc.). These are, clearly, important. However the overlooked aspect is the relationship between the resource and the user; and this relationship can cover a variety of areas (collaborate, alert, entertain, amuse, annoy, etc.) and not just inform (as is assumed in the conventioanl view of the instituitonal Web site). So after 10 years of PR and marketing departments managing our Web sites maybe it’s time for IT services, the research community and innovative e-learning developers to engage more actively in defining and developing a vision for our institutional Web services. Is this an approach which others share? And is this a topic which we should be discussing at this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 7 Comments »

The Blotter Dapper Application March 4, 2007 One example of a Dapper application (a ‘Dapplication’) which is available from the Dapper Web site is Blotter. This uses Dapper to scrape the Technorati Web site for statistical information on usage of a blog (and note that the Blotter page describes how this application was developed). As an example I have embedded the Blotter application in this post. Blotter scrapes the Technnorati service’s results for this blog on a daily basis in order to record trends, as illustrated.

It would appear that over time the image will be updated, to show changes in the numbers of links to this blog and the Technorati ranking. At the time this posting was published, the legend on the graph indicated that the blog has 632 links from 34 sites, and is ranked 115,721. The graph shows that the numbers of links and sites has remained static on Friday and Saturday, but the rating has dropped from around 115,300 to 115,721 over these two days. To return to a point raised by Peter Miller: isn’t this application ’stealing’ data from Technorati? I think it’s clear from the image, that acknowledgments are given to the provider of the service. And if this service becomes popular, it could raise the profile of Technorati in new sectors. Indeed as the Yedda quotation says on the Dapper Web site: “Dapper has made it very easy to distribute our 458 of 544

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content in new and exciting ways. We love Dapper!“. Technorati Tags: Dapper Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Web2.0 | Edit 4 Comments »

Dapper - Web Mashup Development For All? March 3, 2007 I’ve never been a fan of the mystique that you sometime find with Web developers, who like to keep the secret art of development within their own closed community and sometimes belittle small scale development work. “Real programmers don’t use Pascal” was their war cry in the 1980s. I enjoy pointing out to admin staff that when they develop a spreadsheet, that they are developers. And it’s good when the spreadsheet applications makes it easy to do this. So I was very interested when I discovered Dapper recently. I’ve looked at the video introduction and played with some of the demo applications (”Dapplications”). Magg, the Movie Aggregator, gives good example of what Dapper can do - in this example video clips from a variety of services (Yahooo Video, Google Video, etc.) are integrated into a seamless, attractive looking interface. But hang on a moment, the seamless access to distributed resource was one of the aims of the JISC’s DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource) , which was later rebranded as the JISC Information Environment. So has the solution arrived? Does Dapper provide the easy-to-use integration environment for the masses? To be honest, I don’t know. So here’s a challenge for blog readers: see who can create the coolest example with the least effort. And, before anyone asks, the prize - the plaudits of your peers. What more could you ask for Technorati Tags: Dapper Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 14 Comments »

Gabbly - A Simply Chat Facility For Blogs March 2, 2007

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I’ve previously described how the Meebo plugin can be used to provide a chat facility for blogs. However its use requires installation of the plugin as a sidebar widget and users need to have a browser which support Flash. An alternative approach would be to make use of a more native Web-based chat facility. One possibly would be Gabbly. Gabbly’s approach is interesting - it provides a chat facility which is associated with a Web page (or, to be more accurate, with a URI). As an experiment I’ve set up a link which provides a chat facility associated with this posting. Why not try it. I will try and be around this afternoon (Friday 2 March 2007). There are a couple of recent posts which might be worth discussing: the difficulties of managing FireFox across an organisation and a more informal posting which suggested that the Web is now a difficult teenager. So why not visit the chat facility and give your thoughts.

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And let me know if you think a link to a Gabbly chat facility from this blog’s sidebar would be useful. Perhaps this could be achieved with a small image, to make the purpose more obvious (perhaps along the lines illustrated). Please note, though, that it has been suggested that use of Gabbly (embedded within a Web page rather than the direct link I’ve suggested here) may have been responsible FireFox crashing on an Apple Macintosh platform 03/10/2008 14:51

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although this has not been confirmed. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

The Web: From Childhood to Early Adolescence March 2, 2007 We are now seeing the Web developing from its childhood to a, sometimes troublesome, adolescent in our institutions. In its infant years IT service departments took responsibility for helped to nurture and develop the baby (they read the Apache manuals, learnt Perl programming and developed some simple rules so the Web wouldn’t get into too much mischief). And when the Web was old enough to be let out into public the PR and marketing departments took charge, and made sure it was dressed properly before being let out into public. But all of a sudden the Web has turned into a teenager. It doesn’t want to do as its told. It wants to wear whatever it wants, and not the nice suit and tie we’ve bought for it. Sometimes it swears. And it wants its own identity. “I’m not Web, any more” it tells us “I’m Web 2.0 - and I can do what I want!“ And maybe we’ve been too over-protective. Perhaps we should give it more responsibility, even though this may be painful. And if it want to call itself “Web 2.0″, then that’s OK (even though it will always be Web 1.0 to its parents). It makes me smile, sometimes, when I remember when I was a similar age. I was into ‘punk’ and annoyed my parents by dressing strangely. So maybe when it says it wants to ‘mashup a YouTube video’ (I think that’s what it says; I don’t really understand - I just know it sounds like something I should ban) this is similar to what we tried to do when we were young. Now I wonder what it will be like when it reaches its early adulthood? And when did I suddenly become middle-aged? I’ll be voting Conservative next (only joking, I’m New Labour through and through, me.) Technorati links Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 11 Comments »

FireFox - The Researchers Favourite Application? March 1, 2007 Peter Miller recently suggested that “Every academic’s current favourite [FireFox extension] has to be the reference management tool Zotero.” In reply I suggested that “surely every academic’s favourite application must be FireFox?!” Peter and I would be in agreement that a combination of FireFox and a variety of FireFox extensions can provide a powerful platform for the researcher. 461 of 544

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“Well that’s pretty uncontroversial” many readers of this blog would probably feel. But is this environment readily available for the researcher and those who support the research community (the librarians and IT support staff to name two groups)? This answer to this, I suspect, is no, not widely across the sector. There will be understandable reasons for this. Institutional support costs can be reduced by having a small set of supported applications - and this includes not just the technical support in ensuring the applications works correctly but the user support costs in addressing user queries, providing documentation and training, etc. Institutions will have been through several generations of Web browsers, starting with Mosaic (for the early Web adopters) followed by Netscape, after the Mosaic development team left NCSA and joined the Netscape Corporation. However when Netscape found themselves in a dominant position, they introduced a variety of proprietary extensions to the Web which, whilst being innovative, alienated some of the Web purists. This left Microsoft in the strange position of being able to position themselves, at one stage, as the browser with best support for Web standards. Around this time many institutions made a decision to ’stick with the devil you know, with the result that Internet Explorer became the supported browser in many institutions. This was probably a sensible decision at the time, with Netscape at the time being renowned for its flawed support for CSS (which meant that Web developers had to use tables for layout purposes for far longer than they should have done). Even when Netscape rematerialised as the open source Mozilla browser, its initial implementation was also flawed, as the developers themselves admitted. It was only when FireFox became available did we have a robust and reliable open source browser. And, even better, the browser was extensible, through its support for extensions. And even the embedded search box is extensible, allowing users to easily add new search facilities. So FireFox must surely be provided to support the research community in their activities. But what are the possible barriers to realising this vision:

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Institutions should be browser neutral: I would agree that Web sites should be usable in well-used browsers. However I would also argue that institutions should provide members of the institutions will the best tools to enable them to achieve their tasks, subject to the resource implications in providing such tools. FireFox will provide the rich environment, without any expenditure on licence costs. Our admin system/VLE/etc. only works with Internet Explorer: If you have any in-house services which have browser dependencies, you will hopefully have learnt from this experience. In this case, you should be open with your user community and look to explore migration strategies. Rolling out IE 7 will overcome the limitations in IE 6: IE 7 has been a long while in coming. It is much better then IE 6 (at last, IE users will have a tabbed interface). However IE 7 is still flawed in its support for standards and, as a platform, it is not as extensible as FireFox. This is understandable: Microsoft are happy to sell organisations an operating system as a platform and won’t want their customers to use a Web browser as a platform. But that’s Microsoft’s problem - and our opportunity, as a user community. We’ll have to change our documentation, training courses, etc: Is this as big an issue as it was in the days on mainframe computing? Provision of FireFox would not comply with our institutional IT strategy: 03/10/2008 14:51

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In which case it seems timely to revisit the assumptions made in your IT strategy. There may be complexities in allowing users to install a variety of browser extensions from multiple sources: This may be a legitimate concern. About a year ago I had to reinstall FireFox and various extensions after one extension caused FireFox to refuse to load. However since then, I have had no problems. Do any readers have experiences to share and solutions they would recommend? It should be noted that I’m not suggesting you should deploy FireFox because it is an open source product. If you (or your organisation) is committed to open source, then you will know this. If, however, you are sceptical or neutral towards open source applications, then you should be willing to listen to my suggestion that you deploy FireFox because,to put it simply, it is the best product. That’s my case for FireFox. As I’ve explained, I can appreciate the reasons why IE became ubiquitous in the past. But are there any longer legitimate reasons why institutions don’t have a migration strategy to FireFox in place? Technorati Tags: Firefox Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 19 Comments »

Instant Messaging Interface To Applications February 28, 2007 Back in the days when WAP was exciting (hmm, did I really write that? Let me start again). Back in the days when some people thought that WAP would provide widespread access to mobile phone users I can remember thinking that what was needed (especially for non-native text messaging users like myself who make use of semi-colons in messages) was a simple menu interface in order to access informational resources. Although a number of such services were developed (I can remember reading about Cricket information services along these lines) this never took off as a general interface to informational resources. So I was intrigued to read a posting on Posting Using IMified 463 of 544

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by Nitesh Gautam. Nitresh writes that: Imified is an instant messenger buddy that works across all major IM networks and offers access to a growing number of web applications, as well as productivity tools like notes, reminders, and todo’s (sic). Imified helps you get things done faster. On a PC the IMified interface looks very dated (Gopher, anyone?) But on a mobile device, might it provided a much needed interface? And could this type of interface provide the killer application for the mobile phone user generation for informational resources which can be syndicated using RSS? After all, as we’ve discussed previously, RSS does appear to need a killer app. (And also note that IMified can act as a blog authoring tool). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

Web 2.0: What Can It Offer the Research Community? February 27, 2007 Web 2.0: What Can It Offer the Research Community? is the title of a talk I’m giving at on Wednesday 7th March 2007. Normally I might make an announcement about the availability of a presentation after the event. However I’m increasingly realising the advantages of getting others involved in the early stages of prepearing talks. In this case I have made my slides available on Slideshare prior to the event - and have been pleased to discover that the slides have been marked as a favourite by two Slideshare users (digicmb and jensjepper). This has been useful as, as one might expect, these two users both have slideshows on related themes which are of interest to me. But what do you think Web 2.0 can offer the research community? Since the Web was developed for the particle physics research community and, as Tim Berners-Lee has pointed out, Web 2.0 is simply a marketing term for his original vision of a collaborative and highly interactive environment, surely the particle physics research community will welcome the potential provided by Web 2.0? On the other hand, perhaps, as PPARC is a government-funded organisation, the organisational culture may be conservative, with the emphasis of PPARC’s Web site having an attractive and usable interface to quality content will corresponding quality assurance and workflow processes which ensure that organisational and government guidelines are strictly adhered to. In which case, Web 2.0 might be regarded as primarily a trivial social networking environment which might have to be tolerated in universities, but has nothing to offer the research community. What is your view on what Web 2.0 can offer the research community? And do you have any examples which I can use? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events | Edit 464 of 544

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Green IT: Meeting the Environmental Challenge February 26, 2007 UCISA have just announced that bookings are now open for the Managers Forum on “Green IT: Meeting the environmental challenge“. This event will be held at Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel on 1st May 2007.

The details of the event are given below: With the prospect of climate change, environmental issues have moved to the top of the agenda for both the commercial and public sectors. Politicians have been making statements about offsetting emissions and companies from all sectors are now talking about their social responsibility. Higher and further education institutions have been impacted by higher fuel costs and the introduction of legislation on waste disposal. Institutions have sought to demonstrate that they are becoming ‘greener’ through introducing new policies and procedures. The green agenda impacts IT service departments in many ways as owners of large volumes of recyclable equipment and as providers of support to staff and students. This forum will discuss the issues involved in meeting the environmental challenge and look at the way some institutions have tackled them.

But what does the environmental challenge mean for the IT and Web development communities? One thing I would suggest that we can do is to provide and encourage use of ‘just-in-case’ communication technologies. An example of this took place in November when I was a co-facilitator for an Accessibility Summit held at the HE Academy in York. One participant (Jane Seale) rang to say that she’d had problems will the trains and wouldn’t be able to make it from Southampton in time for the meeting. I discovered that Jane was a Skype user - and we had a very successful meeting with Jane participating remotely. A good example of just-in-time accessibility for a meeting about accessibility issues. I have also been making use of collaborative technologies at conferences, with the Access Grid being used at the IWMW 2006 event (as well as a small-scale experiment in web-casting some of the plenary talks). And when planning events I have also encouraged institutions to provide richer information about the facilities they provide - it would be useful, for example, to have 3D visualisations of lecture rooms and breakout rooms when planning an event, and if that could be done without having to physically visit the facilities, that can be an environmental benefit. These have been experiments, exploring the potential of the technologies, whilst being mindful of possible limitations (are they distracting for other participants; will speakers feel more inhibited and less open as they become conscious of a remote audience; how robust are the technologies; etc.) But will an increasing awareness of the importance of environmental issues overcome such reservations? And what other approaches can Web users and 465 of 544

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developers be taking to rise to the environmental challenge? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events | Edit No Comments »

A Blog Plugins Used Page Would Be Useful February 26, 2007 I recently came across the Net 2.0 blog (through the recently launched Explode social networking tool). This WordPress blog contains a page giving details of the plugins used on the blog. This approach has parallels with my blog experiments; my approach has been to provide a description of the reasons for the experiments and the pros and cons of the solutions, whereas this gives a factual descriptions of the solutions deployed. I think a combination of both approaches can be useful. In particular, it can be useful in providing documentation on the tools which are being used: for example, in planning migration of the functionality of a blog to a different platform or in looking to preserve the functionality of a blog. This is something I’ll look at providing in the future. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 2 Comments »

UK Universities On MySpace February 23, 2007 Andy Powell alerted me to Warwick University’s presence on MySpace. Is this a first for Warwick University or are other universities also doing this? Is this a sensible way of reaching out to potential students? Should universities be pro-active in doing this? Doesn’t it break all sorts of 466 of 544

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established guidelines such as Web accessibility, design principles, use of corporate logos and visual identity guidelines, etc.? Isn’t Facebook a better alternative? Should universities observe what happens and back the winner? What are the resource implications of doing this? What are the implications of not doing this? Personally I have to confess that I don’t like MySpace’s user interface - even for friends such as Adrian Stevenson and the Witches of Elswick, and performers such as Atilla the Stockbroker. But if the service is successful, does this matter? After all, I’m not part of MySpace prime demographic audience. What do you think? And, perhaps more impoprtantly, does anyone know what the users think? Technorati Tags: MySpace Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 19 Comments »

Outlook 2007 - A User-Friendly Interface To RSS? February 22, 2007 I recently suggested that services, such as R-info, which provide an email delivery service for RSS feeds could be a useful way of maximising access for users who are not comfortable using a dedicated RSS reader. However having noticed Michael Webb’s posting on Outlook 2007 - the killer RSS application? perhaps the much-needed simple interface will become more widely available as MS Office 2007 becomes more widely deployed. As can be seen from the accompanying screen image (taken from Michael’s blog) 467 of 544

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Outlook 2007 seems to provide an interface which will be familiar to users who make use of folders to organise their blog postings. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in rss | Edit 14 Comments »

Tweaks to Blog Sidebar Widgets February 21, 2007 I have previously described use of the Meebo sidebar widget. Although I reported on how useful it can be, in practice I tend not to login to the Meebo service on a regular basis. As I’m away from my office for a few days I have removed the widget. In future I will reinstall it only on occassions when I intend to make active use of it. Removing the Meebo widget also provided an opportunity to make other minor changes to the sidebar. The widgets on the left are primarily related to the contents of the blog, whilst those on the right are primarily concerned with content elsewhere. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 1 Comment »

Growing Popularity of this WordPress Theme February 20, 2007 Karen Blakeman has just described how she has successfully moved her blog from Blogger to WordPress. I was good of Karen to share her experiences with others. I also noticed that Karen has selected the same Andreas09 theme as I use on my blog (although with a different colour scheme). I myself chose this scheme over Christmas after noticing that ajcann uses it on his MicrobiologyBites blog. I find this theme useful as it provides two separate sidebar areas with a central area for the blog content. I tend to use the left hand sidebar for widgets related to the blog contents (recent posts, recent comments, access by date or tag, etc) and the right hand sidebar for access to information beyond the blog. But when is this useful theme going to look cliched, I wonder? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 8 Comments »

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Roddy MacLeod recently pointed out the difficulties end users may have in understanding how to add RSS feeds to RSS viewers. I think Roddy is right and we do need to make interfaces much easier to use, especially for users who make use of email and Web browsers, but don’t understand RSS readers. In response to this I recently subscribed to three services which deliver RSS feeds using email. The services were R-Mail, RSSfwd and Feedblitz. At the delivery end, the services seem similar: with all of them I received a HTML-formatted email, with embedded images. The Feedblitz subscription service seems to be the most sophisticated, allowing the delivery to be suspended (perhaps when going away on holiday) together with a host of other options which can be accessed from the dashboard, as illustrated.

However as the aim of this service is to provide an interface which is very easy to use, especially for the inexperienced user, I have chosen the R-Mail service, and provided an interface to this at at the top of the right-hand sidebar widget. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, rss | Edit 469 of 544

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Viral Marketing: From Store Wars To Web 2.0 February 15, 2007

The Store Wars Video I was told about the Store Wars video clip some time ago. If you’ve not seen it, do so - this spoof of Star Wars is very funny and very witty. Unsurprisingly it is also very popular, with YouTube reporting 112,688 views, 162 comments and 1,139 YouTube users listed it in their favourites. And, on reflection, I’ve been exposed to clever propaganda: the video was produced for the Organic Trade Association in order to promote their views on the importance of organic food. And here am I, distributing their views to possibly new audiences. The Organic Trade Association has been very astute: the video is available from the StoreWars Web site - but who would find that? Instead they provide a Creative Commons licence which allows the video to be redistributed and uploaded to popular Web sites such as YouTube or embedded within Web pages.

The “Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us” Video Having recently received a couple of emails about the “Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us” video clip (and noticed it getting a mention on the Research Information Network blog) it struck me that the IT development community can learn a lot from viral marketing. Although some developers may feel that you can’t put across the complexities of the Web in a 5 minute video clip (with no accompanying commentary!) I think it is clear that the video demonstrates that this can be done. And don’t take my word for it, look at the statistics: a 4 star rating from over 9,000 viewers and over 1,000,000 views with over 12,000 viewers including it in their list of favourites. It has also received over 3,000 comments. There are other videos available from YouTube about Web 2.0, such as the U Tech Tips Web 2.0 video, which take a more traditional approach - but for me “Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us” is the real winner (and I love the word play). And I’m not the only one who thinks this, judging by the statistics for the U Tech Tips video.

Discussion What are the implications of the popularity of the “Store Wars” and “Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us” video clips? What can the IT development community learn from this? Some thoughts for those thinking of exploiting viral marketing approaches to promote your project, service or idea:

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If you’ve a great idea, a great product, a great service, give it away! Let your customers or your users promote the idea for you. A Creative Commons licence can be your friend. 03/10/2008 14:51

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Beware committee thinking: do you want your idea to be promoted using a worthy but dull approach? Be subtle in your use of logos and corporate branding - users may well spot a corporate video for the first frame and not go any further. Why not be subtle - and leave the logo to the final frame (as happens with the Store Wars video)? Or perhaps even have your logo playing a minor cameo role leaving viewers to admire your subtlety (similar to spottting the Alfred Hitchcock in one of his films). Encourage discussion: the comments feature on services such as YouTube and Slideshare can help generate a buzz. Voting can be useful: people are attracted to what others seem to like. You can subvert the “think globally, act locally” mantra: perhaps you should think locally (”my audience is librarians in the UK”) but act globally (”but I’ll put my video on YouTube, as it may well be of interest to a wider audience”). A commentary in English is likely to restrict your audience to English speakers. Using music can help to provide exposure to a much wider audience (the “Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us” provides a good example of this). Be flexible: copyright and other legal issues, for example, need not necessarily be insurmountable barriers. Obvious? Why not view the Ray Of Light video: a great example of a promotional video which shows how popular the St. Joseph Public Library is and how hard-working the staff are. Could you produce something like this in your organisation - or will conservatism inevitably scare you off? Or, on the other hand, as the Going down the YouTubes? posting reports, will copyright owners require such copyrighted materials to be removed? And, if so, would this result in the investment needed to produce such mashups to be written off? What do you think? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 11 Comments »

Slideshare - It’s Working For Me February 14, 2007 One of the first posts to this blogs, back in November 2006, describes my initial experiments with the Slideshare repository for presentations.

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I described how I had uploaded several of my presentations, suggesting that this would provide greater exposure to the slides (and hence the ideas) than if they were only available on UKOLN’s Web site. A few day’s ago I received an email alert which informed me that a number of the presentations had been added as a Favourite by a Slideshare user. From his profile I discover that srains has a blog, Rolling Rains, which explores ‘the adoption of Universal Design (Design-for-All; Human-Centered Design) by the tourism industry’. From the other slide show he has added to his list of favourites, I have found presentations which are of interest to me (including one on Two Trainers Trade Twenty Technology Training Tips and one on standards used on Oxfam Australia’s Web site). Revisiting my uploaded slides I discover that the most popular of my presentations is Web 2.0: What Is It, How Can I Use It, How Can I Deploy It? with 666 views in two months, with 6 users including it in their list of favourite slideshows (jensjeppe, cezinha.com, noticiasmias2002, gerarddummer, erywin and MCL). I can then follow their list of other favourites and the slides which they may have uploaded. And guess what: people who are interested in my slides on Web 2.0 are also interested in other slides on the same subject. So this ’social network’ provides a form of resource discovery for me Three months after my initial posting about Slideshare what can I conclude:

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It allows my slides (and therefore my ideas) to be accessed by people who would probably not find the resources otherwise. It provides some form of measuring the impact/quality of the slides by observing the numbers of users who have added it to their list of favourites. It help me (and others) to find related resources 03/10/2008 14:51

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Is there a downside? I need to remember that: I don’t know how sustainable the service is - it could, for example, go out of business or change its licensing conditions (perhaps charging for access to the slides) It is an example of ‘fake sharing’ - I can view the resources but not (easily) reuse the materials. In my case, however, I provide access to the original source files by including the URL of the master copy on the title slide and in the metadata. I feel that these experiences provide some useful indications of features which could be adopted by the digital library development community: the importance of ease of use and lightweight approach to IPR issues for content providers; the advantages of getting content out ‘where the users are’ and the benefits of social networks for resource discovery. Technorati Tags: Slideshare Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Repositories, Web2.0 | Edit 11 Comments »

RSS And The Hero Portal February 13, 2007 I recently received a copy of “Hero Headlines” which contains news from Hero Ltd, “the company behind the UK’s official online gateway to higher education and research opportunities“. The newsletter included an article about the new-look HERO Web site, which was relaunched in November 2006. The article mentioned that the Web site now makes use of RSS. Looking at the What is RSS? page I was pleased to 473 of 544

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find that RSS is being used not only for news, but also for syndication of feature articles and press releases. In addition the Web site explains what RSS is and provides helpful advice on using RSS readers. Well done, Hero. I think a national portal to UK Universities, such as Hero, helps to maximise awareness of and access to information about the sector. (I should disclose, BTW, that I was a member of a Hero Technical Advisory Group, several years ago). But what else could a national portal such as Hero provide? How about: An RSS feed for search results Direct access to RSS feeds from individual institutions Geographical metadata for pages about individual institutions A Google Maps mashup providing additional information about the institutions An OPML feed which aggregates the various RSS feeds I’ll talk some more about these issues in future postings - but for now I’d be interested in what you might like to see from a national portal. Technorati Tags: RSS Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in rss | Edit 17 Comments »

Finding Out About OpenID February 12, 2007 There has been a lot of discussion recently about OpenID. It’s clear that this is an area I should find out more about. So what processes do I use to do my research. In the past I would probably have used Google to find the authoritative sources of information, gone to the definitive source of information and spend time reading, reflecting and discussions with colleagues. But this isn’t necessarily what I do any more. Nowadays I often realise that something is important when bloggers I recognise as knowledgeable start talking about something new. So recently I noticed that the eFoundations blog had commented on Microsoft’s interest in OpenID by referencing Scott Wilson’s posting on Microsoft back OpenID. I’d also noticed the announcement on the WWW2007 conference home page that Dick Hardt, a ‘visionary in Web applications and open source software‘ whose company Sxip Identity is ‘the leader in Identity 2.0, creating simple, secure, and open solutions for the next generation of Internet identity‘ is an invited plenary speaker at WWW 2007. I also noticed that the W3C’s QA blog permits use of OpenIDs for people who wish to give comments on blog postings (as can be seen on Oliver Théreaux’s 474 of 544

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posting about the FeedValidator). Having noticed this interest from a variety of trusted sources, I wanted to find out more. The eFoundation’s posting on Microsoft and OpenID includes Technorati tags to link to other postings using the same tags. Following the OpenID tag link shows Technorati listing 1,164 blog postings. I was also intrigued by the videos tagged in the same way. This led me to the OpenID Show 5 minute video clip on YouTube which provided various use case scenarios. A new technology - and I’m using various Web 2.0 services (blogs, Technorati, tagging and YouTube) and a Web 2.0 culture (trusting users and the wisdom of crowds) for the resource discovery process. A continuation of this process is to invite my blog readers to give their thoughts on the processes I’ve used and the resources I’ve mentioned (plus the Wikipedia entry on OpenID). Getting a variety of users actively involved in the process can, I feel, be more beneficial than a small group of experts beavering away before releasing the perfect solution. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit No Comments »

Blogs or Email for Discussions? February 9, 2007 I recently sent an email about a bug in the Feed Validator software hosted at W3C. The bug was quickly identified. This was great, but made me think about the QA process for the software and the faith which is placed on validators issues which I addressed in a recent posting. A discussion continued on the QA list, with Olivier posted his thoughts on the W3C QA blog. Some concerns were raised, however, regarding the fragmentation of the discussion: > Seeing as everyone is commenting on weblogs… > http://www.w3.org/QA/2007/02/bugs_and_qa.html No, I don’t have one of those. Anyway, it doesn’t seem to be working. Three people have put comments on this topic on to their separate blogs. And there is no linking between them (as far as I can see) except for this mailing list. Subsequently I’ve found that Sam Ruby has posted a response on his blog and the Crossnet blog has a posting on RSS Validator in the Spotlight. Is Barry right to be concerned about such fragmentation? I would argue that fragmentation can provide benefits: in this case the discussion is not locked within the minority world of the W3C WWW-QA list, but has been opened up to other communities who may have other perspectives (e.g. the Crossnet blog will be seen by members of the publishing community many of whom won’t be interested in discussion on the WWW-QA list). In addition this diversity also 475 of 544

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enables differing perspectives to be raised - the posting on the Crossnet blog, for example, has provided an opportunity to highlight the robustness of the core RSS spec and to address the issues concerning the importance of test cases to standards, such as PRISM, of particular interest to the publishers: Good point, anyway about contributing test cases. I guess we should really submit a PRISM test case. And yes, the Validator is somewhat buggy as some recent testing confirms. On which more later. I would argue that such diversity outweights the dangers of fragmenting the discussion - and that it is possible to pull together related discussions by, as I’ve done here, linking to them. Is possible splintering of discussions on email lists a legitimate reason to have a downer on blogs? What do other think? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, standards | Edit 2 Comments »

UK Library Bloggers and ILI 2007 February 8, 2007 It has been very pleasing to see the flurry of interest in my posting on Where are the Blogging UK Librarians? It seems that there are growing numbers of bloggers within both academic and public libraries around the UK - and, as their blogs reveal, Karen Blakeman and Phil Bradley are running training course and providing advice targetted at the library and information community with interests in blogging. I noticed recently that the Internet Librarian International 2007 call for speakers is now open, with blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies. This might be of interest to the blogging librarians in the community who might be interested in describing their work at the conference. But it also occurred to me that perhaps the UK blogging librarian community might be interested in working together in order to develop a community-developed resource on blog strategies and best practices - perhaps including ways of getting blogs into the library (and avoiding institutional or managerial conservatism); motivating colleagues to contribute; evaluating the effectiveness of the blogs; training and staff development in use of the tools and in writing styles; policies on allowing users to give comments (and handling potential misuse); etc. In a recent comment to Karen Blakeman’s RSS, Blogs and Wikis posting, Sarah Washford said of this blog “I especially like [my] Blog experiments page”. Well I’m still carrying on with the experiments (especially the experiments which relate to the needs of the smaller libraries, museums and archives - such as my current experiment in email delivery of blog postings). But I’d be even more keen to carry out a community experiment - perhaps with a small group who would be willing to contribute their experiences using a Wiki, could be presented at ILI 2007. Anyone interested? Technorai tags: ili2007 476 of 544

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Validators Don’t Always Work February 7, 2007

Background A standard of much interest to us at UKOLN is RSS. We came across RSS in its very early days: I gave a workshop session on Automated News Feeds at the national Institutional Web Management Workshop back in June 2001 and Andy Powell, a former colleague, included RSS is the JISC Information Environment technical architecture.

Problem I recently discovered that UKOLN RSS feed did not validate, according to the Feed validation service hosted at the W3C. The error appeared to be with the modul, but a colleague was convinced that the feed was fine and the problem was with the RSS validator. I was sceptical (surely an open source validation service, hosted at W3C, can’t have a bug in such a fundamental area) and raised this issue on the web-support JISCMail list. Sebastian Rahtz pointed out errors in the examples given in the RSS specification, which made me wonder whether the specification itself was flawed. When I found out that our news feed was created by the RSS::XML module, I wondered if the error could possibly be in this module.

Solution I raised this issue on the W3C’s QA list, asking whether the problem was with (a) our RSS feed; (b) the RSS specification; (c) the application used to generated the feed or (d) the RSS validator. I received a prompt response from Olivier Thereaux (first thing the following morning) which confirmed that our feed was fine; that there were errors in the RSS specification (in particular in an example included in the spec) but that the fundamental error was due to a bug in the validator. This was reported to Sam Ruby, the developer of the validator who, a few hours later, implemented a patch and released this on the main Feed Validator site.

Discussion I was very impressed with the speed with which this problem was addressed and a solution deployed. Many thanks to Olivier and Sam for this. I was, though, also very shocked that a validator for such a widely deployed standard (RSS 1.0) had such bugs (I bet a colleague a pint, later raised to a gallon, that the validator was fine - luckily he didn’t take me up on this!). I had assumed that:

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cases, code walk-throughs, schema validation, etc.) The development community would have spotted bugs in an open source applications, through the ‘many eyes make all bugs shallow’ principle. The W3C QA processes would have detected this problem prior to the installation of the service on the W3C Web site. A colleague pointed out that software developers (which I am not) tend not to have so much faith in validators, and many important and widely deployed applications have bugs. I am not the only person to have concerns over the lack or resources allocated to this important area: Bjoern Hoehrmann left the W3C QA in July 2006, sending a message to the public-qa-dev list giving his reasons for leaving the group. Where, then, does this leave me? How can I advise others of the importance of validation and of systematic QA processes if such processes don’t seem to be in place with the W3C? Should I stop writing and giving talks on this (I suspect people’s eyes do glaze over when they hear me harping on about this issue). But on the other hand, if digital library development programmes are being funded on the assumption that the data and formats are ‘clean’ aren’t services going to break, if this isn’t the case? And perhaps I’m being over-dramatic over this one incident - the problem may have been an obscure one and at least the bug detected a false negative (it reported that a valid RSS file was invalid) rather than a false positive. And, as I said, the bug was fixed very speedily. So maybe I should continue to promote the importance of compliance with standards - but the wider development community should help to validate the validators. And for formats owned (or, as in the case of RSS 1.0, closely affiliated with) W3C, the W3C QA Interest Group has demonstrated that concerns don’t disappear down a black hole. Technorai tags: validators validation Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in rss, standards | Edit 8 Comments »

Email Delivery Of Blog Posts February 5, 2007 A while ago I published an Ariadne article on “Must Email Die?” in which I suggested that email was being used for purposes for which it was less than ideal. I am, however, well aware of the simplicity of email, and the fact that information comes to you, rather 478 of 544

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than you having to go to the information. So although I’ve suggested that an RSS reader is the best way of reading blogs, I know that many users would prefer to continue to make use of email. My latest blog experiment is therefore testing various RSS to email services. The first one I’ve started to test is RssFwd. To use this, just go to the RssFwd Web site and enter the URL of the feed you wish to receive (for this blog, this is ) and your email address. After you have verified your email address, you should receive email message containing new blog postings. I should point out that this uses a third party service to deliver the email. So there can be no guarantee that this service is sustainable and I don’t know how reliable the service is (how long does it take to deliver messages, for example). However I have subscribed to the service myself and will give a report at a later date. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 5 Comments »

Further Blog Musings February 5, 2007

Background Back in December 2006 I attended a quarterly meeting with the JISC and MLA (UKOLN’s core funders). At the meeting I reported on this blog (blogging, and related Web 2.0 services are important aspects of UKOLN’s work plans which our funders are looking for us to advise on). I was also able to report that my director, Liz Lyon, had sent an email to UKOLN’s staff list the previous day which gave details of a presentation (PDF format) by Herbert Van de Sompel and Carl Lagoze (leading lights in the US digital library development community in the US), which cited one of my early postings. It was obviously very pleasing to be able to update our funders with this evidence of the potential for blogs for maximizing the impact of UKOLN’s work.

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One aspect related to this blog which I haven’t covered to date is the use of a hosted blogging service rather than installing the blogging software locally. A deliberate decision was made to make use of the hosted WordPress.com service - the need to explore options which may be of particular relevance to the museums, libraries and archives community, who may not necessarily have the technical expertise and resources (nor indeed motivation) to install software within their organisation. At UKOLN we are very aware that the preferences and approaches taken within the development community in higher education may not e suited to the cultural heritage sector - so the blog experiment provides a valuable opportunity to explore best practices in using a third party service and will be described in a paper on “Web 2.0: How to stop thinking and start doing: Addressing organisational barriers” by Mike Ellis (Science Museum) and myself which we will present at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference. (Note that although the emphasis has been on exploring options for the MLA sector, the use of third party blogging services is also relevant to the higher and further education sectors, as illustrated by JISC’s Digitisation Programme Blog).

Recent Postings I’ve recently discussed ways of measuring the impact of blogs and suggested possible approaches to blog policies: issues which, although possibly alien in nature to some of the early pioneers in blogging, may need to be addressed in the wider public sector environment. I also provided some suggestions on how lightweight policies might be useful in overcoming the institutional conservatism which might be found in public sector organisations such as local and central government, the civil service, etc. An implicit assumption was of self-compliance with such policies. However there is also a need to have in place contingency plans in case problems occur.

Managing Possible Problems One potential problem area is what happens if a blog succumbs to a spam attack while the author is away (either planned absence, such as holiday on unplanned absence such as illness). In the case of this blog, although the Askimet spam filter has been very successful in blocking automated spam attach, I have to ask myself what would happen if a) spam managed to evade the spam filter; b) the blog received manually-submitted spam or c) offensive or illegal comments were submitted? I’ve discussed this issue with a colleague and suggested that we extend the approach taken with use of other third party services (including Google Analytics) by me giving him administrator access to various services I see in case of problems.

Trust Your Users Further thought led me to reflect on the perspectives of the institution. I met recently with a colleague in the marketing department at the University of Bath who was very interested in the possibilities of various Web 2.0 technologies for communications with staff and students and to enable members of the institution to promote the institution themselves I suspect he may have an easier job that his peers at other institutions as Bath is such as beautiful city and the university does have a very good reputation for its teaching and learning and research. I therefore suggested the the University may benefit from adopting the Web 2.0 catchphrase of “trust your users”. 480 of 544

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There’s a need, though, for some deeper thinking than just resorting to simplistic slogans. What happens if some users aren’t trustworthy? We could go back to the notion of moderated blogs (which might provide additional quality control mechanisms) but this would result in the notion of a blog as a publication rather than a blog as a conversation. So I thought about my own personal perspective. What happens if I say something outrageous in my blog? A simple response to this would be to point out that on a public blog such as this, my professional integrity is at stake and that, as the blog encourages feedback and debate, anything outrageous would be picked up by the blog readers - and multiple feedback channels are available, ranging from the comments facility and the Meebo chat too through to email, telephone, face-to-face discussions or even a chat over a pint! And, of course, as an employee of the University of Bath I have to comply with University policies. which outlines employees’ rights (Freedom: Within the law to question and test received wisdom and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions) and responsibilities (Corresponding responsibility: To support the same freedoms for those of differing views.) My suggestion to organisations who may have concerns over use of blogging services for engaging with their users would be to trust your users within the context of individuals having an awareness of their responsibilities, complemented by feedback mechanisms and backed up be contractual requirements in exceptional circumstances. Of course when blogs become pervasive I suspect we’ll look back at such debates with amusement - why such a fuss over blogs but not email, for example!? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit No Comments »

Blog Experiments February 2, 2007 The policy for this blog describes how the blog will be used to carry out various experiments. Such experiments may relate to this blog itself but in many cases may address more general issues of interest to institutions considering providing blog services. In order to maximise the benefits of such experiments, a Blog Experiments page has been set up which is available on the blog Web site. This contains details of the various experiments, including the purpose of the experiments, the experiences gained, feedback which has been received and any conclusions drawn. Comments on the experiments can be added to the Blog Experiments page. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit No Comments »

A Meta-Policy For Institutional Blogs 481 of 544

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February 1, 2007 I recently published my Policies For This Blog. The comments I received from Phil Wilson and Paul Ayres and the response from Scott Wilson made me reflect on the nature of policies as institutions start to provide blog services for members of the institution. Paul felt that “metrics, policies and guidelines seems to run against the whole free form of the blogging ethos, where expressing yourself via quick and easy web publishing is a key driver” and Phil’s view was that “other than being a useful set of guidelines to help yourself keep on-topic I don’t really see what the point is“. These comments reminded me of my experiences when I helped set up (probably) the first institutional Web service at the University of Leeds in January 19993 and began to encourage take-up, within Leeds and also across the wider community. The first set of information providers were keen and enthusiastic, who perhaps felt they were talking part in an information revolution. Soon afterwards, however, problems started. On one occasion I discovered a set of links to pornographic materials from a departmental Web server. After discussions with the department’s User Rep the links (created by a postgraduate students who had HTML authoring expertise) were grudgingly removed and I received an email saying “I still believe the Web should be free.” On another occasion I became involved in a flame war between the Greek and Turkish societies at neighbouring Universities over the contents of a Web site which gave a disputed description over the ownership of Cyprus (”how do I shut down a Web site which is telling lies” was the question I was asked). Those early problems settled down, as institutions developed Acceptable Use Policies and a more mature understanding of the role of the Web was gained (at once stage, Intranets were felt to run counter to the Web’s culture on free information!) - and the Web became less exciting and content management systems made it more difficult to create content (joke?). I suspect we will encounter similar problems as applications, such as blogs and wikis, make it easier for users to create their own content. I also think there’s a danger that institutions will take a very conservative approach to the provision of such services, in order to avoid (or, more likely, defer) a recurrence of such problems. My take on this is that experienced bloggers (those who have internalised blogging policies, for example) should seek to share their experiences in order to provide a supportive environment for the provision of institutional blogs. Paul is right, though, to warn of the dangers of too formal an approach. And I think that a top-down provision of blogging policies is likely to result in a conservative approach, which fails to recognise the diversity of uses for blogs and stifles individual (and group) creativity. I’ve been given one example in which a senior manager has argued that a blog could not be provided within a library as it would infringe data protection legislation. On revisiting my blog policy I realise that there are a small number of elements to it:

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The target audience The procedures which can help ensure the blog fulfils its goals In addition I would probably add: The ethics associated with the blog So rather than a single, top-down policy covering institutional blogs, I wonder whether a better approach would be for an institutions to identify the key principles which need to be addressed, and devolve the responsibilities for policies which encompass such principles to an appropriate level within the institution: this would enable groups such as the University PR and marketing team to have their own set of policies which may be different to those developed by different departments and by research groups and for students. Might this approach provide a balance between the concerns of the individualist approach of early generation of bloggers and the concerns of the institution? Or would the institutions and the bloggers be happier if everyone made use of an externally-hosted service? It’s then somebody else’s problem. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 1 Comment »

Policies For This Blog January 31, 2007 I suggested recently that there’s a need to define the role(s) of a blog if any meaningful measurements of the effectiveness of a blog are to be carried out. I’ve therefore published a Blog Policy page on this blog’s Web site which includes a summary of the aims of the blog together with descriptions of policies covering use of the blog. In brief:

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The contents of the blog should address issues related to the Web, including Web standards, innovative Web developments and best practices in providing Web services. The blog will also provide a test bed for experiments and for testing new services and provide access to discussions about the experiment. The blog will provide an opportunity for me to ‘think out loud“: i.e. describe speculative ideas, thoughts which may occur to me, etc. which may be of interest to others or for which I would welcome feedback. The blog will seek to both disseminate information and encourage discussion and debate. The target audience includes Web authors, developers, designers and policy maker and the wider digital library and Web research community, in particular those in the UK higher and further education communities and cultural heritage sectors, together with key players in the international community. A set of procedures will be published which will aim to ensure that the blog implements these policies and that the blog is widely accessible, functional and interoperable. The writing style, grammar and design of links will seek to make the blog 03/10/2008 14:51

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readable. Minor changes to blog postings and comments may be made to fix errors. Comments which are felt to be spam or are inappropriate will be deleted. In exceptional circumstances, postings and comments may be deleted. The scope, policies, target audiences and procedures may be subject to change in light of experiences, resource implications or changes in external factors. Do we need such policies or is this too bureaucratic? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 4 Comments »

Metrics For Measuring The Effectiveness Of Blogs January 29, 2007 Do We Need Blog Metrics? The TASI blog recently described how the JISC-funded TASI service had been found to be the top performer among the JISC Advisory Services, based on a JISC-funded Value For Money report. In light of such surveys we might therefore expect cost-benefit analyses of services such as blogs to be included in similar surveys in the future. And such approaches might also be applied more widely, perhaps with institutions being expected to justify the costs of providing blog services. Indeed institutions would probably be wise in asking themselves such questions before committing themselves to significant expenditure.

What is the Purpose of the Blog? If you wish to measure the effectiveness of a blog, you’ll need to be clear of the purpose of the blog. A blog may have several purposes, and in a teaching and learning context this might include self-reflection and collaborative working. However I will leave such issues for colleagues at CETIS to address. Instead I’ll focus on use of blogs by the research community and service departments (such as IT services and libraries), which are intended to provide dissemination to and engagement with the user community. Metrics for measuring dissemination and engagement are probably easier to identity than the complex range of activities associated with the learning process - so I’ll start off with the this.

I’m A C-List Blogger Scott Wilson’s post about the C-List blogger tool was pointed out to me recently so I thought I’d explore this further. I discovered that, like Scott, I am a C-List blogger. So I am entitled to add the tasteful badge to my blog. OK, I know, the badge is tacky, as is the methodology they use (it’s simply based on the ranking in Technorati). Not only that, but entering the URL of a non-existent blog and you’ll find that it’s classed a a D-list celebrity blog! Proof, I concluded, of the flawed nature of this service - although I then wondered whether this might be a subtle post-modern 484 of 544

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reflection of a Big Brother celebrity culture in which even Mr 404 can be a minor celebrity!

A Portfolio of Metrics If a single metric can be flawed, can there be a portfolio of quantifiable statistics which can help identify the effectiveness of a blog? Some possibilities include: Numbers of visitors: If nobody visits your blog, then it has failed has a dissemination channel. If it has lots of visitors, then it may be working effectively. As with conventional Web usage statistics, this metric isn’t without flaws, but it will have a role to play. Numbers of posts: If a blog is meant to provide a dissemination function, then the number of posts will provide a measure of this (although clearly this metric is open be abuse!) Numbers of comments: If a blog is meant to provide a means of engaging with the user community, receiving feedback, etc. then the number of comments can provide an indication of the effectiveness of this aspects of the blog’s role. Numbers of inward links: As with conventional Web sites, the number of links to the blog can provide an indication of the quality of the content. (It should be noted that this is one of the main features of the rating scheme used by Technorati). Geographical distribution of users: If a blog is meant to have an impact at a national or international level, then the geographical distribution of the readers will be an indicator to be recorded. Numbers of feed readers: Unlike conventional Web sites, blogs normally allow their content to be syndicated using RSS or Atom. Since users of RSS readers will not normally be included in the blog site usage statistics, then will be a need to record the numbers of access to the blog’s feed. Numbers of aggregators: Since a blog’s feed may be harvested once and cached, with subsequent reads accessing the cached content, such usage statistics will not be available to the provider of the original blog. In such circumstances, an analysis of the aggregator services may provide an indication of secondary accesses to the blog.

This is Flawed! I am aware that these metrics have their limitations. However it is still true that blogs may be successful or be failures, and may provide a valuable return on investment or may be a waste of money. And may organisations will be asking how the effectiveness of blogs can be measured. Indeed I recently came across the International Museum Blog Survey 2007 in which the responses to the question “How do you measure the success of your blog?” were:

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Number of visitors (33 out of 54) Geographical spread of blog visitors (15 out of 54) Numbers of comments posted to blog per day/week/month (20 out of 54) 03/10/2008 14:51

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Quality/relevance of comments (27 out of 54) Number of links to blog from other sites (25 out of 54) Number of media mentions (10 out of 54) We will need metrics, I suggest. We will therefore need to collect the statistics and the qualitative data. But we will also need to ensure that the limitations of such approaches and well-understood and the potential dangers of wasting time and effort in collecting flawed data. Perhaps most importantly, though, will be the need to develop more sophisticated approaches for measuring the effectiveness of blog services. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 2 Comments »

Theme of the Week: Evaluation of Blogs January 29, 2007 This week I thought I’d give some thoughts on the evaluation of the effectiveness of blogs . The song which accompanies this theme is “Push To Test” by J. Scott Bergman (and note that I’ve tweaked the layout of the sidebar widget to one that it suitable for use in the sidebar. Note for readers using an RSS viewer or an blog aggregator, the song is available in the sidebar on the blog web site. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit No Comments »

Meebo - A Follow-Up January 26, 2007 I recently described my experiments with the Meebo chat widget. I’ve just had a chat with one of my blog readers (at 3 pm on Thursday, 25 January 2007). I’m including, with permission, an (unedited) transcript of the chat I had (with Anna Hvass e-librarian at Teesside University Library) and a link to Teesside University Library’s chat service.

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[15:03] anna: Hi Brian - do you have time for a quick chat? [15:03] lisbk: Fine.. Who’s that? [15:04] anna: Anna Hvass e-librarian at Teesside University Library [15:04] lisbk: Hi. Where you at the MLA-NE do? [15:05] anna: Was at your presentation on web 2.0 [15:05] lisbk: [15:05] anna: lol - yep [15:05] lisbk: Fire away [15:06] anna: Was just looking at your post about meebo and wanted to share that we are using it for Chat Reference, and we just recently put a meebome widget on too 03/10/2008 14:51

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[15:06] anna: http://www.tees.ac.uk/depts/lis/chat/default.cfm [15:07] anna: you mention using it that way so though I would share that we are - its going well slow at the moment but hope to advertise…. [15:09] lisbk: Thanks for that info. [15:10] lisbk: Just looked at your page [15:10] lisbk: Roddy McLeod had a similar interest [15:10] lisbk: BTW do you keep a record of the chats? [15:11] anna: yep - so that we can have a look back and see how we are doing [15:11] lisbk: That’s great. Thanks for sharing that with me …. [15:11] lisbk: Would you mind if I published this discussion? [15:12] anna: your welcome - no that would be fine [15:12] lisbk: Ta. And would you mind it I linked to your http://www.tees.ac.uk/depts/lis/chat/default.cfm page [15:12] anna: nope thats fine too - its all advertising [15:13] anna: Im all for helping people find out how to use these free services to make the best service possible for our users I suspect that if I hadn’t provided the chat tool, Anna would not have got in touch to let me know about the developments at Teesside Something she confirmed in an email message). So for me, the Meebo experiment is proving useful in this respect. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

Experiments With Meebo January 25, 2007 I mentioned previously that I’d installed the Meebo sidebar widget in order to experiment in providing a real-time chat facility on this blog. I’ve now made use of it and can report on the findings. In order to use Meebo I need to go to the Meebo Web site and log in. This provides me with a Web-based client for accessing a variety of instant messaging services, such as MSN and Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, etc. It addition it provides me with an environment for talking to readers of this blog’s Web site. Interestingly the first think I notice in my Meebo window in my Web browser is a list of the current viewers of the blog, as illustrated. However as I just see a random user name I don’t know who the users are (although I guess I could type in “Boo!” - which might cause readers to jump). Normally a reader of my blog would type something in to the Meebo sidebar widget, which would case my PC to beep, and the Meebo window task bar to 487 of 544

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flash, indicating that I’d received a message. I can then chat to the remote users (and if they’ve given their name, I’ll know whom I’m chatting with - as long as they’ve been honest, of course). My first experiment was with Phil Wilson, a colleague at the University of Bath. Phil pointed out some of the usability problems with the small sidebar widget. Our discussion, which is illustrated, then moved on to talk about some of the possible dangers in using third party messaging tools (how do we know the third party isn’t harvesting our content, for example). The chat with Phil was staged in order to get feedback on his views on the interface. Shortly afterwards I had a discussion with a reader of my blog whom I did not know. As can be seen, the tool can be used to receive user feedback.

The third chat I had was with Roddy MacLeod, a librarian at Heriot-Watt University and editor of the Internet Resources Newsletter. A suggestion which Roddy made was that a chat service like this could be used to provide an ask-a-library type service. With academic libraries seeming to should greater interests in providing blog services for their user communities, it might be timely to explore use of such a chat service within the content of a library blog. Unfortunately my discussion with Roddy was abruptly terminated, I suspect due to the Meebo widget:-( There are still issues to be addressed related to use of 488 of 544

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real-time chat services. As most of the time I won’t be around to respond to queries (and even if I am online, I may be busy with other work) it is not necessarily desirable to have the chat widget available, which most of the time is unsuccessfully attempting to see if I am online. Perhaps, for me, it might be more appropriate for me to provide the chat widget if I am particularly keen on engaging in discussions with blog readers. For a wider blogging service, such as a library service blog, for example, the Meebo widget may prove useful - although I should mention that there are similar tools available, such as Koolim which Steve commented on in response to my initial post on this topic. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 5 Comments »

Third Party or Institutional Provision of Blogs? January 24, 2007 Scott Wilson (a blogging pioneer at CETIS) reviewed his blog using a matrix developed by Lilia Efimova on the personal versus business dimensions to blogging. Lilia has developed a matrix which aims to characterise personal and business use of blogs. She subsequently cited the experiences of Alex Barnett, a blogger at Microsoft, who moved his blog from his work environment to his own server. What are the implications of this discussion within the higher/further education sector? I’ve suggested previously that an approach to overcoming organisational inertia and conservatism is to seek forgiveness (if things subsequently go wrong) rather than waiting for permission. And setting up a blog on a remote service (such as WordPress, Blogger, etc.) enables this to be done by anyone, with little technical expertise required. The aim of this approach might be to demonstrate the benefits and to be able to justify the effort. Once this has been done there would often be an assumption that the service could be moved to an institutionally hosted service, which can provide a managed, supported environment, with an expectation that the service will be more sustainable. But are such assumptions valid? Let’s look at the counter-arguments.

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Dangers of losing citation rankings; broken links, etc.: If you’ve established a mature, sustainable blog, moving the content to another location would probably mean having to start from scratch in building up citation ranking in tools such as Technorati.

In the top 300,000 blogs! Technical complexities in migration.: How easy is it to export the contents of a blog and import into a new system? Will links continue to work? Will embedded object continue to work? Staff and students who are at the institution for a short period: Mature students and short term visitors to an institution may have 03/10/2008 14:51

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little to gain from setting up a blog on an institutional server (unless the blog is intended for use directly related to the work or study activity). This might also apply to staff appointed on short term contracts. We can see parallels here with decisions regarding the selection of an institutional or a third party (such as GMail) email address. Losing one’s community: Established bloggers who make use of a community-focussed blogging or social networking environment, may not wish to lose their community. Losing functionality: Established bloggers may not wish to lose functionality they find useful in their blogging environment (although they may wish to migrate if the institution provides a blogging environment with richer functionality). Policies on content: This is the area which relates directly to my introduction to this posting. Will there be problems if blog postings cover both professional and personal interests? What will happen if a posting does not comply with the party line? What will happen if criticisms are made of the organisation (the university administration, the IT services department, the Library, etc)? What will happen if blog posting include swear words? A minority of users are likely to follow the example described above and host their own server (although this may be the preferred option such for bloggers with the expertise to manage their own server, such as Phil Wilson, a colleague of mine at Bath University). However the option for most users will be whether to use an institutional blogging service or a third party service. I don’t think there is a best solution. Rather I feel this is an area in which we’ll have to observe patterns of usage, and ensure that we can be flexible if an institutional blogging is not used to the extent envisaged. This may be due to a reluctance to engage in blogging activities, but equally it could be be a result of decisions by bloggers to have the flexibility which may be provided by a neutral service provider. Technorai tags: blogs Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 18 Comments »

A Team Or An Individual’s Blog? January 23, 2007 If you are thinking about providing a blog service for your project, your department or your service should you set up a team blog or should the information be provided by an individual or group of individuals, each with the own blog? If the blog is intended for formal announcements or as a news service, then possibly an anonymous blog would be sensible. Similarly if the task of creating content is to shared across a group, then a team blog would seem desirable. However a team blog may lack a ‘voice’ or personality and can be difficult to 490 of 544

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maintain a dialogue and ongoing discussions with the readers of a blog if there are multiple authors. Also asking all team members of a group contribute to a blog could well be counter-productive as writing a blog is not necessarily a skills that everyone will have or will feel comfortable with. The approach taken at the JISC-CETIS service is to provide a blog environment for CETIS team members to use in ways which reflects their personal preferences and also the areas of work they are involved in and the needs and preferences related to those areas of work. In addition postings which are felt to be of wider interest can be aggregated by the CETIS editor. Another approach to the aggregation of postings from a number of individual blogs would be to make use of a blog aggregation service, such as Planet, which enables individuals to blog according to their own preferences and for their particular target audience, whilst allowing readers to subscribe to either an individual’s blog or the service’s aggregated blog. A sensible compromise? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 3 Comments »

SiteMeter Added To Blog January 22, 2007 Something I should have done when I launched this blog was to add a stats counter. I’ve now added a Sitemeter stats counter - and you can view the statistics. Note that as I can’t include JavaScript code in the hosted version of WordPress, I can’t get details such as referrer fields or on client-side details (colour depth, browser plugins, etc.). One feature of SiteMeter which I hadn’t noticed before was the mashup showing the location of visitors to the blog (or, more correctly, the location of where a clever piece of software thinks the visitor’s PC is located). Having an additional usage counter will enable comparisons to be made with the usage statistics provided by WordPress - and will enable visitors to see the statistics, too. 491 of 544

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Note that SiteMeter is a externally hosted service, and there are no formal contractual agreements covering their continued provision of their service. However I’ve been using SiteMeter for several years (I wrote an article about the software in the Exploit Interactive e-journal in October 2000), so I’m hopeful it will continue to be around for some time. This posting, by the way, will provide a record of when the software was installed (I installed the code on Sunday 21 January 2007). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 1 Comment »

Song Of The Week To Accompany The “Blog” Theme January 22, 2007 Song Of the Week My song of the week is “100,000 Miles” by June Tabor. This will be available during the week. And this week I’ll be continuing last week’s theme of “blogs” for the content of my postings.

The Sonific Sidebar Widget Puzzled? My continued blog experimentation and discussions continues with a look at another of the sidebar widgets provided in the WordPress.com hosted service -I’ve added the Sonific tool to the blog’s sidebar, as illustrated. I’ve registered with the Sonific service and chosen a song which can be played using the Sonific widget.

Discussion Why would one want to add a music-playing widget to a blog’s sidebar? And what are the possible problems and implications in doing this? In particular what are the broader implications which may be relevant to those considering the deployment of a large-scale blogging service? These are some of the issues I’d like to discuss. From one perspective I could argue that this is my blog, and I can personalise it to reflect my personal preferences, just as I may choose to personalise my 492 of 544

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desktop with screen savers, etc. And one could argue that a blog which has the voice and opinions of an individual would benefit from allowing readers to gain a better understanding of the personaility behind the blog. For many potential blog authors (and we may see a growth in the numbers of authors if institutional blog services start to be deployed more widely) this may be how many regard their blog space (remember the discussions we had about personal home pages during the mid to late 1990s). On the other hand this blog is intended as a means to inform, discuss and engage with the Web development community. The deployment of widgets which I may like can possibly cause problems for the intended audience of the blog. For example, the Web interface to the blog may be becoming too cluttered and possibly causing usability problems, particularly for browsers with flawed CSS support and the dependencies on Flash to deliver various application services in the sidecar widgets will not be available to browsers which do not support Flash. And who am I to impose my musical preferences on you, dear reader There are various responses to such concerns. Readers of this blog who use a dedicated RSS reader and view the blog in an aggregated blog will not have such concerns, as they will only see the contents of this posting (plus any embedded objects) but not the widgets on the blog site. So I could argue that if you just want to access the content or the blog, and possibly add your own preferred application environment, then a personalised and customisable RSS reader such as Netvibes or PageFlakes would satisfy your needs. However, as others have pointed out recently, RSS readers still seem to be not widely used. This blog, which is aimed at the Web development community, may be an exception (there does seem to be a high proportion of access to the RSS feeds). However even which such a specialist community, when posting are referenced by others, readers following such links will arrive at the blog Web site. Ideally the blog would provide the readers with the option to change their display preferences. I have seen this approach taken in a number of blogs (I had some input into developments to the Auricle blog, which enable PDA users to select an interface suitable for viewing on a device with a small screen). I don’t have the options for doing this in the hosted WordPress.com service as I can’t make use of JavaScript. However maybe this is a non-issue if you install WordPress locally - and perhaps other blogging tools provide the end user with the ability to change their display?

The Wider Issues If you’ve installed WordPress MU (Multi-User) you’ll have a wide range of WordPress plugins you can install, which will then be available for bloggers to select from when they set up a blog on your service. Which widgets should you provide? Should you install every plugin which may be available (or would this be an administrative nightmare and cause problems for your bloggers in trying to identify what they do)? Should you respond to requests from your blogging community? Should you have a policy on plugins which may not be acceptable? But how might this affect legitimate exerimentation? Or perhaps we should encourage our community(developers in our institutions, JISC development projects and related development bodies) to engage in development work and we provide access to the services provided by such widgets. Perhaps, reflecting on Sonific’s role in providing access to a sound resource, rather than a widget providing access to a single music track selected by me, a widget which provided access to a variety of Podcasts related to the blogs’ subject area, would be useful? 493 of 544

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Returning To My Song Of The Week Experiment And I thought it was difficult choosing my song of the week (should I go for a fashionable contemporary song, a retro song, a gentle classical piece which may be conducive to reading the blog, a more obscure and pretentious piece - or perhaps something I like!). However use of the Sonific widget is an experiment, aimed at opening a discussion not just on the use and usability of this particular widget but on the more general issues related to a blog administrator’s provision of widget tools. Your feedback on the specific and general issues are welcomed. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 6 Comments »

Windows LiveWriter January 19, 2007 There was a recent posting on the JISC Involve Blog which commented favourably on the Windows LiveWriter blogging tool. I would agree with this sentiment. Windows LiverWriter is a desktop application which can be used to compose blog posting (if, for example, you are offline). One might expect Microsoft software such as this to be usable only with a Microsoft blog. However this is not the case, and it is very simple to configure the software to post to blogs such as WordPress (as I am doing here), Blogger, LiveJournal, etc.

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Such tools sometimes have limitations, such as not being able to make use of the complete set of posting options. I’ve found that Windows LiveWriter allows me to select the categories I have set up for my blog, although it doesn’t seem to allow me to do this with Blogger. Some time ago I looked at a couple of other desktop blogging tools, but they were restricted to posting to a single blogging application. As I have multiple blogs on different platforms I need something like Windows LiveWriter. I’m happy with it. Can anyone suggest any alternatives? PS After composing this post, I remembered that some time ago I had installed the Performancing Firefox extension which seems to provide similar functionality to LiveWriter. I’ll try it out and report back on my experiences. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 3 Comments »

Comment Spam Sent To This Blog January 18, 2007 The WordPress.com com blogger service has an automated filter for spam sent to blog comments. I’ve looked at the records for the first time. Akismet has blocked 271 spam comments since the blog was set up (about 11 weeks ago). I’ve checked the records for the last 15 days (after this period, the spam comments are automatically deleted) and found only one legitimate comment which was treated as spam (which I’ve restored). So thank you, Askimet - this is a very valuable tool. I guess such tools will be needed for all blogs with well-know APIs and which are open to comments. Note that the sofwtare can be installed on a range of blog applications, and there is a discount for education institutions (although it might be expensive for large numbers of blogs). I don’t think I’ll have time to check through the records looking for legitimate comments, so I think the responsibility will be on anyone commenting, to ensure the posting gets through the spam filter - and to contact me if the comment doesn’t appear. (Note that if you give an email address, the comment should be posted straight away, whereas if you don’t include an email address, I’ll need to manually approve the submission). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 2 Comments »

What Can We Learn From Facebook? January 18, 2007

Background Before Christmas I received an email from someone wanting advice on social networking services to support a project. Initially I thought I was being asked for 495 of 544

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my opinions on blogging or wiki applications. However a phone call clarified the requirements, which was advice on the merits of different social networking services such as My Space and Facebook. I had to confess that I have only limited experience of either of these environments. The question did make me reflect on who should provide such advice within an institution? If such services can be used to support the teaching and learning or research activities in an institution, shouldn’t there be some provision of advice and support? And even if such services are used for social purposes (which, of course, they are) why should that be a factor in ruling out a level of support? After all, email and the Web, in general, is used for social purposes.

Facebook In light of these musing, I decided I would try out Facebook - and, fortunately, the University of Bath has subscribed to Facebook, with currently 8,685 subscribers from the institution. (Note that, unlike many similar social networks, the institution, rather than an individual, needs to subscribe to the service - and the authentication is based on one’s email address). And a particularly note-worthy feature of Facebook is the integration across networks - there are many examples of friends spanning across universities (possibly friends from school or friends met at inter-collegiate activities, for example). My profile page is illustrated. This has details of my friends together with a record of the date on which were selected (this struck me as rather cheesy - 9 Jan: “Brian and Pete Cliff are now friends“. And has for the double entendres of “Brian pokes Pete“. Ugh.)

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A potentially very useful feature of the Mini-feed page is the ability to import RSS feeds, from blogs, for example. The two key aspects of Facebook appear to be the network of people (friends) and participation in groups. Facebook users can join existing groups or set up a new group. The list of areas covered by the groups shows that Facebook is focussing on social aspects (with the possible exceptions of Business and Internet & Technology, none of the groupings covers academic disciplines.

Exploring the Internet & Technology section for the Bath network I discovered one use the service provides is to provide a forum for disgruntled users, with one group entitled “We All Hate BUCS” (BUCS being the Bath University Computing Services). How should departments respond to such criticisms? Clearly it is not possible (not even desirable) to ban such discussions. Rather, I would argue, support services (in particular) may wish to visit Facebook (if their institution has subscribed to the service) and explore what students are talking about. I would also argue that if students are spending significant amount of time using Facebook, then it is in the instution’s interest to ensure that they are using the service effectively. Perhaps advising students on a course how the RSS feeds related to the course can be embedded in Facebook would be a sensible approach to take.

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A Radical Suggestion Wikipedia has a comprehensive article on Facebook. The article claims that in April 2006 it was claimed that Facebook was making over $1 million per week in advertising revenue. If this is the case, we might ask ourselves whether institutions should spend tax-payer’s money in seeking to develop social networking services as part of an e-learning environment. Wouldn’t it be more cost-effective to explore the possibilities of using services such as Facebook to support e-learning, rather than trying to compete with such a successful and profitable existing service? Such a suggestion is slightly tongue-in-cheek (Facebook is lacking various features which would be desirable in a system used in a more formal learning context). But if students are making intensive use of Facebook, don’t we have to ask ourselves such questions? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Web2.0 | Edit 5 Comments »

MyBlogLog January 18, 2007 I recently added this blog to the MyBlogLog service. From my personalised MyBlogLog page I can access manage the information about my blog and subscribe to other blog services. I’ve subscribed to a number of blogs of interest to me (including Mashable and Read/Write Web).

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Why have I done this? For several reasons: To provide greater exposure to the contents of my blog. To exploring the community aspect of such blog aggregation services. To gain a better understanding of the ways in which blog content can be reused and the implications. We used to think that information should be held in one location. The information could then be managed by the owner, ensuring, for example, that a consistent and approved look-and-feel was provided. Many people, no doubt, still subscribe to this view. My preference, though, is that access to my information is maximised by allowing it to be reused in a variety of contexts. Some of these contexts may be very specialised; others, however, may be locations where there are many users who, potentially, may benefit from, serendipitously, finding my blog postings. The statistics page for my MyWebLog account show that on 8th January, there were 59 views of the blog by 34 readers. This is 34 readers who would probably not have found the blog otherwise, so this has been a useful exercise.

MyWebLog does provide access to statistics, although the free version only gives me access to statistics for the last 7 days and the top 10 visited pages. My main interest in the service, however, was how it could be used to support the development of a distributed blogging community. What I would like would be for a community blog which aggregated content from a variety of related blogs (e.g. blogs from JISC development projects; blogs from members of institutional Web management teams; blogs from museums; etc.) Obviously I could do this within my personal RSS aggregator - but that would (normally) be 499 of 544

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available just to me. In some RSS aggregators I could share my feeds (e.g. PageFlakes). However I’m not convinced that this provides the sense of community you get from MyBlogLog, which provides a view of people who have read postings recently. (I’m aware, though, that some people may find this intrusive and an invasion of privacy - so it should be possible to view postings anonymously). As an experiment in this community aspect of MyBlogLog I have switched on the MyBlogLog widget in my sidebar. Is anyone aware of services which will satisfy my requirements? I’ve noticed that the OSS Watch’s planet OSS Watch provides an RSS aggregation service using the Planet open source software, which provides a’ river of news’ feed reader’. But this doesn’t address the community angle. I do need to ask whether this is likely to be a service which people would find useful. Perhaps we’ll only find out through use. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 13 Comments »

Why WordPress? January 17, 2007 A while ago Roddy MacLeod asked me why I’d chosen the WordPress to host my blog. After having used WordPress for over 10 weeks I ‘m now in a position to give my thoughts on it. I have to confess that I didn’t carry out a thorough evaluation of the wide range of blogging services. Rather I wanted to use a hosted service (to avoid the inevitable delays in carrying out a evaluation and then having the software installed and tested). I wanted to use a free service, so there would be no costs (in case I decided that the blogging service was flawed or that I wouldn’t have the time or inclination to post consistently). I also wanted to use a mainstream blogging service - one that was widely used and likely to be used by members of my community (so that I could advise others based on my experiences and learn from others). I looked at (and still use) Blogger and LiveJournal. Blogger was fairly basic (although new subscribers will now get an updated service which provides an AJAX interface). And LiveJournal is more suited to a intdividual’s personal blog (you can choose an icon representing your mood when you post an item). As TypePad is a subscription service that left WordPress as the service to look at. After about 60 postings over the past 10 weeks, I can say that I am happy with the service. There are a range of attractive looking designs I can choose from and a small number of sidebar widgets I can use (I’m using the text and RSS widgets to include static text and RSS feeds, together with the Meebo widget which provides a realtime chat service). The service also allows me to assign categories to my post - something I think is important and will return to. And as WordPress is a popular service, there are various third party tools which support it. What I’d really like, though, is to be able to use the WordPress MultiUser service. This is software you need to install locally. This would enable me to embed JavaScript in posts and sidebar widgets. Also a wide range of sidebar widgets are available. I’d particularly like to have the opportunity to explore the 500 of 544

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extensibility which that would provide. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 3 Comments »

RSS Readers Used To View This Blog January 16, 2007 I commented recently that this blog had received 4,000 visits since it was launched. It should be pointed out that this is (probably) visits to the Web site. The contents of the Web site can, of course, be read without needed to visit this Web site, through use of RSS readers or RSS aggregators. WordPress provides details of the feed statistics, as shown below.

In addition details of the RSS readers are also available.

From this we can see that the most popular reader is the Web-based Bloglines service. I suspect that the ‘Web browser’ reference refers to RSS readers such as dynamic bookmarks in the latest version of FireFox and Internet Explorer and/or browser based RSS plugins such as Sage, InfoRSS and RSS Ticker. I’m not surprised by the popularity of Netvibes (I use this personalised Web-based RSS 501 of 544

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aggregator myself). I’ve also used the BlogBridge desktop RSS reader (which Michael Webb has recommended for use at Newport College). As I write today (12 January 2007) there have been 118 visits to the blog’s Web site and 23 reads of the blog content using a feed reader. I would expect to see the proportion of RSS readers to grow, as greater use is made of the RSS capabilities in FireFox and IE, as more organisations start to provide access to RSS readers and Web-based RSS aggregators provide access to RSS feeds with end users not realising that the content they are viewing comes from an RSS feed. This may well lead to a challenge in writing blog posts which are usable in an environment in which the full content may not be displayed - a topic raised recently by Danny Sullivan in his self-confessed public rant on Google’s failure to provide descriptive titles for their posts. The other comment I should make is that my blog postings may well have been aggregated elsewhere. I’ve added the RSS feed to my Facebook account, for example. Facebook appears to have cached the contents of my blog - so any views of the contents by Facebook readers will not appear on blog statistics, with the exception (I assume) of a single access by the Facebook aggregator for each article. I guess we can say there are lies, dammned lies and Blog statistics Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 8 Comments »

Blogs - Theme Of The Week January 15, 2007 As an ongoing experiment on ways of approaching use of this blog, this week I’ll be publishing articles on the theme of ‘blogs’. Tomorrow (Tuesday 16 January 2006) I’ll give an update on the statistics for this blog, with a summary of the RSS readers which some users are using to read this blog. On Wednesday I’ll describe why I chose WordPress to host this blog. On Thursday I will ask, What Can We Learn From Facebook? And on Friday I’ll probably talk about offline blog authoring tools, although I might instead review any feedback I’ve received and outline plans for further activities in the support of best practices for blogs within the community. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 1 Comment »

Shared Approaches to Use of del.icio.us January 14, 2007 I commented previously about a number of blogs which have been published by JISC services (and I should have included the CETIS blogs in my summary). I 502 of 544

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suggested that it would be useful to give some thought to ways in which JISC services (and also JISC-funded projects) could share best practices and explore ways of maximising the impact of their blogging services. This is a topic I’ll return to shortly. On a related area, looking at the referrer logs for this blog I noticed a couple of visits from a del.icio.us bookmark. Following the link back I found a link from CCuran’s del.icio.us bookmarks. I then noticed that Randy Metcalfe of OSS Watch was included on CCuran’s network. I work closely with Randy (we gave a joint talk on What Does Openness Mean to the Web Manager? at last year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop, and we’ve recently been working on a joint paper on openness) so I suspected his bookmarked resources would overlap with some of my areas of interest. One of his tags Randy used to bookmark resources which are also of interest to me is “communications_strategy“. His del.icio.us page for this tag is shown below.

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Myself and colleagues at UKOLN are looking at further developing our communications and marketing strategy - so Randy’s resources should prove useful to us. The more general issue of sharing of bookmarks, using services such as del.icio.us, is an area I would like to develop further. A few months ago I realised that it would be useful for me to bookmark details of venues I’ve used for events (or venues I have attended) and also good hotels I’ve stayed at. So I’ve created a tag for recommended hotels (to remind me of the great, privately-run hotel in Edinburgh with free WiFi in bedrooms) and similarly for recommended venues. With the JISC community many of us have an interest in finding good venues for events - and good hotels to stay in. So rather than keeping a private copy of such information, I think that del.icio.us would be a good, simple way of sharing such information. There will obviously be a need to think about some of the limitations (e.g. the subjectivity of such preferences and concerns that one may be sued if negative comments are given) - but I think the reservations are minor and out-weighed by the benefits. We’ll need to agree on the tags, I think. But is this an idea worth pursuing? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Social Networking, Web2.0 | Edit 11 Comments »

Four Thousand Views and Counting January 12, 2007 According the the WordPress statistics, today saw the 4,000th visit to this blog since it was launched at the beginning of November 2006, 10 weeks ago. On 6th November I described how I claimed my blog in Technorati, in order to observe how new blogs would be found, without any announcement. On 11 November I reported how this had helped the numbers of visitors leap to over 100. The mantra 504 of 544

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that there are lies, dammed lies and Web statistics can also be applied to blogs, of course (although as blog pages are dynamic the usage statistics should not be skewed by cached pages). However it terms of being able to monitor usage, identify impact and evaluate the effeciveness of dissemination strategies, there will probably be a need to collect such statistics. As with general Web usage statistics, however, there will be a need to interpret such statistics carefully - a blog intended for reflective purposes, for example, would not expect to gain as many hits as a blog which aims to provide a news and informational resource to a large community. I’ll return to the issue of maximising awareness of a blog in a future posting. For now, my advice is ‘claim your blog‘. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 3 Comments »

IWMW 2007 - Call for Proposals January 12, 2007 My colleague Marieke Guy has announced the call for proposals for talks, workshop sessions and other suggestions for this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2007) which will be held at the University of York on 16-18th July. I established the IWMW series of workshops back in 1997 and last year, when Marieke took over responsibility as the workshop chair, it celebrated its 10th anniversary. Last year workshop was successful in attracting the largest ever audience (with almost 200 participants) and, judging by the workshop evaluation, probably the most successful event. The theme for this year’s event is “Next steps for the Web management community”. The event will explore how we can build on the successes of the first ten years of the institutional Web management community. An innovation that has been introduced this year is the call for proposals for working group session based on collaborative working in areas of interest to the Web management community which may have started prior to the workshop or for which the event aims to provide a starting point for collaborative working which will continue afterwards. Proposals for talks, workshop and working group sessions should be sent to Marieke by 26th February. Technorati Tags: IWMW Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, IWMC | Edit No Comments »

Avoiding Broken Links In Blogs January 11, 2007 505 of 544

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From time to time I come across broken links in blogs. I often find that these are due to errors when pasting URLs into an Insert/edit Link box (you may notice this if you come across links beginning with http://http://www... I have to admit that I was rather surprised to discover than there don’t appear to be any link checking tools which can be used prior to posting an article in WordPress. In order to minimise the numbers of broken links in my blog, I’ve therefore decided to make use of the Check Page Links FireFox extension, after published posts from now one (if I’m using a PC which has this software installed). Use of this tool is illustrated below …

… and as can be seen, the tool did spot a broken link in one of my previous postings (which I have now fixed). And for those occasions when I’m using a computer which doesn’t have this extension, I’ve added a link to a link checking service to my sidebar widgets. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 506 of 544

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Real Time Chat on my Blog January 10, 2007 I have been experimenting with the Meebo chat widget in this blog’s sidebar. The widget, which is illustrated below, provides a realtime chat facility within the blog.

I’ve not yet established a systematic process for making use of this chat facility or, indeed, had an opportunity to explore its strengths and weaknesses. When I first tried it, in conjunction with the Meebo Web site and the Meebo FireFox plugin, I either missed people who were chatting (as I was looking at the wrong window) or failed to switch off the chat service when I left my office (and note that the image shown above is a simulation of a chat, and not a proper dialogue). As well as those issues of process, I also need to explore whether this can be a useful services, or will simply be distracting. As part of that process I will carry out a simple experiment. I’ll try to log on to the Meebo service after I post a blog article, if I feel I am in a position to respond to any queries or discussions. And I’ll try to ensure that I log off from the service if I am busy, wish to concentrate or other work or am unavailable. Perhaps a chat service like this isn’t ideal for a individual’s blog like this (as the individual is likely to be unavailable for significant periods)- but possibly could be more useful as mechanism for engaging in discussions when used in a multi-user blog with several contributors. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 507 of 544

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Other Blogs By JISC Services January 9, 2007 Following my recent comments on the TASI Lightbox blog I noticed an incoming link from the JISC involve blog. A posting giving a number of links to resources contained an announcement of the OSS Watch team blog. The first posting to the blog was made just before Christmas and OSS Watch team members have begun posting to the blog since the start of the new year.

I think we can expect to see greater use of blogging tools across JISC and JISC Services this year, and possibly blogs set up to support JISC-funded development projects. It might be useful, therefore, to explore some best practises across this development environment, including issues such as selection of software; purposes of the service; policies covering use of such services; interoperability and searching across related blog services; maximising impact and measuring success. I wonder if much work has been carried out in this area? Have there been, for example, reports and studies on use of blogs across IT development programmes in other countries?

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Technorati Tags: JISC Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 7 Comments »

Writing Conventions For This Blog January 8, 2007 Is this a Blog or a blog? Am I Blogging or blogging? And is the question “Wiki or wiki?” rather than “Wiki or won’t he?”? After over two months of blogging it’s time for me to start to document policies relating to this blog. From now on I’ll use the lower case version of the word blog: I’m a blogger who blogs on the UK Web Focus blog (and I’ll avoid the Weblog word which hasn’t really caught on). The title of blog posting will normally be capitalised (for example see the recent The TASI Blog posting). As WordPress converts uppers case words into lower case - such as http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2007/01/05/the-tasi-blog/ - this avoids URIs having mixed case). Similarly I’ll use wiki in lower case - e.g. I use the MediaWiki wiki software. I’ll probably avoid using the word in other forms (so although I may be a blogger who blogs at events, I’m not a wikier who will wiki at an event!) On the subject of writing conventions I always try to ensure that hyperlinked phrases make it clear what is being linked to. For example I would write “I helped to establish the website-info-mgt JISCMail list. A recent posting on the list talked about the First Company Law Amendment Directive.” - the former link goes to the home page of the website-info-mgt JISCMail archive while the latter links directly to the relevant posting (or thread, if I wanted to include a group of postings). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 8 Comments »

The TASI Blog January 5, 2007 I’ve just re-discovered the TASI Lighthouse Blog. TASI (Technical Advisory Service for Images) is a JISC-funded advisory service which provides advice on, as its name suggests, best practices related to digital images. TASI is based at ILRT (the Institute for Learning and Research Technology), University of Bristol. During my 10 years at UKOLN I have worked closely with TASI (and other groups in ILRT). TASI were the UKOLN’s initial partners in the JISC-funded QA Focus project. The TASI Lighthouse Blog has now been running for almost a year and they clearly demonstrated the sustainability of the service, with over 300 postings since it was launched. 509 of 544

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The Blog has a nice, friendly interface and the use of categories provides a quick way of finding useful resources. Wouldn’t it be great if other JISC Services followed this example. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Digitisation | Edit 1 Comment »

Phong - it’s awful, isn’t it? January 3, 2007 Lawrie Phipps (now working at the JISC but formerly of the JISC TechDis service) have worked together for several years and have published several peer-reviewed papers in which we have developed a model for addressing Web accessibility issues, which builds on the WAI WCAG approach, but seeks to 510 of 544

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address some of its limitations. A while ago Lawrie emailed me the URL of the Phong Web site. He suggested that this would be a good replacement for the Flash King Web site, which we had used on a number of occasions to illustrate some of the problems with Web sites based on Flash (note the Flash King Web site is still available, but the links to the various projects we used in demonstrations are now disabled.)

Confusing? Poor usability, bad for accessibility? Yes. And when you get to a page, the interface is similarly flawed. But, OTOH, might this not be fun as a game? Mind this not be entertaining for children? Might not an interface in which animated links move as you try and chase them be fun for some people? Or to put it another way, isn’t the goal of universal accessibility a pipe dream? In some cases (e.g. informational resources) this approach may be an appropriate one, but in others, it may result in pleasing solutions being discarded, even if, ironically, particular audiences may prefer them. The Peepo Web site provides an example of a very graphical user interface with interactive features and this has been designed in this way by Jonathan Chetwynd, an accessibility consultant with an interest in accessibility for people with learning. At a CETIS Accessibility SIG meeting in 2004 he described the Web site as “a portal for people with learning difficulties, who were unable to read“. However commentators have reported that his interests have not been appreciated within WAI. So if such sites can be accessible, usable and pleasurable to certain groups (I’m 511 of 544

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not saying Phoing is, BTW) , doesn’t this devalue an automated approach to accessibility checking. What then are the boundaries to automated checking? How should we go about developing or commissioning Web sites for such groups? And when is it legitimate to discard WAI guidelines? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility | Edit No Comments »

New look-and-feel for 2007 December 31, 2006 I’d changed the WordPress theme to Andreas09 - which provides a 3-column layout, with sidebar widgets on the left and right of the main body. Hope you like it - I think it gives more flexibility to exploit sidebar widgets. Happy New Year. Brian Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, General | Edit 3 Comments »

7 Predictions For 2007 December 31, 2006 My predictions for the forthcoming year: 1. Location, location, location: We will see much greater use of location-based services. Why? Google Maps mashups are becoming more ubiquitous, due to the ease of use, and consumers are buying hardware which can exploit such information, such as GPS devices, mobile phones with GPS (or alternative) support for locations, etc. We are seeing a number of small-scale experiments (I have been geo-locating my events this year, and Northumbria University has recently announced a UK University locator service). This year we’ll see such experiments moving to services. 2. Web 2 services come and go, but become ubiquitous: there will be some great new Web 2.0 services - and we’ll start to make use of ones which the early adopters are already using (PageFlakes, anyone?). But others will fail to avoid the ‘chasm’ in the Gartner hype curve for new technologies. However we will develop better models for evaluating and deploying Web 2.0 services, and the sustainable services will become widely deployed. And the endless debates about the ‘Web 2.0′ term will diminish. 3. W3C wars will continue: We’ll hear more about the battles within W3C in areas such as XHTML 2.0 and HTML 5, Web Services, the Semantic Web and WCAG 2.0. Stripping away the technical debate, we’ll realise that the arguments are between the idealists (”we’ll throw away HTML and start again and get it right”) and the pragmatists (”HTML won’t go away; we need to improve it incrementally”). 512 of 544

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4. We’ll discover that we are a Community of Practice: The term “community of practice” will become more widely used and after an initial period of unease with this phrase (similar to last year’s criticisms of ‘Web 2.0′) the UK Web development community, especially those who attend the Institutional Web Management Workshops or engage in debate on the mailing lists) will realise that it has been a community of practice for several years and will exploit a wider range of social networking tools to build on the strengths of the community. 5. Use of existing services vs developing new services: There will be a split in the development community between those who feel there’s a need to develop new tools and services and those who argue that it is better to make use of existing tools and services. It may take some time before a hybrid approach is developed. 6. We become more flexible about IPR: We’ll discover that copyright holders start to realise that user-generated content which makes use of copyrighted materials can actually be beneficial to the copyright holder (by exposing their materials to new audiences and by providing new business models, for example). We will start to deploy less rigid policies and discover that this makes it easier to get services off the ground and attract audiences - with Creative Commons licences providing a valuable starting point. 7. Management of user IDs for Web 2.0 services will be a major challenge: As staff and students leave their institutions they will realise that many of the Web 2.0 services for which an email address provides the authentication, cannot be managed after the institutional email address is withdrawn. This will be recognised as a major challenge which will need to be addressed. Any comments on these predictions? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General, Web2.0 | Edit 6 Comments »

Blog of the Day December 27, 2006 It was nice to see that this Blog was featured as the number 1 in WordPress’s list of Blogs of The Day for growing blogs:

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I don’t think this with drive much traffic to the Blog, but at least one person noticed this and visited my Blog. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, General | Edit No Comments »

It’s About Giving, Not Taking December 22, 2006 A colleague came in to my office yesterday clutching a book (“Wiki A New Wave in Web Collaboration“) she had just received which, she informed me, had a contribution from me. Rather than a brief mention I was surprised to find that it included an 8 page article on “Experiences of Using a Wiki for Note-taking at a Workshop“. I had to search for this title before finding that this was an article I’d written which had been published in Ariadne (Issue 42, January 2005). I then recalled that over a year ago we had received a request from someone in Indian working for ICFAI (Institute of Chartered Financial Analysis of India) for permission to include this article in a book he was editing. I was happy to give my permission - and was very pleased to receive a copy of the book just before Christmas. Having a article published in a book produced in India reminded me that back in January 1995 I sent out an announcement about a handbook on “Running A WWW Service” which I had written and which was mirrored in the US, Sweden,Turkey and Slovenia (not Singapore, as I mistakenly announced, misinterpretting the .si country code). The handbook was also, at one stage, included in the SuSE Linux distribution pack. I’ve always has an open attitude regarding materials I’ve written, and, for the past year, my slides have contained a Creative Commons logo. In June 2005 I gave a talk at the EUNIS 2005 conference on “Let’s Free IT Support Materials!” in which I argued for support services in our institutions should be pro-active in allowing documents produced for internal use available for re-use 514 of 544

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by others. Three days before Christmas it is timely to repeat this proposal. Remember, openness is about giving, not taking. Merry Christmas Brian Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in openness, publications | Edit 2 Comments »

Christmas Quiz II - An Answer December 20, 2006 In the Christmas Quiz II posting I asked the question: The current version of HTML is XHTML 1.1. What is the next version likely to be: XHTML 1.2 XHTML 2 HTML 5 There were two responses to this question which I will discuss in more detail: Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in HTML | Edit 2 Comments »

Blog Tag: 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Brian Kelly December 20, 2006 Phil Bradley’s Blog describes how he has joined in the Blogtagging game and has Blog tagged me: he has posted 5 interesting facts about himself, and invited 5 people he knows to do likewise. It sounds like a pyramid chain but, rather than predicting ill-fortune on those who break the chain, I take a positive view that this can be useful in building a community by getting to know each other better (we normally have to wait for the social events at IWMW events to do this, so this is a useful approach in the run up to Christmas). Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 2 Comments »

The Trouble With Wikis December 20, 2006 UKOLN hosted a workshop on “Exploring The Potential Of Wikis” in Birmingham on 3 November 2006. A summary of the workshop evaluation is 515 of 544

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now available; the comments on the workshop, the talks and the discussion groups give an indication of the interest there is in the institutional provision of Wikis. However as usage of Wiki software grows, some of the limitations become more apparent. Here are some of the issues which I have identified, which may not have been discussed at the workshop: Navagibility: What does a Home button mean on a Wiki? Is it the home of the Wiki service (which could be a service for the entire institution)? Is it the home for an individual, who may have multiple sub-Wikis? Or is it the home page for a sub-Wiki area? URI structure: Remember when institutions provided guidelines on URI naming conventions, such as UKOLN’s URI Naming Conventions For Your Project Web Site briefing document? Such guidelines addressed issues such as having a consistent approach to the capitalisation of words in URIs and conventions for separating words in URIs (with a ‘-’ often being preferred to an ‘_’ or a space). With Wikis you may find that the Wiki software imposes a URI structure, which may conflict with institutional guidelines. Web site structure: A hierarchical URI structure can be useful for defining self-contained areas of a Web site. This structure can be exploited by tools such as off-line browsers. However the flat structure which many Wikis provide means that such benefits may be lost. Standards: Do Wikis ensure that Web sites comply with HTML and CSS standards? A danger is that some may not. Accessibility: Do Wikis allow authors to provide the structure and tagging needed to ensure that people with disabilities can access content held in Wikis using assistive technologies? Device independence: Are Wikis which provide a rich user experience to authors and readers through use of AJAX technologies usable on platforms such as the Apple Macintosh? One Macintosh users at the workshop reported that the workshop’s WetPaint Wiki required use of a (non-existent) right mouse button in order to edit pages on the Wiki. Are these show-stoppers? Should we put on hold our plans to deploy Wiki software until such issues have been addressed? Are there other significant problems with Wikis? Or can such limitations be outweighed by the benefits which Wikis can provide? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Wikis | Edit 2 Comments »

Reflections On 2006 - Accessibility December 19, 2006 Whither WCAG 2.0? It had been expected that the WCAG 2.0 guidelines would be released by W3C WAI this year, to replace WCAG 1.0 which came out way back in 1999. However the reviewing process for WCAG 2.0 seems to have slowed down (if not stopped) due, I suspect, to the huge influx of comments received after Joe Clark published his “To Hell With WCAG 2.0” article published in May on A 516 of 544

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List Apart. Joe’s posting generated much debate from commentators such as The Pickards, Stephen Downes, Joe Dolson and contributors to Accessify Forum as well as follow up articles and discussions on Joe’s own Blog. Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility | Edit 1 Comment »

Christmas Quiz - An Answer December 19, 2006 In my Christmas Quiz posting I asked which of the following are open standards: Flash PDF RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0 MS Word Before giving my thoughts on this, I will comment on the responses.

Your Responses James Brown felt that “first, my definition of an open standard: publicly available and able to be implemented such that two or more different uses of the standard will be compatible and accessible.” He then went on to apply that rule to the examples I gave and felt that each of them had characteristics of openness but not completely so. Phil Wilson felt gave his “definition of an open standard: publicly available and able to be implemented such that two or more different uses of the standard will be compatible and accessible.“ Ravis Reddick thinks that “Flash itself isn’t the standard, it’s the official authoring tool and general brand name for the technology. Other authoring tools can author ‘Flash’; the export format is various version of Shockwave Flash. I think this can now be authored in an open way using an intermediary format“ Kevin Ashley’s view is that “Flash, PDF and more recent versions of MS Word are all open in the sense that the file format is published, and it is possible to create tools to read/render content in those formats using nothing except the published standards.” He went on to add that “All of them are not open in the sense that new versions of the formats can be created at the whim of the company that owns them.” Although he is “not so worried about that; if I don’t like PDF 1.7 because of some new license twist, I won’t use it. All the stuff I already have in PDF 1.x (x“. And finally Steve Nisbett feels that “PDF, FLASH and MS may well be seen as ’standard’ - available all over the place, but they are certain not Open.“

My Views I can recall back in 1993-4 having similar discussions about open standards. Back then I can recall arguing that a system such as the Web because of the:

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Client software was available on a variety of platforms. Service software was available on a variety of platforms. There were a number of other bullet points (which I have forgotten) but I do recall that my definition was used in a response to other systems which were competing with the Web (and in my opinion where inferior to the Web). These included such as the Guide hypertext system, developed at the University of Kent and Microcosm, an “Open Hypermedia Environment for Information Integration” developed by Professor Wendy Hall and colleagues at the University of Southampton. As these products were being pushed in 1992/3 as potential alternatives to the Web (and came from well-established Computer Science departments with good reputations for the quality of their research) I came up with my definition of openness, which I gave at a day’s workshop on Hypertext Systems On Unix Platforms at the University of Kent back in 1993 (it was originally intended, I think, as a promotional events for Guide, and I was the token person describing at alternative approach!) However my definition of openness was clearly not an open definition - it was intended to embrace my preferred solution, at the expense of the competitors. I’m aware that others take a similar approach (which all too often seems to resolve to “an open standard is one that Microsoft have no involvement in, no matter how proprietary it may be!”). The respondents to this quiz take a more honest approach, I’m pleased to find. So what are my thoughts? The examples I used were taken from a presentation of a paper on A Contextual Framework For Standards which I gave at the “Workshop on E-Government: Barriers and Opportunities” which was held in Edinburgh in May 2006. The opening speaker at the workshop was Ivan Herman of the W3C (and currently the lead of the W34C’s Semantic Web activity). In his presentation Ivan cited an EU definition of openness: The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization The standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge The intellectual property of the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty free basis No constraints on the re-use of the standard. Shortly after Ivan’s talk I delivered my slides, and, as can be seen, I asked the audience (which included not only Ivan Herman, but also Steve Bratt, CEO of W3C) which of the following were open standards: XHTML

Flash

PDF

Java

RSS 1.0

RSS 2.0

MS Word

There was universal agreement that XHTML was an open standard and Flash, PDF, Java and MS Word weren’t. But there was ambivalence over both versions of RSS - it may be based on XML - but there are uncertainties over the governance of the standards. As Phil Wilson commented:

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RSS 2.0 is published but there is a strict copyright on the usage of the term, and no-one apart from Dave Winer may make changes to it (“Someone has to have the last word, and when it comes to the RSS 2.0 roadmap, that’s me”, “I am banging the gavel”). 03/10/2008 14:51

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Related concerns have been raised over the future development of RSS 1.0. I would argue, therefore, that RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 fail the EU’s definition according to the “will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization” - neither seems to being adequately maintained. Tavis Reddick mentioned that “The question isn’t clear about what is the standard: the interface, the file format, the information model…? I took it to mean something like the data binding format.“ It should be noted that the EU’s definition of a open standards relates to the openness and the governance of the standard itself - it is silent on issues such as the openness of tools to support its usage. What does this mean to policy makers, developers, funders and users with digital library development programmes? One response is “nothing, this is just splitting hairs”. But if our mantra is “Interoperability through open standards” then surely we need to have an agreed understanding and definition of ‘open standards’? Oleg Liber, Director of CETIS touched on this issue in his talk at the recent JISC-CETIS Conference. His slides reviewed CETIS historical involvement with educational technology standards: 1998-1999: Educational technology interoperability standards? 2000-2005: Educational technology interoperability standards! 2006-2011: Educational technology? Interoperability? Standards? From the certainties we held at the start of the new century, we are now beginning to challenge some of our basic assumptions. “Interoperability? Standards?” or “Interoperability! Standards!”? What is your view? Merry Christmas Brian Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit No Comments »

Reflections On 2006 - Standards December 19, 2006 This year has seen UKOLN building on its work on ways in which standards can be used to support digital library development programmes. In the past a simplistic approach had been taken, which assumed that standards developed by trusted standards bodies (W3C, IETF, ISO, etc.) would become widely accepted within the market place. This approach, however, has failed in the past (Coloured Book software anyone?) and we currently are seeing a wide range of debates over standards across the Web development community (Web Services Considered Harmful; RSS vs RSS vs Atom debates; the Semantic Web vs the lower case semantic web and microformats and, more recently, a radical vision for the future based on XHTML 2.0 vs an evolutionary development towards HTML 5.0 - as described in Molly Holzschlag’s Blog) . UKOLN’s contribution to the debate has been the development of a contextual 519 of 544

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three-layered approach, based on a neutral standards catalogue (containing details of standards, their governance; their maturity and a risk assessment) together with policy layers for selecting relevant standards and for managing non-compliance with the policies. This approach, which has been designed to provide a level of flexibility which is needed in a rapidly changing technical environment is supported by an advocacy strategy (which promotes the benefits of open standards) and an iterative feedback and development approach (in order to learn from patterns of best practices). We have sought to develop our ideas and gain feedback by papers which have been submitted to a number of peer-reviewed conferences. In May a paper on A Contextual Framework For Standards was presented at the “Workshop on E-Government: Barriers and Opportunities” which was co-located with the International World Wide Web Conference held in Edinburgh. My colleague Marieke Guy has been engaged in implementing the system which is based on our contextual model. It was pleasing when Marieke and I met with members of the eReSS project to discover that they had taken a similar approach in the area of e-science standards. This contextual approach has been designed to be usable by the wider community. The information provided in the standards catalogue has a Creative Commons licence associated with the entries, so there should be no legal barriers to the reuse of the content. This will enable developers, policy makers, managers, etc. within institutions to make use of the resources to support institutional development activities. More importantly from a JISC perspective, the approach can be used by JISC’s partners in the Strategic E-Content Alliance (SEA). The SEA is an alliance of bodies such as JISC, MLA. BBC and Becta, which aims to provide seamless access for the public to a wide range of scholarly, cultural and educational resource. The contextual approach to the selection and use of open standards is particularly relevance in this content as, though the bodies will seek agreement where possible on relevant standards, there will be areas in which organisational or political considerations may outweigh technical factors. Next year will see UKOLN continuing to build on this work - and we are particularly pleased that a paper on Addressing the Limitations of Open Standards has been accepted at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in standards | Edit 1 Comment »

Reflections On 2006 - IWMW 2006 December 18, 2006 This year the tenth in the series of UKOLN’s annual Institutional Web Management Workshops was held here at the University of Bath. This was also the year in which I stepped down as chair of the Programme Committee and handed responsibility to my colleague Marieke Guy. The event, which took place on 14-16 June 2006 was also the largest we’ve held and, judging by the comments and scores on the evaluation forms, the best ever! Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) 520 of 544

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Reflections on 2006 - Events December 18, 2006 This, my tenth year at UKOLN, has been the busiest year ever for giving presentations, with a total of 42 presentations given at conferences, seminars and workshops - I was invited to give another talk recently, but, like all fans of Douglas Adams, I knew when it was a good time to stop :-). Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, IWMC | Edit No Comments »

IWMC December 15, 2006 UKOLN has hosted the Institutional Web Management Workshop every year since 1997, with this year’s event being the tenth in the series. At the workshop a number of participants commented that they felt themselves to be a member of the Institutional Web management community, with the event providing the main focal point for the community, with the web-support and website-info-mgt JISCMail lists providing additional mechanisms for community sharing and collaboration. The IWMW 2006 event highlighted the importance of Web 2.0 to the community. Since the workshop a range of presentations and events have been held throughout the country. And on 1 November 29006 2006 (my tenth anniversary at UKOLN) this Blog was set up. The Blog has not been announced on mailing list in order to gain experience in Blogging and the time and effort needed to Blog in a sustainable fashion. However it is now timely for an official launch of the Blog, which has been announced on the web-support JISCMail list. The Blog will cover areas related to the Web, especially areas of interest to our key communities (the higher and further education and cultural heritage sectors, the digital library development and research communities and the institutional Web management community). In order to support the institutional Web management community, a well-established and thriving community of practice, posts on this Blog which are likely to be of interest to the community will be tagged with the ‘IWMC’ tag. I would encourage members of the community who are setting up Blogs with similar roles to use the same tag, to help in finding and sharing posts. I would also invite Bloggers from the IWMC community to contact me (using email or by commenting on this posting) with details of their Blog. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in IWMC | Edit 521 of 544

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PING PONG December 15, 2006 I recently attended a joint JISC/UKOLN/CETIS awayday meeting. One of the issues which arose in the discussion group I participated in was the boundaries between personal services, institutional services and national services. Scott Wilson (CETIS) suggested the acronym PING (personal, institutional, national and global). In response I proposed PONG (personal, organisational, national and global). An alternative would be DING and DONG (distributed institutional/organisational, national and global). The PING PONG debate will, no doubt, be bounced between UKOLN and CETIS. (Note UKOLN has its Christmas lunch yesterday, and I have probably been reading too many Christmas cracker jokes and puns). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 2 Comments »

Christmas Quiz II December 15, 2006 Another quiz for Chrismas. The current version of HTML is XHTML 1.1. What is the next version likely to be: XHTML 1.2 XHTML 2 HTML 5 Feel free to add your comments. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in IWMC, standards | Edit 4 Comments »

Accessibility and Institutional Repositories December 12, 2006 There has been some discussion on the JISC-Repositories JISCMail list (under the confusing subject line of “PLoS business models, global village”) on the issue of file formats for depositing scholary papers. Some people (including myself) feel that open formats such as XHTML should be the preferred format; others feel that the effort required in creating XHTML can be a barrier to populating digital repositories, and that use of PDF can provide a simple 522 of 544

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low-effort solution, especially if authors are expected to take responsibility for uploading their papers to an institutional repository. An issue I raised was the accessibility of resources in digital repositories. There are well established guidelines developed by WAI which can help to ensure that HTML content can be accessible to people with disabilities. Myself and others have argued that the guidelines and the WAI model is flawed, but many of the guidelines are helpful and institutions should seek to implement them (indeed there are legal requirements to ensure that services do not discriminate against people with disabilities). WCAG 1 has the following requirements: 3.2 Create documents that validate to published formal grammars. [Priority 2] 11.1 Use W3C technologies when they are available and appropriate for a task and use the latest versions when supported. [Priority 2] 11.4 If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible (original) page. [Priority 1]. This seems to be pretty unfriendly towards PDFs, I would argue. WCAG 2.0 (which is in draft form) is, however, neutral regarding file formats - a development I welcome (although the guidelines still have their limitations). However the guidelines still require that content is accessible; and as well as the requirement in the guidelines, there are also legal and ethical requirements to address such issues. Proprietary formats such as PDF can be made accessible. However I am uncertain as to how alternative text for images and providing structure to PDF documents will happen in a distributed workflow environment. Rather than dwelling on this (technical) issue, I would like to focus on the policy issues, which should be independent of particular file formats. UK legislation requirements organisations to take reasonable measures to ensure that people with disabilities are not discriminated against unfairly. One could argue that it would be unreasonable to expect hundreds in not thousands of legacy resources to have accessibility metadata and document structures applied to them, if this could be demonstrated to be an expensive exercise of only very limited potential benefit. However if we seek to explore what may be regarded as ‘unreasonable’ we then need to define ‘reasonable’ actions which institutions providing institutional repositories would be expected to take. One approach would be for the institution to ensure that it provides appropriate training and staff development for authors who are expected to upload documents to repositories. Linked to this may be tools which can flag problem areas to the authors, as documents are being prepared for uploading. There may then be auditing tools which can alert institutions to potential problems. Related to policies to support the authors, are policies which address specific problems which users with disabilities may have. Clearly many scientific papers (containing formulae, for example) may be difficult to be processed by traditional assistive technologies. Perhaps this is where there is a need for just-in-time accessibility (as opposed to the traditional just-in case approach) or blended accessibility (real world alternatives to digital accessibility barriers). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, Repositories | Edit 523 of 544

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Christmas Quiz December 12, 2006 A quiz for Christmas. Which of the following are open standards: Flash

PDF

RSS 1.0

RSS 2.0

MS Word

As a follow-up, give reasons why the opposite of what you said may be true. Please use the comments box for your thoughts. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General, IWMC, standards | Edit 11 Comments »

LibraryThing Hits The Limit December 10, 2006 A LibraryThing Blog posting informs me that recently their database contained 8,388,608 records - apparently this is half of 224, the largest number you can store in three bytes. It’s also the limit for MySQL’s “signed medium integer” (111111111111111111111111). They have now rebuilt the database - and won’t hit another barrier until they hold information on 8.4 billion books! This is clearly a ‘cool’ service (it was also recently featured on Slashdot) . How did they succeed in being so popular? What lessons can the JISC development community learn from the popularity of the service? Any suggestions? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 3 Comments »

Cool FireFox Extensions December 10, 2006 I recently gave a talk on “Web 2.0: Implications For The Publisher” at a meeting organised by ALPSP. A fellow speaker was Terry Hulbert of IOPP. During lunch Terry and I discussed how we both enjoy seeing slides and demonstrations from fellow speakers who are advanced users of FireFox, as this can provide an opportunity to learn about cool new FireFox extensions. Terry noticed two of my that he’d not come across. A few days after the meeting I received an email from Terry saying: “Downloaded the Blogger Web Comments and RSS Panel Firefox plug-ins - they rock !” Terry’s right - these are my favourite FireFox extensions. They are illustrated 524 of 544

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below.

The RSS Panel Greasemonkey script (on the left) appears if a Web page contains an (autodiscovery) link to an RSS page. Initially it appears as a floating window simply containing the title of the RSS feed. On opening the window access to all of the RSS links is available, as illustrated. The Google Web Comments extension provides an interface to Google’s Blog Search service. If a Blog entry has links to a page you are viewing (or pages below it) an indication of this is displayed in the bottom right hand corner of the browser status bar. Clicking on the icon results in the title of the posting appearing, as illustrated. It was using the tools that I came across David Rothman’s comments about a recent talk of mine. The FireFox extension that Terry uses which I hadn’t come across was Colorful Tabs - which I must get round to installing. You’ve now heard about our cool FireFox extensions - what are yours? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Firefox, IWMC, Web2.0 | Edit No Comments »

It’s Cool to be Cool! December 10, 2006 “Have you seen LibraryThing - it’s cool!”. “I agree. And I’ve written a cool XSLT script to take data from my OPAC and upload it to LibraryThing - and 525 of 544

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also to del.icio.us.” “That’s cool!” (see footnote). A common response to hearing discussions such as this is to be dismissive - “It’s just geeks being clever. We need to adopt a user-focused approach to development, and we must deploy formal user needs analysis. And we should be dispassionate about the services we’re developing - so the ‘cool’ word is banned! “ Although there is a need to take a user-focused approach to development, I would argue that there’s also a need to encourage a ‘cool’ approach to development, especially at a time of rapid technological development that we are currently seeing. One reason for this is to build on the work of the early developers and bridge the ‘chasm’ in the Gartner hype curve.

For developers to be pleased with their work and wish to share their successes with others is, I would argue, an approach to be encouraged. And if the vocabulary includes the word, ‘cool’ then that’s fine by me. There is also a need to have a better understanding of the positive aspects of the term ‘cool’ in development circles. At the international World Wide Web conferences which I have attended, the word cool is often used to refer to development work based on simple and elegant implementations of new standards and technologies elegant; the emphasis in this community does not normally focus on fashionable user interfaces. However I would argue that development of ‘cool user interfaces’ should also be encouraged. Andy Powell has commented on the differences between Slideshare.net and JORUM - and I would argue that Slideshare’s cool interface has contributed to its popularity. There is, however, a danger to being cool. Cool can be used to refer to innovation for its own sake or fashionable user interface features which may result in degraded experiences for some. Let our mantra be “Let’s do cool cool stuff and avoid the bad cool development”. If you’re a manager and you hear your developers talking about cool applications, grill them to find out which meaning of cool they are using - if they are good developers, you may learn something; and if they’re not you will need to make use of your management skills.

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Footnote See Dave Pattern’s Blog entry about how he intergrated data from the Library OPAC with LibraryThing and del.icio.us - and the first comment :-). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit No Comments »

Where are the Blogging UK Librarians? December 5, 2006 I have given a number of Web 2.0 presentations to the library and information professional communities recently. It has been pleasing to note that responses to hearing about technologies such as Blogs and Wikis and Web 2.0 approaches such as trust and the importance of user-generated content has been very positive. The attitude seems to be “I can appreciate possible benefits, but I’m not sure what to do next”. In terms of Blogging, a good approach would be to observe what one’s colleagues are doing, identify types of usage and examples of best practice and, if this fits in with local needs, to seek to emulate the best practices. But where are the Blogging librarians in the UK? I recently heard about the Northampton University Library Blog (called Shush!), which is illustrated.

This is based on a WordPress Blog, which seems to be hosted locally. There are 527 of 544

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several contributors to the Blog (including HeatherD, Miggie, Chris, Fionna and Phil). Some observations on this Blog: Not many comments from the user community seem to have been posted yet, although there was clearly one satisfied user: thanks for the support in using the harvard system it was useful and helpped me well i am beginning to understand it now and will put it into practices as much as i can thanx alot Only two categories for posts have been used: Current Assignments and General. The WordPress widgets used in the sidebar are Archives (which date back to December 2005, although the Blog seems to have been actively used since September 2006); Categories; Events; Useful Links and Meta. I am also aware of Univ of Bath Library Science News (which only covers the Faculty of Science). And quick Googling finds: The ILS Matters Blog at the University of Worcester (a well-established WordPress Blog with over 120 postings since September 2005) University of Liverpool E-Resources News and Trials The RefWorks Blog at the University of Warwick The Social Science Team Blog at the University of Leeds (which runs on a locally-installed copy of Elgg) The University of Glamorgan LRC (Learning Resources Centre) Blog. At this early stage in the development of library Blogs it does seem to be that it would be very timely to survey the approaches which are being taken to providing Blogs and to observe patterns of usage. A useful project for a Library and Information Science student perhaps? If you provide a Library Blog within the UK community, or are aware of links to such resources, perhaps you could prvide details in a comment to this posting. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 17 Comments »

Being Blogged At An Event December 4, 2006 On Friday 1st December 2006 I gave a talk on “Web 2.0: An Introduction” at a seminar organised by the CILIP UCRG (Yorkshire and Humberside Region). As I’ve been doing for the past couple of years my opening slide gave explicit permission for attendees to exploit networked application during my talk - for example, to Blog my talk, to discuss the talk with others using chat software or to record or broadcast my talk.

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I was pleased when Sheila Webber, during her talk on Blogs and Blogging in Libraries, brought up her Blog page which showed that she had Blogged my talk. More accurately, I should probably say that I was pleased but slightly apprehensive! Sheila, however, said nothing in her Blog for me to be apprehensive about - but it did make me wonder about the etiquette of Blogging at events, and how possible conflicts should be addressed. From one point of view, if a WiFi network is available during an event, an attendee with a laptop or PDA would be inclined to make use of it to make notes, to follow up examples given during a talk, etc. To make notes on a Blog is, surely, not fundamentally different from making notes in MS Word. But I suspect from a legal perspective there may be differences. More importantly, though, is whether there will be felt to be differences from a cultural perspective. How will lecturers feel about students Blogging their talk? Will this become a frowned-upon activity, similar to using a mobile phone at an event? I think I will continue to explicitly encourage opennness by stating my views on the title slide of my talks. Is this something others seek to emulate, or am I in a minority? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Events | Edit 5 Comments »

Exploiting Networked Applications At Events November 27, 2006 As described in a previous post, the Stargazing Conference 2006 on Social Technologies - Pioneer to Mainstream exploited the WiFi network available in the room and also made the talks available to remote users through use of videostreaming and allowed the remote participants to join in with the discussions using a chat facility. As described in Using Networked Technologies To Support Conferences (Kelly, 529 of 544

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B., Tonkin, E. and Shabajee, P. EUNIS 2005 Conference Proceedings (CD ROM) UKOLN has been an early pioneer in exploiting networked technologies to support events. More recently we have published a series of documents which aim to provide practical advice on best practices for supporting use of networked applications at events, including briefing documents on Guidelines For Exploiting WiFi Networks At Events, Exploiting Networked Applications At Events, Guide To The Use Of Wikis At Events and Use Of Social Tagging Services At Events. As the advice provided in these documents does not seem to be widely known, I thought I’d include the details of the Exploiting Networked Applications At Events briefing document in this post. Your feedback on this would be appreciated. Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit 3 Comments »

Let’s Not Forget RSS Statistics November 27, 2006 Pete Johnston, Eduserv Foundation, emailed me about the statistics shown in a previous post. To clarify things, the graph showed the number of visits to the HTML pages on the WordPress Web site. It does not include views of the RSS feed from people who make use of RSS viewers (and many of the initial readers of the Blog are likely to be those who make use of such tools). The statistics for the feed views is shown below.

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Star Gazing Conference 2006 530 of 544

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November 26, 2006 How should an institution seek to address deployment strategies for Web 2.0? One approach would be to hold a high-profile event, with talks from some of the early adopters of Web 2.0 technologies and senior managers in the institution, external speakers to provide insights from outsiders (who will have a disinterested view of local power struggles and political intrigue!) and, if you are feeling brave, perhaps including views from the student contingent. And as well as talking about Web 2.0 technologies, you might even seek to embed the technologies in the event, with remote participants, chat facilities and perhaps even a Podcast. Sounds good, but difficult to achieve in practice? This is what the University of Edinburgh did recently, with myself as one of the external speakers. Read on for my thoughts on an excellent event, which I would encourage other institutions to emulate. Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog, Events, IWMC | Edit 3 Comments »

Word of Blog - 3 weeks later November 26, 2006 In a previous posting I described how I had launched this Blog on 1 November 2006 (ten years since I had started work at UKOLN). As an experiment in seeing how Blogs become noticed and attract traffic I deliberately avoided announcing the Blog on mailing lists and, instead, just claimed my Blog on Technorati. Details of the findings to date are given below. Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 5 Comments »

Web 2.0: What Is It, How Can I Use It, How Can I Deploy It? November 23, 2006 On Wednesday 22 November 2006 I gave a talk on “Web 2.0: What Is It, How Can I Use It, How Can I Deploy It?” at an ASLIB Engineering Group seminar on Engineering information: today and tomorrow . This was a very successful event, and provided further evidence that academic librarians are aware of a change in the Web environment and that this will necessitate a change in their culture. Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

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Web 2.0 Hip or Hype: New Ways to Engage Users with Content? November 23, 2006 On Tuesday 21 November 2006 I gave a talk on “Web 2.0: What Does It Mean For The Publisher?” at an ALPSP Technical Update Meeting on “Web 2.0 Hip or Hype: New Ways to Engage Users with Content?”. A summary and a response to the feedback we received follows. Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit No Comments »

Reporting back from discussion groups November 20, 2006 Over the past two years at venues with WiFi networks I’ve tried to make use of Wikis to support note-taking in discussion groups. This means that the discussions and recommendations can be disseminated across all participants and with the wider community - no need for the participants to frantically scribble down notes, or for my to take home flip charts, knowing that I’ll never get around to freeing the notes from the non-interoperable real world and transferring them to a digital environment. However the feedback from several events shows that the final report back session seldom seems to work. The criticism seems to have been applied to last year’s CETIS conference, as this year the required the workshop session facilitators to sum up the discussion groups deliberations in one sentence or a single image, cartoon or equivalent. This seemed to work well - and the notes are always available for browsing on the conference Wiki. I’ve suggested to my colleague Marieke Guy that we take a similar approach at IWMW 2007. Anyone reading this posting who plans on attending next year’s institutional Web management might like to give some thoughts on ways of summarising discussions in an informative, amusing or innovative way (a poem, a lyric, a movie tie-in, a mash-up, a videoclip, …). Who knows, we may even provide a prize. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, IWMC, Wikis | Edit 1 Comment »

CETIS 2006 Conference - Part II November 20, 2006 As described in my previous post, I attended the CETIS 2006 Conference on 14-15 November 2006. I have already reviewed the plenary talks. Here I review the two workshop sessions I attended: part 1 of the Future of education media session and the Thinking the unthinkable session, which I co-facilitated. Read the rest of this entry » 532 of 544

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CETIS 2006 Conference - Part I November 19, 2006 I attended the JISC CETIS Conference 2006, which was held at The Lowry, Salford Quays on 14-15 November 2006. I found this to be a very stimulating event, which led to much discussions at the event and subsequently. A brief summary of the plenary talks is given below. Details of the workshop sessions are given in the following post. Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events | Edit No Comments »

Embedding YouTube Video Clips In Blogs November 19, 2006 I’ve noticed that John Dale, University of Warwick has published a Blog posting which contains an embedded video clip from YouTube. The video clip shows Billy Idol dreaming of a white christmas. I would agree with John when he says “is there something terribly, terribly wrong about this?”. But this posting also caused me to reflect on how we (professionals in the HE sector) should engage with the legal minefield of mashups (I’m assuming this music video is copyrighted material). I had similar thoughts recently when I read Michael Stephens’ TameThe Web Blog in which he posted an article which contains details of an excellent video clip - a staff development resources which illustrates how busy a public library can be, using a speeded up video of St. Joseph County Public Library (where Michael used to work). The video clip uses “Ray of Life” by Madonna as a sound track. Interestingly Michael’s link to his original posting is now broken, although the clip is still available on YouTube. The issues these two examples raise for me are: Embedding content from third party Web sites Embedding content for which copyright ownership and permission for reuse is not clear The persistence (in the short term and the longer term) of such data and the integrity of the service which hosts the embedded content (i.e. the Blog posting with the embedded video clip, in this case). The ethics of doing this, in light of the issues given above. The dangers of being over-cautious. I’m inclined to applaud John and Michael in their risk-taking. It seems to me that the sector has shown in willingness to take similar risks in the past e.g. installing caches, despite the fact that they infringe copyright, and ‘deep-linking’, when the legal implications had been been clarified. To a certain extent, the risk-taking 533 of 544

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can lead to establishing a new concensus which can help to develop and refine mainstream orthodoxies which nay be needed for the information age. Such experimentation may also lead to new business models being developed with new sets of relationships being forged between copyright owners, service providers, content providers and end users. It has been argued, for example, that mashups (perhaps like the Ray Of Light video clip) can help expose content to new audiences or that fees for use of such content could be paid by the service provider rather than the content author (i.e. as the popularity of the St. Joseph County Public Library video generates traffic to the YouTubes Web site, a portion of the income received by YouTubes on their Web sites from the advertising revenue can be used to pay the royalty fee to Madonna’s record label). End result: popular video mashup produced by St. Joseph County Public Library and viewed by many satisfied users (as can be seen from many of the comments on the YouTubes Web site) and additional advertising revenue for YouTubes, a portion of which goes to the record label. Benefits for all of the players? This still leaves open the issue of the long term integrety of mash-up service. I’ll give some thoughts on this in a future posting. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 3 Comments »

Risk Assessment For Use Of Third Party Web 2.0 Services November 17, 2006 This posting contains the content of the “Risk Assessment For Use Of Third Party Web 2.0 Services” QA Focus briefing document. It has been posted here in order to explore the use of a Blog to receive feedback on a document, as described in my previous posting on “Blogs - Suitable For Reports“. The briefing document was the initial attempt at providing advice for organisations considering making use of third party Web sites. I’d like to build on this initial work, so comments on the advice, suggestions on other approaches and details of any experiences people have had working in this area would be welcome. Read the rest of this entry » Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in IWMC, Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

Blogs - suitable for reports? November 17, 2006 A recent Technorati search for JISC (which, incidentally, included a sponsored link suggesting that I search for JISC on eBay!) led me to a JISC-funded report on “the use of learning technologies in delivering art and design courses to HE students within an FE environment“. The study was available using Blogging software, rather, than as one might 534 of 544

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normally expect, in PDF and possible static HTML. This approach was clearly described as an experiment: The study is delivered as an interactive website based around a wordpress blog, the blog allows and encourages feedback and comments - at the end of each section feel free to leave any comments you may have, however there is a system of moderation of all comments that means they may not show up immediately. Seeing this has made me reflect on the possible benefits (and possible weaknesses) of using Blogging software in this way - and also on other ways in which Blogs can be used. Obvious benefits include: The WordPress software provides comments as a standard. The software provdies ‘permalinks’ for the individual sections. RSS feeds are provided as standard. Possible limitations include: Difficulties in obtaining a simple printout of the entire report Printouts may not be designed for reading (i.e. Blog navigational features may be included). The software may not support HTML and CSS standards (although this does not seem to be a significant problem in this case). The URI structure may be imposed by the software and it may not be possible to manage preferred best practices. The URI structure may impose a flat structure, which makes it difficult to exploit traditional hierarchical structures (e.g. select a directory for use by an off-line browser). Users may chose not to make use of the annotation features, calling the use of this approach into question. In this particular case, the experimental approach has been clearly identified, and I hope the project gains useful feedback. In the meantime I’ll try and give some thoughts to ways in which Blogs may be used other than providing a personal set of opinions and thoughts, organised in a diary fashion. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 4 Comments »

Web 2.0: How Should IT Services and the Library Respond? November 12, 2006 I’ve been invited to facilitate a meeting on Thursday16 Nov 2006 on “Web 2.0: How Should IT Services and the Library Respond?“which is being hosted IT Service managers in East Midlands Universities. As well as the IT Service contingent, a number of library and e-learning staff have been invited. I’ve prepared some materials, but I’m also going to suggest that there’s a need 535 of 544

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for such staff to engage with use of Web 2.0 services and to participate in social networks. I’d appreciate feedback and suggestions from readers of this postiong who have been through the process of embedding Web 2.0 services. It would be great to have some suggestions which I could show at the meeting. I’ll post a report on the meeting. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit 3 Comments »

LibraryThing November 12, 2006 Michael Webb has recently posted an article on LibraryThing. I have also recently signed up for this service and catlogues about 100 of my (many!) books. The interface is very slick, and I particularly appreciate its thriving community, as can be seem by the statistics page. Initially I started to use it to catalogue my novels. However it has occured to me that this might be a useful service for cataloguing books in small departments (like UKOLN, perhaps). This might provide a simple way of getting departments started in exploring use of a Web 2.0 service. And, if you are worried about potential loss of your data, there is an export function. Technorai tags: librarything” Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Web2.0 | Edit 1 Comment »

“Seek forgiveness, not permission” November 12, 2006 As described in Tom Roper’s Blog, the main theme of the ILI 2006 conference was Web 2.0. I spoke to a number of people who would like to deploy services such as Blogs and Wikis to support their user community, but encountered inertia and resistance within their organisation. It may have been Michael Stephens who proposed an approach based on “seek forgiveness, not permission”, suggesting that it may be better to take a bottom-up approach to such services, rather than wait for approval from on-high, which may take time in slow-moving, conservative organisations. And it seems that this phrase was also popular at the Internet Librarian conference two weeks later. This approach is nothing new, of course: the Web became popular within the University sector in 1993-4 due, in part, to the innovations of researchers in academic departments, with central services within institutions often being committed to either proprietary CWISs (Campus Wide Information Systems) or Gopher . An example of this approach can be seen in the Library at the University of 536 of 544

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Bath, where Kara Jones has set up not only a Bath Library Science News Blog and a Wiki for discussin and planning a Podcast service for the library. An advantage of this approach is that the intended user community for the applications will be better informed of not only the technical requirements, but also issues such as usability, functional requirements and training implications. Clearly there are also limitations with this approach. If things go wrong, there may be a need to seek forgiveness! What is the preferred approach - leadership set by central service departments, as described in my previous post, or a bottom-up approach? Or is there a third way? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 2 Comments »

Blogs published by IT Service Departments November 12, 2006 I’ve added to my Blogroll links to two Blogs published by senior managers of IT Service department in UK higher educational institutions. These are by: John Dale, University of Warwick Michael Webb, Newport College I have met both John and Michael. John, head of development at e-lab, University of Warwick, gave a talk on “Being Agile” at a UKOLN workshop on Initiatives & Innovation: Managing Disruptive Technologies. And Michael gave a plenary talk on “Developing a Web 2.0 Strategy” at the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2006 (where, incidentally, Michael mentioned that Newport College was inspired to develop a Web 2.0 strategy following my talk on “What Can Internet Technologies Offer?” at the UCISA Management Conference in 2004). John and Michael have successful Blogs, covering both strategic issues and more technical ones, with the occasional reflections on a wider range of issues. John’s Blog is also very successful in providing an area for discussion and debate with his user community. As can be seen, John is willing to share examples of best practices and invite encourage others to provide other examples, which John might not be aware of. I think this example provides an illustration of a deployment strategy for Web 2.0 technologies such as Blogs which could usefully be adopted more widely with the community: senior managers setting a lead and demonstrating examples of best practices, such as engaging with the user community. Are there other examples of Blogs published by other senior managers in IT Service departments? Or, indeed, within Libraries? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 2 Comments »

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November 12, 2006 In my “I’ve a Blog - What Next?” posting I described how I had created this Blog and included it in Technorati. I deliberately did not post details of the Blog on any email lists or inform anyone in order to investigate how the Technorati entry, followed by word of mouth (and, do we have an expression for this, word of Blog) would generate traffic. The statistics for the Blog on 11 November 2006, 5 days after the first visits to the Blog, are shown. So what has happened so far? A couple of people (whom I didn’t know) commented on the “I’ve a Blog - What Next?” posting. So there’s a clear advantage in posting an open question and inviting feedback and help. My former colleague Paul Miller then spotted the Blog (possibly through Technorati? - Paul, can you tell me how you found it?) and emailed Michael Stevens and Phil Bradley, my fellow speakers at the ILI 2006 conference. Phil has commented on this Blog about my Blog as well as (as commented on in an earlier post) Michael in his Tame The Web Blog. Both of these are high profile Blogs - so it will me interesting to see how these posting affect the traffic to my Blog. Incidentally the Blog is now number two in a Technorati search for ‘UKOLN’, as shown below.

I’ll report on the statistics and comment on possible reasons for changes to the usage pattern in the future postings. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 9 Comments » 538 of 544

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Vonage V-Phone - phone on a stick November 11, 2006 I’ve read a number of articles recently about the Vonage V-Phone - a VoIP phone application which runs from a memory stick. The device costs £19.99 with a £7.99 monthly rate which gives free local and national calls to landlines. Some thoughts: It runs directly from the memory stick (no software installed on the PC). So you should be able to run it from any PC (but not Apple Macinitosh) with a USB. This has the opotential of freeing the user from the limitations of the IT Services provided. Or, from another perspective, portable applications like this habe the potential to degrade the nework by letting users runpotentailly diruptive applications. This is the first device of its type which I’ve seen. We can expect the price to go down as competitors relase similar products (or, alternatively, the feature set may become richer) . I have a momory stick which runs Portable Firefox and Portable Miranda. I’ve used Portable FireFox on a ouple of occasions, when only IE was available. We are seeing a growth in the number of portable applications. In the fuure will the student carry their preferred applications around on their memory stick (as a key ring, or bracelet, perhaps) leaving the institution to provide the monitor, keyboard and operating system environment? Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Gadgets | Edit No Comments »

Slideshare.net - a repository for slides November 9, 2006 I’ve recently been evaluating the Slideshare service. Andy Powell has recently commented on Slideshare, pointing out its ease-of-use, community-based approach and trusting the nusers (in contrast with digital repository services developed in the UK). Andy’s comments have been picked up by Stephen Downes, who has added some of his slides to Slideshare. I’ve also been uploading a number of my slides. I’ve also embedded some of the slides into pages on my Web site (as has Lorcan Dempsey, another of my former colleagues). So what are the benefits of this? Is it just the latest Web 2.0 fad, or does it have the provide to provide real benefits? As an prolific PowerPoint presenter (having given about 250 presentations in my ten years at UKOLN) I am very interested in exploring if it do anything useful for me. My thoughts so far (after a couple of weeks of using Slideshare):

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It’s good for finding slides on the same topic as yours. It can help my find new & interesting stuff - but I can also find myself sometimes surprised by the simple approach by companies from whom I’d expect a more sophisticated understanding (NOTE after pointing out the flaws in this presentation, I subsequently discovered that the presentaionhad ben removed - BK, 28022007). To be fair, though, in this case I don’t have the context of how this slide was used or the target audience. The comments feature seems to have real potential. I’ve already started to receive a few comments, and I’ve notice how this feature can also be used as a teaching aid. It’s good to get greater exposure to my slides. As Paul Miller has said, get the data out to where the users are; don’t wait for the users to come to you. The statistics feature is also useful. As I described recently Slideshare can be used to gickly upload slides for use on-the-fly at events (in my case, when chairing a session ata Wiki workshop I had 2 minutes before the start of a talk to upload the speaker’s slides, to enable a remote user to view the slides while listening to the speaker over Skype. No time for FTPing and VPNing - but no problem in clicking the upload button and stating the URL when my introduction to the speaker was over). As mentioned, I have also embedded the slides on pages on my Web site. I’m not convinced that I’ll want to do this on a regular basis, but it does demonstrate the potential - and perhaps those who may have reservations about being seen to make use of a third party service might approceiate this feature. Perhaps the most important benefit of services such as Slideshare for those involved in Web development work is to gain a better understanding of the positive (and negative) aspects of such services, and to feed this into local development work. So I’d recommend use of Slideshare by anyone involved in developing institutional repositories - if you are going to develop similar services in-house, you’ll need to be able to compete with such services, otherwise you may find your users have no interest i using your service. Anyone else using Slideshare - or have any thoughts on its strengths and weaknesses? Technorati Tags: Slideshare Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in IWMC, Web2.0 | Edit 2 Comments »

On-the-fly use of networks at events November 6, 2006 At the “Accessibility Summit II” meeting one of the invited participants failed to arrive at York due to difficulties with the trains at Bournemouth and Southampton. On hearing this, my initial response was “Is she a Skyper?” On hearing that she did have a Skype ID, we set about setting up a teleconference using Skype. As the PC used for the presentations was also running the Skype software we needed to use another PC to provide a chat facility. We made use of Gabbly, associated with a specific URL (to avoid chatters on the Gabbly home page. This on-the-fly use of technologies at an event worked well - and 540 of 544

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something I would advise others to be able to deploy if needed. An additional approach I would suggest (and something I did at the “Exploiting The Potential Of Wikis” workshop) is to be able to easily upload PowerPoint files (if they are being used) to allow the remote participant to view them. I have used Slideshare.net to do this, which seems to work well. It was particularly appropriate to do this at the Accessibility Summit, as it provided a good example of on-the-fly / just-in-time accessibility for a user who couldn’t otherwise hear and take part in the discussions or view the presentations. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Accessibility, Events | Edit 1 Comment »

I’ve a Blog - What Next? November 6, 2006 I’ve set up my Blog. So how do I make it visible in the Blogosphere? My initial approach is to sign up to Technorati and claimed this Blog. I’ll post this article and see what happens to the Blog’s visibility in Technorati. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Blog | Edit 9 Comments »

Exploiting networked applications at events November 6, 2006 We are now seeing many events taking place at venues with WiFi capabilities and many participants (especially at many of the events I attend which are aimed at Web developer and Web user communties) arriving at such venues with laptops, PDAs or other networked devices (or non-networked devices, such as iPods, digital cameras, mobile phones, etc. which can be used to capure content at events and subsequently uploaded to Web services). Initially we tended to find that laptops were used for reading email or Web surfing. This can be a problem for speakers and event organisers, as it can mean that participants aren’t paying full attention to the talks and discussions. Rather than banning use of networked devices, I have felt there’s a need to be pro-active in providing an environment in which the technologies can be used to enrich the event. Some of the ways I have tried to do this at events I have been involved in organising include:

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Use of a Wiki to support note-taking during discussion groups, and using the Wiki in reporting back. This has been very successful since I started doing this at the “Beyond Email - Strategies For Collaborative Working In The 21st Century” workshop in February 2004 (back then I used Wikalong, and you can see the notes from the discussion group sessions 03/10/2008 14:51

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on Instant Messaging, news feeds, Blogs and Wikis). A chat facility - I’ve made use of MSN Messenger, Jabber and IRC. This has seemed to be appreciated, but by a smaller group. The most interesting occasion was when IRC was being used at the IWMW 2005 event on 7/7 (the day of the London bombings). A small group of about 15 IRCers were aware of the news, whilst others in the 150+ audience were hearing about it if they were sat close to an IRCer. The use of such networked technologies in an environment in which we are more acutely aware of potential disasters (terrorism, weather, traffic, etc.) or inconveniences (e.g. delayed trains) is something we should give more thought to, and which I’ll return to at a later date. Social bookmarking: I now tend to bookmark resources I talk about in my presentations in del.icio.us, to make it easier for people to access resources I mention (and also to add their own). Tagging: a strength of UKOLN is its expertise in metadata. So I try to use a scalable approach to defining a tag for an event. Use of this tag is encouraged in social bookmarking, photo and other resource sharing services, Blogs and similar services. Use of the iwmw2006 tag, for example, can help find the resources related to the IWMW 2006 event, as can be seen using Technorati. Some of the initial work in this area was described in “Using Networked Technologies To Support Conferences” paper by myself, Emma Tonkin and Paul Shabajee in a paper given at the EUNIS 2005 Conference. I need to revisit this work, though, in particular looking at embedding this approach within events and the context of use (not everybody will want to do this). Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Edit 3 Comments »

Scope, Rationale and Policy for this Blog November 6, 2006 This Blog will focus on matters related to the Web, in particular Web standards, innovations and areas related to Web 2.0. As a Web adviser to the UK higher and further education communities and the cultural heritage sector, there is a clear need for me to be better informed on Blog issues (both technological and non-technological areas). In addition a Blog can help me to better inform and engage with my communities. Use of a Blog will also support my professional development (as was reported in Tom Roper’s Blog it was rather embarrassing to be singled out as the only non-Blogging speaker in a Web 2.0 session at the ILI 2006 conference!). Fortunately my organisation has a proactive policy on staff development. This places a responsibility on me to use this Blog in a professional manner. So I will adopt the policy which my former colleague Paul Miller told me is Talis’s policy on its Panlibus Blog: “Don’t be stupid!”. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit No Comments »

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November 6, 2006 On Friday 3 November 2006 UKOLN held a workshop entitled “Exploiting The Potential Of Wikis” at Austin Court, Birmingham. I put together the programme, chaired the morning session and gave a talk in the afternoon. My co-chair, Steven Warburton of King’s College London gave the opening talk in the morning and chaired the afternoon session. The other speakers were Professor Henry Rzepa (Imperial College) and Phil Wilson (University of Bath). All of the speakers slides are available online. There were about 80 participants at the workshop and the feedback seemed to be very positive. We’ll be analysing the feedback shortly and I’ll post a summary of the significant comments. In the meantime you can access the workshop Wiki, which was hosted on the Wetpaint Wiki service. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in Events, Wikis | Edit 1 Comment »

Welcome to the UK Web Focus Blog November 1, 2006 Welcome to the UK Web Focus Blog. As my tenth anniversary as UK Web Focus at UKOLN arrives, it is clearly time for me to set up a Blog to support my role as a Web adviser to the UK higher and further education and cultural heritage sectors. This Blog will give my thoughts, views, opinions, etc. on matters related to the Web. Your feedback is welcomed. Brian Kelly, UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, UK. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) Filed in General | Edit 4 Comments »

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