ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 1 of 616
Skip to content Skip past content
ukwebfocus-backup
Forecasting Trends Backwards
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
“Forecasting for the Future” was the title of an article published in the recent issues of the JANET Newsletter
(No. 9, September 2009 – PDF format). It won’t surprise people that the byline for the article was positive about
the future: “Outlook – sunny, with a good chance of videoconferencing“.
To be fair, the byline was a play on words of the topic of the article, which described use of the JANET Video
Conference Service (JVCS) at the Met Office. The article concluded with a quotation from Tim Marshall, JANET
CEO:
“The Met Office videoconference programmes are an excellent example of how the JANET Videoconference
Service makes sense not only in terms of delivering excellent educational content and cost savings, but also
through its real contribution in reducing our customers’ carbon footprint“.
Such optimistic views of the benefits which technologies promise to deliver are, however, being criticised. In a
post entitled Postdigital: Escaping the Kingdom of the New? Dave White introduced the ‘postdigital’ concept, a
topic he revisited after co-facilitating (with Rich Hall) a post-digital F-ALT session on the opening night of this
year’s ALT-C conference. As Dave described in that post, in the session (which I attended) the participants were
invited to debate a series of statements which were designed to provoke post-digital thoughts, including:
• Learning technologists are obsessed with technology more than learning, which is why elearning will
never make the mainstream.
• We are purveyors of the worst kind of spin: ‘This new thing will solve all your problems’.
But how might we go about challenging such ‘technological determinism’ (which, of course, goes beyond the e-
learning community)? Inspired by the F-ALT session and further brief discussions with Dave, an approach I took
in a panel session on “Top Technology Trends for Libraries and Information Professionals” at the recent ILI 2009
conference was to take as the starting point the optimism felt towards various of today’s technologies and to travel
backwards in time, and attempt to give plausible reasons why today’s exciting technologies will not be around in
the past.
This was an idea I got from a BBC 4 programme back in 2007 which I described in a post on “The History Of
The Web Backwards“. And following the postdigital discussions it occurred to be that the approach might be
worth revisiting.
The night prior to the panel session I described the idea to a number of fellow speakers including Tony Hirst and
Peter Murray-Rust. Tony was full of enthusiasm for the idea and, as he often does, came up with new ways in
which we could use this approach (e.g. looking at a variety of expected future trends and how we got there from
the present). And a few days later Tony alerted me of a YouTube video which took a similar approach:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hds3jvjZY-Y]
After I had given my brief presentation, which I had published shortly before the conference, Peter Murray-Rust
did wonder whether such Radio 4 humour would be understood by an international audience. And I did notice
that some of the tweets about my talk had failed to pick up on the humourous intent of my presentation. To
summarise what I said (or meant to say) with respect to the demise of Twitter:
Today many people are exploiting the potential of Twitter to help them find resources they are looking for.
Indeed last night I tweeted that I was looking for a good pub to go to and my Twitter community helped me in
my information searching task – and because they knew me, they knew to suggest a good real ale pub and not
a trendy wine bar. An Ask-A-Librarian service wouldn’t be aware of my personal preferences.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 2 of 616
But, as we travel through time backwards, we need to ask “Why did twitter die off in the early part of the
century?”
The answer is obvious. Twitter doesn’t scale. As more and more people asked such questions, the
Twitterverse became clogged. “It’s similar to email spam” people felt and started to cancel subscriptions to
the service.
And of course although I can benefit, as an early adopter, from having large numbers of followers, many
people will have only small Twitter communities, and so won’t gain the benefits which I have. So Twitter is
inherently undemocratic and professions such as Librarians, with their commitments to social inclusion,
were amongst the first to move away from such undemocratic technologies.
The demise of Twitter was eventually accepted by all. And in the new environment of the latter part of the
twentieth century, people met in pubs with their real friends. The term ‘virtual friends’ was felt to be on par
with ‘imaginary friends’ – something you grow out of. And to mention the ‘followers’ you had would result in
strange looks and suggestions that you should seek psychiatric help!
Funnily enough, although I am aware of reasons why people are sceptical about Twitter and why some Twitter
fans feel that the service may eventually be replaced by an open source or distributed alternative service, it
wasn’t until I gave the talk that I used the “Twitter is inherently undemocratic” argument. So using the device of
seeking to give persuasive reasons why technologies disappeared as we travel backwards though time did give me
some fresh insights.
Why then, did video-conferencing, which had such a bright future in 2009 die out?
Although popular at the high of the envirornmental concerns in the early years of the twenty-first century
subsequent research by sociologists revealed that academic and librarians preferred face-to-face meetings.
Further research revealed that most conference participants can’t remember the details of talks given at
conferences, which made people question why one should use networked technologies to access talks which
are quickly forgotten. Rather than computer networking, people networking (including plotting, politicking
and such skull-duggery – as well as opportunities for sexual relationships) were found to be the real reason
why people travel to conferences, although for some strange reasons, such issues were not identified in the
user needs gathering exercise.
Might this have an element of truth?
Filed in General, Twitter | Tagged ili2009 | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (1)
Viewing a WordPress Blog on a Mobile Device
Monday, October 26th, 2009
WordPress, in a post somewhat confusing entitled “The Hero Is In Your Pocket“, have recently announced that
they have “launch[ed] a couple of mobile themes that will automatically be displayed when your blog is accessed
with a compatible mobile phone“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 3 of 616
The new theme is now enabled by default on blogs, such as this
one, which are hosted by Wordpress.com. And yes it does make blog posts much easier to read as the mobile
interface has a less cluttered interface which, although unlikely to provide significant usability problems on a
typical desktop computer, can be irritating on a mobile device, such as a iPhone or iPod Touch (which was used
to capture the image of the blog which is illustrated).
Best of all is that this enhanced interface has been provided without the need for me to do anything – no software
to be upgraded or new themes to install.
Filed in Blog, Gadgets | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Opening Up Institutional Training Resources
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
I’m now back from a few day’s at Aberystwyth University, where I had been invited to speak at the launch of
the HEFCW-funded Gwella project and to give a seminar on “The ‘Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World’
Report: Implications For IT Service Departments“.
As this involved a long train journey I also sought to maximise my time in Aberystwth by participating in a
regional meeting for Welsh Web managers. During the brief summaries of areas of work which the members of
institutional Web management teams had been involved in I noticed that a number of the institutions were
involved in the delivery of training in use of Terminal 4’s Content Management System. But why, I wonder, are
institutions still developing their own training resources? As the meeting took place at the start of the first
international Open Access Week I did wonder whether an institutional move towards (or committment to) open
access for research publications and research data shouldn’t be complemented by an institutional committment to
providing Creative Commons licence for institutional training resources. And shouldn’t Information Services
departments and Libraries be taking a leading role in this area? After all it is staff in the IT Services departments
who will be well-placed to develop the technical infrastructure to provide access to such resources and Library
staff who can advise on access mechanisms, use of metadata, etc.
This suggestion is not new – back in 2005 I presented a paper on “Let’s Free IT Support Materials!“ at
the EUNIS 2005 conference. But it is probably timely to revisit this subject, not only due to links with the Open
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 4 of 616
Access Week but also the related interests in open access for learning resources, as described recently in an article
entitled “Get it out in the open” published in The Times Higher.
Now I’m not saying that the availability of open training resources, which might include podcasts and screencasts
as well as more conventional training resources, will necessarily always be used – perhaps trainers and user
support staff will continue to prefer to use resources they have developed themselves. But if that is the case, then
what is the point of services such as JORUM and funding initiatives such as JISC’s Open Educational Resources
programme? Wouldn’t it be beneficial to the community in general if more people were involved in such debates?
Filed in openness | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (8)
RSS Feeds For Welsh University Web Sites
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
RSS Usage On Welsh University Home Pages
Last year I published a blog post which provided a summary of usage of RSS feeds on Scottish University home
pages. The survey was carried out in July 2008, shortly before the IWMW 2008 event was held in Aberdeen. The
aim was to collate evidence on the extent to which best practices in institutional use of RSS were being
implemented in Scotland and to facilitate discussions on reasons why best practices may not always be being
implemented and ways of addressing such barriers.
As I will be visiting Wales shortly I thought it would be useful to carry out a similar survey of the 12 Welsh
Universities.
The Findings
The findings, based on a manual survey carried out on 21 August 2009, are given in the following table.
No. of RSS
Institution Comments
Feeds
1 Aberystwyth University 0
2 Bangor University 0
3 Cardiff University 0
4 Glamorgan University 0
RSS feeds for news, sports news, Careers centre news
5 Glyndŵr University 4
and Student news.
Royal Welsh College of Music &
6 0
Drama
7 Swansea University 0
8 Swansea Metropolitan University 1 RSS feed for news.
9 Trinity University College 0
University of Wales Institute,
10 0
Cardiff
11 University of Wales, Lampeter 0
12 University of Wales, Newport 0
It appears that only two Welsh institutions are providing RSS feeds which can be found from the home page
(16.67%).
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 5 of 616
Revisiting Community Surveys
Last year’s blog post on RSS usage on Scottish University home pages discussed possible reasons for the low
levels of usage, and I don’t intend to revisit that discussion as I suspect the same reasons will be valid for both
communities. I should also add that Tony Hirst has developed a tool for dynamic discovery of auto-detectable
RSS feeds for all UK University home pages, which currently reports a total of 48 out of 133 institutions
(36.1%).
So rather than discussing the specific example of RSS feeds across a sector, I’m more interested in ways in which
a sector (or interested and motivated individuals within a sector) can provide similar (factual) surveys which can
help to support discussions and, perhaps, inform policies.
Liz Azyan has compiled lists of UK Universities usage of YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and MySpace. But, as can be
seen from the list for MySpace usage, it is not always easy to provide complete coverage and there are likely to be
difficulties in ongoing maintenance of such resources. Would it be useful, I wonder, for the Welsh Web
management community to set up a wiki to keep a record of trends within their own sector? This is something I
will explore at a meeting of Welsh institutional Web managers at the University of Aberystwyth on Monday.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
Top Technology Trends – For The Twentieth Century!
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
Top Technology Trends for Libraries and Information Professionals
Later this week I’m taking part in the Internet Librarian International (ILI) Conference in London. In addition to
running a workshop and giving a talk on standards I’ll also be taking part in the closing panel session on Top
Technology Trends for Libraries and Information Professionals.
What should I say, I wonder? Should I talk about the importance of social tools for resource discovery, using
Twitter as an example of a tool whose success was unexpected. Or shall I try and quickly gain an understanding
on Google Wave and talk about its potential relevance to information professionals.
But doesn’t this approach simply repeat the technological determinism which the postdigital advocates point out
has continually failed to deliver on its promises.
Instead I’m intending to take today’s environment as the starting point and explore how technological
developments promise to take us towards a better world – in the 1990s.
Today’s Networked Environment
How can we summarise today’s environment, which provides the starting point for a journey towards the past?
Let’s mention a few examples.
Twitter: It might be appropriate for event aimed at the Library community to begin by talking about the
success of Twitter, not only for providing community support but as a mechanism for resource sharing and
resource discovery – yes, Twitter now seems to be a very effective tools for sharing links with one’s friends
and colleagues.
Lightweight development: We now hear developers being critical of large-scale funding initiatives,
preferring instead small amounts of funding to support rapid development work. The JISC’s recent Rapid
Innovation Grants provided an example of a funding body recognising the benefits of such an approach.
Barcamps, Bathcamps, Hackfests, …: Proponents of light-weight development approaches also feel that
meeting up with like-minded people, perhaps at weekends, can be a useful way of supporting one’s
professional activities (and in the case of the recent Bathcamp, the weekend away also involved camping!)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 6 of 616
Crowdsourcing: Examples such as the crowdsourcing of the digitisation of MP’s expenses claims, Galaxy
Zoo, reCaptcha and other examples provide further illustrations of today’s networked environment, in which
enthusiasts, who need not be developers, can achieve benefits which previously may not have been felt to be
achievable without significant expenditure.
There is, of course, a political and social context to this technical environment – and, especially, for those
working in the public sector, the context is the gloomy economic situation, an expectation that things will get
even worse and a likely change of government in the near future.
Looking Forward to the 1990s
Let’s assume that, due to a malfunctioning (time) portal, we, like Benjamin Button, find ourselves being taken
backwards in time, in our case towards the 1990s. How might the networked environment I have summarised
above develop? Here ares my predictions:
Twitter: The sceptics who argued that Twitter doesn’t have a sustainable business model will be proved
correct. The Twitter service will die and, despite an attempt by Facebook to provide a simple type of service
using its Status updates, the concept of ‘micro-blogging’ will disappear. The resulting productivity gains
will be instrumental in helping the Twittering nations to move out of the global recession.
Lightweight development: The limitations of lightweight development approaches and simple (some say
simplistic) formats such as RSS become apparent and, despite providing interesting exemplars, fail to
provide an infrastructure for serious significant development work. ‘Enterprise development’ becomes the
new ‘lightweight development’ and large-scale Content Management Systems become the popular with
organisations facing pressures from their peers to deploy such technologies.
Barcamps, Bathcamps, Hackfests, …: The growth in large-scale enterprise development environment
(accompanied by pressure from friends and families to achieve a more healthy work/life balance) brings to an
end the culture of the amateur hacker and events such as barcamps, bathcamps and hackfests.
Crowdsourcing: The importance of the professional in the development of high quality networked services
goes beyond the developer community. The failure of amateurs to provide the required levels of quality for
digitisation, metadata standards, etc. results in an appreciation of the merits of the professional. Librarians
and related information professionals become critical in the development of sustainable networked services.
Of course, as with many technological predictions, this vision of the 1990s is an optimistic one. Not only does the
demise of social networks lead to an emphasis on real-world friends and relationships, but the political and
economic environment will also see tremendous improvements – indeed I predict that in 10 years, or possibly 12
years time (say 1997), we will be very pleased with our political and economic situation and positive about the
benefits that the future will bring.
Postscript
This post was influenced by the post-digital session which Dave White facilitated and Rich Hall as part of the
fringe (#falt09) activities around the ALT-C 2009 conference. In a blog post about the session Dave White felt
that “After the fringe session I was even more convinced that the post-digital was a useful concept but that we
hadn’t found the right way of expressing it yet.”
John Maeda has described how “Recently I have had the sense that no matter what new digital territory may
arise, we end up where we first began – back in an infinite loop. My instinctive response to this personal
perception has been to proclaim a new effort to escape to the post digital . . . which I am certain lies in the past.”
Can we gain a better appreciation of our perhaps naive expectations of the benefits of technological developments
by, as John suggests, looking back into the past?
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 7 of 616
Twitter Event Hashtagging Strategies
Monday, October 5th, 2009
Background
In a recent post on the eFoundation’s blog Andy Powell wrote about “Flocking behaviour – why Twitter is for
starlings, not buzzards“. Based on the statistics I had provided for use of Twitter at the recent ALT C 2009
conference Andy picked up on the use of two tags (#altc2009 and #altc09) and pointed out that “if you don’t tweet
using the generally agreed tag you are effectively invisible to much of the conference audience“.
I agree – so there’s probably a need to agree on hashtagging strategies for events, which I’ll explore in this post.
And I’ll use this as an opportunity to consider what hashtag UKOLN should be using for next year’s Institutional
Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2010).
Issues To Consider
What are the issues to consider when selecting a hashtag for use at an event?
Being brief
The initial requirement is that as tweets are limited to 140 characters, hashtags should be brief in order to
maximise the amount of content that can be containing in a tweet about an event.
Avoiding problems with non-alpha-numeric characters
It may be felt desirable to avoid use of certain non-alphanumeric characters which may cause problems in
some Twitter clients. For example, the hashtag #clip2.0 was initially suggested for an event on the
relevance of Web 2.0 technologies for the CILIP organisation and CILIP members. However Twitter clients
seem to truncate hashtags containing a full stop, so the hashtag #cilip2 was used. Similar problems have
been observed with use of a dash (-) as illustrated in the display of a tweet in the TweetDeck client. In
addition there was a complaint that use of an underscore (_) in the #cilip_lams event caused usability
problems, especially on mobile devices. The advice would seem to be stick with alphanumeric characters in
hashtags.
Avoid numbers at the start of hashtags
Hashtags which begin with a number (e.g. #2009foo ) are believed to cause hyperlinking problems in some
clients.
Should you be consistent with other tagging services?
Although those who make intensive use of Twitter may feel that the first two points are all that need to be
considered when formulating a hashtag for an event, there may be an argument for being consistent with
recommendations for tags using in other environments such as other Flickr, YouTube, etc. These services
do not suffer for the length constraints imposed by Twitter and so can provide more flexibility. There may
be an argument for using a Twitter-safe hashtag in these other services, but what if these other services are
the more widely-used services (e.g. events with an established use of Flickr)?
Should the year be included?
Many of the events I’ve attended or followed on Twitter have included the year in the hashtag (e.g.
#iwmw2009, #altc2009 and #solo09) but some have not (#alpsp and #cilip_lams). Does the year have to be
included, especially as the tweets will be readily accessible via the Twitter search APIs for only a short
period? But might a decision to save space by omitting the year cause problems if the Twitter API changes
or other tools are used? And might this cause additional confusions with tags for which date encoding may
be useful.
One hashtag or several?
If there are multiple events associated with a main event (e.g. pre-conference workshops or fringe events)
you will need to consider whether to recommend use of the main event hashtag for these peripheral events
or to suggest an alternative hashtag.
Branding issues
There may be pressure to ensure that an event hasthtag provides the correct branding for the organising
bodies. The hashtag for the CILIP’s Umbrella 2009 conference, for example, was #cilipumbrella.
Multi-lingual issues
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 8 of 616
Welsh institutions may need to consider use of bilingual tashtags. Note, for example, that for the CILIP
Wales 2009 conference the conference hashtag was cilip-cymru09. I should add, however, that I havent any
experience of the implications of use of non Latin characters (ironically, as Im typing this sentence on a
Croatian keyboard and cant find the single quote character!)
Being memorable
Perhaps because I’m getting older I am finding it difficult to remember random strings of characters – so I
wouldn’t appreciate a a tag such as #xuj740n9 (having to re-authenticate a username and password with a
similar pattern can also be irritating). I found the hashtags used for the recent Oxford Social Media
Conference (#oxsmc09) and Science Online London (#solo09) events easy to remember as the conference
names themselves were memorable.
Being different
Having an event hashtag which could clashes with other hashtags is likely to lead to confusion.
Avoiding ambiguities in the characters
Many years ago I was an information officer and I was very aware of the need to avoid confusions between
characters such as 1 and i and o and 0 (in some fonts these many be indistinguishable). Note that this may
be very relevant for events held next year. The (fictitious) Input Output’s annual conference hashtag #io10
could be particularly confusing depending on the font used on your computer.
Being timely and promoting the hashtag effectively
As mentioned recently, it is important to finalise a hashtag in advance of the event and to ensure that
participants and other interested parties are aware of the official hashtag for the event. In many cases
participants are likely to tweet about an event prior to the event, perhaps when a call for paper has been
published e.g. “Loking for partners to write a proposal for #altc2010 with“.
Obtaining buy-in from users of the tag
As it is not possible to mandate use of an official event hashtag you should seek to ensure that users of the
tag will be inclined to use the hashtag. If the hashtag is too long the users may choose to use a shorter one.
Explaining the tag
As well as promoting the hashtag to the event participants you should also try to ensure that other interested
parties, who perhaps might notice a stream of tweets with the tag, can easily discover more about the
associated event. One way of doing this might be to ensure that a Web page containing details of the
hashtag and the event is published early so that it may be indexed by Google. In addition it may be useful to
describe the event in Twitter aggregation services such as WThashtag (e.g. see the description for the
IWMW 2009 event).
#iwmw2010, #iwmw10, #iwmw – or something else?
This post has described some of the issues which should be considered when choosing an event hashtag. But to
put such discussions into context, I’d like to consider the hashtag UKOLN should be using for next year’s
Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2010) – the fourteenth in this series of annual events for
members of institutional Web management teams.
I’ve recently attended four events which had a Twitter hashtag, each of which took a different approach:
#altc2009, #techshare09, #alpsp and #cilip_lams.
As there aren’t pressures to brand our host institution, UKOLN, there’s no need for a ‘#ukoln_iwmw” style tag.
The options, and arguments for and against, are therefore:
#iwmw2010
For: Consistency with previous years and consistency with tags used in Flickr, YouTube, etc. Also
consistency with URL used on UKOLN Web site.
Against: Uses 9 characters – this could be shorter.
#iwmw10
For: Saves two characters over #iwmw2010.
Against: Loses consistency with previous years and with other tag services. Possible confusion over the
characters (could it be confused with #iwmwi0?)
#iwmw
For: Saves four characters over #iwmw2010. No confusion with the ‘10′ characters.
Against: Loses consistency with previous years and with other tag services. Loss of the date may cause
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 9 of 616
problems if data is to be used in content of other years (but not necessarily so as the tweets do have a
machine-readable date)
What do you think we should go for? And are there other issues one should consider when choosing a hashtag for
an event which I haven’t mentioned?
Filed in Events, Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(11)
Guest Post: Blogs At Imperial College
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
After a gap of 11 months the guest blog post returns with a post by Jenny Evans, Liaison Librarian: Maths and
Physics at Imperial College. Jenny provides a background to two blogs (to support the Physics and Maths and
Engineering departments) which were set up by liaison librarians in 2006 and answers many of the questions
which librarians in a similar role may be asking: how did you get agreement from the management?; who
contributes; what is the target audience; what do you write about; how long does it take to support; is it
sustainable and, perhaps most importantly, can the blog service be regarded as a success?
About Imperial
Imperial College London is a science-focussed institution with a reputation for excellence in teaching and
research with approximately 12,000 full time students. The Library comprises the Central Library and the
Mathematics Department Library, located on our South Kensington campus, as well as campus libraries at
Charing Cross Hospital, St Mary’s Hospital, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Brompton Hospital,
Hammersmith Hospital and Silwood Park.
Background
Our first two blogs were created by liaison librarians, Ruth Harrison and myself, in March 2006. There were three
main reasons we considered using a blog.
Firstly, we had tried sending out emails and newsletters to departments informing them of relevant developments.
Problems with this method included academics wanting different formats, or complaining about email overload.
From our perspective, as a newsletter tended to be produced only once a term, information we wanted to get out
to them quickly was often out of date by the time it was sent.
There was the option of adding pages to the library website, however this relied on us getting information to
another library staff member, and then waiting for them to put the page up. Which if you needed to get
information out to staff/students quickly was not the ideal solution.
Finally, the library Web site doesn’t provide detailed subject specific information pages, which academics had
complained about to us, so we wanted to address this issue – the blogs were a way in which we could provide
very specific information and only to those people who wanted it.
As such, we felt a blog would be an ideal way to be able to communicate quickly, effectively and directly with
our respective departments about information that was relevant to them. Blogs would enable us to post content as
we needed to, they would be easy to set up and maintain, and we could delegate responsibility to staff where
appropriate. It also meant academics could set up an RSS feed to the pages so they could control how they
viewed the information.
WordPress software
We decided to start the blogs using the free blogging software from WordPress. It was a fairly new option at the
time, but it was getting good reviews, seemed to be flexible, offered some useful features and was free.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 10 of 616
Getting agreement from management
Working on the assumption that it is much easier to sell an idea that you can demonstrate we created a working
prototype and began posting content to the blogs before presenting them to our respective managers. They then
took them to the relevant management meetings. Although there was some unease about the lack of branding,
and the idea that at the time not all liaison librarians would have a blog, it was agreed that as this was a form of
communication, specific to a liaison librarian and their department (not unlike email) that we could continue.
Over the past 3 1/2 years, other liaison librarians have seen the success of our blogs and have created their own.
We now have thirteen blogs covering a variety of subject areas. There is currently no specific ‘library style’ for
the blogs, although some look more ‘Imperial-like’ than others.
Blog authors
Our blog authors are a mix of library staff – though all work in Library’s Faculty Support Services for Teaching
and Research Directorate – as the blogs are aimed staff and students in specific departments/subject areas. As
such, the relevant library liaison team are responsible for the blog. This could be a single person or more than one
member of the same team. Our medicine blog is aimed at all medical staff and students and as such members of
staff from all of the medical campuses contribute to this blog.
Target audience
Each of our blogs has a different target audience, depending on what is thought appropriate for that subject area.
This can include:
• Academic/research staff
• Postgraduate research students
• Postgraduate taught course students
• Undergraduate students
For example the maths and physics blog that I am responsible for (as I’m no longer responsible for chemistry) is
aimed at academic and research staff, and research post-graduate students, although some content is relevant to
post-graduate taught course students and I do make them aware of its existence. It is not so relevant to the
undergraduate students, however I do have a maths projects blog I have created to support the projects they work
on in the first and second year of their course.
Content
This is also something that relies on the particular person or group of people responsible for each blog.
Examples of what people include in their blogs:
• New resources including new book purchases and journal subscriptions
• News
• Custom search engines
• Journal citation reports/bibliometrics information
• Help/advice pages
• Support for teaching sessions
• Identifying key resources such as e-books
• Highlighting relevant parts of the library website
• Highlighting the physical location of relevant collections
• Overview of relevant key database and referencing information
Generally, we would try not to duplicate information found on the library Web site, but do highlight relevant
content.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 11 of 616
How long we spend maintaining our blogs
As you can imagine, this differs depending on who is working on the blog. I did a quick survey of fellow
bloggers as to how often they post on their blogs and this ranges from a couple of times a week to once a month.
Personally, I must confess I don’t spend as much time on mine as I used to, though my team member Katie does
most of the posting these days.
Publicity/Marketing
You can find a link to our blogs on our library homepage and there is also a link from the College blogs page.
I’ve also got links on the Physics department website and the Maths Library web page.
For my blog, I email department staff, PhD students and MSc students at least once a term, reminding them the
blog is there and highlighting any current news. Some bloggers use Feedburner which enables them to give
people the option to receive updates by email.
Our Life Sciences team introduce their blogs to students in induction sessions and point out useful features.
This is possibly something we could market better than we do so at the moment. Suggestions from fellow
bloggers include giving them a higher profile, making them more visually appealing, perhaps giving them a
similar style/layout.
Success?
As a whole our blogs have been very successful – they are all getting used. They enable us to raise our profile as
liaison librarians within the departments we work with, and provide our users with a resource that is specific to
their areas of expertise.
In the words of one of our Life Sciences bloggers:
“Subject blogs are an ideal way to gather relevant subject specific material together in one place for your
staff and students, they can be tailored and expanded to meet the need and are much more flexible than
having to coordinate an official webpage update. We introduce our students to them in inductions and point
out useful areas such as ‘Finding Books’ (which is a well-used page) and Academic Writing Skills (another
well-used page which lists academic writing skills books in the library with links to the catalogue – this
really picked up over the summer when Masters students were focussing on writing up).“
The statistics available via WordPress do enable you to see details about how many people are viewing your blog,
who is referring to your blog, what the top posts and pages are, search terms people are using to find you, and
what people are clicking on and incoming links. However, this doesn’t include RSS feeds (unless you are using
Feedburner). And these statistics do demonstrate that our blogs are being used.
Personally, I didn’t expect loads of comments on my blog – I use it more as a means of getting relevant
information out to my departments (maths and physics) – however I do encourage people to get in contact via the
comments mechanism of the blog. I have installed a MeeboMe widget on my blog which hasn’t had a great deal
of use (though the widget I installed on the blog I created for my maths undergraduate students has had a few
enquiries). My humanities colleague has also tried MeeboMe with limited success.
Our Life Sciences team has noticed that the more time they have invested in “developing, populating and
marketing (not to mention regularly updating) the blog has seen a continued growth in usage figures”.
Another unexpected outcome has been the interest from third parties such as Victor Hemming from Mendeley
who had seen “posts we had put up about referencing and networking for researchers. This initial contact led to
Mendeley coming to Imperial to give a personal introduction. It was good to know that our blog was attracting the
attention of useful people and sending them in our direction”.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 12 of 616
Sustainability
Our blogs have been running for 3 and half years now and show no signs of slowing down. The bloggers I have
been in touch with all feel that it is worth the time they spend maintaining and updating them.
Jenny Evans,
Liaison Librarian: Maths and Physics
Imperial College
London
Email: j.evans@imperial.ac.uk
Blog: http://physmaths.wordpress.com/
Filed in Blog, Guest-post | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(0)
If It's Not "All About The Technology" Then What Else Is It Not
About?
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
The announcement of the availability of a video summary of the event reminded me of the opening F-ALT
session, held on 8 September in the Lass O’Gowrie pub (a pub I always try to get to when I’m at a conference at
Manchester University). This was my first time at F-ALT, the ALT’s Fringe event, and I was looking forward to
meeting up with the F-ALT organisers and participants, many of whom I’ve met previously or may not have met
but read their blogs or follow on Twitter.
From what I’d heard of last year’s F-ALT, the Fringe event would provide an opportunity to discuss topics related
to elearning in a informal and friendly setting. I’d heard anecdotes of last year’s debate on the “Edupunk” meme
and was looking forward to a similar light-hearted evening of geeky fun. However the topic of the opening F-
ALT session was “Postdigital” and the description on the F-ALT wiki read:
“What does this mean? Why is it not two words? Is it just Dave making-up another term in an attempt to get
keynote gigs? No, it actually has some substance to it and could be a very helpful way of framing the
learning-tech discussion over the next few years. If you are sceptical about all this then you should definitely
turn-up. The chances of an argument breaking out are very high.“
Perhaps this year’s F-ALT wouldn’t turn out to be the informal evening and drink and chat that I had expected!
The participants at the event were asked to give a two-minute response to a number of ideas we were presented
with. Mine was, if I recall correctly:
The speed of the change, however, has left us with the mistaken belief that social change was somehow
‘created’ by the digital rather than simply played out on a the canvas of the digital; that the digital itself is
the main driver of change.
Being presented with this serious topic in the pub on the opening evening of the conference I tried to response in a
light-hearted fashion. I suggested that it was appropriate that this topic was raised in a traditional Manchester
boozer, possibly a pub which Fredrick Engles drank in when he spent time in the city. And just as we call for
ownership of our scholarly works in ours IRs (institutional repositories) so Engels called for ownership of the
means of production in the better known IR – the industrial revolution. So the arguments we are having now
aren’t about primarily about the technologies, but reflect arguments which date back hundreds of years (indeed
Martin Weller has suggested that the debates go back many centuries).
The publication of the video summary of the evening (which is embedded below) provides an opportunity to
revisit ‘postdigital’ debate …
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKPoWMYEvvg]
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 13 of 616
If, as Dave White suggests in a post on “Postdigital: Escaping the Kingdom of the New?“, we tend to overhype
the new and exciting, and fail to appreciate the aspects which are actually useful, what are the implications?
Perhaps this is a topic which is worthy of more considered thinking.
Now maybe it is correct to suggest that we in the development community, who consider ourselves to be agents of
a transformational change to a better environment, fail to appreciate that our users often ignore our developments
and our vision. After all, if the initial evidence reflects a more general trend, we seem to be living in a world in
which most users use an MS Windows platform to access institutional resources – they’re not interested in Linux,
for example, despite many years of evangelism from the open source community. A computer’s a computer, just
like a fax machine is a fax machine – only nerds care about what goes on underneath the bonnet.
But if this is true, what are the implications for accepting that we are in a postdigital age? Don’t we then accept
that our IT environment will be owned by the mega-corporations – Google and Microsoft. And let’s forget
debates about device independence and interoperability – unless the mega-corporations feel such issues may
provide a competitive edge.
It strikes me that the postdigital agenda is a conservative one, in which we are asked to accept that we (in our
institutions and in our working environment) cannot shape our digital environment. And for me that is a worrying
point of view which I don’t accept.
Filed in Events, General | Tagged altc2009 | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (9)
200,000 Views
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
On 6 September 2008 I published a post entitled 100,000 Views which documented the date of this blog having
received 100,000 views according to the usage statistics provided on the Wordpress.com site. I described how:
“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“.
Just over a year later, with the blog having yesterday received
200,000 views, this milestone provides another opportunity for some reflection. As can be seen from the graph,
there has been a significant increase in the number of average monthly page views which began (coincidentally?)
after the blog reached 100,00 views in September 2008.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 14 of 616
There was a peak (of 9,108 views) the following month (October 2008) followed by a plateau of over 7,000 views
until June 2009, which saw a new peak of 9,300 views. This peak coincided with work I had been involved in for
a workshop on “Using the Social Web to Maximise Access to your Resources” – it would seem that the
experiments (including gathering evidence of the influence of Twitter in generating traffic) were successful.
However there has been a significant decrease in traffic since that peak, although the figures are still higher than a
year ago (the dip could be accounted for by the summer holidays and a decrease in the numbers of posts while I
was away at conferences recently – but could also reflect a more general decrease in blogging activities which
some commentators have speculated about recently).
Although I recognise that it is not possible to gain a picture of the state of the blogosphere based on usage figures
for a single blog (to say nothing of the view that there may be Lies, Dammed Lies, Blog Statistics and
Unexpected Spikes) I hope this snapshot is of interest to others. It would be particularly interesting to hear if
others are experiencing a downwards trend in light of the supposed move away from blogs to use of Twitter.
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
We Need Evidence – But What If We Don't Like The Findings?
Monday, September 28th, 2009
The Need For Evidence
We know that technologies have the potential to provide many benefits, but this potential is not necessarily also
realised. We therefore need to gather evidence in order to inform our policies – perhaps to help us recognise that
what seemed to be a great idea has actually not been delivered in practice, perhaps to make us aware of a need for
greater advocacy and user engagement or perhaps for refining the approaches we initially took.
Usage Statistics For Mobile Devices
Such issues came to mind following a recent discussion on the website-info-mgt JISCMail list. The discussion
began by addressing the question of whether institutions should be developing iPhone applications providing, for
example, resources of interest to new students.
Following a discussion as to whether we should be developing generic applications for mobile devices and
whether this could fail to exploit device specific features, especially features which might be particularly valuable
for students with disabilities, David Bailey (Bath Spa University) put the discussion into context by providing
statistics on access to his institutional Web site from various platforms.
His statistics revealed that 80.55% of visits to the Web site in the past month came from an MS Windows
platform, 17.84% from the Apple Macintosh and 0.66% from a Linux platform, The figures for mobile devices
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 15 of 616
were iPhone (0.44%), iPod (0.11%) and Symbian (0.10%) with the figures for mobile devices such as the Palm,
Blackberry and Android and gaming devices such as the Wii and Playstation being less than 0.1%.
In response to this sharing of evidence a number of follow-up posts provided additional statistics:
Heriot-Watt: MS Windows (93.51%), Apple Macintosh (5.05%), Linux (0.67%), iPhone (0.34%), Symbian
(012%) and iPod (0.11%) (see email).
Sunderland: MS Windows (92.4%), Apple Macintosh (5.7%) and Linux (0.7%). The figures for other
devices were all less than 0.1% (see email).
Imperial College: MS Windows (91.69%), Apple Macintosh (6.9%), Linux (0.87%), iPhone (0.3%),
Symbian (012%). The figures for other devices were all less than 0.1% (see email).
University of Warwick: MS Windows (89.19%), Apple Macintosh (8.4%), Linux (1.85%) and iPhone
(0.25%). The figures for other devices were all less than 0.1% (see email).
Before reflecting on the implications of this evidence we need to be aware of the limitations of these figures: it
reflects the experiences of only four institutions; the data is not necessarily based on institutional data and may
reflect usage for departmental Web servers and the data reflects usage in the summer vacation. But having
acknowledged these caveats, what might the implications be if this evidence does prove to be indicative of the
wider higher educational community?
Discussion
Ironically although the discussion on the website-info-mgt list began over access to institutional Web sites from
mobile devices the data provides little evidence of significant usage by mobile devices. But the data does reveal
patterns of desktop usage which are worthy of further consideration.
I suspect many of the Web and IT developers and support staff who have been critical of Microsoft over the years
will be disappointed at the overwhelming popularity of the MS Windows platform for accessing the institutional
Web sites described above. Should we now accept that MS Windows has won the battle for the desktop operating
system environment? And at a time when, if the predictions are correct, we may see a reduction in staffing levels,
do these figures suggest that the time and effort in testing Web sites on the Linux platform may not be justified?
This isn’t to suggest that Web sites should be designed for the MS Windows platform, rather that the effort in
testing and tweaking for little-used platforms may not be justified.
Of course an argument could be made that the figures suggest that there is no point in developing services for the
mobile Web as the current levels of usage are very low. But the difference is that the desktop and laptop computer
environment is now mature, whereas the mobile environment is new.
I think there is a debate to be had – and there is also, perhaps, the need to ask “Where did it go wrong? What
happened to the diversity of operating systems? Where have the Mac users and Linux users gone?” Or perhaps
they are still around, and simply aren’t visiting institutional Web sites. What do you think?
Filed in Gadgets | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (14)
Tweetboard: Adding Twitter To Web Pages
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
I was recently alerted to a blog post on TechCrunch entitled “Tweetboard Launches Twitter Client And URL
Shortener“. The article described how this service “lets you create a Twitter-powered forum on any site“. In
addition Tweetboard provides “the ability to view discussions as a thread, similar to what you’d find on
FriendFeed or Facebook“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 16 of 616
This sounded interesting so I signed up for a (free) Tweetboard account and created a page in which I added the
HTML code to created the embedded interface.
An screenshot of my experiment is illustrated.
As can be seen the tool provides a threaded view of replies to tweets – something I’ve not seen before but a
feature which does seem popular in FriendFeed.
However as has been pointed out, the service does seem slow (although I wonder if this might be due to the
increased usage of the service which the TechCrunch article may have generated) and the tweet display cannot be
moved.
Now although many experienced Twitter users may be interested in the threaded replies feature I suspect that a
typical response is likely to be “So what? There are lots of good twitter clients available – why should I be
interested in this one?“. This may be true, but will this approach be a useful way of introducing new Twitter users
to the service, in a specific context of use. At an amplified event, might an event page with this embedded
interface prove useful, I wonder? And if the HTML <script> fragment can be embedded in more mainstream
applications environments – such as a VLE, for example – might this be a way of embedding Twitter functionality
in the context of existing widely used services? Hmm, might there be life in the VLE yet?
Filed in Twitter | Tagged Tweetboard | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (3)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 17 of 616
Reflections on Web Adaptability and Techshare 2009
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
Last week I gave a talk entitled “From Web Accessibility To Web Adaptability” at the RNIB’s Techshare 2009
conference. I have already posted about this talk and described how I had created a slidecast of a rehearsal of the
talk (containing an audio track synched with the slides) in order to (a) check the timings for the talk and (b) allow
the co-authors of the paper on which thew talk is based to see how I intend to present our work. An additional
benefit is that the talk is more accessible to people who attended one of the parallel sessions at the conference or
who couldn’t attend the conference. In addition people who could attend the talk will be able to revisit the ideas
and share them with colleagues.
In addition to the slidecast of the rehearsal I also brought a Flip
video recorder with me, together with a tripod and recorded my live talk. This 30 minute talk is now available on
Vimeo.com (and a master copy is also held on the UKOLN Web site).
It should be noted that there are some differences between the rehearsal and the live talk. In part this is due to the
delayed start of the talk (due to technical difficulties) which meant I had to skip a couple of my slides. But in
addition on the evening before the conference I met up with a number of conference participants, including Lisa
Herrod (one of the co-authors of the paper) and Joshue O Connor, who is a member of the W3C WAI Protocol
and Formats WCAG 2.0 and WAI-ARIA Working Group.
The chat I had with Joshue provided me with a fresh insight of my criticisms of the WAI model. I’ve argued
previously (initially in a paper on “Forcing Standardization or Accommodating Diversity? A Framework for
Applying the WCAG in the Real World” published in 2005) that expecting a combination of best practices for
accessible Web content (WCAG), Web authoring tools (ATAG) and Web user agents (UAAG) to provide rich
accessibility is naive. And, in addition, focussing on this model fails to provide any assistance on what content
creators should be doing in a world of flawed browsers and a rich diversity of ways of creating Web content.
The valuable discussion I had made me realise that the flaws aren’t in the model itself. Rather it’s with the user
community’s acceptance of the model as the approach which should be accepted in the real world. The WAI
model is valuable in managing WAI’s development activities and clarifying different areas of responsibilities
(how the content can be described; how tools can be used to create and manage that content and how user agents –
browsers, automated agents; aggregators, etc. can then access and render such information). But this isn’t a model
which we need to use ourselves when we are developing institutional policies for our approaches to enhancing the
accessibility and usability of our services or when legislators are writing laws describing the legal responsibilities
organisations have in providing accessible services.
Following my talk, Joshue and I had a brief chat. Despite the concerns I’d raised it seems that we had similar
views. The difficulties, I feel, is in how the WAI approach is being adopted in the real world. So whilst I
appreciate WAI’s advocacy in promoting take-up of their guidelines, I now have a better appreciation that their
hands are tied when it comes to real world deployment challenges. WAI aren’t in a position to advise on how we
should prioritise our (increasingly scarce) resources – such as the example I gave in my final slide on how higher
educational institutions should go about enhancing the accessibility of PDFs in institutional repositories.
But perhaps WAI could help by openly stating that decisions on how WAI guidelines should be deployed is up to
individual organisations to decide. We do need to remember that there are ‘accessibility fundamentalists’ who
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 18 of 616
bought wholesale into the WCAG 1.0 vision and who may now be finding it difficult to come to terms with a
more flexible approach. Let’s use the release of WCAG 2.0 to promote a more flexible approach to accessibility
in the real world. And let’s also not forget that the UK Government’s blunt approach of “The minimum standard
of accessibility for all public sector websites is Level Double-A … Websites owned by central government
departments must be Double-A conformant by December 2009” . This policy fails to recognise the low
penetration of UAAG-conformant browsers in the Government sector, the resources needed to implement this
policy, the reduced level of funding which government departments will be faced with and the likelihood that risk
-averse decisions-makers in government departments will use the policy as an excuse to deploy innovative Web-
based services.
The slidecast and video of my talk at Techshare 2009 gives another illustration of how providing a diversity of
resources might enhance the accessibility of a resource (my talk and the related ideas) which is, to my mind,
preferable to not making these resources available as they aren’t universally accessible. And this view appeared to
be shared by a number of people at the conference who couldn’t attend my talk but werre interested in listening to
what I had said.
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged techshare09 | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (2)
A Lack of 'Social' and 'Media' at the Oxford Social Media Conference
Monday, September 21st, 2009
The Oxford Social Media Conference
The Oxford Social Media Conference, held on Friday 18 September 2009 at Said Business Centre, University of
Oxford, was one of the few events I’ve attended this year in which I haven’t spoken at. And it came at the end of
a very busy two weeks, having facilitated workshops and given talks at the ALT-C, ALPSP and Techshare
conferences and the Silos of the LAMs briefing event.
But despite not being on the programme, these days attendance at many conferences can provide opportunities for
more active participation than was the case in the past, through use of Twitter and other ways in which Social
Media can be used to engage with the audience (both local and remote) and facilitate informal discussions
amongst the participants.
I have already described how the failure to announce a conference hashtag in advance led to participants being
unable to meet up in advance (I’m sure I wasn’t the only participant to arrive the night before – and I was
fortunate in spotting a colleague in my Twitter network who was also travelling to the conference). But what of
use of Social Media at the conference itself?
Use of Social Media at the Event
The summary for the event began “With corporations, governments, newspapers and universities embracing
blogs and Twitter feeds as key elements in their communication strategies, social media have finally come of age”
and promised to “look back at the evolution of blogs and other social media to give a more nuanced
understanding of the ways in which such tools have or have not made a difference at the social, political or
economic level“.
Although the event did not have a technical focus, I expected it to embrace use of various aspects of Social Media
as the opening statement suggested universities are doing. I was pleased, therefore, when it became clear that the
panelists in the opening session were using Twitter to observe what the participants were discussing. And,
following a Twitter response from Bill Thompson to a my tweet in which I linked to a screenshot of an
Augmented Reality view of twitterers in the nearby locality, I took the opportunity ask (slightly tongue in cheek)
whether such engagement by the panel with the audience’s ‘backchannel’ wasn’t a somewhat worrying
appropriation by those in a position of power (the speakers) of what may be regarded as a democratising tool. I
went on to ask whether the expected spamming of the event’s hashtag (which happened) provided an example of
the inevitable commercialisation of the Social Web. We were naive in 1993 and 1994, I suggested to Bill (whom I
first met at the first WWW conference in Geneva in 1994) when we described that conference as the “Woodstock
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 19 of 616
of the 1990s” and predicted that what we might now refer to as ‘Web 1.0″ would bring about a radical
democratisation of society. Aren’t we being equally naive to suggest that the Social Web will bring about this
change?
The response was, not unexpectedly, uncertain, with the panelists pointing out that it is difficult to predict the
future and that the Social Web is likely to develop in unexpected ways, and what may be regarded by some as
spam (I gave an example of advertising from a taxi firm at the end of the Techshare conference) could equally be
felt to be useful information by others.
For me this opening session established a lack of experts in Social Media and would be followed by more open
discussions – and would avoid the lengthy responses to questions made by each member of the panel. But what
happened throughout the rest of the day was a repetition of the opening panel session: talks from each of the
panelists, with the occasional question or comment being made by the chairperson. I felt like I was a member of
the audience at a Radio 4 programme.
So for a conference on Social Media the event was missing on the ’social’ aspect, with little opportunity for
participants to engage with the discussions. There was also little ‘media’ at the conference, with none of the
speakers using any visual aids. For me meant the day was very repetitious, with little visual stimulation. It was
also at odds with a comment made in the final session that “it’s all about video, video, video. There will be
screens EVERYWHERE very soon“.
Now perhaps I’m being unfair. I have to admit my recent intensive spate of travelling meant that I was probably
suffering from an overdose of conferences – and the enjoyable lunch provided did mean that I wasn’t paying full
attention to the sessions after lunch. And an early departure meant that I missed the panel session on corporate
blogging which was described as “by far the most entertaining and informative of the day, mostly dealing with the
politics of setting corporate blog tone and complaint/query response rate“.
Final Thoughts
I’ve described how the description for the conference suggested that “With corporations, governments,
newspapers and universities embracing blogs and Twitter feeds as key elements in their communication
strategies, social media have finally come of age“.
For me many of the events I now attend make use of technologies such as Twitter, blogs and video streaming as a
key part of the ‘amplification’ of the event – and this amplification takes place before, during and after the event.
For an event about Social Media such expectations do not seem unreasonable. It is pleasing, therefore, to note that
a number of blog posts about the conference have already been published including:
• What we learned at the Oxford Social Media Convention, Digital Content Blog, The Guardian
• How social networking is changing journalism, Digital Content Blog, The Guardian
• A social media proposal (you’re not going to like it) #oxsmc09, jennifr.net
• Kara Visits the Oxford Social Media Convention: I Say Twitt-er, You Say Twitt-ah, BoomTown
• Oxford Social Media Convention 2009, MarkAttwood.com
The first of these links, from The Guardian, concludes: “PS: To find more detailed bits about the conference, look
up the hashtag #oxsmc09 on twitter“. However as I have described previously, content posted to twitter becomes
unavailable via Twitter’s search interface after about 10 days. Since media organisations such as The Guardian
are likely to ensure that such evidence does not disappear, I have created a copy of the #oxsmc09 tweets which
should make subsequent analysis of the discussions easier to carry out. And looking at the HTML version of the
archive there is a noticeable lack of tweets by the conference organisers – unlike, say, the recent ALT C and
Techshare conferences, both of which used Twitter during and after the event.
Filed in Events, Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(6)
What! No Event Hashtag?
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 20 of 616
Tim Berners-Lee at the Science Museum
Last Monday I attended a talk on “The Web Revealed” given by Sir Tim Berners-Lee at the Science Museum as
part of the centenary celebrations for 100 years of the Science Museum. This was a last minute decision – I was
about to head off to London as I was taking part in a session at the CILIP Executive Briefing on “Beyond the
Silos of the LAMS” the following day and spotted a tweet about a spare ticket for the event which was available.
When I joined the queue for the event I tweeted my location – to indicate to any Twitter followers where I was,
with the possibility of meeting up and perhaps going for a drink afterwards. As I commented at the time it felt
slightly strange to be at an event about the Web which did not have an event hashtag, thus making it difficult to
make links with other Twitterers at the event and share thoughts on the content. However one of my Twitter
followers, @brian@condon, who was following the event from a distance, spotted my tweet and suggested “How
about #bernerslee?” as a tag for the event. A few minutes later he tweeted:
RT @martingoode: Am following the #Berners-Lee talk via twitter thanks to @joannabutler @briankelly-
seems to be a hashtag!
So now it seems we have two people (@martinegoode and @brian_condon) following the talk on Twitter, via
tweets from myself and @joannabutler, with two hashtags (#Berners-Lee and #bernerslee) having being
suggested. I also spotted some tweet from @filce who concluded:
Sir Tim Burners-lee was amazing. Very interesting and brilliant. It was recorded so hopefully it will be
available the web!
And thanks to @filce I’ve spotted a recording of the opening of Sir Tim’s talk. as well as a link to his slides (the
URL was displayed very quickly at the end of his talk, and I had no time to make a note of the URI). Without
following up on @filce’s tweets, I would probably have missed out on this information.
But how could have it been made easier for the event Twitterers to be found and for them to be aware of each
other’s presence? Perhaps the Science Museum should be suggesting hashtags for its anniversary talks (especially
with another distinguished Web luminary – Dame Wendy Hall scheduled to talk in November). And what
approach should be taken to coining the hashtag? Should it be related to the venue (”I’m at the @sciencemuseum
to listen to Sir Tim Berners-Lee”), the anniversary series (”I’m at the @sciencemuseum-100 talk”) or, as
mentioned above, should the tag be based on the individual speaker’s name? If the latter, there will probably be a
need to avoid possible organisers – @timberners-lee (note the hyphen can cause hyperlinking problems in some
Twitter clients) or @timbl, for example. Or in the case of Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Dame Wendy Hall and other
members of The Knightage, will an updated version of Debretts guide to forms of address require the title to be
included, so we’ll have to use #sirtim and #damewendy?
The Oxford Social Media Conference (#oxsmc09)
On Friday I attended the Oxford Social Media Convention 2009 held at Said Business School, University of
Oxford. As might be expected for an event which promised to “look back at the evolution of blogs and other
social media to give a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which such tools have or have not made a
difference at the social, political or economic level” the event did have a hashtag (#oxsmc09) which was widely
used by the Twitterers in the audience. Indeed, following a suggestion I made at the event a colleague set up a
wthashtag page for the tag, so that we can see that there were almost 1,000 tweets during the day, from 200
contributors (note there would probably have been more, but the conference WiFi network went down during the
conference).
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 21 of 616
But as can be seen
from the histogram of the event tweets, nothing was said prior to the event. This was due to the hashtag only
being announced in the conference pack when the delegates registered at the event.
This resulted in a missed opportunity for participants at this conference on Social Media to, for example, meet up
prior to the event and, err, be social. Indeed it was rather fortuitous that while travelling from London to Oxford I
spotted a number of tweet from EDINA’s Nicola Osborne who was travelling from Edinburgh to London
Heathrow and then, I noticed, to Oxford. In response to my tweet:
@suchprettyeyesI’m on way to Oxford for Social Media conf. Fancy drink tonight? Am sure someone can
suggest decent real ale pub.
I discovered that Nicola was going to the same event and we met up at the Eagle and Child (thanks to
@sboneham for the suggestion). But despite asking:
Is there a tag for Social Media conf at Said College? Would be good to meet up with others.
it wasn’t until the next morning that we found out the event’s hashtag (with the first event tweet coming from
Nicola ). A missed opportunity, I feel, which was echoed by Bill Thompson, one of the conference speakers:
@deejacksonI’m looking forward to Oxford Social Media Convention tomorrow – no idea of hashtag but
will be tweeting…
The need to find the information containing the hashtag also caused confusion for people who had arrived and, in
the absence of advance notification, had started to make us of their own hashtag. As rohanjay commented:
foxed by random hashtagging, calls for order at the Oxford social media bunfight -is it #oii or #oxsoc or
#oxsmc09?
There are lessons which can be learnt from such confusions, especially for anyone organising events about Social
Media.
Augmented Reality and Geo-Location
But need an event’s Twitter discussions necessarily require agreement on a hashtag? Following problem’s with
the conference WiFi network I started to use my HTC Magic Android mobile phone to follow the conference
tweets. Due to the phone’s poor user interface, I didn’t contribute significantly to the discussions. However it did
occur to me that the event might provide an opportunity to make use of the LayarAugmented Reality application
which I’d installed the previous week, after hearing about it from Joss Winn, a fan of the HTC Android phone (he
has the newer model which has, I understand, an improved user interface).
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 22 of 616
I had first started to use the application the previous night in the pub, using it to find information
on nearby pubs and historic building which could be viewed on a map and relevant Wikipedia pages or geo-
located photos displayed.
The Layar environment also has two Twitter applications which enable me to view nearby Twitter users and
Twitter posts. I used this at the conference and posted a link to a screenshot of my mobile phone display, which is
illustrated.
It would be nice if the display showed that a prolific Twitter user was located in from of my and slightly to the
left, with another prolific user being near the front of the lecture theatre. However that wasn’t the case – the image
shows tweets within about a mile of my location, some of which had been posted the previous day. So this isn’t a
way of finding tweets from others at the same conference – yet!
Conclusions
To conclude, events such as Tim Berner’s Lee’s talk at the Science Museum and the Oxford Social Media
Conference need an event hashtag. There’s also a need for the tag to be announced in a timely fashion and not just
on the day itself. There’s also a need for process for selecting a tag (which I’ll discuss in more detail in a future
post). But perhaps the importance of hashtagging at events may be complemented by developments such as geo-
location application. But as we will still need to talk about the events we are planning to attend as well as the
event we are at, we’ll still need the event hashtag,
Filed in Events, Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(1)
Use of Twitter at the ALTC 2009 Conference
Monday, September 14th, 2009
Back After A Week Away
Last week was unusual – not a single blog post published in the week. Although there were suggestions at last
week’s ALT-C 2009 conference that blogging is in decline with established bloggers making greater use of
Twitter, my failure to blog last week was due to being away all week at the ALT-C conference followed by the
ALPSP 2009 conference. And although I’d brought along my ASUS EEE PC, I couldn’t get it connected to the
network in my bedroom at either of the conferences. So my connectivity was restricted to use of my iPod Touch
and HTC Magic mobile phone – which I used for reading email messages, tweets and RSS feeds and writing the
occasional Twitter post.
ALT-C 2009 Summaries
A number of valuable summaries of the conference have already been published. I don’t intend to repeat what has
already been said, apart from mentioning that the two plenary talks I saw (from Michael Wesch and Martin Bean )
were both excellent (I had to leave on the final morning and so unfortunately missed Terry Anderson’s closing
plenary talk); the VLE is Dead debate was entertaining, with witty contributions made from the four speakers and
was useful in raising issues and providing insights which I hadn’t previously considered.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 23 of 616
Twitter at ALT-C 2009
But what of the use of Twitter at ALT-C 2009? Philip Paasuke, an e-learning enthusiast based in Adelaide,
Australia, has described how he followed the conference from home using a variety of technologies: watching the
keynote plenary talks on Elluminate and using Tweetdeck to follow the back channel discussions. As Philip
describes: “The Twitter postings gave me an interesting perspective on what participants at the conference and
those observing it remotely were thinking about the various presentations“. Philip went on to add that “Following
ALT-C 2009 on Twitter has also led me to increase the number of people that I am following using this service
from what might loosely be called ’the elearning community’. The Twitter posts also included a lot of useful links
to more detailed blog postings by some of the conference participants“.
But how
extensively was Twitter used at the conference? And what was the profile of its usage?
I have previously described how I used a variety of Twitter analysis and management tools to analyse use of
Twitter at UKOLN’s IWMW 2009 event. For that event, which had 200 participants, there were 1,530 tweets. For
the ALTC 2009 conference, with had over 700 participants, there were over 4,300 tweets published in a week!
This figure, which was obtained using the wthashtag service, provides a summary, illustrated above, based on
tweets posted from Monday 6 to Sunday 13 September. We can expected further tweets this week, as other
participants get round to writing their reports on the conference and continue the discussions. And I should add
that Philip Paasuke’s blog post mistakenly gives #altc09 as the official Twitter hashtag – there were a further 128
tweets using this tag from 51 contributors.
During my analysis of #iwmw2009 event Tweets, I discovered that tweets seem to disappear after a short period
of time. I subsequently came across a TechCrunch post which reported that tweets currently become unavailable
from the Twitter search API after about 10 days.
In order to carry pout more detailed analyses, it will be necessary to ensure that a copy of the relevant tweets is
kept, ideally in a format suitable for data analysis. I have therefore once again used the wthashtag, Twapperkeeper
and Tweetdoc services to keep a local copy of the conference tweets. Links to the data and to these servicesis
available on the UKOLN Web site.
Why The Interest?
What is the point of the analysis of the Twitter posts made at the ALTC 2009 conference? Isn’t the point of
Twitter it’s spontaneity and perhaps its subversive use?
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 24 of 616
Well although that may be one use case for Twitter, it’s not the only one.
The interest in use of Twitter as an educational tool can be gauged from the popularity of the Teaching With
Twitter workshop facilitated by Steve Wheeler and colleague. And mining the data might also provide interesting
insights into the event, the community and the ideas discussed and shared. Looking at the summary of trending
words provided by the Tweetdocs service, for example, might indicate an interest in Twitter (to be expected) but
also in openness and people. And the two people who seem to have been most discussed (or, in the case of James
Clay, contributed to the discussions) seem to be James Clay and Anderson (probably Terry Anderson, the final
plenary speaker).
The conference organisers might be pleased to see the popularity of the words “good” and “great” – but what
about the criticisms that were made of the queues for the food and coffee and the conference accommodation?
Will analysis of the Twitter discussions start to from part of an organisation’s debriefing after an event - and
might not the venue itself have an interest in what was said about the facilities? Well the data is now available for
reuse.
Filed in Events, Twitter | Tagged altc2009 | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (11)
"Realising Dreams, Avoiding Nightmares, Accepting Responsibilities"
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
Martin Weller and I will be facilitating a workshop session entitled “Realising Dreams, Avoiding Nightmares,
Accepting Responsibilities” at the ALT-C 2009 conference. Martin and I met over blog comments and Twitter
posts and discovered we had similar interests. In particular Martin and I bounced around some ideas on the theme
of “Even if we’re wrong, were right”, which started with a blog post by Martin on “Web 2.0 – even if we’re
wrong, we’re right“.
When a few months ago I saw a tweet from someone saying they were find it difficult to think of a proposal top
submit which fitted in with this year’s ALT-C theme of “In dreams begins responsibility” I felt that this theme
provided the ideal opportunity to write a joint proposal.
So on Wednesday 9 September, starting at 9 am, we’ll be facilitating a workshop session. In the 90 minute session
the participants will explore the (probably) diverse visions (the dreams) they have for e-learning and the barriers
(nightmares) which may be faced. We will then explore the approaches (the responsibilities) we may need to
avoid the nightmares and bring about a realisation of the dream.
The workshop session itself has a dream in which interested participants, including those who may not be
physically present at the session, will engage in the discussions and debates and contribute to examples or the
dreams and nightmares and suggestions for the responsibilities.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 25 of 616
In order to bring about this dream we hope to provide live
streaming of the talks in the session using the Bambuser service on my HTC Magic Android mobile phone.
Discussions will take place on Twitter and contributions to the session can be made by tagging tweets with the
tags “#altc2009″ and “#s113″ (as described previously, the second hashtag will enable tweets to be
differentiated from other Twitter posts at the conference).
My nightmare is that video streaming won’t work (will there be a mobile phone signal for the venue, I wonder) or
will be of poor quality. My responsibility, however, will be to write a summary of the session so that if you tried
to participate remotely but failed you will at least be able to read a summary of the discussions.
Filed in Events | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
"From Web Accessibility To Web Adaptability" Talk at Techshare
2009
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
A proposal for a talk I submitted to the RNIB’s Techshare 2009 conference has been accepted. The talk on “From
Web Accessibility to Web Adaptability” will be given on 17 September 2009.
The talk is based on the paper of the same name which was published recently in the Disability and Rehability:
Assistive Technology journal. The talk at the Techshare conference will provide an opportunity for the ideas in
the paper (which I have also outlined in a recent blog post and in an article published in the e-Access Bulletin) to
be described to those in the disability community who may not read academic journals or blogs.
There is an expectation that presentations at the conference will be accessible to those with visual
impairments. An approach I have taken to enhancing the accessibility of the slides (and the ideas which will be
described in the talk) has been to create a slidecast of the talk, by synching the audio of a rehearsal of the talk
with the slides. This slidecast is available on Slideshare and is embedded below.
[slideshare id=1881012&doc=web-adaptability-090819092258-phpapp01]
The rehearsal also provided an opportunity for me to time the talk – and I found that at 34 minutes it was slightly
too long, so the version I will give at the conference will be slightly shorter.
As well as helping me with the timings and allowing me to spot where the material can be improved, creating the
slidecast prior to the talk has some additional benefits:
• It provides a back-up in case I lose my voice or am ill at the conference or fail to arrive at the conference
venue due to travel difficulties.
• Conference delegates can listen to the talk after the event.
• The talk can be shared with others.
• The slidecast is a richer resources than the slides on their own
In addition there are parallels with open source software development – this early release of a talk and exposing it
to many eyes ears can potentially allow my peers, including co-authors of the original paper, to listen to what I
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 26 of 616
intend to say and provide comments and suggestions as to how the talk can be improved. The talk isn’t trapped in
my head until the live delivery!
If you have a particular interest in Web accessibility your comments and questions are welcomed.
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged techshare2009 | Permalink
| Edit | Comments (1)
Skype, Two Years After Its Nightmare Weekend
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
The headline in the Technology Guardian supplement read “Skype’s nightmare weekend highlights peer-to-peer
fears” two year’s ago back on 23 August 2007. The article described how “Skype’s popular internet telephone
service went down on August 16 and was unavailable for between two and three days“.
I remember this incident as, with people’s attention focussed on the loss of this service (fortunately at a non-
critical time in the academic year) our University IT Service department took the opportunity to remind the Skype
users on campus (which included me) that Skype was a proprietary application. The recommended VoIP
application, which was about to be deployed for the start of the academic year, was the FreeWire phone service.
This, I was told, was recommended as it was based on open standards. This sounded interesting, especially if it
provided the application independence which Skype lacks. So I looked at the FreeWire Web site and found that
“It’s only when you call non-Freewire phones that you have to pay“. So its’ based on open standards, but you
have to pay if you try to call a user who isn’t running the same software as you. It’s no different from Skype, it
would seem – except, perhaps, that as I speak there are almost 17 million Skype users online. In comparison the
standards-based FreeWire service services a niche market (and perhaps a satisfied niche market as, here at Bath
University several student residences now have Voice-over-IP telephones in the bedrooms).
But the promise of VoIP telephony services seems further away than it did two years ago (and the access
problems Skype suffered from were due to a bug triggered by large numbers of automated Microsoft Windows
updates – a bug now fixed). I now have Skype clients on my office PC and my laptop (both running MS
Windows), my Asus EEE netbook PC (running Linux), my iPod Touch and my HTC Magic Android. A
proprietary application running on four different platforms seems pretty good!
So what’s the future for VoIP telephony services? Yesterday the BBC News announced “eBay reaches deal to
sell Skype“. The article states that “Online auction site eBay has agreed to sell the majority of internet phone
company Skype for about $2bn (£1.2bn)” and goes on to explain that the deal values Skype at $2.75bn, a slight
increase on the $2.6bn it paid for the company in 2005.
Attempts by JANET to deploy a standards-based VoIP service (called JANET Talk) for the UK’s higher/further
education community were abandoned a few months ago bacause, as described in JANET News (PDF format): ”
The results from both trial feedback and market research showed that the appetite for a service like JANET Talk
had diminished. The reasons cited include a preference for alternative solutions that are now available from the
commercial sector. These solutions were deemed easier to use, reliable and free.”
Sometimes standards-based solutions don’t take off, it would seem, even when there are JISC-funded initiatives
encouraging the take-up of such solutions. And as Nick Skelton suggested in a post entitled “Why did JANET
Talk fail?” perhaps this is due to a failure to appreciate the importance of the network effect. Nick concluded:
“When planning a new service, see if it has built-in positive network effects. It is doesn’t have these naturally,
find a way to connect it to larger networks so it can benefit from theirs. If you can’t find a way to do this then
you are dooming your project from the start. You’re better off doing nothing, unless you want to see your
service become irrelevant, pushed to one side by a larger, more popular one.“
I agree.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (8)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 27 of 616
Hashtags for the ALT-C 2009 Conference
Friday, August 28th, 2009
This Year’s ALT-C Conference
I will be attending the ALT-C 2009 Conference at the University of Manchester in a couple of weeks time where
I’ll be facilitating a session with Martin Weller on “Realising Dreams, Avoiding Nightmares, Accepting
Responsibilities” – a title chosen to reflect the conference theme of “In dreams begins responsibility“.
Yesterday I was involved in discussions on Twitter regarding use of hashtags (hash tags?) for referring to specific
sessions at the conference. The conference tag has already been agreed – it is altc2009 and this has been
announced on the conference home page. Let’s hope that this high visibility avoids tag fragmentation.
But there are many sessions at ALT-C and many parallel sessions. So an active Twitter community – which we
are likely to find at the conference – may well find itself talking at cross-purposes if nothing is done to
differentiate between the sessions. It may also be useful to be able to be able to identify particular sessions using a
short and unambiguous tag e.g. so people can say “Are you going to Brian’s session?” or “What did you think of
Martin’s session?” without confusion and using fewer characters.
Experiences of Using Hashtags at UKOLN’s IWMW 2009 Event
At UKOLN’s recent IWMW 2009 event we allocated a two-digit code for the plenary talks (P1-P8) and the
parallel sessions (A1-A9, B1-B4 and C1-C5) . This short code was used consistently on the Web site, initially for
selection of the parallel sessions.
Shortly before the event we
encouraged use of these codes, together with the codes we assigned for the plenary talks, in Twitter. And, as I’ve
described previously, after the event we captured the tweets for the plenary talks and provided links to this record
of discussions which used the Twitter hashtags in this fashion (see, for example, the tweets made during Paul
Boag’s plenary talk P3 which is illustrated).
After the event we used the Archivist Twitter archiving tool in order to capture these tweets are store them
locally. These local archives are available in CSV and XMLformats. As can be seen, for Paul Boag’s talk, 78
tweets containing the pair of hastags were found.
What To Do For ALT-C?
What approach should be taken to use of hashtags at this year’s ALT-C conference? A similar answer might be to
do nothing other than use the event’s hashtag. After all, some may argue, Twitter’s strength is its simplicity and
adding anything new is likely to undermine this simplicity. Whilst I’d agree with this sentiment I don’t feel that
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 28 of 616
adding an additional optional tag is complex. And we know have some examples of the benefits of doing this,
which I’ve described in a recent screencast published on this blog.
But how should we select the hashtags for the session? I recently discovered that the unique identifier for the
workshop myself and Martin Weller are facilitating is 113. And looking at the conference introduction and
abstracts which arrived in the post a few days ago it seems that the session ids range from 0012 to 0322. I’m
assuming that the unique ids were assigned when the proposals were submitted as the numbers aren’t consecutive
(hmm, were the first 11 proposals rejected, I wonder?). To avoid confusion and to save space I’d suggest that
leading zeroes are ignored. So my proposal for a hashtag to identify the session would be #snnn – in my case this
would be #altc321 and James Clay’s four sessions would have the identifiers #s208, #s221, #s286 and #s301.
These tags would be used in conjunction with the main conference tag. A Twitter search for “#altc2009 #s321″
should find tweets referring to my session. Simple? Indeed a simplification of my initial suggestion of #altcnnn as
a session identifier.
But although this approach worked at IWMW 2009 and would work for my workshop session it has been pointed
out to me that this approach won’t work for the sessions which have multiple papers being presented. Although
the individual papers have a unique identifier, the sessions themselves do not. Owen Stephens suggested that the
identifier used in the conference’s CrowdVine social networking environmentcould be used but this then causes
potential confusion with the identifiers allocated by the conference and won’t easily be found by conference
participants who aren’t using CrowdVine. And further discussions is only likely to lead to confusions and
unnecessary complexity.
So my proposal is this:
• The conference hashtag is #altc2009.
• If Twitter users wish to identify a specific session they should use the #altc2009 hashtag in conjunction
with a session tag which has the format #snnn when nnn is a the session identifier given in the conference
programme, with leading zeroes omitted (the prefix s standards for the session identifier).
Is this approach worth trying?
In light of the workshop session on
Teaching With Twitter which Steve Wheeler will bve giving at the ALT-C Conference, I can’t help but think we
do need to be experimenting with ways in which Twitter can be used in a learning context and in enriching its use
in community building.
Reflecting on Tony Hirst’s recent post on “A Quick Peek at the IWMW2009 Twitter Network“ which analysed
and visualised tweets at the IWMW 20009 event in order to “help to identify amplification networks” it occurs to
me that something similar might be useful at a larger event such as ALT-C. Do, for example, the Twitterers
who @ each other and RT tweets tend to go to the same sessions, I wonder?
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 29 of 616
And if you still think this may be too complicated I intend to include details of the session hashtag on the opening
slide for the session Martin Weller and I will be facilitating, as illustrated.
Filed in Events, Twitter | Tagged altc2009 | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (10)
The Science Online 2009 Unconference Video
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
As described on the On The Roof blog a video clip of the Fringe Frivolous Unconference is now available. The
Fringe Frivolous Unconference took place on the evening of Friday 21 August 2009 on the roof terrace of the
Mendeley offices. About 40-50 people attended this event, which provided an opportunity for science bloggers
and other interested parties to talk about and discuss science blogging.
The video clip (which lasts for 7 minutes 47 seconds) is available on YouTube and is embedded below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T2wIpCq0RE]
As you can see the video contains brief interviews with many of the participants who attended the unconference
in which they explain why the blog or mention other topics of interest to them.
In a blog post about the event Richard Grant described how he “stalk[ed] the rooftops with a Flip camera (kindly
loaned by Alom Shaha)” and subsequently “edited the clips into a short film that I think captures the essence of
the evening perfectly“. And I think Richard is to be applauded for so quickly taking so many video clips and
editing thenm to produce the short film.
But is this YouTube video accessible? Where are the captions which are needed to ensure that the resource
complies with the Web Acessiility Initiative’s (WAI’s) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)? After all
the WCAG 2.0 guidelines state that:
1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded): Captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media,
except when the media is a media alternative for text and is clearly labeled as such. (Level A)
But do the unconference organisers (unorganisers?) have to follow these guidelines? Legislation requires
organisations to take reasonable measures to ensure that people with disabilities are not discriminated against
unfairly. And is it reasonable to expect a light-weight approach to recording a video of an event to require
captioning? I think not – and recall a suggestion that ‘reasonable measures’ meant an addition 10-15% of effort. I
suspect the time it would take to caption this video would probably be significantly greater than this.
In addition perhaps as this event wasn’t ‘official’ and the video wasn’t a deliverable of a public sector
organisation, conformance with WCAG guidelines is not needed. But might there not be a moral responsibility to
enhance the accessibility of this resources – after all, discussions of the ethical as well as legal aspects of blogging
cropped up during the unconference as well in the opening talk at the Science Online 2009 conference the
following day?
But how might one go about enhancing the accessibility of the video, in light of the limited effort to do this – and
the difficulties of doing this on a sustainable basis?
One approach might be to crowd-source the captioning to share the effort. If, for example, everyone who was
interviewed in the video provided a textual summary of what tey said, could that be used to caption the video? I’m
not sure – but I am willing to provide a summary of my contribution:
4 minutes 45 seconds: Brian Kelly introduces himself. Brian is based at UKOLN, a national centre of
expertise in digital information management, lcoated at the University of Bath. He blogs about Web and Web
2.0 issueson the UK Web Focus blog, which is available at ukwebfocus.wordpress.com
5 minutes 7 seconds: end of Brian Kelly’s clip.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 30 of 616
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged solo09 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (3)
The Back Channels for the Science Online 2009 Conference
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
The Science Online 2009 Conference
On Saturday 22nd August 2009 I attended the Science Online 2009 Conference which was held at the Royal
Institution of Great Britain, London. The conference followed on from last year’s event, which had the title
Science Blogging 2008, but had a broader remit addressing issues such as “What is a scientific paper?”, “Author
identity – Creating a new kind of reputation online”, “Real-time statistics in science” and “Google Wave: Just
another ripple or science communication tsunami?” as well as blog-related talks such as “Blogging for impact”
and “Legal and Ethical Aspects of Science Blogging “.
With an audience of experienced scientific bloggers present it is only to be expected that, just a few days after the
conference, blog posts about the conference has already been published. So rather than repeat what has already
been said, I will link to one blog post which provides links to a number of posts already published: Thoughts on
the Science Online London Conference.
The Event Back Channels
This post mentions the Twitter hashtag for the event (#solo09) and provides links to the FriendFeed Science
Online London group (which used the tag solondon for the Friendfeed room) and also the Flick group for the
event (which used the tag solo09).
For an event aimed at scientists which focussed on innovative online technologies (as well as a talk on Google
Wave several of the talks were also available in Second Life) and which discussed the implications of the online
environment on traditional views on scientific papers and mechanisms for measuring the impact of scientific
research in this environment it was perhaps surprising that there wasn’t more discussions of ways of preserving
the online discussions associated with the conference itself which took place on Twitter, FriendFeed and Second
Life, in addition to blog posts, some of which were published during the conference itself.
Preserving the Back Channel Discussion
Now although links have been provided to Twitter searches for “solo09″ I suspect the short lifespan of Twitter
searches may not be well-known. Following my recent blog post containing links to the Twitter channel for
UKOLN’s IWMW 2009 event I subsequently discovered that tweets disappear from Twitter’s search index in a
short period of time: as reported in a recent TechCrunch article “According to Twitter’s search documentation, the
current date limit on the search index is “around 1.5 weeks but is dynamic and subject to shrink as the number of
tweets per day continues to grow.“”
Further information on these experiences has been published. As I have described many (but not all) of the tweets
associated with the event were stored locally using the Backupmytweets, Twapperkeeper, and WTHashtag
services in order to avoid the dependencies on the Twitter service.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 31 of 616
Testing one of
these services with the #solo09 hashtag I find that currently Twapperkeeper finds 1,1472 tweets for the “#solo09″
tag. This service also provides a graph of the numbers of tweets which is illustrated. To summarise in the last 7
days there have been:
• 1,435 tweets
• 193 contributors
• 205.0 tweets per day
• 29.8% come from “The Top 10″
• 16.0% are retweets
• 43.0% are mentions
• 5.7% have multiple hashtags
In addition the top contributors were:
1. @kejames – 65
2. @rpg7twit – 55
3. @kjhaxton – 51
4. @Allochthonous – 50
5. @skyponderer – 41
6. @brian_condon – 38
7. @morphosaurus – 36
8. @PaoloViscardi – 34
9. @phnk – 29
10. @allysonlister – 29
Discussion
We might expect the science community to have a particular interest in citations and the online science
community and the early adopters to have a particular interest in citations related to new collaborative and
communications techn0logies such as Twitter, FriendFeed and Second Life.
In previous discussions on this topics there has been a view expressed by some that Twitter should be regarded as
a transient form of communication and the loss of data should be regarded as one of Twitter’s strengths. And this
might be particularly relevant when the communications relates to trivial issues or issues which time out quickly.
Examples of both instances took place at Science Online 2009: the unaswered iPhone caused lots of people to
complain on the various channels and the updates on the Ashes test scores are no longer relevant.
The experiences of Science Online 2009 do, however, underscore an additional challenge: the diversity of the
back channels. In addition to the Twitter channel, the science community has been an adopted of FriendFeed and
this was popular at the event. Discussions were also taking place on Second Life. As well as the different
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 32 of 616
applications being used there were multiple variants of the event tags: ‘#solo09′ on Twitter, ’solo09′ on Flickr and
’solondon’ for the name of the FriendFeed room.
The conference was also faced with the question of how to display the back channel. At one point a Twitter
Search screen was displayed alongside the FriendFeed display. However since the Twitter display required
manual refreshing to display new tweets this was replaced by the Twitterfall software during one of the
presentations. Unfortunately this last minute adjustments meant that the text on the screen display wasn’t large
enough to be read comfortably by many in the audience.
Where does this leave us? I would hope that the experiences of Science Online 2009, IWMW 2009, etc. and the
subsequent sharing and discussions of experiences will help to inform approaches and best practices for future
amplified events. And as suggested in a recent blog post on Feral Event Data: Twitter at IWMW 2009 aren’t the
benefits of preserving the (reusable) data associated with live blogging at events particularly relevant for the
research community? Tony Hirst has recently given his Preliminary Thoughts on Visualising the OpenEd09
Twitter Network. And he has started “thinking about how we might start to analyse the structure of the network
around the hashtag, in part so we can understand information flow through that part of the open education
network better“.
Tony has written a follow-up post
giving “A Quick Peek at the IWMW2009 Twitter Network” which shows who cited who on Twitter during the
IWMW 2009 event. This might give rise to some interesting questions. But might the interesting observations
which can be made about the IWMW 2009 event (an event aimed at Web practitioners) be of more relevance in a
research context? Perhaps not -but you can only ask the questions and carry out this type of analysis if you have
the data. So if there is anyone who wishes to mine the ‘#solo09′ Twitter data I hope the data I have captured is
useful.
Filed in Twitter | Tagged solo09 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (6)
Feral Event Data: Twitter at IWMW 2009
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
I have been asked to give a talk at a workshop session to be held at the Dublin Core DC-2009 conference on
“Semantic Interoperability of Linked Data”. The invitation arose after my recent posts on the use of Twitter at
UKOLN’s IWMW 2009 event. The talk is intended for a session on “feral data”. This, I assume, is meant to cover
data which may be uncontrolled and unmanaged but which may be useful in ways which are not originally
envisaged.
The DC-09 event is being held in Seoul, South Korea in October 2009. I won’t be attending the conference, but
have agreed to produce a brief pre-recorded presentation. My first rehearsal of the talk was too long (20 minutes
rather than 10) and the sound quality wasn’t great (interference caused my the close proximity of my mobile
phone to the microphone). However I thought it might be useful to make this draft presentation available for those
who may have an interest in this subject. The draft abstract for the talk is give below:
Increasingly research conferences, such as DC 2009, will have a WiFi network which conference attendees
will use to enhance their learning and engagement with ideas, as well as for supporting administrative and
social needs.
Tools such as Twitter enable conference attendees to engage in discussions during talks in ways which would
have been frowned upon before hand-held devices and laptop computers became an essential item for many
researchers.
The pre-recorded presentation will describe the approaches which were taken at UKOLN’s recent IWMW
2009 (Institutional Web Management Workshop) in which Twitter (together with technologies such as
Twitter, an event blog, Flickr and live video streaming) was used to enrich the quality of the event and
maximise its outreach.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 33 of 616
The presentation covers:
• The reasons for the ‘event amplification’.
• Tools used to aggregate information provided on a diversity of services.
• Tools used to ‘preserve’ the event ‘tweets’.
• Challenges in curating the event ‘tweets’.
• The dangers in attempting to manage an event’s back-channel”
This talk is available as a slidecast (slides plus audio) on Slideshare and is also embedded below.
[slideshare id=1861131&doc=twitter-at-events-090814085552-phpapp02]
Your comments are invited.
Filed in Twitter | Tagged dc09 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
25 years of PowerPoint. But What Next?
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
Happy Birthday
PowerPoint was born 25 years ago, on 14 August 1984. An article on the BBC News Magazine, entitled “The
problem with PowerPoint” points out that “They’re often boring” and goes on to point out the problems with
PowerPoint presentations which are too wordy, make excessive use of bullet points, etc.
The Need For Good Design and Visual Impact
Nothing surprising, you may think. And I too have been bored with such presentations and have been impressed
with more visually oriented presentations, in which the design creativity is apparent.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 34 of 616
In particular I remember how impressed I was with Alison
Wildish’s plenary talk at IWMW 2007 – a talk which was radical, at the time, in the summary of how a relatively
new institution (Edge Hill University) was embracing Social Web services to engage with students and potential
students.
The accompanying slides were also visually impressive, with each slide having its own visual identity and some
of the slides challenging the assumptions that a speaker from a marketing background would invariably promote
their own institution.
As someone who gives a lot of talks my slides should be more like Alison’s, I can remember thinking at the time.
I should ditch the UKOLN template and make the individual slides distinctive, as Alison did. And I should reduce
the amount of text on the slides, leaving it to my memory, or the accompanying speaker notes, to provide the
details of what I will say in my talks.
An Alternative View
But whilst I’ll acknowledge the impact that good design and visual diversity can have on an audience I do wonder
whether the points made in the BBC article start to become slightly less relevant in the environment I increasingly
work in, in which ‘amplified conferences’ will be built around the speakers and their slides but the audience may
not be physically present in the lecture theatre but viewing the talks on a video streaming service or accessing the
slides after the event is over.
UKOLN’s recent IWMW 2009 event was one such amplified event. And for this event we sought to treat the
remote audience watching the video stream as first class participants, providing access to the plenary speaker’s
slides using Slideshare, as well as using various social media services, such as Twitter to encourage discussions,
etc. Liz Azyan, in a blog post entitled “Iwmw2009: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly…“, picked up on the
importance of this approach:
“Let’s talk a bit about some of the stuff I liked about the conference…
There were alot of things that this conference did get right in terms of using social media to fully aggregate
the workshops content effectively online. Check out how #iwmw2009 came alive online and created real-time
conversations and feedback …
1. Slideshare of all presentation slides (Excellent!) – I always find myself needing to ask for these at
events and often take a long time to become available. So, well done!“
In a follow-up post Liz, in a report on the opening session at the event, embedded the slides from the two opening
talks, thus illustrating how such slides can now be decoupled from their use in the live presentation.
I personally am finding larger numbers of people seem to access to my slides on Slideshare than are present when
I give the live presentation. Looking at the statistics I notice that a the slides for a talk on “Introduction To
Facebook: Opportunities and Challenges For The Institution“, which was given to a small number (less than 20)
of staff at Bath University has been viewed 10,900 times.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 35 of 616
Who, then, is my main audience? Should I seek to treat the remote audience on par with the live audience? And if
I do wish to do this, will it (should it) have any relevance to the design of the slides? Perhaps for the remote
audience, there should be a greater emphasis placed on the informational content, whereas for the live audience
the emphasis may be on engaging with the audience?
And does a personal visual appearance for slides possibly make it difficult for the slides to be reused? For a
number of years I have provided a Creative Commons licence for my slides, and have welcomed their reuse. But
if they were less neutral in the appearance and contained less content, would this detract from their potential for
reuse?
Or are these just excuses for my lack of design skills!?
Filed in General | Tagged Slideshare | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (7)
If Not Too Large, Are University Web Teams Poor Communicators?
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
I recently posed the question “Are University Web Teams Too Large?“. The context to this question was a
suspicion that the UK HE sector is lagging behind smaller US colleges in exploiting the potential of various Web
2.0 services. And maybe organisations with well-established IT Service departments try to develop services in-
house because of the relatively large Web team and Web developers.
A response to this assertion would be to argue the diversity of services which University Web teams are engaged
in. But do Web teams take the time to communicate within their institutions and inform their user communities of
the work they are engaged in? And do they work effectively by sharing their approaches with their peers in other
institutions, and learn from approaches taken in other higher educational institutions?
This was an issue raised last year by Mike Nolan on the Edge Hill University Web team blog on a post on
“Blogging web teams” in which he pointed out that “Blogging web teams are rare. I suspect you could count
them on one hand“.
In the blog post Mike provided a whole series of reasons why Web teams should be making use of blogs
including:
• Communicating what you’re doing.
• Personal Development.
• Community Engagement.
• Practice what you preach.
• Networking with peers.
Those suggestions, which I’d endorse, were made before the economic crisis began to seriously affect the higher
educational sector. But in a recent issues of the Times Higher Education (6 August 209) I read a news item which
states that “The University of Wolverhampton is to cut about 250 jobs – about 11% of its total staff“.
So to Mike’s list of reasons why Web teams should be blogging I’d add:
• To ensure that University policy makers are aware of the importance of the activities of the Web
team to the institution.
And if you still argue that you haven’t got time to blog, be warned – you may find yourself with more time on
your hands than you bargained for! At least the Web Team for the Electronics and Computer Science department
at the University of Southampton seem to have got the message – they set up a Web team blog at the start of
August with a simple and clear remit: “This blog is aimed at people doing similar jobs to ours, and to members of
our school so they can see a bit of what we do“.
Filed in Blog, General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 36 of 616
The Use of Blogs and Wikis in Scholarly Communication
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
I have been invited to give a talk on “The Use of Blogs and Wikis in Scholarly Communication” ALPSP 2009
conference to be held at the at the The Oxford Belfry, Milton Common, Thame on 9-11th September. The talk will
will take place on the final day in the closing session on “The Transformation of Scholarly Practice”. The abstract
for this session is given below:
The way that researchers work is changing and so is the way they interact with the scholarly literature.
Publishers and academics are experimenting with different types of scholarly content ranging from
‘informal’ scholarly communication on wikis and blogs through different ways of writing books and journal
articles, linking data to the primary literature and on to new technologies that render information in ways
that transform online content beyond a mere digital facsimile of print. This session will provide food for
thought for publishers by exploring this transformation and examining the new ways in which scholars and
practitioners are generating and interacting with the literature.
But what should my take be, I wonder? I suspect that a simple promotion of the potential benefits of blogs and
wikis in the research community could easily be too bland for a final session at the conference. Some ideas which
reflect my areas of interest which I could cover in the 25 minute talk include how micro-blogging fits in; the risks
of reliance on services in the cloud and using the Social Web to help to maximise the impact of research activities.
I’d welcome comments on ideas which I could explore in this session? And if any readers are using blogs and
wikis in innovative ways to support the “Transformation of Scholarly Practice” I’d love to hear about such
approaches.
Filed in Events | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
The Live Video Streaming Of IWMW 2009
Monday, August 17th, 2009
This year, once again, we provided a live video stream of the plenary talks at IWMW 2009, something we have
been doing since IWMW 2006.
But how many people watched the live stream? Last year 160 remote viewers watched the final plenary talk given
by Ewan McIntosh. The statistics provided by the University of Essex are not directly comparable, but indicate
that there were about 50 viewers for Derek Law’s opening plenary talk with slightly larger numbers for the
opening plenary talks on the second day of the event.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 37 of 616
As can be seen, a location
map of the viewers has also been provided by the University of Essex. And clicking on the icons will provide
further details on the numbers of viewers at the IP address together with the total time spent viewing the
streaming video.
A good example of the global impact of the event? On an initial view of the map this would seem to be the case.
But on further examination we can see that some of the views were only for a few seconds. For example the
information for the viewer in Africa tells us that:
Kinshasa, Kinshasa, Congo, The Democratic Republic of the
1 hits (1 unique IPs), 0d0h0m12s total.
The 8 hits from Finland, which lasted for over 4 hours, appear to indicate a commitment to watching several of
the talks (assuming the video wasn’t simply left on over lunch). But is there a viable business model for providing
live video-streaming for such events? As the event was fully subscribed (as it has been for a number of years) we
can argue that the live stream helps to maximise access and the impact of the talks, especially to the core target
audience in the UK. And the (apparent) popularity of the video stream in North America help to enhance the
UK’s activities to a wider audience.
But perhaps the most important aspect of the video streaming have been the experiences we have gained in the
delivery of ‘amplified events’. The four year’s of video streaming of IWMW events have helped us to gain a
better understanding of the best practices. And we have tried to summarise our experiences in a briefing paper on
“Using Video at Events“.
Filed in Events, iwmw2009 | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
Social Networks, Open Source and Risk Assessment
Thursday, August 13th, 2009
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 38 of 616
Does The Ownership Of Social Networks Really Matter?
In my most recent post entitled “Facebook Buys FriendFeed; Identica is Open Source; Does It Matter?” I asked
“But how relevant is this dogma?” in response to the apparent suggestion on a mailing list for an international
standards body that since “above all laconi.ca is Open source“ the standards body (DCMI) should make use of
the laconia.ca micro-blogging service in preference to the closed source Twitter solution.
I sought to draw parallels with the recent announcement that Facebook had bought FriendFeed, suggesting that,
although some may feel that this announcement will force them to leave FriendFeed and use an alternative micro-
blogging environment, for me and, I suspect, for many the ownership of the service and the underlying software
isn’t a clinching argument. We know that this is the case generally (although many won’t like it to admit it, the
reality is most users use Microsoft Office products rather than Open Office and Internet Explorer rather than
FireFox). And for social networking environments there is a added complication – social networks don’t work
unless there is a community – you might be happy to use Open Office on your own, but an open source
community with few members is likely to be an unproductive environment for many.
So rather than the ‘we must use an open source micro-blogging environment – full stop‘ argument, let’s explore
the reasons ownership issues could matter and the associated challenges if it is felt there may be a need to
consider migrating to a new environment.
A Risk Assessment Approach
In response to my post Cameron Neylon pointed out that “if Friendfeed goes away from what our community
wants from it we have no way of maintaining our community because it isn’t open source“. He went on to add “If
twitter were swallowed by google tomorow and everyone forced to use Google Talk instead (I don’t say its likely,
just possible) then you’re in trouble“.
That’s true, and as I have recently had a paper on “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise
the Dividends” published recently in the Program journal I would endorse Cameron’s approach of identifying
risks. What then are the risks? I think, in the case of the Facebook purchase of FriendFeed, these might include:
• Facebook shuts down FriendFeed. It regarded it as competition for its core business and bought the
company in order to remove the threat.
• Facebook continues FriendFeed, but changes its terms and conditions which are felt to be unacceptable to
significant parts of the FriendFeed community.
• Facebook makes changes to the FriendFeed user interface which users don’t like (e.g. provision of ads in
the free version of the client).
These are legitimate questions to raise. But that does not necessarily mean existing users should abandon
FriendFeed. There is a need to ask how realistic such risks may be and also to consider the costs and the effort of
moving to an alternative. I remember being told that organisations shouldn’t use Google as a search engine as we
can’t guarantee that Google wouldn’t change their terms and conditions. True – but most people are prepared to
accept that risks.
The likelihood that such changes will happen is likely to be very subjective, so I’ll not engage in that assessment
here. I would suggest, however, that if FriendFreed users are seriously considering a migration to an alternative
environment (as opposed to just having a moan) then they will need to think about what the migration strategies
would be. There is also a need to be honest about the costs and difficulties of such a migration, including the
difficulties of migrating a community, the associated costs of doing this and the dangers of associated losses (of
data, communities and credibility).
And although FriendFeed users may be asking such questions in light of the purchase of the company by
Facebook, the general issues I’ve raised are likely to be true in other context, whether a move from Flickr if
Microsoft were to purchase Yahoo or a move from Twitter if its ownership were to change.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 39 of 616
The Risks Of Change
As well as the risks associated with use of current well-established services such as FriendFeed or Twitter, there is
also a need to consider the risks of alternatives, especially when the alternatives are immature or unproven. And
simply arguing that, for example, “above all laconi.ca is Open source” is an inappropriate response. Look, for
example, at the evidence provided by failed open source initiatives in the area of social networking environments.
Who remembers “Marc Canter’s much anticipated PeopleAggregator“, which provided, as described in
TechCrunch in 2006, “free downloads of the software for organizations who prefer to host it themselves” which
meant that “it will be easy to come and go from new social networks, instead of being locked in to one just
because you’ve put the time and energy into using your account there. Instead of being at the mercy of one
centralized database and service, if Canter’s vision succeeds then countless social networks will proliferate with
unique styles and function but with interoperability.”
The People Aggregator software may not have been open source but, as it could be downloaded and installed
locally, it avoided the single point of failure problem which has recently troubled Twitter. But let’s now consider
Eduspaces, an open source social networking environment designed for the educational community which
announced the closure of the service in 16 December 2007, giving the user community just a few weeks before
the service was scheduled for closure.
And looking at the Eduspaces Web site today I see it describes itself as “the world’s first and largest social
networking site dedicated to education and educational technology“. But looking at the FAQ to see who owns the
company, where it is based, what jurisdiction covers the content and terms and conditions I find a series of
questions but no answers, other than the stark message “[available soon]“. And the terms and conditions state
that:
• 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.
So remember, there may be flaws and concerns over the social networking services we are using today. But an
uncritical adoption of alternatives just because they are open source could lead to a worse scenario than the
potential risks identified above.
Filed in Social Networking | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
Facebook Buys FriendFeed; Identica is Open Source; Does It Matter?
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
As described on TechCrunch a couple of days ago, Facebook Acquires FriendFeed. The Monkey Bites blog
advises “Let’s Be Friends in its article on how Facebook acquired FriendFeed. But the reaction in the
Twitterverse seems to be negative, with concerns that Facebook’s walled garden mentality will be applied to
FriendFeed and that the ownership which Facebook claims for content posted within Facebook will also apply to
content on FriendFeed. This acquisition may be a threat to Twitter, as suggested on the ZDNet Asia blog:
“Facebook takes aim at Twitter, buys FriendFeed“.
Meanwhile the announcement that the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative has “started a little DC twitter activity”
has been met with comments suggesting that identi.ca should be used on the grounds that “above all laconi.ca is
Open source“. Dan Brickley backs this suggestion:
While it has a smaller userbase than twitter, the project is very friendly to standards such as RDF which
DCMI is also committed to. Identi.ca/laconi.ca is also API-compatible with Twitter, and allows you to repost
from identi.ca to twitter accounts automatically.
…
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 40 of 616
Oh, last thing re identi.ca: there’s a groups mechanism, so we could experiment with groups for DCMI or
sub-communities…
But how relevant is this dogma? FriendFeed, it seems, is cool in some circle, as is identi.ca, whereas Twitter and
FaceBook aren’t. And some FriendFeed users are talking about closing down their accounts whilst fans of
identi.ca are seeking to encourage newcomers to joint, citing the richer functionality it provides as well as its open
source pedigree. But to what extent will the issues of ownership of the code, rights over the data and the richness
of the functionality affect people’s decisions?
For me the important aspect of these social tools is the associated community – and as a well-established Twitter
user I am not too concerned regarding the openness of the source code. And although I am willing to experiment
with providing richer functionality with Twitter, such as recent experiment with use of multiple hashtags for
events, I do appreciate the point which Mike Ellis has raised, suggesting that it’s Twitter’s simplicity which is a
key aspect of its success. So is there any evidence that identi.ca open source code and richer functionality will be
successful in migrating a community to it? And is it really true that the integration between Twitter and identi.ca
will be seamless and transparent? Why do I feel I’ve heard these arguments before – without the supposed
benefits actually being delivered? Facebook buys FriendFeed; Identica is open source; does it matter? To you it
might, but to the vast majority of users I suspect it doesn’t.
Filed in Social Networking, openness | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (9)
Paper on "Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise
the Dividends" Published in Program
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
A paper on “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” has recently been
published in the Program journal (Program Electronic Library and Information Systems, 2009, 43 (3), pp. 311-
327). This paper is accessible from the University of Bath Opus institutional repository service.
This paper was originally presented at the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference held at the National Library of
Singapore in October 2008. I am the lead author of the paper and the other contributors are Paul Bevan (National
Library of Wales), Richard Akerman (National Research Council Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical
Information, Ottawa, Canada), Jo Alcock (University of Wolverhampton) and Josie Fraser (consultant).
The process of depositing the paper into the institutional repository was much easier than my previous experience
– now that I know which option to select when a DOI for the paper is available. However since depositing my
various papers in our institutional repository it has struck me that although my papers should now have a stable
URI and will have associated metadata designed to make the papers easier to discover the institutional repository
does not provide a forum for interested readers to discuss the paper openly. So, as I did with another recent paper,
I am writing this blog post which will allow comments to be made. And after this post has been published I
should updated the details in the repository to link to this blog post.
Hmm – shouldn’t all papers have a mechanisms whereby readers can ask questions about the ideas which have
been exposed to a peer-reviewing process?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Are University Web Teams Too Large?
Friday, August 7th, 2009
Mike Richwalski was very busy at IWMW 2009 (and beyond). Mike, Assistant Director of Public Affairs at
Allegheny College, submitted a proposal to run a workshop session on “Using Amazon Web Services (AWS)”
which we were happy to accept. In subsequent discussions with Mike I discovered that he was not only a techie
who knew about managing Amazon services but had recently presented a webinar on Facebook & Twitter
Recruitment Tools to Engage Prospective Students.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 41 of 616
This was a topic which was directly related to a series of workshops I was involved with on behalf of the SCA
(Strategic Content Alliance). When I discovered that Mike was arriving in London on the day of the workshop in
London (they day before the start of IWMW 2009) I tentatively asked if he’d like to give a brief talk at the SCA
workshop (I have to admit that I was particularly interested in any cultural differences between educational
institutions in the US and the UK in a willingness to make use of Social Web environments such as Facebook and
Twitter). Mike not only agree to take part, he was also able to participate in the workshop in Cardiff, as he was
returning to the US from Cardiff airport. And Mike also gave a bar camp at IWMW 2009 in which he summarised
the ways in which Allegney College is using Social Web services.
In the IWMW 2009 bar camp Mike described his college’s use of Facebook, Twitter (for general use, admissions,
student orientation and sports) and YouTube. Amazon Web Services (AWS) also powers many areas of their Web
site, such as their multimedia fund-raising activities.
Following Mike’s overviews of these services, I asked others in the bar camp whether UK higher educational
institutions were taking similar approaches in exploiting such Web 2.0 services. The answer, it seems, is not yet.
But why, I wonder? What are the barriers? Is it because we are seeking perfection? Do we hide behind phrases
such as ‘creepy tree-houses’ and ‘walled gardens’ when the evidence seems to suggest that institutions feel that
they gain benefits from use of such services? And, secretly, are members of Web teams feeling threatened? Is
there a view that if we don’t develop the services in-house, we’re not doing our jobs properly? And is it
significant that members of UK institutional Web management teams are leaning from the approaches taken by a
small US college with 1 Web team, of 1.5 FTEs?
I recently suggested that The Recession Has Still To Hit the Public Sector! And I’ve heard rumours of layoffs and
early retirements in University Web teams. So it strikes me that it is now very timely to make use of the global
infrastructure which various Web 2.0 services can provide to support our institutional activities. I was therefore
pleased that Barry Cornelius, for example, ran a workshop session at IWMW 2009 on “Time for iTunes U“.
But will this provide an opportunity for the bean-counters in the institutions to ‘right-size’ the Web team?
Possibly, but I also feel there is so much more that could be done to make in exploiting the potential of the Web to
support our institutional objectives. Why waste effort in attempting to replicate in-house what is already working
on a global scale?
Filed in Web2.0, iwmw2009 | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (6)
How People Access This Blog – 600 Posts On
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
This is the 600th post since the blog was launched in November 2006. As I have done a couple of times in the
past, I will use this occasion to document some statistics related to this blog.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 42 of 616
How do people access the blog site? Well as the
WordPress.com service provides me with analytics on the Web site usage I can easily answer that.
Unsurprisingly Google is the Web site which has delivered most traffic to the blog site since it was launched, as
can be seen from the accompanying image. However unlike conventional Web sites, it is the Google RS Reader
which delivers the traffic, rather than the Google search engine.
In second place is another RSS reader: Netvibes.
But perhaps of most interest is the Web site to be found in third, fifth and sixth place – which is Twitter. Yes,
although Twitter has only became such a popular service after this blog was launched it is responsible for
delivering a significant amount of traffic to the blog.
I noticed recently that Twitter was frequently appearing in the list of referrers to this and to UKOLN’s Cultural
Heritage blog. I then came across the TechCrunch articles on “For TechCrunch, Twitter = Traffic (A Statistical
Breakdown)” and “The Value Of Twitter Is In ‘The Power Of Passed Links’“. The latter article suggests that:
Twitter “will surpass Google for many websites in the next year.” And that just as nearly every site on the
Web has become addicted to Google juice, they will increasingly try to find ways to get more links from
Twitter. Because Twitter equals traffic.
Hmm. It could be that the Twitter users who follow links to this blog would have viewed the posts anyway in
their RSS reader. But maybe Twitter is becoming a replacement for RSS for many users.
Filed in Blog, Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (5)
Evidence on Use of Twitter for Live Blogging
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
When we encouraged use of Twitter at the IWMW 2009 event we ensured that tweets containing the event’s
#iwmw2009 tag were archived using a variety of services including Backupmytweets, Twapperkeeper service,
wthashtag and Tweetdoc.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 43 of 616
A page on the IWMW 2009 event’s Web site provides links to the various archives of the tweets, allowing the
different approaches taken by the services to be compared. But the most interesting feature was provided by the
wthashtag which provides a record of tweets over a user-definable date range in HTML and RSS formats. But
even more interestingly, it provides a range of statistics on usage of the selected hashtag.
As well as the histogram of usage of the tag which is
illustrated, I also discover that over the past seven days the top contributors have been:
1. @iwmwlive – 255
2. @spellerlive – 60
3. @mecb – 58
4. @bensteeples – 54
5. @MikeNolanLive – 45
6. @catmachine – 41
7. @PlanetClaire – 36
8. @kammer – 35
9. @webpackets – 34
10. @m1ke_ellis – 32
Unsurprisingly the official @iwmwlive Twitter account was in top place (this belonged to the event’s live blogger
who had a remit to keep a record of the plenary talks). Two of the other top contributors, @spellerlive and
@MikeNolanLive also contains the ‘live’ suffix, indicating regular Twitter users who have chosen to create a
second account to be used for live blogging at events. The numbers of tweets from @mecb is perhaps surprising
as the user has previously been an infrequent blogger, although, as described in a video interview, Miles Banbery
has discovered a new found enthusiasm for Twitter
In addition there have been:
• 1,530 tweets
• 170 contributors
• 218.6 tweets per day
• 42.5% come from “The Top 10″
• 4.4% are retweets
• 20.0% are mentions
• 34.5% have multiple hashtags
I am particularly interested in the statistics of usage of multiple hashtags. As described in a post on Use of Twitter
at IWMW 2009 published a few days before the event began we suggested that “if you wish to refer to a specific
plenary talk or workshop session [in your tweets], we have defined a hashtag for each of the plenary talks (#p1 to
#p9) and workshop session (#a1-#a9, #b1-#b4 and #c1 top #c5“.
Mike Ellis responded to this suggestion: “I’ll be interested to see what take-up is for your
#complexhashtagsuggestion. Personally (as you know!) I think it’s an error of complexity over usability.”
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 44 of 616
I feel the evidence indicates that many of the participants were willing to use multiple hashtags when their use
was appropriate (hashtags were not suggested for the bar camp sessions or for social events, so we wouldn’t
expect 100% of the event tweets to have multiple hashtags.
We can now, after the event, exploit
the multiple hashtags to more easily find what people were saying about particular sessions. Use of #iwmw2009
and #p3 in a Twitter search, for example, enables us to quickly discover what was being said about Paul Boag’s
talk on Making your killer applications… killer!. Why might we want to do this? Well towards the end of the
talks we invited participants to post a single tweet summarising what they felt they had gained from the session.
This may be useful information to reflect on after the event.
And it should be noted that some of the comments were made after the talk had been given – without the
additional hashtag it would have been difficult to relate a comment to a particular session (in the example
illustrated the reference to Paul Boag’s plenary talk #P3 was made in the final summing-up session).
An approach to be recommended for future events?
Filed in Twitter, iwmw2009 | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (4)
Event Amplification at IWMW 2009
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
IWMW 2009
This year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop, IWMW 2009, is now over. Despite being the 13th in the
series on annual events aimed at members of institutional Web management teams, the event was not unlucky!
The largest event audience for an IWMW event (200 registered delegates) arrived at the University of Essex
campus which began on Tuesday 28 July with the opening plenary talk on “Headlights on Dark Roads” given by
Professor Derek Law. And despite a rail dispute on Thursday (the final day of the event) there was still a large
audience for the final talk on “How the BBC make Web sites“, an entertaining session on the importance of
developers by the two Mikes (Ellis and Nolan) and my closing summary.
Amplification of the IWMW 2009 Event
I’ll not attempt to summarise everything that took place at IWMW 2009 in this blog. However there were a
number of issues which were raised during the event which will be worth exploring in future posts. But for now I
thought I’d summarise three aspects of the event organisation (rather than the content) which I feel are
particularly noteworthy.
The IWMW 2009 Blog
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 45 of 616
Last year we provided a Ning social network for use by the workshop participants. This year. inspired by the
approaches taken at the Dev8D and Mashed Library Oop North events, we decided to set up a IWMW 2009
blog. The aim was to provide a less formal environment than the main event Web site, for both published
information about the event and about the workshop participants, including their interests, recollections of
previous IWMW events from those who have attended previous event and reasons why newcomers at the
event have decided to travel to Essex in the last week of July. The blog proved very successful. We will be
continuing to encourage some further posts to the blog before the participants disappear off for their summer
holiday.
Video Streaming
For the third year running we provided a live video stream of the plenary talks. I understand that there were
about 50 people viewing the opening plenary talk. It will be interesting to see the viewing statistics for the
second and third days.
In order to provide a richer experience for the remote audience we ensured that the slides for the plenary
speakers who used PowerPoint were available on Slideshare (and note that many of the slideshows used in
the parallel sessions are also available) .
Live Blogging
In addition an official live blogger used the iwmwlive Twitter account to provide a running commentary of
the plenary talks. Kirsty McGill, who provided the live blogging service, also used these notes as the basis of
a summary of the talks which was posted to the blog shortly afterwards.
We made a conscious effort to treat the remote audience as ‘first class citizens’. As well as the technologies
listed above, we also tried to ensure that everyone used a microphone so that the remote audience could hear
not only the speakers, but also the session chair and any questions posed by the live audience.
Twitter Channel
As well as the official use of Twitter for recording plenary talks and an IWMW Twitter account for
administrative use (I’m pleased the missing phone reported on Twitter was found) we also encouraged
participants to use the #iwmw2009 tag when tweeting about the event.
Links with the US
Thus year, for the first time, we worked with Higher Ed Experts who provide professional development and
social networking online opportunities to higher education professionals working in Web, marketing, PR and
admissions offices in the USA. Two of the parallel sessions, Where’s the University? Building an
institutional geolocation service by Janet McKnight and Sebastian Rahtz (Oxford University Computing
Services) and Using Amazon Web Services by Mike Richwalsky (Allegheny College) had been pre-
recorded in advance of IWMW 2009 and were provided as free Webinars on the Higher Ed Experts Web site.
Reflections on the Event Amplification
None of the aspects of IWMW 2009 I have described is significantly new. We have made use of wikis (at
IWMW 2007) and social networks at previous events; the use of communication technologies to facilitate
discussions during plenary talks dates back to IWMW 2005 when we made use of IRC (as you can see from the
archive of the IRC discussions) and we have been video streaming the plenary talks since 2007.
In previous years use of these technologies to ‘amplify’ the ideas and thinking beyond the physical event and
enhance the discussions and debate at the event has been experimental. This year we have attempted to provide
this as a service. The local participants have expectations of reasonable levels of service for the food and
accommodation at the event. But now we can expect remote participants to have similar expectations regarding
access to the content and the discussions and debate.
Did we provide a satisfactory level of service? Please let us know.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 46 of 616
Filed in Events, iwmw2009 | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (6)
A World Where No-One Visits Our Web Sites
Friday, July 31st, 2009
In a blog post entitled Pushing MRD out from under the geek rock Mike Ellis provides access to the slides he
used in a session on “Digging into data: text and data mining” at the recent JISC Digital Content Conference.
Mike’s blog post goes on to explain his views which he helpfully summarises “I think that MRD (That’s Machine
Readable Data – I couldn’t seem to find a better term..) is probably about as important as it gets“. Mike goes on
to ask us to:
… be prepared for a world in which no-one visits our websites any more, instead picking, choosing and
mixing our content from externally syndicated channels.
This world in which people don’t visit Web sites to read content as the content appears in their preferred
environment is one in which I live. The content I have an interest in reading appears on my iPod Touch ready for
me to read on the bus travelling to work in the morning. I seldom visit Mike’s Electronic Museum blog site or the
other blogs (such as the eFoundations, OUseful, The Ed Techie, and From a Distance blogs which are on my
must-read list) – these appear automatically in my RSS reader.
Of course I still visit Web sites – and increasingly I am finding that the new Web sites I visit are those I am
alerted to by the people I follow on Twitter. But the more traditional marketing campaigns for new Web sites or
redesigned Web sites tends to have little impact on my browsing habits. Unless the content can be accessed
without having to visit the Web site I am unlike to be a regular visitor, no matter how useful the content may be.
Now we still do need Web sites – the content needs to be held somewhere. And not everyone makes use of an
RSS reader. But we are finding that Web sites are sucking in content held elsewhere, perhaps using RSS. And of
course the growth in popularity of mobile devices is likely to see a renewed interest in ways in which content can
be accessed without having to visit Web sites and navigate the Web sites on small screens.
Mike Ellis suggests we need to rethink our approach to Web site development: “Don’t Think Websites, think
data” he argues. His slides are available on Slideshare and are embedded below. Well worth reading.
[slideshare id=1714963&doc=dontthinkwebsitesthinkdatafinal-090713100859-phpapp02]
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
The Recession Has Still To Hit the Public Sector!
Monday, July 27th, 2009
Last week began with the gloomy headline in the Sunday Times Whitehall sharpens the knife for university cuts.
The article began:
WHITEHALL is drawing up plans for deep cuts in the higher education budget that in the worst case would
slash a fifth from university finances, funding officials have disclosed.
and went on to point out that:
If implemented, they [the cuts] would lead to the widespread closure of university departments and could
cause some institutions to shut altogether.
A few days later the times then described how “Arnold Schwarzenegger [is] in last-minute deal to save broke
California“. But this isn’t Arnold playing a heroic role as:
“The higher education system, including the University of California, will be hit by nearly $3 billion in cuts“
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 47 of 616
It seems that public sector organisations are facing the brunt of such cuts. Indeed the Time praises Arnold
Schwarzenegger: “His greatest victory was standing firm and warding off tax increases“.
I’ve heard financial commentators suggest that the recession hit the private sector first, whilst public sector
organisations were initially protected by 3 year funding agreements. But as the private sector slims down and
closes unprofitable areas of their activities they will be in a better position to respond to the economic recovery,
whilst public sector organisations begin to experience their financial difficulties. Indeed in a blog post entitled
“Universities and financial crisis” the elearningspace blog reports that:
“The Bank of Canada has declared that the recession is over. While the numerical indicators (small growth
predicted) may support this assertion, reality will tell a different story for many people and institutions.
Universities, for example, are only now beginning to feel the impact. University of California is starting with
deep cuts. Canadian universities are facing cuts as well. Few universities, however, face the difficulties of
Harvard. Hard Times at Harvard provides a rather depressing glimpse into university systems that have lost
focus and direction.“
Whilst I appreciate that the Times may be accused of using a tabloid headline and language in its article, I do
think we need to reflect on the implications of significant cutbacks in the education sector. Especially in light of
the Conservative’s recent success in the by-election and the headline on the front page of Saturday’s Guardian
“I’ll be nation’s hate figure, says top Tory Philip Hammond” in which the shadow Treasury chief secretary,
“anticipat[ed] an era of deep short-term cuts in public spending“.
We can’t say that JISC has failed to provide support for such a gloomy future: they did, after all, commission
work on Scenario Planning which was was originated by the JISC’s Users and Innovation programme, and further
developed by JISC infoNet in partnership with Netskills with the aim of “providing a sustainable online resource
as well as a range of workshops for the sector“.
My scenario, based on these recent reports: “The higher education sector has to deal with severe cuts in its
funding, at a time when the weaker Web 2.0 companies have gone against the wall, leaving the stronger
companies well-placed to deliver services on a global scale”. How should we plan to respond to this increasingly
likely-looking scenario?
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (5)
The IWMW 2009 Blog
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
This year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2009) takes place at the University of Essex on 28
-30th July. In order to support the institutional Web management community we have made use of social
networking environments over the past few years. Last year we made use of Ning but this year, inspired by the
approaches taken at the Dev8D and the recent Mashed Library Oop North events, we have decided to make use of
a blog to support the workshop.
The blog was created on 26th June but was officially launched on 10 July. Since them the blog has published
introductions from UKOLN’s organisers (Marieke Guy, Natasha Bishop and Michelle Smith and myself),
provided a multimedia record of last year’s event, explained the barcamps and barpicnics, summarised the
plenary talks from Derek Law, Paul Boag and David Harrison and Joe Nicholls and, perhaps most importantly,
provided an opportunity for the workshop participants to introduce themselves.
Additional posts will be published which are likely to be of interest to the participants who will be physically
present at the event. But if you can’t attend, please note that IWMW 2009 will, once again, be an amplified event.
You’ll be able to join in the discussions using the #iwmw2009 hashtag on Twitter and we also intend to provide a
video stream of the plenary talks.
Filed in iwmw2009 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 48 of 616
This Year's Technology That Has Blown Me Away
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
About Bathcamp
The history of the Bathcamp is described by Mike Ellis on the Bathcamp Ning service:
Back on 13/14th September 2008, we ran a BarCamp in Bath called – obviously – BathCamp. It was a fun
event and brought together a bunch of local (and some not-so-local) people who talked about a range of
interesting stuff. Some of it was geeky, some of it wasn’t. You can read more about BathCamp over on the
blog or see some Flickr pics.
After the event, I had a think about what we could do to keep the momentum of BathCamp going, without
(necessarily!) having to organise another BarCamp any day soon. I did a survey, and a large bunch of people
seemed interested in meeting up more regularly.
Last night’s Bathcamp, held in conjunction with the Bath-based Carsonified company, was entitled
“BathCamponified: 3 minutes, one technology…“. The task which the Bathcamp participants were invited to take
was to identify “the one technology that has blown you away more than any other in the last year, and [describe]
why?“. The challenge was in three minutes or less to “tell us about your chosen technology: why it has changed
your life, the way you work or ways in which it has improved the world“. As there was a promise of a free bar and
a prize I decided to miss my normal Wednesday night rapper sword practice and summarise the one technology
which has changed my life this year. For those of you who weren’t there, here is a summary of the script I’ve
prepared.
The Technology That Has Transformed My Life in 2009
As there’s a prize at stake I’ve decided to go for a crowd-pleaser for the geeky Bathcamp audience. It’s a
technology that is close to my heart. It is [takes phone from shirt pocket] my HTC Magic Android mobile phone.
And as I’m sure you know it has an open source operating system. I decided to get the phone after reading a blog
post about it written by Dave Flanders who works for the JISC. Dave described the features of the phone, and
concluded by arguing that you should get the phone for ethical reasons.
Now I have to confess – I’m not as ideologically pure as Dave – or, I suspect, many of you. I got the phone for
free, and simply had to upgrade my voice-only contract from £15 to £20, which includes data. OK, the device
which has transformed my life this year may be free (as in open source software) but is also cheap (as in the costs
of the device and the monthly contract).
And I can download applications from anywhere. I avoid the censorship of the single source for applications. Yes
I can download music with rude words which certain other companies will block for fear of offending the
sensitivities of the American mid-west. This is a feature which I’m sure Mike Ellis (@dmje to his followers) will
warmly endorse (warning, adult content!).
A camera, video camera and sound recorded were supplied with the phone. I’ve also installed GPS software,
Shazam, an Augmented Reality browser and the Qik live-video streaming application. OK, I’ll admit, the results
from Qik weren’t great. Well, they were pretty poor. Some might even say unusable. But its open source, so let’s
not quibble about minor details.
I’ve also installed a couple of Twitter clients – so if I have problems with one I can always use the other. I should
apologise, by the way. If you follow me (briankelly) on Twitter and you sometimes see a half-composed or
misspelled tweet I’m (probably) not drunk – it’s just the Magic’s virtual keyboard and annoying auto-correct
feature. Oops, sorry, I’m getting a bit off-message. It’s probably my fault – I’ve got the wrong size fingers for the
phone or I’ve got used to tweeting on my iPod Touch.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 49 of 616
I ought to confess that I also own an iPod Touch. It’s easy to use. I can easily install new applications. It has
WiFi, so I can connect to the Internet. I can – and indeed have – installed Skype, which I used when I was in
Australia earlier this year.
Now it did occur to me that if you were to take the telephony aspect of the Android device and couple it with the
usability of the iPod Touch, you could create a market leader. But that, I fear,would be dangerous. The ease of use
would appeal to the naive and gullible. But us geeks know about the dangers of walled gardens, single providers
of hardware and device lock-in to single network providers. We know we don’t want to unleash a twenty-first
century Microsoft into the mobile world.
And although we may be geeks, we also care about non-geeks – so we know that ‘jail-breaking’ isn’t an ethical or
scalable solution to vendor lock-in.
So join in with me and rejoice in the technology which has blown me away this year.
Embrace the system error messages which pop up from time to time. These remind you
that your phone is a computer and not a fashion accessory! Smile, as I did, when I upgraded the NewsRob RSS
reader at the message “Version 2.5.1 Fixed an issue where Mark All Read marked too many articles read“.
Exercise your brain: see if you can work out how to use the Augmented Reality app.
Remember the Android device is for clever people!
Become part of a thriving community: tell me how the application you find cool works and I’ll tell you about the
application that I’ve eventually mastered.
Note My slides from last night are available on Slideshare. In addition a video clip of part of my talk is available
on YouTube part 1 and part 2 (I’m afraid I was over the time limit as I was so passionate about the technology I
described!.
[slideshare id=1735385&doc=kelly-bathcamp2009-090717113633-phpapp02]
But Seriously
I failed to win a prize last night (but congratulations to my colleague Julian Cheal who won a ticket to FOWD
Tour Bristol) – I’d forgotten that most of the people at the event were proud owners of an iPhone!
But seriously, doesn’t the popularity of the iPhone amongst many software developers, including those who are
supporters of open source software, tell us something about the limitations of open source software. And it’s not
just me who feels the Android device is flawed – Tony Hirst recently commented “A few weeks ago, I got my first
“real” mobile phone, an HTC Magic (don’t ask; suffice to say, I wish I’d got an iPhone:-(”
As someone said last night, open source software might be fine for server applications, but the user interfaces
often appear clunky. Does the open source development community or open source development processes fail
when it comes to developing applications to be used by non-techies?
Filed in Gadgets | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (4)
Depositing My Paper Into the University of Bath Institutional
Repository
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 50 of 616
I recently mentioned that my paper on “From Web accessibility to Web adaptability” had been published in a
special issue of the Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology journal. Shortly after receiving the
notification that the paper had been published I deposited the author’s version of the paper in Opus, the University
of Bath Institutional Repository. As I had attended a short training course on use of Opus (which uses the ePrints
repository software) a few hours before uploading the paper to the repository I decided to time how long it took to
complete the process.
I discovered it took me 16 minutes to do this. As someone responded to my tweet about this, this seemed too
long. I subsequently discovered that I had mistakenly chosen the New Item option – as a DOI for the paper was
available I should have selected the Import Items option (not an intuitive name, I feel). In addition I also copied
the list of 46 references and tried to apply some simple formatting (line breaks between items) to the list and also
to the abstract. This was a mistake, as any line breaks appear to be ignored.
In order to understand what I should have done, I went through the deposit process a second time and this time
recorded my actions, with an accompanying commentary as a screencast which is available on YouTube and
embedded below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSi76y3k5N0]
The video lasts for 10 minutes and the deposit process took 7 minutes (although this includes the time taken in
giving the commentary and showing what I did the first time).
It does occur to me that it might be useful to make greater use of screencasting not only as a training aid for
institutional repository staff to demonstrate the correct processes for depositing items but also to allow authors
themselves to show and describe the approaches they take. I’m sure that some of the mistakes I made are due to
limitations of the user interface and I won’t be alone in making such mistakes. Indeed having shown this view to
the University of Bath’s institutional repository manager she commented:
I’ve also noticed, from your video a few issues that should be fixed, so it was helpful to see.
Why aren’t we making more screencasts available of user interactions with the services we develop, I wonder?
And why aren’t we sharing them?
Note: Just to clarify, this post was intended encourage users to described (openly) their experiences in using
services such as repositories. and to share these experiences. The video clip is not intended as a training resource
on how to deposit an item in a repository! [24 July 2009]
Filed in Repositories | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (13)
"From Web Accessibility To Web Adaptability": A Summary
Monday, July 20th, 2009
I recently announced that a paper on “From Web accessibility to Web adaptability” by myself, Liddy Nevile,
Sotiris Fanou, Ruth Ellison, Lisa Herrod and David Sloan has been published. I also said that, due to copyright
restrictions, access to this article will not be publicly available until next year, when it will be released from the
embargo on the University of Bath institutional repository.
David Sloan, who also edited the special issue of the Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology journal
which published the paper, has written a brief summary of the paper:
A review of web accessibility from an organisational and policymaker’s perspective. This paper focuses on
ways to strike a balance between a policy that limits the chances of unjustified accessibility barriers being
introduced in web design while also providing enough flexibility to allow the web in a way that provides the
best possible user experience for disabled people by acknowledging and supporting the diversity of and the
occasional conflicts between the needs of different groups.
In this post I will give a extended summary of the ideas and approaches outlined in our paper.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 51 of 616
The paper begins by adopting the UN Convention’s view that “disability results from the interaction between
persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective
participation in society on an equal basis with others“. Disability is therefore a social construct and not an
attribute of an individual. In particular, resource accessibility is the matching of a resource to an individual’s
needs an preferences – and is not an attribute of a resource.
From this perspective we see the limitations of the WAI’s approach to accessibility, which regards accessibility
as a characteristic of the resource (which should conform to WCAG guidelines) and the tools used to create the
resource (which should conform to ATAG guidelines) and view the resource (which should conform to UAAG
guidelines). In a previous paper we have described in more details the limitations of the WAI approach to
accessibility (see Forcing Standardization or Accommodating Diversity? A Framework for Applying the WCAG
in the Real World) and here we describe the limitations of what we call ‘Web accessibility 1.0‘ in the context of
the UN Convention.
The paper reviews the holistic approach to Web accessibility which we have described in several papers
previously (see Implementing A Holistic Approach To E-Learning Accessibility, Holistic Approaches to E-
Learning Accessibility, Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes and Reflections on the Development of a
Holistic Approach to Web Accessibility). The approach, which we refer to as ‘Web accessibility 2.0‘, explores
accessibility in a number of areas which are more challenging than the simple provision of information, such as
access to e-learning and cultural resources.
We then describe an approach which we call ‘Web accessibility 3.0‘ in which access to resources can be
personalised to match an individual’s needs and preferences. As described in our paper Accessibility 2.0: Next
Steps For Web Accessibility instead of seeking to ensure that all resources are accessible to all potential users (an
approach which the evidence suggests is not a realistic goal), this approach aims to provide resources and
information about them that enables users or automated services to construct resources from components that
satisfy the individual user’s accessibility needs and preferences.
The paper accepts that the labelling of these different approaches (which has parallels with the ‘Web 2.0′ and
‘Web 3.0′ terms) can be confusing: for many it would imply that Web accessibility 1.0 and 2.0 are now obsolete.
This is not the case: there will still be a need for certain types of informational resources (a bus timetable, for
example) to conform with WCAG guidelines and the Web accessibility 2.0 and 3.0 approaches describe different
approaches which can complement each other.
We have therefore coined the term ‘Web adaptability‘ to described an approach which attempts to support the
“interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full
and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”.
The paper provides four case studies which illustrate how a Web adaptability approach is being used:
Support for users with learning disabilities: An example is provided of a project at the University of West
of England of an e-learning system for people with learning disabilities. The approach taken is to engage the
end users in the design and development of the system, rather than the application of WCAG guidelines. A
decision was taken “not to try to create a system and content that are universally accessible, but rather to try
to maximise the usefulness and usability for a specific audience of learning users with particular permanent
disabilities“.
Adaptability for the deaf: This example illustrates the inappropriateness of the medical model of
disabilities which underpins the ‘Web accessibility 1.0′ approach. The deaf community itself recognises both
the medical and cultural model of Deafness (and note that the capital D is used to distinguish them as an
ethnic community, just as we would use a capital E for English). The case study (which is described in an
article on Deafness and the User Experience published on A List Apart) reinforces the merits of the ‘Web
adaptability’ approach which can apply a cultural rather than a medical definition of deafness.
Adaptability in a government context: The challenges of applying best practices when faced with limited
resources and timescales form the basis of the third case study. This example considers the decisions taken in
an Australian government organisation and how the challenges of addressing several constraints: government
policies, budgetary measures specific deadlines to meet legislative requirements and availability of staff with
the expertise to develop the accessible solutions. The ‘Web adaptability’ framework supported a holistic and
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 52 of 616
pragmatic approach to the challenges by enabling both usability and accessibility issues to be addressed and
appropriate solutions to be deployed on time and within the budget.
Adaptability and institutional repositories: Increasing numbers of universities are providing institutional
repositories in order to enhance access to research publications and to preserve such resources for future
generations. However many of the publications will be deposited as a PDF resource, which will often fail to
conform with accessibility guidelines (e.g. images not being tagged for use with screen readers; text not
necessarily being ‘linearised’ correctly for use with such devices, etc.). Rather than rejecting research
publications which fail to conform with accessibility guidelines the Web adaptability approach would support
the continued use and growth of institutional repositories, alongside an approach based on advocacy and
education on ways of enhancing the accessibility of research publications, together with research into
innovative ways of enhancing the accessibility of the resources.
The paper addresses some of the criticisms which may be made of the Web adaptability approach such as ‘doesn’t
the Web adaptability approach allow organisations to disregard accessibility considerations?’ and ‘if WCAG
conformance isn’t mandated in law, won’t organisation simply ignore accessibility issues?‘
How does one specify accessibility requirements in a tender document? How does an organisation audit its
resources for accessibility?
We describe how we regard the WCAG 2.0 guidelines as a valuable resource for enhancing the accessibility of
resources. The guidelines should be used in they can be used in a cost-effective way and if they do not detract
from the core purpose of the service.
We also point out that legislation isn’t the only driver for implementing best practices – and indeed focusing on
legal requirement can be counter-productive as if case law subsequently rejects WCAG conformance in a test case
(after all the RNIB home page doesn’t conform with the guidelines) this would undermine WCAG as a key
component for enhancing the accessibility of Web resources.
Rather than the threat of disability legislation for ensuring organisations enhance the accessibility of their Web
services we describe a range of other drivers such as peer pressure, cultural pressure, user engagement,
maximising business opportunities and corporate social responsibility and reputation management.
The paper concludes by describing the areas in which standardisation is beneficial. Since we have adopted the
UN’s perspective on disability as a social construct and not an attribute of an individual or the resource, we feel
that standardisation work should focus on the practices which facilitate the “interaction between persons with
impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in
society on an equal basis with others“. The BSI PAS 78 on “Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible
websites” provided a good example of a code of practice which documented best practices for the commissioning
of accessible Web sites. The draft BSI PAS 8878 on “Web accessibility. Building accessible experiences for
disabled people” has the potential to build on this, although, as I pointed out earlier this year, the initial draft
provided too great an emphasis on the potential of the nearly arrived WCAG 2.0 guidelines, rather than
documenting proven best practices.
I will conclude this summary of the paper by repeating the final paragraph of the paper:
[This paper] argues for the adoption of a Web adaptability approach which incorporates previous
approaches and, perhaps more importantly, embraces the future, including technical innovations, differing
perceptions of what is meant by accessibility and real world deployment challenges.
Your views and feedback are welcomed.
Filed in Accessibility | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (11)
"From Web Accessibility to Web Adaptability" Paper Published
Friday, July 17th, 2009
I’m pleased to report that a paper on From Web Accessibility to Web Adaptability has been published in the
Disability and Rehability: Assistive Technology journal. The full citation details are:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 53 of 616
From Web Accessibility to Web Adaptability, Kelly, B., Nevile, L., Sloan, D., Fanou, S., Ellison, R. and
Herrod, L.
Disability and Rehability: Assistive Technology, Volume 4, Issue 4, July 2009, pages 212 – 226.
doi:10.1080/17483100902903408
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a912788469
I’ll summarise the contents of this paper in a subsequent post. For now I thought it would be worth describing
how this paper came to be written.
I, along with other authors of paper published at the W4A 2009 event, was invited to submit an updated version of
my paper, entitled “One World, One Web … But Great Diversity“, although there was a requirement that the
requested paper would be substantially different.
I received this invitation in early January 2009, with the deadline of early March. As I had been invited to give
the opening plenary talk at the OzeWAI 2009 conference in January and was already thinking about further
developments to the holistic approach to Web accessibility I had been involved in developing over the past 5
years or so, this invitation provided an ideal opportunity to put down in writing the approaches I intended to talk
about at the OzeWAI conference.
As I have described previously, immediately following the talk I received tweets from two participants at the
conference saying how valuable they found my talk and wished to have further discussions about the ideas I had
described.
Following those further discussions I invited Ruth Ellison and Lisa Herrod to provide case studies based on their
involvement in Web accessibility work in Australia as examples of the ‘Web adaptability’ approach which the
paper describes.
Although I was a bit grumpy at having to submit the final edits to the paper over Easter, I’m pleased that our
paper has been published. And the ideas described in the paper were strengthened by the concrete examples
provided by Ruth and Lisa. A good example of how Twitter can help in bringing together people with shared
interests who can then engage in publishing a paper in a peer-reviewed journal
The other aspect of the process which I was pleased with was the two pages of comments we received from the
anonymous reviewer of the first draft of our paper. The reviewer pointed out a number of weaknesses in our
arguments, challenged us to justify a number of our assertions and queried whether our criticisms of the
traditional approaches to Web accessibility could be interpretted as suggesting that institutions could ignore
accessibility considerations. Our responses to these comments helped us to submit a much-improved final version
to the publisher – and we were pleased when the reviewer warmly endorsed the final version.
The paper is available on the publisher’s Web site. In addition my version of the paper is available on the
University of Bath Institutional Repository. Unfortunately, due to copyright restriction, access to this version is
embargoed until next year
Filed in Accessibility | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
The Network Effect Is Missing From The Standards Debate
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
In a recent post I asked “Do We Want A Standards-based Voice/Video Service?“. The post suggested that the
failure of the JANET Talk service to gain significant support or interest provided evidence of the failure of a
development approach based solely or primarily on support for open standards.
In a response to the post, Nick Skelton provided his explanation for why JANET Talk didn’t take off – the lack of
positive network effects. Nick pointed out that as network grow “its usefulness increases in proportion to the
number of potential connections between people in the network – the square of the number of people“. Nick felt
that JANET Talk’s failure was inevitable as it “was only for people in UK HE to talk to others in UK HE“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 54 of 616
Although Nick’s point specifically addressed telephone networks I feel his arguments are also applicable to social
networks in general – an argument I made at the JISC Digitisation Conference back in July 2007 in a talk on
“Globalisation Of Social Networks and Networked Services.
We are now beginning to appreciate the importance of the network effect in a range of application environments –
saving bookmarks used to be a function of the user’s browser but now we are seeing advantages of social sharing
services such as del.icio.us.
But this seems to be missing from the approaches which have been taken to support IT development activities. In
a post about the JISC e-Framework, for example, Andy Powell questions whether the e_framework is of “any
value to anyone“. In a response Wibert Kraan felt that we can’t “forget about [the e-Framework] and pretend it
never happened” – rather there’s a need to “look at what went well and why and what went wrong and why“. And
this is equally true when considering the failure of open standards to live up to their expectations.
We need a better model for the adoption of open standards in our development activities since the current
approach, which tends to assume that an open standard from a trusted and mature standards body will inevitably
be accepted by the marketplace, is clearly flawed. And the network effect would appear to be a significant aspect
in solutions which do become widely deployed and used.
Filed in standards | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
Do We Want A Standards-based Voice/Video Service?
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
Last year JANET(UK) launched a trial of a voice, video and collaboration application called JANET Talk. As
described in JANET News No.8 June 2009 (PDF format):
“The aims of the trial were to understand the precise requirements and service provisioning model for an ‘on
net’, standards-based SIP service that could be used for communication between JANET users via a software
PC client interface, mounted on the user’s PC or a SIP-based traditional phone handset“.
A survey of potential users also “showed a requirement for a feature rich collaboration tool for exclusive
use by JANET connected users that didn’t use peer-to-peer technology“.
Sounds good doesn’t it? A standards-based solution should avoid the problems caused by use of proprietary
services and access would be available on both a PC and a phone handset which supported the SIP (Session
Initiation Protocol) standard. Who, apart possibly Macintosh and Linux users who seem to have been excluded
from the trial, would not wish this trial well (which attracted over 100 institutions) and look forward to
deployment of the service across the JANET community?
However, as described in JANET News
“The results from both trial feedback and market research showed that the appetite for a service like JANET
Talk had diminished. The reasons cited include a preference for alternative solutions that are now available
from the commercial sector. These solutions were deemed easier to use, reliable and free.“
So now we know. Users don’t care about standards. Users care about solutions that work, are easy to use and,
ideally, are free!
I know this is true for me, as I was an early adopter of Skype. At one stage use of Skype was frowned upon here
at Bath University due to the load it could place on the campus network as well as the concerns about its
proprietary nature, and the licensing conditions. However over time the local network team deployed solutions to
manage the network load and we now seem to have happy Skype users, such as myself.
The University has also deployed a SIP solution which is available on SIP-compliant phones in various halls of
residence. I must admit that when I heard about this offering I was interested. Was there a service based on open
SIP standards which would enable me to talk to others without being constrained by a particular client? Sadly it
seems that with the Freewire service used at Bath calls are free “when they’re made from one Freewire user to
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 55 of 616
another” although you can “download the Freewire Telephone software for nothing“. But if you want to talk to
someone on another service (Skype, for example) you’ll have to pay for the call
So let’s remember, open standards don’t always succeed. And users may reject standards-based solutions in
preference to other alternatives. There are risks in investing in open standards. And there should be lessons to be
learnt from examples such as this. But I sometimes feel that we will ignore evidence which does not fit in with
established dogma.
Filed in standards | Tagged JANET, SIP, VOIP |
Permalink | Edit | Comments (5)
Thoughts About Dopplr and the Environment
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
I’ve been using Dopplr for a couple of years now, and
have used it to keep a record of my substantial work trips over the last three years.
Wikipedia describes the service as “a free social networking service, launched in 2007 that allows users to create
itineraries of their travel plans and spot correlations with their contacts’ travel plans in order to arrange
meetings at any point on their journey“.
Although there is a social aspect for the service (I can share my trips with others) the aspect which is of particular
interest to me is the way it can be used to the carbon costs of one’s trips.
Could we envisage a future in which institutions are required to account for the carbon emissions associated with
travel by members of staff, with targets for reducing the amounts? And possibly the contracts for JISC-funded
projects could require projects to report on the carbon costs of the travel associated with project-funded activities.
If this did happen I hope that rather than developing an application for aggregating such data from scratch, the
potential of existing services, such as Dopplr, was explored. And this is something we can be doing now. Now
although I know I can share this information with others, I wonder if I can export the carbon data (which is
created by the AMEE service) for use by other applications? And what about the traveller’s individual
sensitivities? We can appreciate why one might not wish information about futiure trips to be made publicly
available (so opportunistic burglars can’t find out when your home might be empty) but what about the carbon
costs? Is this something we should be more open about (as the general public expect MPs to be with their
expenses claim)? And if so, who will be the first?
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Dopplr | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (4)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 56 of 616
Enthusiastic Amateurs and Overcoming Institutional Inertia
Monday, July 6th, 2009
I was very pleased but also slightly embarrassed when Dave Pattern invited me to speak at the Mashed Library
UK 2009 event (also known as ‘Mash Oop North‘). Pleased because this event, which is building on the success
of the first event which took place at Birkbeck College in November 2008, reflects the interests I have in this area
and will provide an opportunity to learn from some of the people (such as Tony Hirst, Mike Ellis and Dave
Pattern) who are actively engaged in significant development activities. But embarrassed because I’ve been asked
to speak to an audience who would, I suspect, prefer to listen to and talk to the gurus of mashup developments!
Dave convinced me, however, that as there appear to be a significant number of participants at the event who
don’t regard themselves as mainstream developers, but rather as ‘enthusiastic amateurs’ that there is a role to play
in exploring how the learning which will take place at the event can be exploted.
So I will be giving a talk and inviting discussion on the topic of “Enthusiastic Amateurs and Overcoming
Institutional Inertia“. This session will take place on Tuesday 7 July 2009. My slides are embedded below (and
are also available on Slideshare). If you have any thoughts on this subject, especially if you regard yourself as an
‘enthusiastic amateur’ yourself I’d welcome your comments. Of you may wish to particuipate in the Twitter back
channel, using the hastag “#mashlib09″.
[slideshare id=1681576&doc=enthusiastic-amateurs-090704084747-phpapp02]
Filed in Events, mashups | Tagged mashlib09 | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (4)
Wolfram|Alpha's Terms and Conditions
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
Wolfram|Alpha
Wolfram|Alpha is described in Wikipedia as “an online service that answers factual queries directly by
computing the answer from structured data“.
Comparing Web Sites
When I discovered that Wolfram|Alpha could be used to compare Web sites I thought it would be interested to
compare the Web sites for Oxford and Cambridge Universities. From this I found that the www.ox.ac.uk Web
site has 960,000 daily pages views and 230,000 daily visitors and the site is ranked 6,289th, whereas the figures
for www.cam.ac.uk are 760,0000,d 260,000 and 6,269 respectively.
Table comparing three blog Web sites (from
Wolfram|Alpha)
Closer to home I thoughts I’d compare the figures for this blog with those for the eFoundations blog provided by
Andy Powell and Pete Johnston and Martin Weller’s EdTechie blog – of some interest in light of recent
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 57 of 616
discussions about impact metrics for Social Web services. Here I find the amazing statistics that my blog has 150
million daily page views and 53 million daily visitors and is ranked 15th of all Web sites. The eFoundations blog
has 16 million daily page views and 7.3 million daily visitors and is ranked 195th with the Ed Techie trailed way
behind with 61,000 daily page views and 47,000 daily visitors and is ranked 53,872th.
Unbelievable, isn’t it? And, of course, wrong! The figures provided by Wolfram|Alpha, which they got from the
Alexa.com service, seem to be based on the figures for the wordpress.com and typepad.com domains, with Martin
Weller’s blog trailing as it is hosted on the typepad.co.uk domain.
So further analysis has given us a better understanding of how WolframAlpha uses the statistics provided by
Alexa.com. And the comparisons for Oxford and Cambridge Universities Web sites may be skewed bv the
number of Web services in their domains.
And maybe other services which make use of such figures can be similarly skewed. Does this, I wonder, have any
relevance to the metrics to measure online digital reputation described recently by Martin Weller? Perhaps my
unexpectedly high ranking in a list of influencers in ‘distance learning’ is due to the service which hosts my blog?
Wolfram|Alpha’s Terms and Conditions
Interesting questions which we need to ask if we are to build up a better understanding of the digital world we’re
living in, the tools that can help us in our tasks and the strengths and weaknesses of such tools.
But of interest – and perhaps concern – are the terms of use for the Wolfram!Alpha service . It short it seems that,
as my colleague Emma Tonkin recently pointed out to me there are “no guarantees, no under 18s, no organised
repeated access, no mashups (don’t think about accessing this service in your software). Use must be personal, ad
hoc (no organised groups of users please, so don’t think about teaching or training with it) and not for a
professional reason unless you buy a licence for an unspecified price (curious amateurs only please). They reserve
the right to assert IP rights over anything given as input to their site if they can think of any reason for doing so.
Whilst they got much of their data for free by spidering sites, they will be deeply upset if you do the same.”
In addition is the requirement that “the results you get from Wolfram|Alpha are correctly attributed to
Wolfram|Alpha itself“. The terms of use go on to say:
If you make results from Wolfram|Alpha available to anyone else, or incorporate those results into your own
documents or presentations, you must include attribution indicating that the results and/or the presentation
of the results came from Wolfram|Alpha. Some Wolfram|Alpha results include copyright statements or
attributions linking the results to us or to third-party data providers, and you may not remove or obscure
those attributions or copyright statements. Whenever possible, such attribution should take the form of a link
to Wolfram|Alpha, either to the front page of the website or, better yet, to the specific query that generated
the results you used.
So if I ask Wolfram|Alpha what 1+1 is, if I published the result ‘2′ I must provide a link back to Wolfram|Alpha.
And if I ask “What were the dates of the second World War?” I need to provide a similar link before using the
answer “1 September 1939 to 2 September 1945″.
What Should We Do?
What should we make of this? As students are encouraged to cite their sources, perhaps educational institutions
should welcome the support they are getting from a commercial company? And maybe we should work with the
manufacturers of calculators and require that any numerical calculations include details of the make of the
calculator used. There might be sponsorship possibilities in doing this, as well as allowing the teachers to spot
flaws in the answers which might be due to errors on the chips on the calculators (after all, we don’t have open
source calculators so, according to Peter Murray-Rust, we probably shouldn’t be using them to carry out open
science.
I’m joking! But what should we do? Should we block access to Wolfram|Alpha from our firewalls? Should we
simply ignore the terms, as we know that few people will bother reading them (although this story has been
picked up on the Grocklaw blog, Slashdot, CNet and The Register)? Or should we actively break them? After all
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 58 of 616
Peter Murray-Rust recently argued that “We must reform the practice of copyright. We may be getting close to
civil disobedience. Because unless we do we shall not control our future but be controlled by others.“.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged WolframAlpha | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (2)
Facebook Usage by US Colleges and Universities
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
I’m pleased to publish a guest blog post by Mike Richwalsky, assistant director of public affairs at Allegheny
College, a small, private liberal arts college in the United States. Mike provides a US perspective on a topic which
often generates heated debate in the UK – the role of Facebook in higher educational institutions.
Facebook Usage by US Colleges and Universities
First, thank you to Brian for allowing me to use this space to talk about how we at US colleges and universities
are using Facebook. I’ll be presenting a session at IWMW 2009 (on cloud computing, not social media), and I’m
interested to learn more about how schools in the UK and Europe are using tools like Facebook and Twitter to
communicate with different audiences. Here we go…
Several years ago, in its infancy, Facebook was all the rage among students on campuses large and small across
the United States. At that time, many schools were panicked about what services like Facebook and MySpace
allowed students to do, often with an eye towards potential liabilities the school may face due to photos being
posted, thoughts being shared, disagreements and much more.
Fast forward to today, and a large majority of schools have changed their tune about Facebook. Yes, we still
worry when students post photos of themselves drinking and the like, but now we in college administrations have
adopted the site as an effective way to reach students, both prospective and those students already attending our
schools.
I’d like to examine how schools in the US are using Facebook and share some thoughts and experiences I’ve had
from managing my school’s presence there.
First, why are schools using Facebook? First, it’s where the students are. College students today in the US live
and breathe Facebook all day long. For us, using it to reach them makes sense – after all it’s a medium they are
comfortable in. Second, it’s free for our institutions to use. Finally, the tools that Facebook offers have developed
to the point where it’s become a compelling communication platform for us to use to reach a large number of
people very easily.
Now that we’re in the golden age of social media, many colleges are developing strategic plans on how to use
Facebook. At Allegheny, our adoption of this medium and the successes we’ve had have been very organic. We
didn’t jump right in with a set plan, instead we started small, just creating an official page before someone else
did. As we got more comfortable with the tools, we added more and more and have grown to the presence we
have today.
When Facebook launched its Groups tool, many schools, mine included, created a group for not only our
institution but many offices across campus, such as career services, student life, libraries and more. The groups
behaved much like they do today, we could post events, participate in discussions and more.
Eventually, Facebook created its Fan page platform, and many schools transitioned their main institutional
presence from the Groups tool to the new Fan page format, which offered many similar functionality but added
new tools like video, wall posts and most importantly, analytics.
At the time I write this, we have just north of 2,100 fans of our institution (http://facebook.com/alleghenycollege).
Our largest number of fans are in the 25-34 age group, which includes graduates of the last several years, so it
makes sense that number is high. The next largest group is the 18-24 group, with the 35-44 group a close third.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 59 of 616
The smallest age group is 13-17, which is interesting since that’s an audience we actively market to since they are
the college students of the near future. 2% of our college’s fans fall in that age group. It’s great that 45 or so
people have indicated they are a fan of our institution, I wonder why that number isn’t larger. Perhaps people of
that age don’t want to commit to a college in this way, or they are still into their college search research and
planning.
This past academic year, we actually had a student working in our office 10 hours a week that posted events and
news to our Facebook fan page. The student worked under close supervision, but it worked out well for us and
gave our presence some authenticity and a voice that even someone in their early 30’s can’t provide.
As I mentioned, our college moved its institutional profile from a group to a fan page, but that doesn’t mean
Facebook Groups are no longer used by offices on our campus.
Our most active group is a yearly “Class of” group – this year its the Class of 2013 group. For several years prior
to this one, incoming students would create an unofficial group for their class and use it to start to get to know
each other. The challenge for us as marketers and admissions folks was that we didn’t want our new students to
think that group was sanctioned by the college or an official voice of the college, so in 2008, we created the
official Class of 2013 group, with several people in different offices across campus serving as administrators.
Now, it’s become a very useful tool for communicating quickly with that group of students. Our student
orientation program leaders use it to answer questions, be a part of the conversation and post reminders and prod
the students to complete tasks like completing necessary paperwork or registering for fall events.
We’ve also had great success in our career services group, who have used Facebook to promote employment fairs,
recruiter visits and other employment-related activities on campus. They have seen program attendance increase
over previous years, and Facebook has been a great way for them to reach an audience they otherwise may not
have been able to be in contact with.
Hopefully, as Facebook grows they will continue to develop new technologies and ways for us to communicate. I
think they’ve done a good job of it thus far, but it highlights one of the perils of social media in general – things in
this area change very quickly and without warning. It can require a bit of work to keep track of all the new
features, rules and more.
Four years ago we had no idea of how to use Facebook and two years ago we didn’t know how to use Twitter.
There may be a new tool that’s being developed right now that may come along and change everything we’re
doing and we’ll look back and say “wow, we didn’t even think about how to use X two years ago.”
Mike Richwalsky is assistant director of public affairs at Allegheny College, a small, private liberal arts college in
the United States. He is also a technology fellow at NITLE, the National Institute of Technology in Liberal
Education. He has a blog at HighEdWebTech.com, is on Twitter at @mrichwalsky and Facebook at
http://facebook.com/mrichwalsky.
Filed in Facebook | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (6)
From Search Engine to Twitter Optimisation
Monday, June 29th, 2009
Workshops on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
As described on the JISC Digitisation blog the Strategic Content Alliance (SCA) are running a series of free
workshops entitled “Improve your online presence“. The workshop series, which will be held in June and July in
London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, is being coordinated by Netskills. The workshops will “introduce simple
and inexpensive search engine optimisation techniques to improve your online presence, web visibility and
website traffic“. I will be contributing to the workshop content by running a session on the role of the Social Web
in enhancing access to scholarly and cultural content.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 60 of 616
The Potential of Twitter
The potential of Twitter was recently discussed in a post entitled How much is it worth to be one of Twitter’s
suggested users? which was published in the Guardian’s Technology blog. As described in this post, being
included in Twitter’s Suggested Users List can boost one’s numbers of followers, and thus traffic to links
included in the tweets being published.
Coincidentally on Friday 5th June 2009, whilst accessing this blog’s administrators interface in order to delete one
or two spam comments which had failed to be detected by the Akisimet spam filter, I noticed that the top three
referrers for the day were from the Twitter Web site (from Twitter.com, twitter.com/home and
twitter.com/Twitter_tops). On further investigation I discovered that a page on the Twitter Web site which
provides links to resources about use of Twitter had included the following link to a post on this blog:
What is Twitter? It’s An Interactive Business Card: http://cli.gs/YL6R4D –Share this article:
http://bit.ly/180g9w
Now although this link resulted in driving the most traffic to the blog in over 3 weeks, this was disappointing to
me. I had been after evidence that Twitter can provide successful in driving traffic to arbitrary resources, rather
than just traffic to an article about the Twitter service.
However a better example was provided by the blog statistics for
UKOLN’s Cultural Heritage blog. As illustrated the statistics for May 2009 showed that, after Google, the second
most popular Web site for driving traffic to the blog was Twitter.
In this particular example the most popular post in the month was one on Explaining the Risks and Opportunities
Framework- a blog post which was announced on Twitter at 08.55 on 21st May:
Blog post explaining the Risks & Opportunities Framework published at http://tinyurl.com/p72kld
Evidence, it would seem, that Twitter can enhance the visibility of one’s Web content and therefore provide an
example I can use in the workshop. But what of the dangers of using Twitter in this way? Might not Twitter
followers resent being used as fodder for marking materials? Isn’t there a danger of killing the goose that lays the
golden eggs?
Twitter Optimisation
Although some people regard Twitter as being essentially an informal communications channel and a tool for
community building we can now observe that it is being used for a much wider variety of purposes. But what are
the emerging best practices which one should adopt in order to optimise Twitter’s potential to maximise access to
’stuff’ out there, as opposed to engaging with one’s Twitter community?
Keep it short: Perhaps the best advice is to keep your tweets short to allow other to retweet (RT) the
message, perhaps including their own comments.
Acknowledge the limitations: If you do intend to use Twitter as a one -way publishing mechanism (as, for
example, the MLA does) then you need to recognise that you should not expect to gain the benefits which
fans of Twitter, as described in a post entitled “The person is the point” by Mike Ellis, feel they gain from its
use as an individual.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 61 of 616
Consider publishing a policy: You may also wish to consider having a policy covering your use of Twitter,
as described in a recent post on “Emerging Best Practices For Institutional Use of Twitter“.
Think about your followers: If you are using Twitter as an individual but also wish to promote areas of your
work you will need to consider the balance between engagement (chatting with your mates), support (helping
your mates), requests (asking your mates for held) and dissemination (telling your mates what you’ve being
doing and what you’re proud of). This was an area I addressed in a post on “Twitter Can Pimp Up Your Stuff
– But Should It?“.
And if you’re still sceptical that Twitter has any significant role in delivering traffic to a Web site I’d suggest you
read the TechCrunch article “For TechCrunch, Twitter = Traffic (A Statistical Breakdown)“.
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (4)
"Is It Really A Good Time To Be Asking For More IT Money?"
Friday, June 26th, 2009
Michael Cross in the Technology Guardian asked back in April “Is It Really A Good Time To Be Asking For More
IT Money?” Michael poked fun at the notion that “as the chancellor announces the largest peacetime deficit in
history, the IT industry is lining up to say what the government really needs to do is spend more taxpayers’ money
on computers“. His blunt response: “Dream on“.
He is, of course, correct to remind us that public sector funding is in decline and this is likely to impact grandiose
plans for large-scale IT developments. Indeed, as I pointed out recently, we have already seen the recent demise
of the Hero gateway to UK higher educational institutions.
Michael Cross’s suggestion is to “freeze budgets at just those needed to keep existing big systems … ticking
over“. He goes on to propose that “Any new programmes would have to be achieved with Gmail, Flickr, and
whatever other free stuff can be found on the web. Preferably running on public employees’ own laptops and
mobile phones” and points out that “the market research firm Gartner is peddling a similar line, under the
heading ‘The future of government is no government‘”.
A ridiculous notion? Maybe, but consider the alternatives which might include a lack of services and innovation
or a move towards centralised solutions. And let’s be honest about the dangers of the centralised solutions. I’ve
heard people talk about ideas floating in government circles that the Open University should be the provided of e-
learning resources for the high education sector – a suggestion which Open University e-learning staff I know are
happy to debunk.
And what of he wider public sector service? A tweet from Joss Win pointed out that it cost:
£168,000 to out-source the Treasury’s website last year?! (only 4 visits/minute) http://bit.ly/zndCW Surely
this deserves full disclosure?
which led to suggestions from other Twitters that they would be happy to deliver Web pages on a memory stick
transported on a Rolls-Royce if funding of that scale was available And the response given in Hansard went on
to add that “Staff costs are not included as they could only be established at disproportionate cost“.
Now I’m not suggesting that we should necessarily or in all cases require that “new programmes would have to
be achieved with Gmail, Flickr, and whatever other free stuff can be found on the web” (or, as Tony Hirst
describes this “Appropriating Technology“). But these are possibilities which should be treated on par with in-
house development work, just as open source software solutions should be evaluated along side proprietary
solutions for public sector procurement exercises. And yes, the risks of such out-sourcing to such Web 2.0
companies should be included in any procurement exercises.
But let’s also ensure that development work outsourced in more conventional ways is also open to public scrutiny.
Otherwise we may find that figures such as £168,000 of the public’s money to outsource hosting or development
to companies which have close links with public sector bodies is being wasted. As Joss suggests, this deserves full
disclosure! (Oh, and if you don’t think that public sector should be reliant on commerical services, remember that
the U.S. Government Ask[ed] Twitter to Stay Up for #IranElection Crisis) .
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 62 of 616
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Launch of 'The Edgeless University': a new Demos report
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
A report entitled “The Edgeless University: why Higher Education Must Embrace Technology” was launched
earlier today. As described on the JISC Web site:
The Edgeless University argues that technology in higher education is not just about virtual learning
environments, but is increasingly central to the way institutions provide learning and facilitate research.
Technology is making research and learning possible in new places, often outside of institutions. Far from
undermining them, this is creating exciting opportunities for universities to demonstrate and capitalise on
their value so will take strategic leadership from inside institutions, new connections with a growing world of
informal learning, and a commitment to openness and collaboration. This is the radical role of The Edgeless
University.
I haven’t yet had a chance to fully absorb this 90 page report but there were a number of aspects to the report
which reflect my areas of interest. I should first disclose, however, that I contributed to the report (Peter Bradwell,
author of this DEMOS report, was aware of my work in this area and invited me to give my views).
The need for fundamental changes in the higher educational sector: The report describes the comment
made by one participant at a roundtable meeting who described the current predicament of the higher
education sector: ‘This seminar feels a bit like sitting with a group of record industry executives in 1999’.
The report went on to say “It is no use lamenting the golden age of universities (or record companies). The
goals of the two ‘industries’ remain the same, but they must refocus on how to achieve them. Society’s
aspirations for the sector remain the same. The challenge for institutions is to find the way to do it.“
The need to understand changing student expectations: The report quoted an interviewee who said
“Technology is part of people’s daily life in a university, I would say everywhere except in the classroom” in
order to illustrate the need for institutions to “get better at understanding exactly what it is these students
need” .
New tools to support teaching: It was interesting to note that the report, in a section on how social media
tools can support collaborative teaching described Michael Wesch’s work at the University of Kansas in the
US in using using online tools for collaborative and team-based student coursework including tools such as
sites such as Netvibes, Yahoo Pipes and Diigo. Although I’m pleased to see Web 2.0 tools being highlighted
in the report, it was somewhat strange to see a US-based example of use of these fairly mainstream tools.
Aren’t there similar examples to be found in UK HEIs?
“A renewed commitment to openness“: The report includes a section with this title. The opening quotation
for the section “Science is as much about conversations in corridors as it is about papers in journals” strikes
me as summarising the benefits which the Social Web can provide for the research community. However this
section seems to focus more on the ease of access provided by tools such as Scribd and iTunesU rather than
the issues of open access and open data.
“Experimentation and investment“: I was particularly pleased to see that JISC Developer Happy
Days’ (Dev8D) being mentioned as an “event brought together communities of coders and users from
educational software and beyond” with the aim of “mix[ing] people interested in civic society with those
who have the skills to develop tools to encourage social change“. Dave Flanders (now of JISC) will be
pleased to see that his work in bringing together a set of developers has been appreciated in this report.
A few weeks ago the “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World” report was published. And today we see another
report which provides a similar top-down view on the importance of Web 2.0 in higher education. If you
encounter resistance to change from senior managers in your institution I’d suggest you beat them over the head
with these two report until they realise that Web 2.0 is changing the higher educational environment.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged #edge09 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (5)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 63 of 616
Openness and IWMW 2009
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
IWMW 2009 Fully Subscribed
Bookings are now closed for this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2009), with the event
again fully subscribed with 190 participants (the limit imposed by the numbers of bedrooms available and the size
of the venue for the reception).
Amplification of IWMW 2009
If you haven’t booked a place but do have an interest in the range of plenary talks which will be given, don’t
worry – the event will be ‘amplified’.
This reflects our commitment to openness which I argued the higher educational community should embrace
more fully in a recent post on Respect Copyright (and Subvert It!). In that post I also suggested that we need to
be more open about the risks and the approaches taken to managing the risks. So here is a summary of the various
approaches we are taken to encouraging openness for the event.
Maximising the Impact of the Plenary Talks
The plenary talks at IWMW 2007 and IWMW 2008 were streamed live and we will be doing the same again this
year.
We hope to have an official ‘live-blogger’ who will take responsibility for providing a live summary of the
plenary talks. This will be available using the event hashtag #iwmw2009 and may also be aggregated in another
environment (such as Coveritlive, use of which has described in a Review of Web2.0 amplification at
CILIPS Conference) to allow people to contribute to the discussions if they don’t have a Twitter account.
Due to logistical reasons (only one screen display in the lecture theatre) we will not be providing a live display of
tweets during the talks (which means we aren’t addressing the issue of whether a live display would be valuable
or distracting). However we intend to make use of a live Twitter display (a ‘Twitterwall’) during the opening of
the event and at other times in order to allow participants to say hello to each other if they are not sat in adjacent
seats, an approach I felt worked well at the Museums and the Web 2009 conference.
We will also try to ensure that the speaker’s slides are available on Slideshare so that the remote audience is able
to view the slides and the talk simultaneously. We know that speakers sometimes change the slides at the last
moment – we’ll try and keep the versions in synch, but can’t guarantee this.
Note we’ll need speaker’s permissions for this – and will respect their (e.g. if their organisation doesn’t allow this;
they want the freedom to be more open; etc.).
The Risks
I’ve described what we are planning on doing. But what about the risks of embracing openness more fully at an
event?
We will be seeking permission from the speakers for the live streaming of their talks. And we do appreciate that
there may be reasons why such permission may not be given (the speaker wishes to be able to speak freely or the
speaker’s organisation may not allow this). We also intend to have a Creative Commons notice on the lectern (as
we did last year) so that a rights statement will be embedded in the video. We will allow the speaker to change
their mind about making a recording of the talk available after the event (we will clarify this immediately after the
talk, so that we do not have to write off time which may be spend on post-processing the video).
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 64 of 616
We will be providing a ‘quiet zone’ in the lecture theatre for participants who wish to avoid possible distractions
caused by live-blogging and who do not wish to be photographed or videoed. We will also ask other participants
to respect the guidelines for this area.
We will, of course, be evaluating the event, including the innovative aspects as well as the mainstream aspects.
As we would like to share the user feedback more widely the evaluation form will state that anonymised
comments may be published openly.
We appreciate that amplified conferences are still in their infancy, and there may be a diverse range of
expectations from the audience, both local and remote. We are interested in learning from related events, such as
Dev8D, Mashed Library UK 2009 ‘Mash Oop North’, Amplifiedat Nlab 09 day and the Eduserv Symposium.
We’d welcome feedback and suggestions. But, please no suggestions that will take too much time and effort –
there’s not much time left!
Filed in Events, iwmw2009 | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (1)
I'm A Top Influencer For The Open University! (Or Am I?)
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
Metrics For Measuring Impact in the Social Web
Martin Weller has published a blog post on Connections versus Outputs which discusses a report produced by the
Open University Online Services team in collaboration with external consultants (MarketSentinel). The aim of the
work was to examine “the broader influence of various web sites and looking at sentiment mining. The idea from
an official communications perspective being you can see how well regarded your institution is in different
sectors, and maybe influence that perception“.
Their findings? Well it seems this UK Web Focus blog is:
• In 4th 6th place in a list of the Open University’s top 100 influencers in ‘distance learning’;
• 4th in a ‘betweenness‘ category of “Stakeholders who are “stations” where information (on the issue in
focus) is passed via in order to reach the constituency of said stakeholder”;
• 8th in a ‘hubness‘ table which “is a characteristic of disproportionately linking to those who are
authoritative on a given topic”.
Andy Powell responded to this post in a comment saying “Sorry… not meaning to pick on Brian here but the
appearance of his blog, given this particular choice of topic [distance learning], stuck out a little“. Andy was
correct in mentioning this strange result. I will have a better awareness of the topics I have covered in my 580
posts and I know this isn’t a topic I write about – and a search for the term confirms this (although there may have
been a couple of occurrences of the term in comments).
Andy’s comment also touched on the sensitivity of discussing an individual, and this concern was shared by
others on Twitter. Let me make it clear that I think it is appropriate to explore both the reasons for my inclusion
in this list and the relevance of such an approach. As Martin Weller commented, this is very appropriate academic
debate.
Interpreting The Findings
Let’s begin by trying to explore the reasons why I’m listed so highly (Martin Weller and Tony Hirst are also
featured highly in the tables, but this can probably be explained by the fact that they work at the Open
University).
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 65 of 616
Collusion: Perhaps Martin Weller, Tony Hirst and myself collude in linking to each other, in order to boost
our rankings. After all we know each other and follow each other on Twitter. That could be a possibility –
but we don’t.
Echoing: It may be, as was suggested on a second post on Martin Weller’s blog, that we are echoing each
others views and the metrics simply reflect that. There may be some truth in that. As you can see from Martin
Weller’s post on Web 2.0 – even if we’re wrong, we’re right following a talk I gave on What If We’re
Wrong? and my follow-up posts on “Even If We’re Wrong, We’re Right” and What If We’re Right? we can
see this in action. Now this reflecting on other’’s views and adding new insights is, for me, part of the
learning process. And although we’ve created something new in this process (we’re thinkers and not just
linkers, as the saying goes) I appreciate that the metrics may give (undue?) weight to this.
Complementing: It may also be that the reason this blog is ranked so highly is that it complements the topics
covered by Martin, Tony and others. This blog tends to reflect my background in working in IT Services and
my interests in, say, Web accessibility – areas which tend not to be addressed in Martin or Tony’s blogs so
much. So perhaps my ‘influence’ reflects this?
Being an early adopter: Although I wasn’t an early adopter of blogging (I started in November 2006) it may
be that my high profile in the Open University reports simply reflects my presence in various the Social Web
technologies (Twitter, Friendfeed, etc.) This could mean that the survey is picking up on the technologies
I’ve been using, rather than the content I publish on this blog.
Blog is outside the institution: This blog, as is the case for the blogs published by others mentioned in the
report, is hosted outside my institution. Perhaps the high ranking is a manifestation of the hosting
arrangements? Or perhaps the fact that we have chosen an external hosting body indicates early adoption of
blogging (before our host institution provided a blogging service) and the survey is skewed by the presence
of the early adopters? Or perhaps a willingness to use a third party service, when this may have been
discouraged (it’s not open source; what about sustainability of the service? …) , reflects a level of
independence and willingness to take risks which the survey picks up on?
Social Web presence builds on peer-reviewed publications: I don’t just publish on Social Web services,
such as blogs, Twitter, Slideshare., etc. I also write papers for peer-reviewed journals and conferences and
invited papers for conferences. I then reference the papers on the social Web on my blog and make slides
(and sometimes video recording) of the accompanying presentations available on services such as Slideshare,
Vimeo and Google Video. Perhaps the amplification of peer-reviewed ideas and approaches via the Social
Web helps to enhance the impact I have, which is being detected in the survey?
Writing style, linking style, etc.: I may be that my writing style, the ways I try to cite relevant posts, Web
resources and even tweets contribute to the high ranking.
Relevant, Useful and Interesting Content: In an attempt to document the range of possibilities for this blog
being identified as a significant influencer and hub for ideas related to ‘distance learning’ I should include the
possibility that the content of the blog are felt to be relevant, timely, useful and interesting!
These are some thoughts which occur to me for my high ranking in the survey. But surely we simply need to find
out what algorithms are being used. And, as Peter Murray-Rust has pointed out in a bog post on “Open Source
increases the quality of science” if we have access to the source code we will be better placed to spot any flaws in
the code itself.
This argument reminds me of the time I attended a WWW conference and heard a research er describe how his
team had reverse engineered the algorithms used by a number of the global search engines. In the subsequent
questions an engineer from Google said he wished the paper hadn’t been published, as Google would have to
change the algorithms in order to prevent spammers from exploiting this knowledge. I suspect that we’d find
institutions looking at ways to game Social Web metrics,especially if this became competitive. And as we know
how one’s position in the University league tables are to institutions, I suspect this would happen.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 66 of 616
Is This A Useful Starting Point?
If we have to accept that there are likely to be various metrics covering use of the Social Web, the question may
be whether the approach which is being taken at the Open University provides a useful starting point.
Andy Powell agrees with Martin that metrics on how the Social Web can impact scholarly activities are needed:
“I think we want to get to the same place (some sensible measure of scholarly impact on the social Web)” but goes
on to add “ I disagree with you that this is a helpful basis on which to build.”
Is this glass, as Martin feels, half full or would you agree with Andy that it’s half empty? I’ll add a third
alternative – I’ll finish off what’s in the glass while the rest of you are arguing! Or to put it another way, while
the academics go off in pursuit of the perfect metric the marketing departments will make use of a variety of
impact measurements in any case. I suspect we’ll find people in marketing departments asking “How can we use
the Social Web to market our institutions, attract new students and new funding?” and then asking “How can we
measure the impact – or ROI – of our presence in the Social Web?“. I’ll conclude by echoing Martin’s
conclusions:
We’ve got to start somewhere – my take on this is that the output may have problems, but it’s a start. We
could potentially develop a system focused on higher education, which is more nuanced and sophisticated
than this. By analysing existing methodologies and determing problems with them (such as the three I’ve
listed above) we could develop a better approach. I hold out hope that we can get interesting results from
data analysis that reveals something about online scholarly activity.
And we should be analysing the existing methodologies in an open fashion. I hope my observations have
contributed to this analysis.
Filed in Impact | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Twitterers Subvert Daily Mail's Racist Poll
Sunday, June 21st, 2009
On Friday I was alerted by one of the people I follow on Twitter to
a poll which asked “Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the queue?“.
I responded by voting Yes, and send a tweet which said
I’ve just been to the Daily Mail Web site for the first time ever. And so should you – http://bit.ly/w4b6Q
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 67 of 616
My tweet was then echoed (’retweeted’) around the Twitterverse by a
number of people including lucy3point0 and ccsnjf with others picking up on my posts and adding their own
commentary (as shown). Other communities picked up on this for, as you can see, there were over 90% of people
voting on the Daily Mail Web site that the NHS should allow gipsies to jump the queue!
I was intriguing to see what the final total was (it reached 96% at one point and I grabbed the screen image
shown above – to use in a forthcoming talk – with the total of 94%). But on Saturday I found that allow the
question was included in a list of Daily Mail polls, clicking on the link took me to another page on the Daily Mail
Web site, and not to the results of the poll. (Ironically another discussion which took place on Twitter on Friday
discussed URL shorteners and the possible dangers of a lack of long-term persistency of URL shortening services
– in this case the short URL for the Daily Mail poll is still available – http://bit.ly/w4b6Q – but the page it points
to – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/index.html?pollId=1011506 – is not the gipsies poll.
The reason I captured the screen was to make use of this example in a forthcoming workshop session I am
facilitating on “Using the Social Web to Maximise Access to your Resources“. I’ll make the point that Twitter can
be used to engage a community through a viral campaign for (or against) a particular idea. I’ve an interest,
therefore, in how this poll went viral, and also in the ethics of commenting on the poll and attempting to influence
the votes.
This story has been picked up on blogs.journalism.co.uk with an article on Twitterers claim victory over loaded
Daily Mail gypsy poll. Here I find that :
Brighton-based senior lecturer in experimental psychology Dr Sam Hutton contacted Journalism.co.uk today
to reveal that there was also an email campaign among UK-based psychologists who, as part of their jobs,
take questionnaire neutrality seriously.
Was this the start of the viral campaign? Or did a number of people become aware of the poll and mention it on
Twitter independently of each other? And why did this become viral whereas, for example, a poll on Should
immigrants be forced to respect British culture? has failed to attract a similar level of interest, despite covering a
similar topic which is liable to inflame liberals? Do successful viral campaigns need to attract the attention of
‘hubs’ to use a concept from Gladwell’s Tipping Point, which Martin Weller mentions in a post, also published on
Friday, on “Connections-versus outputs“.
And what of the ethical aspects from those of us who are engaged in observing, commenting on and analysing the
way in which the Social Web is shaping our society?
You should note that my initial tweet did not suggest how people should vote:
I’ve just been to the Daily Mail Web site for the first time ever. And so should you – http://bit.ly/w4b6Q
The wording I used was also intended to intrigue people; anyone who knows me or has read my tweets or blog
posts over time will know that I am not in sympathy with the Daily Mail’s views. The tweet was also brief, and so
allowed other to easily retweet it i.e. append “RT @briankelly” to the front and add heir own commentary, such as
lucy3point0’s “Laugh or cry?“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 68 of 616
However I should disclose that I voted three times in the poll. Despite responding to a suggestion that “If you
disable cookies you and refresh the page and vote gain to your heart’s content” by saying that we should keep the
high moral ground over the Daily Mail I did vote on two additional occasions (using the Flock and Opera
browsers) – as I wanted to see if I could get the error message which a couple of people had encountered. In
retrospect I should have ensured that these two votes cancelled each other out.
And finally I’m also linking to, citing and including a screen image of a number of people who have engaged in
the debate. Should this be done? Am I infringing copyright (indeed, am I infringing the Daily Mail’s copyright in
including a screen image taken from their Web site)?
I am taking a risk management approach to this. Rather than seeking written permission (which may be time-
consuming) I have made a judgement as to whether the people I have mentioned are likely to be concerned. I
suspect not. And inclusion of the poll from the Daily Mail Web site? This may be a risk, although I might claim
fair use. But won’t it be a greater risk for the Daily Mail if they ask me to remove? If I do get a letter from their
solictors I don’t intend to fight them. But everyone will know they have done this.
Filed in Twitter | Tagged #dailymail | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (12)
Respect Copyright (and Subvert It!)
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
The Digital Britain Report
The Digital Britain report was published a few days ago and as is stretches to over 230 pages we’ve needed that
time to digest the report or, perhaps more likely, allow others to read the report and publish their summaries! My
specific area of interest in the report is what it says about copyright.
The report describes how “Already today around 7.5% of total UK music album purchases are digital and a
smaller but rapidly increasing percentage of film and television consumption is streamed online or downloaded”
and that although “User-generated and social content will be very significant” it will not be “the main or only
content“.
The report goes on to argue the case for the ‘creative industries’ and repeats their claims that they “have indicated
they suffer considerable losses from unlawful peer-to-peer file-sharing” – and fails to acknowledge the criticism
of these figures described by Ben Goldacre’s “Illegal downloads and dodgy figures” article in the Guardian’s Bad
Science column.
Section 18 of the report puts the recommendations bluntly:
This is unacceptable. The Government considers online piracy to be a serious offence. Unlawful
downloading or uploading, whether via peer-to-peer sites or other means, is effectively a civil form of theft.
This is not something that we can condone, or to which we can fail to respond. We are therefore setting out
in this report a clear path to addressing this problem which we believe needs to result in a reduction of the
order of 70-80% in the incidence of unlawful filesharing.
My fears are that equating use of networked technologies with large scale copyright infringement will lead to
organisations’ being conservative in their approaches and being unwilling to take any risks that they might be
seen to condone the ’serious offence of online piracy’.
So let’s look at other views on copyright, beyond the teenage kids who seem to stand accused of downloading
music and videos and ruining the country’s economy (I’ve tried to avoid the temptation to say the bankers have
done that, but have failed!)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 69 of 616
“Copyright Warriors”
Earlier this year Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University wrote a blog post
on “Universities as copyright warriors“, this being a follow-up post to one which asked “Should universities break
copyright law?“. In the former post Martin described how he:
“wasn’t arguing that universities should ignore copyright because they think they’re special, or that they
should advocate wholesale piracy. Rather it was that universities are in a privileged position. They can fight
on behalf of the general populace.“
Professor Stephan Harnad, University of Southampton, has been fighting for the research community for several
years. You just have to visit the Open Access Archivangelism blog to see evidence of the work being done by
Stevan and many fellow open access researchers not only here in the UK but around the world. “Ensure your
research publications are published in an open archive” is their cry “and make publicly-funded research openly
available“. And such simple requests are supported by significant examples of technical solutions, business
models, institutional services and growing international pressures to build on this work.
Professor Peter Murray-Rust, Reader in Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge (who,
incidentally, has his own entry in Wikipedia), has been making a similar plea to open up scientific data. Peter
recently argued that “Copyright in Scientific Theses is holding us back; Ignore it“. Peter’s opening comments are
worth noting:
I feel the dread hand of copyright hanging Mordor-like over the whole area of scholarly publishing. I heard
to my horror in PennState that one University had embargoed all its theses in case they violated copyright.
So I tested this in my talk and asked “are there repositories that embargo all their content for fear of
copyright?” and got a few nodding heads. So I am taking this as fact, and asking:
Why is no-one except me angry about the way that copyright (or exaggerated fear of it) is stifling electronic
innovation in academia?
Pete goes on to make the plea “let’s abandon copyright in science. What does it gain us? Almost nothing, unless
you author a successful textbook. Nowhere else is copyright the slightest use to a scientist and its stands in their
way at every step.” And note that Peter is not arguing for the abolition of copyright; he makes it clear that “if you
are working in creative arts you may wish to protect your work“. Peter’s views are focussed on science. And he
repeats this message loudly “SO AS A FIRST STEP LET’S JUST PUBLISH ALL OUR **SCIENCE**
THESES OPENLY AND ALLOW UNRESTRICTED DOWNLOADING AND RE-USE?”.
Beyond The Professors
If you read Martin Weller’s, Stephan’s Harnad’s and Peter Murray-Rust’s blogs you will find much more in-
depth discussions on the benefits of openness in teaching and learning and research. But the danger is that such
views will be dismissed as the ramblings of professors who are secure in their own position. How can others
engage in maximising the openness of resources? How should young researchers and academics respond? And
what approaches can the service departments – libraries and IT Services, for example – take?
A Personal Approach
Back in 2005 I gave a paper on “Let’s Free IT Support Materials!“ which concluded “IT Service departments are
well-positioned to encourage a culture of sharing by encouraging an open access approach to IT support
materials through use of Creative Commons licences“.
In January 2006 I made a commitment that the resources used in my public presentations would be available with
a Creative Commons licence – and since giving a talk on “Web Futures: Implications For HE” at King’s College
London on 27th January 2006 the title slide of my presentations has contained a Creative Commons licence. That
talk was also the first time (I think) in which I recorded my talk and made the talk available also under a Creative
Commons licence.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 70 of 616
But what of the risks in making one’s own resource available under a Creative Commons licence? What if the
slides contains resources owned by others (e.g. the JISC and MLA logos on the title slide; a screen shot of the
BBC Web site; etc.)? What if I make defamatory comments in my talk?
Rather than ensuring that no copyrighted material are used in my presentations I take a risk assessment approach.
I weigh the risks that if I use the JISC logo on my title slide that JISC will sue me for copyright infringement –
pretty unlikely! I also try to ensure that a provide hypertext links to third party resources so that the original site
can be easily found. And the Creative Commons logo has a caveat which links to a statement that points out that
the slides may contain copyrighted resources. The onus is then on anyone who wishes to reuse my resources to
undertaken their own risk assessment.
Professor Charles Oppenheim helped me to understand a risk management approach at a seminar he gave at
UKOLN on the copyright implications of institutional repositories. In response to my question as to whether the
complex copyright questions (”Podcasting lectures? What about performance rights?” ) meant that institutional
repositories were unlikely to take off, Charles suggested a simple formula which could be used to gauge the risks.
The Oppenheim formula is simply:
R=AxBxCxD
where R is the risk factor of your decision; A is the probability that you are infringing copyright; B is likelihood
the the copyright owner finds out; C is the likelihood that they will care enough to take any action and D is the
compensation they are likely to seek.
A simple formula which (when I asked permission to publish it) Charles told me is intended as rhetorical device
rather than aiming to provide any significant deep insight. But this has been an approach I have found useful.
What Next?
What can we do if we are supportive of the views which Professors Weller, Harnad and Murray-Rust, but feel
constrained by our perceptions of the risks and barriers? My suggestions:
Free your materials: Make use of Creative Commons for the materials that you create.
Take a risk management approach: Change does not occur without taking risks. So we prepared to take
risks, but asses the risks and make an informed decision.
Be open about the risks: Share the approaches your have taken with others. Help them to assess the risks
they may face in reusing your content.
And remember that there will be people and organisations within our sector who will have vested interests in
maintaining the status quo. If, for example, you are involved in negotiating copyright deals, you may be
concerned that your empire would be threatened by the widespread available of open content. Or maybe you
simply don’t want to rock the boat. But change is needed!
Filed in openness | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (7)
Who Needs Social Networks? I've Got Opera Unite
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
Opera, the browser vendor, have released a new version of their browser, Opera Unite. And they launched their
browser will the slogan “Today, we reinvent the Web“. So what’s behind this rather grandiose claim?
Well:
Opera Unite allows you to easily share your data: photos, music, notes and other files. You can even run
chat rooms and host entire Web sites with Opera Unite. It puts the power of a Web server in your browser,
giving you greater privacy and flexibility than other online services.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 71 of 616
In addition:
What if you use Opera at home, and a different Web browser at work? Opera Unite services can be accessed
from any modern browser, including mobile browsers! At home, just select what you want to share, and you
can view it later using your work Web browser without any problems.
A post on Mashable.com sums this up nicely “Opera Unite: Web Browser Becomes the Web Server“. But do we
need another Web server environment? Do we need the ability of every networked PC to be able to share files?
What are the networking implications? What are the security implications? How will we find the stuff?
I suspect this may the the reaction of members of institutional Web teams. But, on the other hand, mightn’t this
free us from a reliance of the commercial sector and the concerns we have over companies such as Facebook?
And might not the innovative e-learning developers welcome the opportunity to explore how the sharing of
learning resources and the use of collaborative technologies can be provided without having to rely on the local
Web services team whilst avoiding the need to deal with companies such as Google and Facebook. Opera, it
might appear, are unlikely to have a desire to take over the networked world as Google, Facebook and Microsoft
want to do.
Have Opera really reinvented the Web? And is this announcement good news or bad? Or perhaps it is irrelevant –
this is file sharing for home users and need not concern those of us who work in a networked environment?
Filed in browser | Tagged opera, unite | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (16)
Which Will Last Longer: Hero.ac.uk or Facebook?
Monday, June 15th, 2009
A Hero For Our Sector
One of the real strengths of the UK higher education sector is the
way in which we can work together as a sector, meaning that the whole is geater than the sum of the individual
parts. This is undoubtedly true of JISC (which is envied in the higher education and research sectors around the
world) but also applies elsewhere. One example of this is Hero: “the official gateway to universities, colleges
and research organisations in the UK“: a gateway funded by the various funding bodies (HEFCE, SHEFC,
HEFCW and DENI) and supported by other higher educational agencies and by the high educational institutions
themselves (and note that I was involved in the technical advisory group for the “HE Mall” as it was originally
called.
Indeed will a service such as Hero, why would higher educational institutions wish to use other channels for
online marketing, particularly social networking service such as Facebook which, despite its popularity are, in
some circles, regarded with suspicion in not hostility?
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 72 of 616
Our Hero Is Dead …
Alas for those who believe that the sector should own its marketing channels, the Hero.ac.uk service was closed
on 4th June 2009 (and the image shown above was taken from Hero’s most recent entry in the Internet Archive,
from 10th February 2008) I should disclose that last year I was interviewed by a consultant who had been
appointed in order to identify future directions for the service, including whether the service was viable. I pointed
out the flaws in the Hero service: it did not have the community aspects which potential new students might
expect and it was a ‘walled garden’ – information could be uploaded to the service but there were no easy ways of
getting the data out again. “Make ‘Hero 2.0′ a trusted service which could host structured institutional data“, I
suggested “and provide APIs to allow developers elsewhere to add value to the service“. But this did not happen.
… Long Live a New Hero?
If the managed service to promote UK higher educational institutions is too costly to provide, why don’t we
appropriate popular social networking services to fulfil this role? This is an idea inspired by a Tony Hirst’s post
on “Appropriating technology” which he described as “appropriating technologies that might have been designed
for other purposes in order to use them in an educational context” but I would replace ‘educational context‘ by
‘marketing context‘.
And, if we’re honest, isn’t Facebook the new Hero? It can provide the popular service for hosting institutional
marketing materials. And it can provide the community aspects which Hero failed to provide. Admittedly it may
be a ‘walled garden’ – but then so was Hero, so nothing is being lost.
But if we wish to use Facebook in this way, don’t we as a sector need to identify the best practices for making
use of Facebook, including minimising the risks associated with the service? And shouldn’t we be exploring the
benefits which might be gained by working collaboratively?
Some initial thoughts on this:
Institutional URL: As mentioned in my recent post on “Have You Claimed Your Personal And Institutional
Facebook Vanity URL?” we are seeing Facebook URLs being minted as a single string (edgehilluniversity)
and words separated by dots (aberystwyth.university). We might wish to consider whether there are
advantages in seeking agreement on the form of the name – perhaps even using an institutional domain name
in the URL (e.g. www.facebook.com/www.bath.ac.uk). However it is probably too late to do anything about
this (which arguably demonstrates the failure in having not had such discussions previously).
Trademark disputes: We’ll want to avoid the possibility of trademark disputes. Might we see one between
Leeds Metropolitan University and say, Loyola Marymount University over www.facebook.com/lmu?
Ownership of Facebook resource: Who has access to the institutional Facebook account in your institution?
And what if they’ve left or you can’t find the owner? The information should be regarded as a valuable
institutional resource and ownership should be managed appropriately.
Workflow processes: There’s a need to establish effective workflow processes for information provide on
the institutional Facebook page. Ideally information would be hosted elsewhere and automatically updated in
Facebook though use of, for example, an RSS application in your Facebook page.
Will Facebook pages enhance or diminish Google Juice: Might not institutional content which is
replicated on Facebook pages diminish institutional ‘Google juice’ as my colleague Paul Walk has
suggested? Or, alternatively, might content held in popular services such as Facebook and Wikipedia (and
previously, to a lesser extent, Hero) held to increase traffic to the institutional Web site? Indeed if such
replication of content is felt to be counter-productive, shouldn’t institutions try to prevent Web sites having
links to their content rather than seeking to maximise such links?
Facebook Terms and Conditions: It would be useful to gain a better understanding of the Faceboom terms
and conditions and the implications for an organisation’s pages in order to inform appropriate risk
management approach. If the concern is that Facebook will claim ownership of marking material provides, is
that really of concern?
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 73 of 616
Explore Possibilities for Facebook Applications: Might there be benefits in developing Facebook
applications to make the UK HEI pages more appealling?
But have we, in the UK, missed the boat? Looking at the timetable for the forthcoming Eduweb 2009 conference I
notice sessions on topics such as “Facebook — a case study of building virtual relationships“, “Cheap, Fast, &
Out of Control: Brand management & recruitment..” and “Recruiting and Marketing in the Web 2.0 World“.
We’ve nothing along these lines planned for IWMW 2009 – but as the bar camp sessions can be submitted at the
workshop itself, perhaps there’s an opportunity to build on these ideas?
Oh, and if you think it is inappro[oriate for an organisation to make use of a social network in this way, look at
what companies such as Starbucks and McDonalds are doing on Facebook.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (8)
Have You Claimed Your Personal And Institutional Facebook Vanity
URL?
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Short URLs for Personal Facebook Accounts
The Facebook vanity URL landrush began at 9 PM PST (5 am in the UK). I woke up early and claimed my
personal short URL for my Facebook page at about 06.30 (actually I wasn’t awake early enough as the obvious
short form had already been claimed). Now I won’t divulge this short form of my Facebook ID as I don’t
necessarily want you trying to befriend me just because you read this blog. But I now have a much easier way of
sharing my Facebook details with people I may wish to befriend in Facebook – previous they had to search
through the large numbers of ‘Brian Kellys’ or I had to give them my email address. The short form is much more
convenient.
Short URLs for Organisational Facebook Accounts
You can also claim short Facebook URLs for an organisational Facebook page – provided you had more than
1,000 fans before the cut-off date. Again if you are in this position this strikes me as a no-brainer – as described in
a TechCrunch article you should go to facebook.com/username and log into Facebook. And then enter your
preferred name. That’s it.
Earlier this morning I discovered that some of my Twitter contacts had already got a short name for their
institution. Mike Nolan announced first thing that his institution has claimed edgehilluniversity and slightly later
Matthew Cock took the opportunity to promote a group on the britishmuseum’s Facebook account. Both Matthew
and Mike had already made there plans for claiming a short form for their organisational Facebook account. Keele
University had also made their plans, pre-registering their institutional name as a trademarked name – but then
subsequently encountering difficulties in using this name.
“Somehow Feel Dirty After Minting Fb URL”
Despite the ease of getting such short URLs, a number of my Twitter contacts seems very discomforted with the
notion. Now I understand why people may not approve of Facebook, but if they, or their institution, do have
Facebook accounts then surely it’s only sensible to make access to the Facebook pages easier?
And in the case of institutional pages which are used to market the institution, then surely we should be expected
the marketing departments to have spend 10 seconds or so on a Saturday morning to claim the short name which
can, if so desired, be used in marketing materials. And I would hope that rather more time would have been spend
in selecting the short name – poppletonuniversity, poppleton-universityor university-of-poppleton, for example.
Or perhaps there’s even a case for www.facebook.com/www.poppleton.ac.uk?
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 74 of 616
Discussion
So tell me, what is the logic in having a personal or institutional Facebook account and keeping the long form for
its address? Or are the tweets I’ve been seeing simply a minority view from the ideological purists (the 21st
century equivalent of the Tooting Popular Front?)
Of course, it may be that your institution hasn’t claimed the short name as it doesn’t know who owns the acount!
But that’s another matter. Institutional ownership of services in the Social Web is worthy of a post in itself.
Filed in Facebook | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (10)
"#firefoxcrashes or #firefoxisfine"
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Recently the FireFox browser has been crashing on me. But because FireFox is a Good Thing TM I’ve tending to
gloss over the problems (we do this for our loved ones, don’t we). But when the browser started to crash
consistently when embedded images in this blog I decided enough was enough. I’ve moaned a bit on Twitter
about FireFox over the past few days and was interested to see that other people had had similar experiences. So I
thought I’d try and find out how widespread this problem might be.
In order to minimise the time and effort in analysing responses I sent the tweet:
Firefox is crashing frequently. Is this true for others? Respond with #firefoxcrashes or #firefoxisfine. Please
RT.
I then used the search capabilities in Tweetdeck to search for tweets containing #firefoxcrashes or #firefoxisfine
(bearing in mind that retweets would contain both strings. The response are illustrated in the screen shot (or you
can see the live search results for #firefoxcrashes and #firefoxisfine).
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 75 of 616
There seems to be growing evidence that FireFox is not as reliable as we might have expected. And as I know a
number of the people who responded I am confident that these responses aren’t coming from people who think
that open source software is some form of communism, but from people who prefer the FireFox browser to
Internet Explorer.
The next question might be “what is the cause of the problem?” A couple of people suggested it might be FireFox
plugin bloat or maybe problems with specific FireFox plugins.
The final question is “what do I do next?” Tolerating the problem was no longer acceptable, so I wondered
whether I should use Google Chrome (which is installed on my PC) as my main browser. But I also wondered
whether it would be timely to try out a new browser, But rather than installing Apple’s Safari browser, which a
couple of people suggested, I decided to try out Flock.
However during the installation of Flock I also restarted my PC, which had been put in hiberation at the end of the
working day for a while. And as there were various plugins I was missing I decided to restart FireFox – which I’m
now finding is working fine. So I think I’ll stick with FireFox unless the problems re-occur.
But to me the ease of getting a rapid and semi-structured response from Twitter was the most interesting part of
the exercise. A couple of people responded asking for details of my operating system I was running, FireFox
version number, installed plugins, etc. Now I could have set up a SurveyMonkey form to gather such information
– but I know that not many would have responded. I feel that the important thing was that the survey was
available from within the recipient’s environment – they could immediately respond from whichever Twitter
client they were using.
What, though, of the others for whom #firefoxcrashes? What do you intend to do? Opera, Chrome, Safari, Flock –
or even the other browser?
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 76 of 616
Filed in Twitter, browser | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(6)
The JISC SIS Landscape Study
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
The JISC is funding a landscape study on the UK HE sector use of content, communication and social
networking services developed by commercial companies (or, perhaps more accurately, outside of the JISC
sector).
As we know although JISC has developed a number of services specifically for use within the UK higher and
further education sector (e.g. Jorum, JISCmail, etc.) people within the sector are increasingly using services
developed outside the sector, either in addition to – or in some cases instead of – JISC-provided services.
Since evidence of this usage is fragmented and often anecdotal, the JISC SIS Landscape study aims to provide a
snapshot of the current situation in the UK.
My colleagues Ann Chapman and Rosemary Russell are leading this work and have set up the JISC SIS
Landscape Study blog to facilitate their work. We welcome contributions to this blog in order to collate evidence
on how such services are being used within the sector. Please note that JISC are primarily interested in use of such
services within the UK higher and further education sectors. If you are outside this sector, feel free to contribute
but please make it clear in your comments the sector you work or study in.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
There Is No Institutional Blueprint for Web 2.0 – So Let's Develop One
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
Last week I gave a talk on “The ‘Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World’ Report: Implications For IT Service
Departments” to staff in BUCS (the Bath University Computer Services Department.
The following day, as she described in a blog post, Chris Sexton, IT Services Director at the University of
Sheffield and UCISA chair, facilitated a similar session on “IT Service 2.0“.
Chris concluded that “There was a general acceptance of the conclusions of the report which was that
Universities need to change, and that change will be driven by students and what they will demand“. Such
comments could also apply to the discussions at the BUCS seminar. And the reservations which Chris described:
“However, there was some opinion expressed that the report was an exaggeration of the change that web
2.0/social web will make in students. There was also a concern that we could be in the situation of using
technology to cut costs – to deliver more with less – to the detriment of what a University education means“.
also reflected some concerns which were aired here at Bath.
Both of these events were based on the recent report on the recent “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World”
CLEX report.
One of the points made in the report was the lack of a clear institutional blueprint for action:
Decisions on whether or not to implement Web 2.0 technologies are, however, the responsibility of each
institution individually having regard to its particular ethos and circumstances. Here, experience can be
shared, but there is no blueprint for action and, indeed, it may not be possible to develop a blueprint in an
area that is so highly context specific.
Senior managers in IT Services at the Universities of Bath and Sheffield have started the discussions regarding
such an institutional blueprint. I’m also aware of a forthcoming Web Community event at the University of
Bradford which will address how the Web can be used to support the University’s mission and objectives.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 77 of 616
Is there scope, I wonder, for an event for the community on exploiting the potential of Web 2.0 which could help
in the process of developing an institutional blueprint? In November 2006 UKOLN organised an event on
“Exploiting the Potential of Wikis” followed a year later by a similar one-day event on “Exploiting the Potential
of Blogs and Social Networks“.
Both of these events, which were fully subscribed, provided an opportunity to explore some of the policy issues
associated with provision of or access to wikis, blogs and social networks.
I think we are now in a situation in which we need to address the institutional issues associated with use of
services in ‘The Cloud’ (e.g. sustainability, reliability, and legal issues) , the relationships between the bottom-up
and personal use of networked services and the institutional provision of such services and the relevance of
‘Social Web’ technologies to support teaching and leaning and research activities within our institutions.
I’ll start exploring the possibilities of organising such an event. I’d welcome suggestions on the topics which
should be addressed at such an event and possible speakers.
I’ll conclude by sharing the resources for the talk I gave at Bath. The slides are available on Slideshare (and
embedded below) and a video of my talk is available on Vimeo. In addition local-hosted copies of the resources
are also available on the UKOLN Web site.
[slideshare id=1558270&doc=social-web-090610015810-phpapp02]
Please note that this post originally had a link to an incorrect version of the slides (a version which had been
uploaded to a guest account). The post has been updated with a link to and an embedded versionof the managed
resource. However the original version of the slides has not been deleted.
Filed in Events, Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(3)
Who'll Last Longer – Gordon or Google?
Monday, June 8th, 2009
On Friday I gave a talk on Benefits of the Social Web at the Association of Independent Museum’s (AIM)
annual conference. In the subsequent workshop sessions the issue of the sustainability of the services provided by
companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr was raised. In response I asked “Which do you think is likely to
be more sustainable – Gordon Brown or Google?” And that was a question I asked before I heard Friday’s
announcement that DIUS (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills) was no more, being replaced by
DBIS (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills).
Now the question of the sustainability of instiuional services is something I’ve raised previously, ever since the
Guardian had a front page article on the Secret List of Universities Facing Collapse, which I described in a post
entitled “Universities, Not Facebook, May Be Facing Collapse“.
But this news item (which the Guardian subsequently admitted was inacurate) was concerned with higher
educational institutions which were in financial difficulties. The demise of DIUS made lead us to the situation in
which well-regarded bodies and initiatives cease to be funded due to political manouvering in Westminster, Matt
Jukes, whilst admitting that he is “no expert on the comings and goings in Westminster” goes on to add that “I
really don’t see how this can be anything but bad news for FE and HE“. I would agree with this – as, it would
seem, would many people I know on Twitter who sharing similar misgivings since the announcement on Friday.
Indeed Andy Powell created a Wordle map of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skill press release
which formed the basis of discussion on the lack of any mention of learning and the emphasis on skills and the
economy.
And such concerns shoudn’t be restricted to the higher education sector. I suspect we’ll see other significant
changes which affect public sector organisations such as libraries, museums and archives, either before or after
the election.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 78 of 616
Shouldn’t we now be including the dangers that our funding bodies and government quangos won’t be around for
very much longer in our risk assessments and scenario planning exercises? And just as IBM has lived through the
rise and fall of several generations of governments and government policies, might not Google provide a level of
stability amid the current uncertainies in the government?
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
"Wanna chat with me on cam?"
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Last year we set up a Ning social network
to support the IWMW 2008 event. Afterwards I forgot about the network until a few days ago I was alerted that a
number of members had received spam messages. And on checking I discovered that Lucile Sawyer was sending
messages asking others “Wanna chat with me on cam?, come see me here You’ll enjoy it. I promise!!!!” And on
checking the membership details I discovered that Genvieve has a twin sister called Lucile Sawyer, as you can
see.
I have now banned Lucile and Genvieve and changed the registration options for the site, so that any new
members have to be approved. The lesson I’ve learnt – there’s a need to change the settings for social networks
set up to support events after the event is over. I still prefer to make it easy to subscribe to such services, however,
in order to avoid any delays caused by the need to accept new subscriptions manually.
Filed in Social Networking | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (5)
The Ethical Mobile? (No, not the iPhone!)
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Dave Flanders recently published a blog post which gave an Independent UK Hardware Review of HTC Magic
(Vodaphone) vs HTC G1 (T-Mobile). The blog post (and embedded video clip) made a case for the HTC Magic
mobile phone (which uses Google’s Android open source operating system) in preference to Apple’s iPhone for
several reasons and concluded with an ethical argument:
Ethical computing! <–! Last but certainly not least (IMHO)–> In an age of global financial crisis and
corporate bastardising the technology we decide to spend our money on says a lot for how we want the world
to turn out for the next generation. In my opinion using an Open Source phone (like Android) says you want
a world where we as a global community decide what we want, NOT one where a company decides how we
want it. Choice is yours, but this phone proves without a doubt that you can have both the ethical openness
of Open Source while still having all the functionality and services of a proprietary company. Truly, this
could be the first time Open Source is the top of the stack and I can only hope it will stay this way (for a
month or two anyways
Now a debate of the relative merits of the iPhone and the Google Android device took place following my post
on Google’s G1 Phone: “Innovation For Tech Heads” in September 2008 and a follow-up post on The Wow
Factor, The Openness, The Developers Environment, … published the following month. That debate appeared to
conclude with a concensus of the benefits of the usability of the iPhone, which outweighed the closed nature of
the platform, the centralised Apple Store and the costs of the the iPhone.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 79 of 616
Well I have now got myself a HTC Magic Android device. And have I selected this device based on the ethical
considerations which Dave has raised? Of course not! I chose the HTC Magic phone as wanted a device which
meant I could be always connected, and not tied to a WiFi network. And I was out of contract I was able to obtain
the HTC Magic free-of-charge, with an increase of my monthly tariff from £15 to £20, which included the data
rate.
And having had the device for a few days I’m enjoying it. I’ve installed a variety of Android applications (all of
them free) included an email client (K9), an RSS reader (NewsRob), a couple of GPS applications, a Twitter
client (Twidroid), a barcode reader (to experiment with), Quikipedia (for cheating in pub quizzes), Skype, Shazam
and Last.FM.
For me the deciding factors were the cost and usability – and the iPhone’s better usability isn’t enough to
outweigh its costs. And although this might not be a fashionable comment to make in developers’ circles, the
ethical issues which Dave has described have IMHO little to do with the selection of mobile phones. You just
need to ask an iPhone user to see the truth of this.
Now where are the other HTC Magic users to chat to and discuss the cool apps to install?
Filed in Gadgets | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
Google Wave, HTML 5 and Browser Policies
Monday, June 1st, 2009
Over the past few days the Twitterverse seems tobe full with of discussions regarding Google’s announcement of
Wave. The Techcrunch article on “Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A
New Web” is worth reading. But I was also interested to read a couple of blog posts on how Google Wave might
be used to support teahcing and learning and research activities within higher educational instituions.
In a post entitled”Google Wave and teaching & learning” Wilber Kraan, who works for JISC CETIS, described
how a technology like Google Wave has the potential to support a social constructivist’s model based on group
collaboration activities, especially those that can be constructed, annotated or modified collaboratively. And
whilst Wilbert feels that Google is “evil” he feels that “a technology like Google Wave has the potential to impact
this area significantly” and as Social Networking isn’t a market in which Google dominates, Google “needs to
play nice and open“.
Meanwhile over on the Science in the Open blog Cameron Neylon feels that “OMG! This changes
EVERYTHING! – or – Yet Another Wave of Adulation“. Cameron, a research scientist who is an unapologetic
evangelist for open science, describes how, up till now “Those of us interested in web-based and electronic
recording and communication of science have spent a lot of the last few years trying to describe how we need to
glue the existing tools together, mailing lists, wikis, blogs, documents, databases, papers“. But Google Waves
seems to have fundamentally changed things (if the service lives up to the hype): The lack of a framework to glue
various communications and collaboration tools together “as far as I can see has now ceased to exist. The
challenge now is in building the right plugins and making sure the architecture is compatible with existing tools.
But fundamentally the framework seems to be there. It seems like it’s time to build“.
An exciting future, if Google Wave lives up to the hype, for the learning and research communities, it would
seem. And therefore Google Wave could be of particular important to the higher education community. There
will be lots of issue that will have to be addressed, not least the dangers of a monopoly provider and concerns
over privacy. But, less emotive, perhaps, but of particular importance to IT Service departments is the question of
the browser environment which will be needed to access Google Wave. It appears that Google Wave is an HTML
5 application – and HTML 5 is supported, in part, by all modern Web browsers, with the exception of Microsoft’s
Internet Explorer – which dominstates he marketplace.
Isn’t it time for IT Services department to acknowledge that Internet Explorer is a major barrier to innovation in
higher education? Would it be too much to expect a search and destroy operation to be carried out during the
summer vacation to the desktop environment across the sector? Or, as a Google member of staff was quoted as
saying that Google aim to get it working for all browsers: “People will not have to upgrade their browser to use
Wave” maybe not? Perhaps if we find the innovators and early adopters grow to like Google Wave and wish to
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 80 of 616
see it used more widely within or institutions, we’ll also find that it will eventually be made to work in the latest
version of Internet Explorer. So maybe the summer’s search and destroy operation could be a less radical search
and update operation.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (5)
Defend this Tory MP (yes, really!)
Friday, May 29th, 2009
Whilst reading the Guardian’s RSS feed on my iPod Touch on the bus yesterday I came across an article entitled
“The internet – a threat to free speech?“. The opening sentence was intriguing “It’s probably not the best time to
be seen defending an MP, but here goes“. In the article Padraig Reidy described how “Conservative MP Nadine
Dorries has been pilloried for likening the Daily Telegraph’s handling of the MPs’ expenses story to “torture” –
drip-feeding information and keeping MPs waiting nervously by the phone each morning, awaiting the dreaded
call“. And this complaint, it seems, was published on her blog, in which Nadine Dorries questioned the motives
of the Telegraph and its owners, the Barclay brothers.
Now although I have little sympathy for Tory MPs, I am concerned with the news that “solicitors acting for the
Telegraph and the Barclay brothers sent [a] complaint about not just to Dorries, but to her internet service
provider, TDMWeb” which resulted in Dorries’ blog being taken down by the ISP. And although the blog was
later restored, it seems that the material the Telegraph and the Barclays found so offensive has been removed.
The Blog of Nadine Dorries MP was launched in August 2006. It has a blog policy on the home page stating:
“It’s simple. Be nice. If you try and misinterpret the position I have laid out in a blog; if you swear, are rude,
abusive, aggressive or threatening, I will not publish. If you want to be any of the above, there are lots of
other sites you can go to.
This blog is civil, respectful and will try always to be caring (except when in verbally, armed, political
combat) I will not tolerate the harsh political, aggressive tones accepted on other blogs. Anyone who breaks
these rules will be sent to the naughty step until they learn to behave. I have a very keen nose for Trolls, so
beware.“
Although I’ve not read any of the posts on the blog I’m pleased that an MP has been blogging for that length of
time. And I’m very concerned that a newspaper can insist that a critical blog post can be removed and that the ISP
will cave in. A clear example of the dangers of flaws in the legal system which can cause an ISP to cave into such
threats. And we should be pleased we won’t experience such problems in our sector.
Of could we? I recently looked at the “IT ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY” at the University of Bath, which covers
us of blogs hosted at the University. This states that “You must not use University computing services to harass,
defame, libel, slander, intimidate, impersonate or otherwise abuse another person“. It goes on to state that a
breach of the AUP can include “Copyright infringement“. Hmm. A search reveals I’ve written several blogs posts
containing the words ‘George Bush’ – and they were unlikely to have been complementary! And I’ve also
embedded various images, YouTube videos, etc. which may infringe copyright. So if this blog was hosted on the
University of Bath blog server there could be a risk that I could face pressure to moderate my posts. A very slight
risks, I’ll admit, and I would be prepared to justify the content I’ve published. But if the IT Services department
was as easily intimidated as the provider of Dorries’ blog, there might be a risk.
I’ve also recently come across consortia agreements which contained a clause that organisations would not
publish content which critical of other signatories (this wasn’t the exact wording, please note). So if, for example,
JISC has signed up to such an agreement and I was posting on a JISC Involve blog, I might not be able to post
anything critical of other partner organisations. Now I don’t think such possibilities are likely. But, in light of
the Nadine Dorries incident I think we need to be careful.
I could imagine some academics or academic disciplines in which one could envisage tensions between the
individual and the institution. And the clause in the JISC Involve blog terms and conditions which states that JISC
has the “right (though not the obligation) to, in JISC’s sole discretion (i) refuse or remove any content that, in
JISC’s reasonable opinion, violates any JISC policy or is in any way harmful or objectionable” seems to set a
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 81 of 616
particulurly worying precedent – content can be removed if someone in JISC deems it “in any way harmful or
objectionable“. I wonder if this post, which expresses concerns over this clause, could be considered
objectionable and subject to removal if my blog was hosted on the JISC Involve service?
In order to avoid such risks wouldn’t it be desirable to make use of an external blog provider will whom one has a
disinterested relationship? And if the service provider in based overseas we might avoid the pressures which have
occurred in the Dorries blog case. Wordpress pr Blogger, anyone? And that includes MPs such as Nadine Dorries.
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (7)
The Social Web and the Belbin Model
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
I have previously suggested that although I feel that the Social Web has much to offer that doesn’t mean that I
would want everyone to have a blog, to Twitter, to record talks and make them freely available on video sharing
services. Rather I feel that these approaches should be available to people who wish to exploit their potential,
whether in teaching and learning, research or enriching access to scholarly and cultural resources. But who are the
people who may be best suited to using Social Web services in this fashion?
A couple of decades ago I took part in a team building workshop during which I was introduced to the Belbin
model. On completing the questionnaire on my personal preferences I discovered that I was a plant and a resource
investigator. According to Wikipedia these are defined as:
Plants are creative, unorthodox and a generator of ideas. If an innovative solution to a problem is needed, a
Plant is a good person to ask. A good plant will be bright and free-thinking. Plants can tend to ignore
incidentals and refrain from getting bogged down in detail. The Plant bears a strong resemblance to the
popular caricature of the absentminded professor-inventor, and often has a hard time communicating ideas to
others.
The Resource Investigator gives a team a rush of enthusiasm at the start of the project by vigorously
pursuing contacts and opportunities. He or she is focused outside the team, and has a finger firmly on the
pulse of the outside world. Where a Plant creates new ideas, a Resource Investigator will quite happily steal
them from other companies or people. A good Resource Investigator is a maker of possibilities and an
excellent networker, but has a tendency to lose momentum towards the end of a project and to forget small
details.
Are these characteristics still true, I wonder? And do they reflect the way I use Social Web tools, such as this
blog? As I defined the role of this blog as an environment to 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” I think I have been using the blog to support my preferences as a plant.
I most definitely use the blog to pursue contacts and opportunities beyond my host institution. And as well as
sometimes creating new ideas (such as the holistic approach to Web accessibility) I will also “quite happily steal
them from other companies or people” (though I do always try to provide links back to the original ideas, whether
in blog posts or even tweets).
Is the Belbin model useful in identifying the characteristics of those who enjoy blogging and micro-blogging, I
wonder?
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Belbin | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (7)
Reflections on Use of Twitter at the #CILIP-CYMRU09 Conference
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 82 of 616
Last week I gave a
talk on “Virtual Space for All: The Opportunities and Challenges Provided By The Social Web 2.0” at the
CILIP Wales, Welsh Libraries, Archives and Museums Conference 2009. The organisers, Mandy Powell in
particular, were keen on building on the success of the amplification of the recent CILIP2 open meeting by
encouraging exploitation of the conference’s WiFi network though use of Twitter with the conference tag ‘#cilip
-cymru09‘. Although the numbers of twitterers were small I thought it was interesting to observe and reflect on
the ways in which Twitter was being used and the possible benefits it can provide as usage grows.
Jane Stevenson of the Archives Hub, MIMAS, University of Manchester, was the main conference twitterer. As
can be seen for the accompanying image, Jane provided a running commentary of the talks (in this case my talk)
with, on a number of occasions, links provided to the resources being described, such as the link to the National
Library of Wales community wiki at www.ourwales.org. What we have here is potentially an accessibility benefit,
provided by the textual transcript of a talk.
In contrast a tweet by BeccaDavies, who chaired my session which asked “have we ritualised our reasons for not
allowing access to web 2.0 – can we remember why? #cilip-cymru09” provided me with a new insight into my
talk (a talk which I have given on a number of occasions recently). Have established a number of unthinking
reasons for not engaging with the Social Web? I’d not thought of it in those terms before.
Bob McKee, CEO of CILIP, in his introductory comments for the panel session, suggested that as well as the
physical space provided by libraries and the virtual space which I described, there is also an internal space, where
the learning takes place. A tweet by MartinNHW commented on this remark: “#cilip-cymru09 Bob McKee – re
Martyn Wade: space between our ears – echoes of JG Ballard’s inner space – as well as physical and virtual“.
Afterwards I heard Bob remark that he hadn’t made the connection with JG Ballard’s ‘inner space’, but seemed to
welcome this analogy. Again we are seeing how Twitter can provide differing perpectives on a talk, which can
help enrich the learning for others.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 83 of 616
We are starting to see a number of posts describing experiments in using Twitter in lectures, such as Where for
art thou Twitter? on the Classroom 2 blog, and The Twitter Experiment – Bringing Twitter to the Classroom at
UT Dallas on the Kesmit-ing blog, Classroom idea: Twitter note-taking on Steve Outing’s blog, and Embracing
the Twitter Classroom on the Huffington Post. We’ll be seeing much more of this, I suspect.
Filed in Twitter | Tagged #cilip-cymru09 | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (4)
You Care About Innovation? Then Tell Me What You Think, Not Who
You Work For!
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
I recently commented how Twitter provides a means for not only finding out and discussing new ideas but also
establishing and developing new professional relationships. And sometimes the contacts may take place initially
in the blogosphere which can then be supported by discussions, or even just listening, on Twitter.
But how easy do we make it for others to establish new contacts and engage in discussions in this way? I was
thinking about this in the context of a comment made recently by Nicole Harris who described how “the fact that
I am connected to JISC in my e-mail address is important…“. As I wanted to read Nicole’s blog to see what else
she’d written on this topic I Googled “Nicole Harris JISC Blog” - and found that her staff page on the JISC Web
site was the first hit. This page provided contact details (including her JISC email address) and a brief summary of
her areas of work – but no link to her blog. I had to scan through the Google results more carefully before finding
her JISC Access Management Team blog – and, interestingly the link was to a post entitled “The opinions
expressed on this blog are only the opinions of…?” which concluded with the questions:
- As a manager at JISC, should my blog posts reflect my personal opinions or that of the corporate body of
JISC?
- How can senior managers within our organisations best understand the role of web2 platforms so we don’t
get our wrists slapped for being vocal on such platforms?
- Should we be vocal on such plaforms?
- Should policies be governed by communication mode (i.e. blogging), platform (JISC Involve versus general
Wordpress) or job role (would this policy be different for me and mark, who now lives in JISC Collections
but continues to blog with me)?
Now a discussion about the contents of a blog is worthy of another post. In this post my interest is in how one’s
active participation in innovation can be surfaced for the wider community. Shouldn’t it be the address of the blog
which is included in one’s profile in various social networking services (e.g. Link-in). And shouldn’t a staff page
on one’s organisational Web site link to the place where views and opinions are being surfaced and discussions
take place?
Surely if you care about innovation (which I know Nicole does) then you’ll make it easy for your user community
and your peers to find out what you think and help then to engage in the discussions and debate? And these days
that is increasingly likely to take place on blogs and via Twitter. And the debate never took place on instituional
Web sites, did it?
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (6)
How Do New Ideas Start? How Do New Contacts Develop?
Monday, May 18th, 2009
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 84 of 616
The Question
How do you ideas start? How can a informal conversation lead to an exploration of new ideas? How do such
conversations start? And how does one participate in such conversations, especially with new people?
These were a series of questions which occurred to me a few days ago, following some early morning light-
hearted banter on Twitter. I thought I’d share the dialogue and invite comments on the more general issues.
The Twitter Discussions
At 7 am on Friday 15th May 2009 I got up and downloaded the new tweets on my iPod Touch. I noticed that
James Clay had spotted that the “Latest upgrade to TwitterFon on the iPhone now includes Ads. There will be a
paid for Pro version which doesn’t“. As I was using Twitterfon to view the tweet I had an interest in alternative
Twitter clients, in case the ads on the new version were to intrusive. In response to my query on alternatives Joss
Winn responded by suggesting that “if you’re going to pay, Tweetie is worth every penny“. Now I’ve not met Joss
(as far as I know) but, a few months ago started following him on Twitter and subscribe to his blog.
In order to put his suggestion into context, I visited his blog and spotted his (then current) post on “The user is in
control“. This post was written in response to Andy Powell’s post about Identity in a Web 2.0 World and
contained some comments which reflected my view of how Web 2.0 is requiring higher education to challenge
some of the assumptions we have previously taken for granted (in particular that higher educational institutions
should regard themselves as automatically the main provider of a student’s digital identity). As I appreciated
Joss’s work in this area, I tipped my hat in his direction with a tweet posted at 07:23 saying “Ta for suggesting
Tweetie app. BTW have just looked at your blog & will cite your post on “The user is in control” l8tr today“. I’d
made links with a new contact before 07.30 am.
When I arrived at work forthy minutes later Joss had responded with a jocal tweet:
responded shortly afterwards saying “excellent A citation from Brian Kelly surely counts towards the REF!“.
And in a similar vein I made fun on the notion that citing tweets would have any relevance to REF (the Research
Exercise Framework alternative to the RAE for identifying the merits of research publications:
“A citation from Brian Kelly surely counts towards the REF!” True – so if I cite u, will u cite me? (hmm
should have DMed that!)”.
Martin Weller observed this dialogue and joined in by suggesting that “semi-seriously we should work up our own
set of metrics of reputation etc so we can compare when REF is done“. Following a few further tweets between
Martin, Joss and myself a few hours later Martin published a blog post on “What would ALT-REF look like?“.
The blog post included an image (shown below) which captured the discussions:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 85 of 616
Discussion
Martin Weller’s suggestion was that an alternative to REF would “take in the sort of distributed identity we have
online, so measures activity in blogging, delicious, slideshare, YouTube, twitter, etc. It would need to measure not
just activity but influence, impact, etc in some data driven manner“. Whether this idea has any merits might be
worth exploring on Martin’s blog. My more specific interest is how the people who may be working together
across the “blogging, delicious, slideshare, YouTube, twitter, etc” services might find each and share ideas which,
at some later point, might provide significant benefits.
Martin and myself have already benefitted from the discussions we’ve had on Twitter and from reading and
commenting on each other’s blog posts, with the shared understanding we’ve gained having led to a submission
for a workshop session at the ALT-C conference which we’ll be faciliting at the conference in September. I have
also received contributions to a number of peer-reviewed papers from contacts I’ve met on Twitter.
Thinking about this in more detail, I realise that typically I might start following someone on Twitter if I feel I
might gain something from this, such as new insights into digital library developments, use of Web 2.0, digital
preservation, etc. If I do find myself following links embedded in tweets or enjoying contributions to a twitter
discussion I might look at the Twitterer’s blog (if, as is often the case, they have one) and subscribe to it so I can
read their ideas in more depth on their blog. And this might then lead to further sharing of ideas and possibly joint
work.
But if you don’t tweet or don’t blog then you are likely to be invisible to me. This, I’m sure, won’t be of concern
to many people! But, more generally, won’t a failure to have a presence in the blogosphere, on Twitter and in
other social media which are being increasingly used in certain sectors of the research community result in a
failure to have one’s ideas being known about and opportunities to engage with others being missed? Speculation
on my part, I’ll admit. And there will be a need to gather evidence. So I’ve provided my anecdote. Anyone had
similar experiences?
Filed in Twitter, Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(2)
Not Your Father's IT Innovation!
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Yesterday a leader column in The Guardian suggested that the current global economic crisis is “Not your father’s
recession“. Rather than being simply the latest downturn in a economic cycle which has been with us since 1945
the leader writer feels that this recession is very different from those we (and our parents) have experienced in the
past.
On the same day Andy Powell on the eFoundation’s blog invites us to consider The role of universities in a Web
2.0 world? Andy feels that the Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience (CLEX)’s report on
“Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World” should have sought to address the question”what is the role for
universities in a Web 2.0 world?” rather than “how do universities best use Web 2.0 to enhance their current
practice?”
Similarly Andy feels the the recent CILIP2 Open Session missed an opportunity to address the fundamental issue
of”What is the role of an organisation like CILIP in a Web 2.0 world?” instead discussing the much safer
question of “how should CILIP use Web 2.0 to engage with its members?“.
Andy’s post concludes by suggesting that “if Web 2.0 changes everything, [he] see[s] no reason why that doesn’t
apply as much to professional bodies and universities as it does to high street bookshops“. Or to put it another
way, it’s not just about sometimes slow-moving institutions eventually accepting the importance of the IT
innovations which the early adopters have been talking about – and using – for some time now. Rather we don’t
just have to develop the “best practices for institutional engagement (or not) with Web 2.0” which I suggest. This
needs to be done (and I’ve very pleased that the CLEX report and the CILIP community seem to have accepted
this) – but we also need to look closely at the roles which our institutions have traditionally played and the
services they have provided and questions whether these are still needed.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 86 of 616
On one level support services in our institutions need to question their traditional roles. Is there a need for IT
Service departments, for example, to continue to provide and host mainstream services such as email. In her blog
Chris Sexton, Director of Corporate Information and Computing Services at the University of Sheffield and
UCISA chair has described proposals to move its email service for students to Google – and the comments from
the users on her blog seems very positive. And how should academic libraries respond to the wide range of
information sources of available ‘out there’ . The traditional approach has been to ensure that information literacy
provision allows users to be able to differentiate between quality controlled sources of information, such as
academic journals, and widely used services such as Wikipedia which don’t provide such managed approaches to
quality. But as we have recently discovered that publishers of research journals such as Elsevier publish fake
academic publications, it would seem that such traditional notions are already questionable.
Put as well as the provision of services such as email we also need to question whether it is desirable for
institutions to provide email addresses for staff and students. Since email is used to authenticate registration and
subsequent changes for many Web 2.0 services, what will happen when people leave the institution and thus can
no longer use their email address? Wouldn’t it be sensible for institutions to advice students on short course and
staff on short-term contracts to use an email account which can still be used when they leave if they wish to use
Web 2.0 services, whether for social or academic purposes? And if so, how short is a short course? A diploma,
lasting a few months? A 1 year MSc? Or a 3 year undergraduate course?
This is part of a wider discussion about identify in a Web 2.0 world, and the focus of another post on the
eFoundations blog. “Identity in a Web 2.0 world is not institution-centric” argues Andy; a view strongly
supported by Paul Miller. Joss Winn explores these issues in more depth in a blog post entitled “The user is in
control” in which he describes a blueprint outline which recognises that “University students are at least 18 years
old and have spent many years unconsciously accumulating or deliberately developing a digital identity” and will
increasingly question and resist the idea that the instituion will impose a new digital identity.
What, then, “is the role for universities in a Web 2.0 world?” to revisit Andy’s question? And will a combination
of the continuing economic recession, possible implications of global warming and the availability of Open
Educational Resources does the traditional higher education institution have a future? And if you point out the
failure of the UK eUniversity (see The Real Story Behind the Failure of U.K. eUniversity – PDF) to argue for a
continuation of the status quo I’ll suggest that that provides a valuable learning experience, illustrating some of
the ways approachs to radical transformation of the sector which we now know to avoid.
Web 2.0 is not just the latest in a series of IT developments (ranging from mainframes, mini-computers,
workstations, standalone PCs, PCs on a LAN, PCs with Internet and Web access to today;s mobile devices) which
institutions have successfully absorbed and integrated into the mainstream, I feel. It’s not your father’s IT
innovations – it’s something much more radical. And if you deny this aren’t you behaving in a similar fashion to
the music industry, which refused to acknowledge that developments such as the Internet, mobile music players
and P2P networks fundamentally changed how the industry needed to operate?
Or is this a tongue-in-cheek post, which I’ll be happy to distance myself from in a few year’s time? To be honest,
I don’t know. What do you think?
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged clex09 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (7)
The Launch of the CLEX09 Report
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Yesterday morning I wrote a blog post about the report on “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World” published
by the Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience (CLEX). In the afternoon I went to the
Barbican Centre London in order to attend the official launch of this report. It was good to meet up with Sir
David Melville, who chaired the Committee of Inquiry, and Ewan McIntosh, both of whom spoke at the launch
event. The two speakers had also spoken at UKOLN’s Institutional Web Management Workshops, incidentally,
Sir David in 2003 and Ewan McIntosh at last year’s event.
I think it is fair to say that the “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World” report does not provide any new insights
for those who have been actively involved in the Web 2.0 world over the past few years. What it does provide,
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 87 of 616
however, is senior management endorsement for the work of those of us who have been involved in promoting
and exploiting the potential of Web 2.0 and the Social Web within higher education. And the list of
recommendations should be closely looked at by policy makers and senior managers as well as those of us who,
like me, will be welcoming this report.
I brought along a digital camera (which could also take video recordings) to the meeting and, with permission of
the two speakers, recorded their two talks (I also recorded the third speaker, Wes Streeting, President of the NUS
but haven’t been able to upload it).
The videos of Sir David Melville (13 mins long) and Ewan McIntosh (16 mins long) have been uploaded to the
Vimeo service. It is not possible (I understand) to embed the Vimeo video player in this blog. However clicking
on the images below will take you to the Vimeo Web site.
What do you think of their views of the future for Higher Education in a Web 2.0 world?
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged clex09 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
"Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World" Report Published
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
The CLEX Final Report
The final report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience (CLEX) entitled” Higher
Education in a Web 2.0 World” has just been published.
The report built on work which began last year included a “Report of the review of current and developing
international practice in the use of social networking (Web 2.0) in higher education” (available in PDF Format) to
which I contributed the section which provided a history of use of Web 2.0 in the UK.
Article In Today’s Education Guardian
The official launch of the CLEX report has been accompanied by an article entitled ”Time to get with the
program” published in today’s Education Guardian. As I mentioned in a blog post on How Is HE Embracing Web
2.0? How Is Web 2.0 Changing HE?” published yesterday I had been interviewed by the author of the article,
Anthea Lipsett, last week.
The article in the Guardian begins with a description of a student experience which is at ease with the social web:
The “Google generation” of today’s students has grown up in a digital world. Most are completely au fait
with the microblogging site Twitter; they organise their social lives through Facebook and MySpace; 75% of
students have a profile on at least one social networking site. And they spend up to four hours a day online.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 88 of 616
The article cites the CLEX report ’s conclusions that although UK Universities are doing “pretty well” there are
“major issues to address if universities and colleges are to keep up with these changes in student practice and
attitude” since “use of Web 2.0 … is far from systematic in universities” and is “driven by enthusiastic individuals
who have embraced the opportunities it offers” .
Discussion
The CLEX report is very positive in its views on the potential of Web 2.0 in higher education. The report provides
a series of recommendation including, for example, the recommendation that that “JISC continues to develop a
research and support programme into the use of Web 2.0 for all aspects of university business“.
Should this be regarded by higher educational institutions as encouragement to make more systematic use of the
Wocial Social Web? After all, today’s Guardian includes, as well as the Education supplement, a University
Guide supplement which contains on the front page an article on “Tweet and lowdown” which describes how
“most univerities are so desperate to come across as cool that they’ve joined Facebook, YouTube and Twitter,
and are happy to meet you online” and how “a lot of institutions offer free podcasts of lectures and tutorial
recordings via their individual websites or Apple’s portal iTunesU“.
Evidence that Universities are successfully embracing Web 2.0 technologies (despite the snide remark about
‘desparation’)? Or should we be concerned regarding the way in which social networking technologies are being
institutionalised to support marketing purposes?
In our contribution to the “Time to get with the program?” article myself and Professor Martin Weller both
warned of the dangers of institutions “infiltrating Facebook”. Martin described how “If you ask students: do you
want the university to come on Facebook, the answer is no. They don’t want their professor as a friend” and I
questioned whether “universities [need] to get involved in … informal learning” which can be supported by social
networking environments.
But what if Martin and myself are wrong? After all the CLEX report concluded with a quotation from a student:
I think it’s great to have tutors/university staff on Facebook. After all, it is supposed to be a social community
network and I think they [deserve] the right to have their own community or form a network with students (if
the students are willing).
The answer to this dilemma should be addressed by another of the recommendations of the CLEX final report:
“JISC works with the HE funding bodies and Universities UK to explore issues and practice in the development of
new business models that exploit Web 2.0 technologies“. We haven’t yet identified the best practices for
institutional engagement (or not) with Web 2.0. But the report makes it quite clear that we need to be asking these
questions.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged clex | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (11)
How Is HE Embracing Web 2.0? How Is Web 2.0 Changing HE?
Monday, May 11th, 2009
On Thursday I received a message followed by a subsequent email asking me to contact a journalist at the
Guardian newspaper who was writing an article about institutional use of Web 2.0 in higher education. In her
email Anthea Lipsett told me that she was writing an article for the Education Guardian about a report on ‘HE in
a Web 2.0 World’ due to be published on Tuesday, 12 May 2009. Anthea wanted some background information
on whether HE had embraced Web 2.0 technology, how Web 2.0 is changing HE and whether universities
keeping pace with the changes and had been given my name as someone to talk to.
A challenge for me, then, to give my thoughts on these questions! My initial response was to post a tweet inviting
suggestions from my Twitter followers. I then drafted some notes which on some of the key points which I felt
might be useful to raise in the interview. Although I didn’t have an opportunity to mentioned all of these points in
the brief interview I felt it might be worth expanding on my notes and sharing them on the blog so that others can
see how I feel the higher education sector is responding to and engaging with Web 2.0.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 89 of 616
What is Web 2.0?
If you are writing an article about how Web 2.0 is changing higher education and how higher education is
responding to Web 2.0 you first need to clarify what you mean by the term ‘Web 2.0′.
‘Network as a Platform’
Web 2.0 could refer to the concept of ‘network as a platform’. In the past I feel that institutional IT service
providers have felt threatened by this notion which, in the UK, seems to imply Thatcherite out-sourcing and
privatisation. This doesn’t go down well with the Guardian and Independent readers you will typically find in the
university sector! However back in 2006 at the UCISA management Conference I gave a talk on “IT Services:
Help Or Hindrance?” in which I argued there was a need to embrace the mixed economy of in-house and external
providers of IT services. I was pleased (and slightly surprised) to discover a willingness to accept such changes –
this was a very different response to my “A Controversial Proposal” talk which I gave to an audience of
institutional Web managers back in 2000 which, in retrospect, made similar arguments but at a time in which the
underlying technical infrastructure and business models had not been established.
I think now, however, IT services departments are much more comfortable with embracing ’services in the
Cloud’. As an example, see the recent blog post on “Google for students” by Chris Sexton, IT Services Director at
the University of Sheffield and UCISA Chair in which she described how a “project group agreed to recommend
that we outsource our service to Google and implement Google mail and calendar in the first instance – possibly
moving to more of the apps later such as Google docs” and then went on to add “first major service we’ve
outsourced, but I suspect that over the next few years it won’t be the last“.
Culture of Openness
Web 2.0 also embraces a culture of openness. And this is an area in which the higher education community has
taken a high profile in for several years. The research community has been pro-active in promoting open access to
research publication, with advocates such as Professor Stevan Harnard playing a prominent role in promoting
alternative business models which can enable research publications to be freely available for use by others whilst
maintaining editorial and peer reviewing processes which are essential for maintaining the quality of research
outputs.
This culture of openness is increasingly being applied in other areas of higher education, such as open educational
resources, with the JISC funding an Open Educational Resources Programme) to expand on the amount of
educational content which is available. Similar initiatives are being taken to open access to scientific data as can
be seen from the blog posts of open science advocates such as Professor Peter Murray-Rust and Cameron Neylon.
Blogs, Wikis, …
But rather than the more philosophical aspects of Web 2.0, perhaps the issues concern the provision of Web 2.0
technologies such as blogs and wikis. The University of Warwick was the first UK university to provide a blog
service for its staff and students. And after some initial concerns about how an institution should go about
managing the content I suspect we are now finding that IT Services are starting to regard blogs and wikis as fairly
mainstream the higher education sector – that the impression I had after the UKOLN workshop on Exploiting the
Potential of Wikis held back in November 2006 and Exploiting the Potential of Blogs and Social Networks held a
year later.
Social Networks
I suspect, however, that the main area of interest may be how universities are engaging with the Social Web and
social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.
The first example of institutional engagement with such social networking services I was aware of was Edge Hill
University, which Alison Wildish (who is now manager of the Web Services team here at the University of Bath)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 90 of 616
described in a plenary talk on “Let the Students do the Talking…” at the IWMW 2007 event (and note that a
video of her talk is available). I suspect that nowadays institutional marketing departments and alumni offices
will be familiar with the potential of social networking services and many will have established a presence in
popular service such as Facebook. In addition institutions have also started to make use of Twitter as another
channel for engaging with their communities.
Social Networks Beyond Marketing
Of more interest, I feel, is the question of how universities are using social networks to support their teaching and
learning activities. And this is probably an area in which there it is more speculative as to is happening beyond the
early adopters . I suspect there is also more diversity of opinions on the question of what institutions are seeking
to achieve through use of social networks and how institutional policies and decisions should be developed to
support such nebulous aims.
If we regard social networks as supporting informal learning it may be questionable as to whether institutions
need any formal policies beyond not banning their use. After all informal learning has always taken place in
universities, in bars, coffee rooms, students kitchens, etc. but we haven’t sought to manage the discussions and
interactions. Should we seek to do so in online social spaces? And if we try do, isn’t there a danger that student
will simply move to other online spaces?
Some Concluding Thoughts
I feel it is important that universities should be pro-active in developing and implementing new media literacy
strategies for members of their institutions, including members of staff (academic, senior policy makers, …) as
well as students. This should not only cover assessment of information found on the Web but also issues related to
creation of content and engagement with communities.
There will be a need to gather evidence as to the effectiveness of informal learning and the effectiveness of use of
social networks in more formal contexts. I suspect there will be a need to understand how the effectiveness of
social networks differs across different disciplines and also across different groups of users.
And as well as gaining a better understanding of how social networks can support student learning, there is also a
need to understand how social networks can enhance the effectiveness of teaching and research staff within our
institutions, through, for example, support for communities of practice. This is an area of particular interest to me,
with my interests in engaging with and learning from a number of communities related to my professional areas
of interest and activities, including standards development, Web accessibility and the broad area of digital library
development activities.
That’s my summary of how I feel the higher education sector is embracing Web 2.0. I’d welcome your thoughts,
comments and observations.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (9)
Reflections on eLib and Other National Digital Library Programmes
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
I have been invited to give a talk at the CILIPS Annual Conference 2009 on “Inspiring Excellence: Yourself,
Your Service, Our Future” which will take place in Peebles on 1-3rd June 2009.
I have been invited to give a talk in a session on “How Far Have We Come?” and the draft title of my talk is
“From eLib to NOF-digi and Beyond“. In the talk I’ll give my thoughts on a number of national digital library
development programmes which I have had some invovement with: namely eLib, DNER (which was
subsequently renamed the JISC Information Environment) and the NOF-digitise programme.
Rather than looking at the outputs of such programmes I’ll be exploring the technical guidelines which funded
projects were expected to follow. This will include a review of the standards documents developed to support
these programmes and some of the important architectural decisions which had an influence across a range of
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 91 of 616
projects. I’ll also explore the things I feel we got write – and also the things we missed or were late in adopting.
The intention is to try to inform large-scale initiatives in the future by learning from our successes and failures.
I’ll write a number of blog posts in which I’ll describe my thoughts prior to writing the presentation. And I’d
welcome comments from people who may have been involved in these programmes or have views and opinions
they would like to share.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
IWMW 2009 Event Open For Bookings
Friday, May 8th, 2009
This year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2009) is now open for bookings. This year the 3-
day event, which is aimed at members of institutional Web management teams and others with interests in
institutional use of Web services, will be held at the University of Essex, Colchester on 28-30th July 2009.
Although the event is well-established, having been launched in 1997, the event continues to develop in response
to the ever-changing Web environment and the needs and expectations of the Web management community. We
will continue to have a number of plenary talks which will provide a shared context for all workshop participants.
However this year, in response to feedback we’ve received from previous events, we are splitting the talks (and
related workshop sessions) on the second afternoon into two strands: a ‘front-end’ strand which focusses on the
services as perceived by the end user and a ‘back-end’ strand which addresses the ‘behind-the-scenes’ activities
which are needed in order to deliver the user services.
We will also continue to provide the parallel workshop sessions. These sessions aim to provide all participants
with the opportunity to contribute actively to the sessions, rather than simply sit back and listen to talks!
A significant development to the event, which was trialled for the first time last year, are the bar camp sessions.
These sessions will be more informal than the workshops, and ideas can be submitted during the event itself.
Another new development is the developer’s lounge. We will be encouraging active participation from the
development community but will let developers provide a structure to how this will develop.
The cost is £350 per person which includes two nights ensuite accommodation (or £300 with no accommodation).
The delegate fee includes attendance at the workshop, conference materials, refreshments and lunch, workshop
dinner and social events.
We hope to see you in July!
Filed in Events | Tagged iwmw2009 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (1)
The "Good Practice for Provision of APIs" Project
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
For the past few months my colleague Marieke Guy has been working on the “Good Practice for Provision of
APIs” project. As described on the project blog “the ‘Good APIs’ project aims to provide JISC and the sector
with information and advice on the factors that encourage use of machine interfaces, based on existing practice“.
This work involved working with a community of developers in order to collate and disseminate advice on best
practices for the provision of and use of APIs. In addition background information about APIs (what they are and
why they are important) was also produced which is aimed primarily at project managers, programme managers
and policy makers.
An initial report was produced but, following discussions with a number of the stakeholders, it was felt to be more
appropriate to provide access to the report using a blog in order to allow discrete parts of the document to be
referenced and commented upon. Use of the blog’s comment facility will also provide an opportunity to receive
additional feedback from the developer community prior to submission of the final report to JISC.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 92 of 616
The deadline for comments is 18th May 2009. Once any additional feedback has been incorporated into the report
the document will be available as entries on the blog together with a final project report in PDF resource.
If you would like to provide feedback, please visit the Good APIs blog site.
Filed in Technical | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
Lessons Learnt from the Amplification of the CILIP2 Event
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Reasons for This Post
At last week’s CILIP2 Open Session both Phil Bradley and myself argued that there was a need for the Library
community to actively engage with Web 2.0 tools and even be prepared to make mistakes. Without making
mistakes, it will not be possible to innovate, we argued. We also felt that we should be open about our mistakes,
in order to learn from them and to help others in the sector from repeating such mistakes.
Such views echo the sentiment expressed by Mia Ridge who, in a blog post about the recent Museums and the
Web 2009 conference entitled “Oh noes, a FAIL! Notes from the unconference session on ‘failure’ at MW2009 ”
explained her “motivation in suggesting the ['Failure' unconference] session – intelligent, constructive failure is
important. Finding ways to create a space for that conversation isn’t something we do well at the moment“.
This post is my attempt at explaining aspects of the ‘amplification’ of the CILIP2 open session which failed or
could have been improved, and to identify ways in which the next attempt at amplifying a physical event to a
wider remote audience can be improved. (Note the term amplified conference was coined by Lorcan Demsey
Dempsey and a summary is provided on Wikipedia).
Things Which Worked
Before describing areas for improvement it is worth summarising the things that worked!
I was pleased that the pre-event publicity of use of Twitter at the event succeeded in attracting large numbers of
participants, with some, I think, being willing to subscribe to Twitter and possibly even install a Twitter client in
order to participate on the day itself.
The event organisers played their in supporting the amplification of the event. Caroline Moss-Gibbon, who
chaired the event, described the live-blogging at the event and asked the participants physically present at the
meeting at CILIP Headquarters to regard any comments they made or questions they asked as being in the public
domain. The evnt organisers had also arranged for two official bloggers, who would act as public note-keepers at
the event, using both a Twitter channel and a CILIP blog post as a means of keeping the remote audience up-to-
date with the talks and discussions.
The Twitterfall client which was suggested as a way in which remote participant could keep up-to-date with
Twitter posts containing the ‘cilip2′ tag also seemed to prove popular judging from subsequent comments I read
of various blog posts. And the goodwill of software developers – in particular Dave Patten – was appreciated by
the CILIP community for his transcript of the tweets and his Wordle visualisation of the content of the tweets.
I was also pleased to have recorded a slidecast of a rehearsal of my talk prior to the event. A couple of people
commented that they had listened to my talk prior to the event which enabled them to have a feel for the issues I
would be raising in my talk.
Areas For Improvement
There are a number of areas in which I felt improvements could have been made. Most of these will not have been
apparent to others and so I could feel safe in keeping them to myself. However sharing the experiences with
others will remind me to do better next time and will allow others to make additional suggestions.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 93 of 616
Reporting:
After the event it was pointed out to me that the description of ‘official’ Twitterers and bloggers at the event
could have been interpretted as a way of ensuring that an official party line was documented which censored
any criticisms of CILIP. As Caroline Moss-Gibbons, chair of the CILIP Council, described in her brief
report on the session the reporters ”had full editorial freedom of course, no ‘party line’ to follow“. Although
Caroline made this point in her introduction to the session, the remote audience would not necessarily have
picked up on this.
Lesson: next time I feel it would be helpful to provide a Web page about the amplification of the event which
explictly clarifies the autonomy of the reporters.
Lack of audio/video recordings:
I recorded a video of Phil Bradley’s talk at the event using my Nokia N95 mobile phone – but despite having
deleted old videos from the memory card the previous day, the phone ran out of memory after only two
minutes. I subsequently discovered that the phone was storing the video on its built-in memory rather than
using the 2 Gb memory card.
Lesson: check configuration options on mobile phone to ensure recordings are being made to correct storage
device.
I also brought along a digital camera which could take video recordings (and isn’t limited to the 10 minutes
of video footage which my personal camera has). I also brought along a tripod to avoid camera shakes. As
my intention was to record my own talk I needed a helper to start the recording. Unfortunately no recording
was made, possibly because the camera had switched itself off.
Lesson: I need to remember that people who I ask to use my digital devices are unlikely to be familiar with
them and there will be a need to provide some training.
Lack of streaming audio/video:
I brought along my Asus EE PC and intended to try out Skype in order to its potential for allowing a remote
user to listen in to the two opening talks (and also possibly record the talks). I also brought along a Polycom
Communciator device and tested that it worked correctly as a microphone and speaker. Unfortunately
although the devices worked correctly I couldn’t connect to the two new Skype contacts who had expressed
interest in listening to the talks. This may have been due to user interface problems on my Linux-based Asus
EEE.
Lesson: I need to authenticate remote users in advance, on user interfaces which I am more familiar with.
How Else Could the Event Amplification Have Been Improved?
What else could have been done to enhance the amplification of the event to the remote audience and to people
who may have wished to hear the talks and discussions but did not have networked access at the time of the
event?
I am aware that James Clay, e-learning resource manager at Gloucestershire College, has been using Qik at
various conferences for some time. I did wonder whether a streaming video service such as Qik might have been
used by members of the CILIP2 audience with a suitable mobile phoneand a contract which allowed for data to be
transmitted within incurring significant charges. However I suspect that this service is still being used by the
early adopters, such as James, and hasn’t yet caught the attention of the early mainstream user community.
Perhaps there’s an opportunity for its use at a forthcoming CILIP event?
But if members of the audience did not have a device and contarct which could be use for video streaming, I
suspect many of them did have mobile phones which culd be used for sound recordings. SHould we have
encouraged the audience to record the talks, I wonder? Rather than a single centralised approach, which has a
single point of failure (as I’ve described above!) possibly we should be adopting a LORKSS approach (Lots of
Recording Keep Safe and Secure). Should we be encouraging others to take recording in order to minimise the
risks of failures?
Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Tagged cilip2 | Permalink | Edit
| Comments (7)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 94 of 616
CILIP: More Popular Than Swine Flu!
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
Background
When Bob McKee, CEO of CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) wrote his blog
post on “All of a Twitter” we can safely predict that he wouldn”t have expect to CILIP to be featured as one of
the topic topics of discussion on Twitter, at one stage, according to one one the Twitter tending tools, seemingly
being more widely discussed than swine flu.
Bob’s post, which was published back in February, looked at the question of CILIP’s involvement with Twitter.
Should a professional organisation such as CILIP make use of Twitter? Bob view, which went beyond discussions
of Twitter and addressed the wider use of social networking services hosted outside the institution, was
unequivocal: “The simple answer, of course, is no. In terms of “official” activity, cyber life is just like real like –
if it happens in a CILIP-sanctioned space, it’s official; if it happens down the pub or in someone else’s space, it
isn’t.”
Phil Bradley responded with a blog post with an unequivocal title “CILIP – Epic FAIL“ although the tone of the
post was measured
I like Bob – he’s a nice chap and very personable, but I can’t articulate enough how wrong he is on this
issue, though I’ll try. He says ‘There’s some twittering at present about whether CILIP has (or should have)
any “official” presence on various lists or micro blog sites. Sorry Bob, but we were discussing this on
Twitter two weeks ago. The boat has long since left on this one and we’ve moved onto other things related to
CILIP now.
and invited CILIP to engage in a wider and more open discussion about how an organisation such as CILIP
should be engaging with a Web 2.0 world.
CILIP2 Open Meeting
Phil was pleased that the CILIP Council responded to his post by arranging an open session on how CILIP could
make use of Web 2.0 which was held yesterday afternoon (29 April 2009) after the morning’s Council meeting. I
too was invited to speak at the meeting and, like Phil, was delighted to see how the Council had embracinga
willingness to make use of Web 2.0 by encouraging live Twittering at the event and publicising it to a wider
community who were invited to follow the #cilip2 tag on software such as Twitterfall.
The Twitter Channel
It was particularly pleasing to see the extent to which the wider CILIP community and other interested parties
who couldn’t attend the meeting engaged with use of Twitter to get a feel for the talks and discussions at the
Council meeting and also to raise a much wider set of issues about the role of CILIP. The popularity of the #cilip2
discussions became apparent as the Twitterfall display (which was displayed following the two presentations by
myself and Phil) began to include posts from a number of Twitter-trending services – and the inclusion of a
number of Twitter spam posts. Incidentally for me the spam provides an indication of how Twitter is now
mainstream – and if you feel a service shouldn’t be used if it can attract spam, I assume you’re not using email!
Incidentally if you wish to see examples of the popularity of the Twitter discusisons you can view the trends
shown on the hashtags and Twitscoop services – although as the event is now over we have probably lost a record
of the popularity of the tag.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 95 of 616
The Discussions
Dave Pattern, Library systems
manager at the University of Huddersfield Library provided a good example of rapid software development when
he wrote software to harvest tweets containing the the #cilip2 tag. And not only is a record of the discussions,
annotated with the time of posting, now available, a Wordle cloud is also available (and shown below) which
provides a visual summary of the topics which were discussed on Twitter.
There have already been a couple of blog posts published about the event which I’ll briefly summarise.
Alison Williams (a remote participant) felt that the Twitter channel was “excellent in that it was discussing how
librarians and specifically CILIP (1) could make use of web 2.0 tools, and it was doing it by…. making use of web
2.o tools! What a good idea!” She also joined in the discussions by “suggest[ing] that CILIP might look to the
ALA (American Library Association) as a role model“.
Amelia Luzzi appreciated the Twitter channel in her post “Twitter – better than a conference“. She found it useful
to be “able to follow the talks at CILIP 2.0, without an expensive trip down to London“. I also found her
observation that ” in case you were wondering why video/audio isn’t a better solution – I can discuss what is said
with other participants, also in real time: if an interesting comment comes up, the discussion can start amongst us
virtual participants in a way that it simply can’t amongst real-life ones. I’ve heard it said, often, that the best bit
of a conference is the bit where you end up talking to other participants in the hallway. Following #cilip2 on
Twitter has had the feel of that“. That’s an interesting point – live audio and video simply amplifies the one-
dimensional publishing aspect of conference whereas successful conferences often provide an environment for
two-way(or rather multiple-way) discussions. She concluded “Today, I think I’ve expanded my professional
network by about 25%. And, granted, the ties aren’t all that binding – but I now have a way of keeping an eye on
what they’re talking about, and engaging them when I feel I have something to add. It’s a great starting point for
building a more solid professional relationship“.
Neil Ford on the Random Letters blog also felt that “it was fascinating for me to attend an event like this on
Twitter”. In answer to the question as to whether any concrete decisions were made on the day Neil felt the he
“didn’t pick up on any hard action or proposals. I can’t see that any actual decisions were made by the CILIP top
brass“. But rather than this being regarded as a criticism Neil realised that the event “was more about CILIP
Council *listening* to it’s members. This is something I’ve never heard of before and I really think CILIP Council
deserve a big hats-off for hosting the event”.
Carl on the Sinto blog felt that CILIP ”does appear to have been slow to develop a coherent approach to some of
the emerging technologies” but felt there was a need for “the more considered responses that will soon appear in
blogs and printed articles“. Carl is concerned that although there are “Web 2 savvy professionals who are part of
this debate“ we may find that “there is a larger group of web-sceptics who are excluded“.
Revisiting The Main Themes of the Day
Returning from the remote participants’ views on the day to some of the issues which I (who am not a CILIP
members of librarian) picked one on.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 96 of 616
CILIP As An Enabler
A view was expressed at the meetingthat , rather than providing a variety of Web 2.0 services on the CILIP
Web site, CILIP shouldact as an enabler, perhaps sharing best practices and patterns of usage, aggragating
content provided by members (as CILIP already do with CILIP memebr blogs) and providing directories of
CILIP member users of various services which can help members to find like-minded collagues more easily
on the various social networking services.
Exclusion
The dangers that sections of the CILIP membership ould be marginalised though an ainability to access
social networkingservices down to organisational poplicies and firewalls, which Carl referred to, was
discussed at the meeting. In my talk I suggested that CILIP should have a role to play in gaining a better
understanding of such barriers and to explore ways in which organisational concerns, across the various
sectors represented within CILIP, can be addressed. I also pointed out the dangers that CILIP members
might feel pressured into using social networking tools in areas which are not appropiate and which do not
reflect individual styles of working.
CILIP and Twitter
But what of the question which led to the CILIP2 meeting – should CILIP make use of Twitter? In all of the wider
discussions about the role of CILIP we lost sight of that question during the meeting itself. However in the pub
afterwards myself, Phil Bradley, Caroline Moss-Gibbon (leader of the CILIP Council) and a few others revisited
that question. In my talk I described the risks and opportunities framework which I presented at the recent
Museums and the Web 2009 conference. The framework described the need to clarify the purpose of a tool rather
than developingpolicies for the tool itself. I illustrated this point by speculating on whether professional
organisations in times gone by debated whether they should use new technologies such as the telephone, with the
early adopters pointing out the benefits to the organisations whilst others pointed out the dangers that the
technology could be used for social purposes and that employees may use the technology to bring the organisation
into disrepute in ways that wouldn’t be possible when the established forms of communications (business letters)
has editorial and work flow processes in place to minise such risks.
My suggestion? CILIP Council should welcome initiatives from CILIP, CILIP branches and CILIP
workinggroups in making use of social networking services such as Twitter in ways in which support their
business aims. And rather than developing a policy (it’s too soon, for that, I feel) they should observe patterns of
usage which work and share emerging best practices – but also monitor usage patterns which aren’t feel to be
working and learn from such experiences.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged cilip2 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (12)
What Can Web-Based Presentation Tools Offer?
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
Back at IWMW 2007 Helen Sargan ran a workshop session entitled “Just say No to Powerpoint: Web Alternatives
for Slides and Presentations“. As someone who has used PowerPoint extensively since I’ve been at UKOLN and
also have an interest in what Web-based alternative can provide I thought I would explore such alternatives.
And as I recently suggested an approach in which “Critical Friends, Friendly Critics and Hostile Opponents”
could either help or hinder a development or evaluation process I’d like to start off by describing the policies,
environment, sensitivities and resources issues which I would regard as out-of-scope for such an evaluation, as the
main area of interest are the specific issues related to the various Web-based presentations tool. A secondary
agenda is to explore the limits of the model I described in my previous post.
But what of the policy issues which scope this evaluation work? I regard this exercise as looking at possible
alternatives to PowerPoint as a desktop presentation tools to support mainstream teaching, learning and research
activities. In my case this is for exploring ways in which over 10 year’s of PowerPointing can be made more
interesting whereas from an institutional perspective this might be to explore possible savings which could be
made by replacing PowerPoint. And as my area of interest lies primarily in Web-based services I won’t be
looking at desktop alternatives to MS PowerPoint, such as Open Office.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 97 of 616
What are the environmental, sensitivities and resourcing issues which I have suggest could be disclosed in order
to provide a context in which discussion and debate can be fruitful? Well, this work will be neutral about issues
such as open source versus proprietary solutions. It will also be neutral about the technologies used to provide
access to Web-based solutions – so Flash-based solutions can be considered. And the discussions will be framed
around a bottom-up approach for solutions which might be considered by the individual or small group or used
within the context of an event which invites diversity in how speakers give their presentations. Similarly the issue
of whether a presentational tool is an effective way of communicating ideas is out-of-scope.
But what type of tools should I be looking at? I think this should include office-based solutions available in the
cloud and Web-based repositories of presentations, such as Slideshare and Slideboom.
Is this a useful approach? And any thoughts on what might be missing?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
Critical Friends, Friendly Critics and Hostile Opponents
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
I recently wrote a blog post on We Need More Critical Friends! and have made this point in several of my recent
talks on A Risks and Opportunities Framework For Archives 2.0 and Time To Stop Doing and Start Thinking: A
Framework For Exploiting Web 2.0 Services and in a workshop I facilitated at the Museums and the Web 2009
conference on Openness in the Cloud.
In recently discussions with my colleague Paul Walk Paul has suggested that there is a need to differentiate
between Critical Friends and Friendly Critics and I think this is a useful distinction. In the real world the critical
friend is the person who would be honest about a response to a question such as “Does my bum look big in this?“
But the friendship would mean that this response would be given in private and not in a public space. The friendly
critic, in contrast, might be someone who is willing to be critical in public, but would not do so in a way which is
rude or undermines confidence.
Comments in response to my blog post by Pete Johnston and Mia Ridge made similar points arguing that “our
choice of style and language matters – a lot” and “communication has to be both appropriately private and
timely“.
But Mia goes on to conclude “That said, I’m not sure what happens when you raise concerns privately and don’t
get an acknowledgement or other response“. And this is a legitimate concern to raise. What happens in one’s
concerns are ignored? And in the context of services provided bu public sector funding don’t we all, as citizens,
tax-payers and, possibly users, have responsibilities to raise concerns which we have. After all, aren’t we correct
in raising objections to a wide range of mistakes which the Government has made? Weren’t we right in our
objections to the Iraq war, despite being told that the Government had evidence of ownership of weapons of mass
destruction and the ability to launch an attack within 45 minutes?
Of course there are huge differences between declaring wars and engaging in IT development work! But if we are
in favour of openness and transparency in our development work this tension between open and closed criticisms
is something which needs to be addressed.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 98 of 616
In discussions I had at the Museums and the Web 2009 conference there was an
understanding of the need for projects to welcome feedback, especially in the current environment we find
ourselves in in which there is an increasing diversity of approaches to developments. But there is also a need for
critics to appreciate the complexities of a specific development environment, aspects of which will not always be
appreciated by the remote observer.
Based on the discussions I had will various people at the conference and my suggestion in the final session at the
MW2009 that “We need more formal approaches for structuring feedback to the diversity of approaches to
development work which can help to de-personalise criticisms” I have produced a diagram which is embedded in
this post which provides an initial attempt at providing a structure approach for gaining feedback.
The diagram acknowledges that there will be areas (such as policies, the local environment, sensitivities and
levels of resources) within which a development project will have to work. Concerns about such issues are likely
to be out-of-scope for Critical Friends. This should help to scope the areas in which input, comments and
concerns can be raised and which should be able to be acted upon. The development project will need to provide
an infrastructure for engaging with a Critical Friends community. We are finding in some areas of the JISC
development sector that a Critical Friends approach is becoming a formal part of a bidding process. However it is
likely that in many any cases it may not be possible to adopt such a formal approach. Perhaps then it is the
responsibility of the the project team to open up their development processes, perhaps by making use of a blog for
use by the developers to describe their development plans and decisions and any complications which may not be
apparent to others, ideally at an early stage in the development process. This, I think, reflects the approaches take
by the COPAC development team in their COPAC development blog which, for example, described back in
August 2008, the reasons why they removed and then reinstated links to Google Book following feedback from
“a vociferous few who questioned why Copac would give Google ‘personal data’ about them as users“. As I
wrote back in November 2008 “raising these issues in an open fashion is to be applauded“.
Our IT development work does need to have a reviewing process and I feel that we should be pro-active in
seeking ways of opening up such processes. Let’s be aware of sensitivities, but let’s not use that as an excuse for
being closed. And if there is a failure to open up feedback to development ideas remember that this may leave the
concerned tax-payer to act not as a friendly critic but as an unfriendly, and perhaps even hostile, opponent.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
Sharing the Rehearsal of my Talk at the CILIP 2 Council Meeting
Friday, April 24th, 2009
As I described a couple of day’s ago in a blog post on CILIP2.0 – Open Session on CILIP’s use of Web 2.0
myself and Phil Bradley will be giving brief talks about how we feel CILIP should respond to the opportunities
and challenges of Web 2.0 at a CILIP Council meeting next Wednesday (29th April 2009).
I have produced the first draft of my slides and I’ll be chatting to Phil how this may fit in with the approach he
will be taking. I have also created a ’slidecast’ of the talk, by recording a rehearsal of the talk and synching the
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 99 of 616
audio with a copy of the slide on Slideshare. This will help Phil to gain a better understanding of what I’ll be
saying. But I also feel that their can be benefits to be gained by sharing this pre-release verion with a wider
audience. In suitably-configured browsers the slidecast will be embedded below:
[slideshare id=1336675&doc=web-2-0-risks-framework-rehearsal-090424061228-phpapp02]
I’m well of of some risks in doing this: I feel slightly self-conscious about listening to the sound of my own voice
and towards the end of the talk I found myself forgetting what I was intending to say and start stuttering and
repeating myself. If I felt that as a professional all of my outputs mist be of high quality although I might write a
script I would leave the reading of it to a trained actor. But this would undermine the key point in my presentation
that information professionals (in particular) should be willing to make use of innovative approaches to one’s
work, be prepared to make mistakes and learn from them and be prepared to be open with one’s user community
in the early stages of development and not just when a service has been finalised.
Making this particular slidecast available can also provide some specific benefits:
• Users can comment on my talk.
• Users can suggest other relevant resources, either by commenting on this blog post on or Slideshare page or
by bookmarking resources on del.icio.us using the same tag.
• Anyone who would like to attend the meeting but can’t make it will get a feel for my contribution.
• If I fail to attend the meeting (I’m ill or First Great Western fails to get my to London on time, for example)
my slidecast can be used as a replacement.
But before you start listening to the slidecast (which lasts for about 20 minutes) I should say that the talk contains
nothing that I haven’t written about in my blog previously. Indeed the talk is very similar to a talks on Time To
Stop Doing and Start Thinking: A Framework For Exploiting Web 2.0 Services and A Risks and
Opportunities Framework For Library 2.0 which I gave in the Indianapolis last week.
To summarise the key points.
The talk begins by reviewing examples of Library 2.0 approaches, add the University of Wolverhampton and the
National Library of Wales. A description of various barriers which have been identified at various UKOLN
workshop for the cultural heritage sector is given. It is acknowledged that there are legitimate concerns which
need to be addressed such as sustainability, interoperability, staff development, cultural barriers, etc. The talk
describes a variety of deployment strategies and outlines a risks and opportunities framework for the deployment
of Library 2.0 services. The talk suggests how a ‘Critical Friends’ approach (which I will expand on next week)
can be used in conjunction with this framework and help to identify possible problem areas. The need to balances
such risks with the possible benefits to be gained and the risks of doing nothing – as well as the risks of doing
something similar in-house which fails to meet user’s expectations.
The talk concludes by looking at what a professional organisation such as CILIP should be doing for a young
librarian (using Jo Alcock as an example) and suggests that thinking about what might be provided in a ‘CILIP
2.0 Manifesto’ could be helpful in furthering the debate.
Your comments are welcomed!
Filed in Events, Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(6)
CILIP2.0 – Open Session on CILIP's use of Web 2.0
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
Phil Bradley and myself have been invited to take part in an open session on CILIP’s use of Web 2.0 (CILIP, the
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals is “the leading professional body for librarians,
information specialists and knowledge managers“). This event, which is being referred to as CILIP2.0, will take
place at CILIP offices, Ridgmount Street, London from 14.30-16.30 on 29th April 2009.
The information about the event describes how Phil and myself (well-known ‘gurus’) will be “kicking off the
Open Session with presentations about what has worked elsewhere, and the types of things CILIP could try out“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 100 of 616
The aim of the session is to generate ideas about how the CILIP Council could be using Web 2.0 to engage better
with the library and information community. These ideas will be fed into CILIP’s Communications Framework
which is due to be published in the summer.
The Open Forum was set up following a blog post entitled CILIP – Epic FAIL made by Phil Bradley in response
to a post entitled All of a Twitter by Bob McKee, CILIP CEO. I’ll not revisit the different visions of the role of a
professional organisation such as CILIP in today’s Web 2.0 environment, but will simply say how pleased I am
that CILIP have invited Phil and myself to facilitate a discussion for an audience who will be physically present
on the day and a remote audience who may follow the tweets and live blog.
Phil Bradley will probably provide his vision in which information professionals are comfortable in making use of
a variety of networked tools and services which are available ‘out there’, and don’t restrict themselves to
applications which may be managed in-house. And I intend to explore the risks of this way of working and
suggest that, rather than seeking to develop a safe, risk-free environment, information professionals do need to
engage with the networked environment that exists today and need to recognise that a failure to take risks can
result in a failure to innovate.
I’d be interested in the views of reaers of this blog. What are your views on how information professionals should
engage with a Web 2.0 world and how CILIP should respond?
Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Tagged CILIP2.0 | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (6)
(TwitterFall) You're My Wonder Wall
Monday, April 20th, 2009
This year’s Museums and the Web conference (MW2009) marked the first occasion I have attended an event
during which the Twitter back channel has been embraced by the conference organisers and by many conference
participants and not just the usual early adopters.
At last year’s event (MW2008) we saw many developers making use of Twitter, with a display of the tweets
about the conference (i.e. tagged with #mw2008) being shown near the registration area. And as a demonstration
of the willingness of the conference organisers (David Bearman and Jennifer Trant) to embrace innovation at the
conference a live display of the tweets, which were being aggregated by Mike Ellis’s Onetag software, were
shown during Clifford Lynch’s closing talk at the conference. I have to admit, though, that there were concerns
about this live, unmoderated display of Twitter posts during a talk: what if personal banter were displayed
(”anyone fancy going for a drink later?”); critical comments about the speakers (”this is a boring talk”) or bad
language or even spam from people who weren’t at the conference.
But whilst such concerns may be legitimate, David and Jennifer
showed that they were willing to tak and risk and “just do it”. So when the conference delegates arrived at the
auditorium for the conference welcome and opening talk we found two computer displays: one of the speaker’s
slides and the other a display of Twitter posts tagged with the #mw2009 tag, using the Twitterfall software,
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 101 of 616
And judging by comments made on the conference blog, many people found that this live display of tweets in the
opening session provided a valuable way of developing a shared sense of community and active participation
which continued throughout the conference, with many newcomers subscribing to Twitter, following the more
well-established Twitter users and engaging with the discussions themselves. In fact use of Twitter at the
conference was so popular that, during the opening talk, there was a message displayed showing the the #mw2009
tag was ‘trending’ – and was one of the top ten tags used during the day.
Which is not to say that everyone found the Twitterfall display useful: some participants, for
example, did find the display distracting. And once the tag was included in the top tags of the day it, perhaps
inevitably, attracted the attention of Twitter spammers, with a tweet from ‘PantyGirl’ - and an associated image
being included in the live Twitterfall display.
But despite such concerns, others identified some perhaps unexpected benefits of such displays of live tweets.
After I published a tweet one person in the audience, with whom I had worked with a few years ago but hadn’t
spoke to since, spotted my image in the display and sent me a direct message suggesting that we should meet up.
The ability for participants at a large conference to make their prescence known in this way is a benefit which I
hadn’t prevviously considered.
Someone else, who hadn’t used Twitter prior to the conference, reflected that in plenary talks people often lose
concentration, even if the talks are interesteding (as the opening plenary talk at MW 2009 was). Having additional
channels, in which other participants can share their thoughts and provide perhaps different views can help to
provide richer insights into the talks.
But what of the dangers that people might make inappropriate comments. Well at MW2009, apart from the
PantyGirl spam (which I suspect most people found inoffensive) I feel that the Twittering participants were aware
of the issues and avoided tweets which others might have felt inoffensive or inappropriate.
The benefits of the conference Twitter back channel were also officially recognised in the firanl session at the
conference when Jon Pratty provided prizes for the MW2009 Backchannel Stars for Saturday. And I was pleased
to be the first in the list of prize-winners for my two tweets:
briankelly Due to lack of unions in museums sector @jtrant& David Bearman have got us working at
#mw2009 on a Saturday. Capitalist oppressors.
briankelly: @bsletten is right – photo at http://tinyurl.com/3aessg (expand) could be me. Waiting for groupies
to arrive at #mw2009
But what of next year? Clearly many particioants found the Twitter wall display useful, with one participant
commenting that ”based on how well tweets were working @ mw2009 I set up a twitter account for our staff
intranet. Public site next? #mw2009“. But this wasn’t true for everyone. Should this be managed by better use of
the physical space, I wonder – perhaps suggesting that those who don’t wish to be distributed by the visual
intrusion should sit on one side of the lecture theatre? Or perhaps, with the growing popularity of iPhones and
iPod Touches participants should simply view the communal wall on their own mobile device?
Filed in Events, Twitter | Tagged MW2009 | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (15)
The European Council Plans an Accessible Information Society
Friday, April 17th, 2009
The European Council has recently announced a set of conclusions on how to deliver an accessible information
society. In the announcement the Council welcomes the European Commission’s communication on “Towards an
accessible information Society” and acknowledges that ICT is “crucial in today’s society and economy and they
can greatly improve personal autonomy and quality of life, particularly for people with disabilities or elderly” .
I too welcome such principles. However the document goes on to underline that “The adoption of the second
version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
provides the necessary technical specifications“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 102 of 616
Hmm. So the answer to the delivery of an accessible information society is to be found in the WCAG 2.0
guidelines, is it? Well not according to Wendy Chisholm who, in a talk on “Interdependent Components of Web
Accessibility” at the W4A 2005 conference described “how Web accessibility depends on several components of
Web development and interaction working together” (namely ATAG and UAAG as well as WCAG). So even
people who have worked on the development of WAI guidelines wouldn’t, I suspect, agree that WCAG
“provides the necessary technical specifications“.
And what evidence do we have that WCAG 2.0 by itself will “greatly improve personal autonomy and quality of
life, particularly for people with disabilities or elderly” . What about accessibility issues which aren’t addressed
in WCAG? What about the different definitions of accessibility (on 1st January 2009, for example, the definition
of ‘disability’ was changed drastically in the Americans with Disabilities Act)? What about accessibility solutions
which can be provided in ways not covered by WCAG guidelines? What about blended solutions to Web
accessibility? What about the danger that the communication only covers access to Web resources and not other
uses of IT by people with disabilities? What about the lack of evidence to support the positioning of WCAG
guidelines as the only solution mentioned in the document?
The document could have focussed on a different part of the WAI model – it could have supported a requirement
that member countries enact legislation that organisations must provide UAAG-conforming Web browsers, for
example. This would be a more achievable goal, focusing on the small number of browser vendors rather than the
much larger number of Web authors and Web publishing tools and work-flow systems.
Although I suspect many accessibility evangelists will welcome the publication of this document I fear that it is
based on flawed underlying assumptions and will be ultimately counter-productive. We need more open
discussions about the limitations of the WAI’s approaches to Web accessibility and of ways of enhancing
accessibility for people with disabilities in the complex environment in which we live. Where are the Critical
Friends, I wonder?
Filed in Accessibility | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Further Developments of a Risks and Opportunities Framework
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
I have previously described a risks and opportunities framework which I will be presenting shortly at the
Museums and the Web 2009 conference.
At the Archives 2.0: Shifting Dialogues between
Users and Archivists conference I described a slightly updated version of the framework, which includes ‘Critical
Friends‘ as a means of ensuring that a degree of scepticism is applied to planned innovative services.
The framework is based on the notion that the risks and benefits of innovation cannot be considered without
considering its intended purpose.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 103 of 616
In order to ensure that the framework does not result in inertia and an avoidance of new developments it is
envisaged that the approach will also be applied to existing services, in-house development, etc.
During my talk on “A Risks and Opportunities Framework For Archives 2.0” at the Archives 2.0: Shifting
Dialogues between Users and Archivists conference I gave an illustration of how this framework might be applied
in two contexts related to use of Web 2.0 services: use of (a) Twitter by individuals in an organisation and (b)
organisational use of Facebook.
The intended use of Twitter by individuals described at the Archives .2.0 conference was to provide support for a
community of practice. The individual should benefit from working in a community and such benefits would
should also help the institution. The risks might include the time required to use Twitter and to become part of a
community and the dangers that Twitter is used inappropriately or excessively. It should also be noted that
inappropriate use of Twitter could include requiring members of staff to use Twitter against their will or
inclination. There might also be risks that to the organisation in terms of its brand (”I hate working here“). Failing
to allow staff who so desire to make used of Twitter (by firewalls, policies or more subtle pressures) could result
in a failure to make use of the benefits provided by being part of a (virtual) community and a failure to understand
the potential of Twitter for organisational use. It should also be noted that the costs of using Twitter can be small,
as Twitter tools are available for free, no editorial mechanisms need to be deployed and no archiving of Twitter
posts need to be kept.
The intended use of Facebook by organisation described at the conference was as a marketing tool for the archive
or museum. This would have the advantages to the organisation of being able to market to the large numbers of
Facebook users and to exploit the various functions provided by Facebook without needing any in-house
development work. However there may be risks related to data lock-in, giving permissions to Facebook to
commercially exploit content which is up-loaded and disenfranchising users who chose not to sign up to
Facebook or users whose assistive technologies may not work with Facebook. Failing to use Facebook could,
however, result it missed opportunities for marketing to large numbers of users and a failure to allow users to
engage with the service. The costs of setting up an organisational presence in Facebook should be low, but
consideration does have to be given to ongoing maintenance (e.g. responding to wall posts).
Critical friends, such as my colleague Paul Walk’s various posts on possible risks associated with use of
Facebook and Twitter, can help to inform organisational decision-making processes, as can discussions on
mailing lists, sharing experiences at conferences and blog posts (such as recent guest blogs post on use of social
networking tools at the National Library of Wales, Wolverhampton University Library and Brighton Museum
and Art Gallery).
Finally I should add that there will be subjectivities and personal biases in how I’ve described use of this
framework. But let’s acknowledge that such biases and personal prejudices will always exist.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 104 of 616
Filed in Facebook, Social Networking, Twitter | |
Permalink | Edit | Comments (4)
I Won't Be Censored!
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
Stephen Downes recently published a blog post entitled “Lessons From Slidesharegate” which began “Brian Kelly
wrote, in a post he later deleted“. In his blog post Stephen described some of his concerns regarding Slideshare
and concluded by “wondering why Kelly deleted his Slideboom post“.
The answer to that is simple – I’d accidentally published the post prematurely, as I wanted to see if Slideshare
published their comments on “Slidesharegate” before describing how I was evaluating alternatives to Slideshare.
No big deal – but I did wonder whether Stephen (or readers of his blog) had thought that I had deleted the blog
post, perhaps having been ‘got at’ by Slideshare. The answer is no, there is no conspiracy. But could this happen?
Well as we have seen, once a blog post is published it is “out there” – and even if I delete the original there will
be copies in people’s RSS readers and blog aggregators. And attempting to delete a blog post may well result in
drawing people’s attention to it with people wondering, perhaps, if the post has been censored,
So I know that deleting a post once it has been published can be fraught with possible dangers. So if I publish a
post and am subsequently asked to delete it, I can point to this post. Of course this also means that if I’m
embarrassed about something I’ve written it will be difficult for me to erase it from public view. But that’s
something I’m prepared to accept.
And I can’t help but think that the former Downing Street adviser Damian McBride should have been aware of
the difficulties of deleting copies of digital resources once they have been published.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Slideshare? I'm Now Flirting With Slideboom!
Monday, April 13th, 2009
You know what it’s like. You’ve been together for some time. And you get on well together. And then something
goes wrong. So you start looking for something new. And you start to get excited about the new things on offer.
And perhaps you then decide it’s time to move on. Well this is happening to me at the moment, after Slideshare’s
April Fool gag caused me to explore alternatives to their service.
I signed up to Slideboom and uploaded my most recent presentation
on “A Risks and Opportunities Framework For Archives 2.0“. I have embedded this in my Web page. And I have
to say I’m impressed with the features it provides. However rather than describe these features (which are
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 105 of 616
described on the Slideboom Web site) I thought it would be more effective to capture the screen display of my use
of the service which is available on YouTube and embedded below:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O_67PWfyQI]
Now although I like the functionality provided by Slideboom it is even more important than it used to be to
consider the sustainability of remote services. And this is where Slideboom’s track record and financial stability is
unknown to me.
But such considerations are also true of Slideshare. So I intend to continue to keep a master copy of my
PowerPoint slides on the UKOLN file store, whilst using the richly functional and embeddable third party
services to act as access points. And it will be useful to gain experiences of a competitor to the market leader in
Web 2.0 slide repository services. After all, what would happen if Slideshare’s market lead went to their head and
they started to treat their customers in a similar fashion to Microsoft?
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Slideboom, Slideshare |
Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
How Many Publishers Does It Take To Change a Light Bulb?
Friday, April 10th, 2009
“Submit Comments By Easter Monday”
I’m feeling a bit grumpy. On Wednesday night while listening to some excellent live music at The Bell, Bath I
checked my email in the interval. There was an email from a publisher with the final corrections for an
accessibility paper which had been accepted for publication. The email message give the blunt instructions:
“Please approve these proofs, or return any corrections by 13 Apr 2009. Failure to do so may result in delay
of your publication, reallocation to a later issue, or review and approval of your article by the journal’s Editor
-in-Chief.”
That’s right on Wednesday 8 April at 21:50 I received an email telling me my updates had to be submitted by
Monday – that’s Easter Monday. And today (Good Friday) I’m in a cyber cafe in London sorting out the
corrections before heading off the the Museums and the Web 2009 conference.
The email message (which was sent from India) also contained the stark warning:
PLEASE NOTE: The CATS system only supports Internet Explorer versions 5.5 and up, or Firefox 1.0
browser software. Popup blockers should be disabled. If you have any difficulty using CATS, please contact
me.
And there’s me using FireFox 3.0 (not supported, it would seem).
As for the comments themselves, they were fine, asking us to supply, for example, years of publication which we
had omitted for a couple of the references. But for one reference the Production Editor had requested the page
numbers of one of my previous papers, and the URL of the online version of the paper had been removed. It
would appear that the publishers are trying to help the reader of the printed journal by providing the page number,
but hindering users who wish to access the paper online. Good business for the publishers who might expect to
receive additional income for requests for the journal or paper but bad news for other researchers who might wish
to access such papers which are freely avaailble online.
Why Do I Bother?
Why do I bother writing peer-reviewed papers, I sometimes ask myself. In this particular case myself and David
Sloan were invited to submit a paper based on an update to a paper published at the W4A 2008 conference. As I
received this request when I was preparing an invited keynote presentation at the OzeWAI 2009 conference I felt
this would provide an ideal opportunity to publish my updated views on Web accessibility, which I described to a
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 106 of 616
small but supportive audience at the OzeWAI conference. And after I gave my talk I discussed my ideas further
with two delegates who, I discovered, had similar interests regarding the complexities of Web accessibility in the
context of accessibility for the Deaf and implementing best practices for Web accessibility when challenged with
limited budgets and short deadlines in a Government context. As I was in the process of finalising the paper, the
meeting with Lisa Herrod and Ruth Ellison provided an opportunity for me to strengthen the paper with these two
case studies.
I should also add that the (anonymous) reviewer’s comments we received were invaluable, pointing out flaws in
our arguments, ways in which are ideas might be misinterpretted and suggestions for how the paper could be
improved. The updated version of the paper was improved greatly following these comments, so you could argue
that the publishers had a role to play in enhancing the quality. But why do I suspect that the reviewer was an
academic who was doing this work for free?
Look on the Bright Side
I have now submitted the corrections to the production editor and am feeling less grumpy (I started this post
yesterday evening). And to cheer myself up (and others who might have had similar problems with publishes,
here’s a joke:
Q. How many publishers does it take to change a lighbulb?
A. It’s a trick question – publishers are living in the drak ages and the light bulb hasn’t been invented yet.
Mind you, they’ll charge you for use of a candle if you want to read your manuscript.
Have a good Easter.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (6)
Contrasting Visions of the Library of the Future
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
My Views From 2001
I was invited to take part in a panel session at the Internet Librarian International (ILI) conference way back in
2001. Myself and my fellow panellists (Greg Notess and Mary Peterson) had encountered a number of bland
panel sessions at previous conferences in which panelists uttered trite sentiments which nobody could possibly
disagree with (yes, user testing is a good thing and so is accessibility and quality information). We decided to
avoid falling into this trap and I found myself in the position of having to respond to Greg and Mary’s views of
the key role the library sector had in supporting use of networked services and supporting users in a networked
environment. I suggested that librarians were just another group of users who had nothing special to add to the
development of innovative networked services and, indeed, could inhibit development by seeking to take
inappropriate methodologies to the Web environment. Now although these remarks were somewhat tongue-in-
cheek, it would be interesting to see how they may relate to today’s networked environment, 8 years later.
The Darien Manifesto
The authors of the Darien Manifesto (John Blyberg, Kathryn Greenhill and Cindi Trainor) have no doubts
regarding the importance of librarians, with a manifesto which begins by giving their view that “the purpose of
the Library is to preserve the integrity of civilization“. And this “purpose of the Library will never change“!
Whilst a number of people have expressed concern over this monolithic description of The Library, and pointed
out the unease we would feel if other bodies made similar statements (”The purpose of the government/the
police/the Freemasons is to preserve the integrity of civilization and this purpose will never change“) other
comments do appear to more accurately reflect the role of libraries (”provides the opportunity for personal
enlightenment“; “encourages the love of learning” and “empowers people to fulfill their civic duty“) and librarians
(”select, organize and facilitate creation of content” and “connect people with accurate information“), various
commentators, including the Annoyed Librarian, are questioning the manifesto.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 107 of 616
The Researcher’s Perspective
Here in the UK a debate is taken place on the Libraries of the Future which is being led by the JISC. At a recent
debate on Libraries of the Future Professor Peter Murray-Rust gave his thoughts on what he expects from an
academic library from a research/scientific perspective.
Peter’s views had been outlined in a series of blog posts prior to the debate (Peter was living his open vision and
encouraged those interested in helping to shape a vision to engage with the ideas he was developing in his blog).
As described by Professor Bruce Royan in a report on the event, Peter’s views challenged current orthodox
thinking regarding the libraries’ relevance in a networked world:
“The Librarians of the future will not emerge from the Libraries of today. The researchers of the future won’t
want journals, they’ll want little bits of lots of papers, and they won’t respect faculty or subject boundaries,
as their work will be interdisciplinary. If they need an information service, they’ll JUST DO IT for
themselves“
What Does The Future Hold?
The official blog for the debate provided a summary of Peter’s talk which began:
What is happening in the world is bypassing university libraries. I talk to colleagues and the feeling is that
libraries for STM (science, technical, medical) are not useful. That’s not my polemic view – that’s reporting
on having spoken to people.
Will librarians have a significant role to play in the academic library of the future (the future of public libraries,
whilst important, was not touched on in Peter’s presentation)? And is Peter’s assertion and question in a recent
blog post: “Wikipedia has won – how can we convince you?” further evidence that the librarians who warn their
users against such popular Web 2.0 services are becoming marginalised?
But maybe the Dryberg Darien manifesto does contain elements which reflect Peter’s views:
• Adopt technology that keeps data open and free, abandon technology that does not.
• Be willing and have the expertise to make frequent radical changes.
• Hire the best people and let them do their job; remove staff who cannot or will not.
• Trust each other and trust the users.
Perhaps Peter would endorse the third bullet point which calls for staff who aren’t prepared to adapt to a changing
environment to be sacked. And there was me thinking that the manifesto simply endorsed woolly liberal values!
Filed in Events, library2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(3)
Ask A Librarian? No Thanks, I'll Ask The World!
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
On the same day that I came across a thread on “Ask a Librarian” on the LIS-LINK JISCMail list, Chris Sexton,
Director of Corporate Information and Computing Services at the University of Sheffield, was sharing her 5
interesting things found on my Twitterfeed today… which included:
Ten years of The Guardian on-line plotted in expletives – very illuminating!
MPs expenses by geographical location- a good example of information from the Guardian’s databank, in a
mashup with map and postcode data.
How cats can give us tips to be good corporate strategists – if you’ve got cats, you’ll appreciate this.
How to turn your house lights off using Twitter – will appeal to the really geeky
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 108 of 616
Bakertweet – a way for bakers to tell the world that their bread has just come out of the oven
I had also come across the first two examples in my Twitter feed. What Twitter provides to Chris and myself, it
seems, is not only a mechanism for asking questions to my friends, colleagues and others who have chosen to
follow me, but also finding things out from them without needing to ask.
Do we, I wonder, need to develop Ask-A-Librarian type services any longer when services such as Twitter are
now available to everyone for free? And if the response is we need a trusted service, can’t we make use of the
existing infrastructure (which need not be Twitter, of course) and wrap a trust mechanism around it? And
although on the LIS-LINK list there was a view that “Since IM widgets rely on external systems which sometimes
crash, the reliability of any service based on them can be adversely affected” aren’t in-house systems also likely
to fail? And will an in-house system provide the potential for a 24×7 coverage?
Now I should add that my speculation on whether a micro-blogging tool such as Twitter could be used as an Ask-
A-Librarian type service is very much ‘thinking out loud’. But it does seem to me that with the large numbers of
Twitter applications which are now available it might be worth carrying out such speculative thinking.
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (9)
Must Institutional Repository and Open Science Software be Open
Source?
Monday, April 6th, 2009
“Institutional Repositories Should Be Built on Open Source Software” is one topic in “Institutional Repositories:
The Great Debate“ which is being held in the current issue (April/May 2009 -PDF format) of “The Bulletin of
the American Society for Information Science and Technology”.
Meanwhile over on Glyn Moody’s Open … blog an argument is being made that “Open Science Requires Open
Source“. Here we read that:
“The central argument is important: that you can’t do science with closed source software, because you can’t
examine its assumptions or logic (that “incomplete scientific record”). Open science demands open source.“
And who could possibly disagree?
Well I’d challenge such conclusions. I feel that we need to reflect on the over-hyping of open source software
over the past decade: we should now, if you believed the hype, all be using open source office software on our
desktop PCs, and those desktop machines would all be running Linux. But this doesn’t reflect the working
environment for most people, with open source email clients now seemingly in need of saving.
Despite its failure to live up to the expectations of the evangelists, we are now seeing more effective use of open
source software. But for me this is because open source software is now being evaluated on par with licenced
software, and not because open source software is felt to have any natural advantages. I would argue, in fact, that
uncritical acceptance of open source software in the past led to disillusioned end users and the ‘counter-culture’
approach adopted by some open source developers led to the software development which failed to have a
community to ensure that the software was sustainable in the long-term future.
Despite the frequently cited examples of Apache, email server software and the like, is there evidence that open
source software has a significant role to play beyond the server environment?
And in cases in which open source software is growing in use, such as Open Office on cheap Netbook computers
such as the Asus EEE PC, isn’t it the case that the advantages provided by such software are in avoiding licence
costs rather than in the other benefits which open source evangelists promote? Aren’t the benefits for most users
to be found inthe amntra that the software is “free as in beer” rather than “free as in speech”?
At the JISC OSS Watch’s inaugural conference Jeremy Wray, Business Development Executive for Public
Sector, IBM argued that it would be a mistake to compete in well-established markets such as office software,
citing IBM’s failures in competing with Microsoft. Perhaps open source software should be positioned in more
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 109 of 616
niche sectors such as institutional repositories and open science? And yet even here I have my doubts. If we are
passionate about open access to research publications and open access to scientific data, then shouldn’t we be
focussed on such issues and be neutral on the production mechanisms used to develop the associated software?
And the argument that you need open source software to examine the assumptions and logic is flawed – source
code can be made available for inspection without it being licensed under an OSI-conformant open source licence.
Yes, use open source institutional repository software and open source open science software. But do so because
the software satisfies its intended purpose and is better than proprietary alternatives and not just because it is open
source. And let’s not forget the associated risks of using open source solutions: many of the more widely used
open source applications are bankrolled by large IT companies which are suffering from the economic downturn.
And if widely used open source solutions start to suffer from a lack of ongoing inverstment, where will that leave
the more niche solutions?
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (4)
Lessons From 'Slidesharegate'
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
Blog posts from Phil Bradley and myself published at lunch time on 1 April 2009 where amongst the first to take
Slideshare to task for the April fool’s prank. Now although a number of people felt that people should have
expected such gags’s on April Fool’s Day, many others were very critical. And now Slideshare have admitted
they were wrong and have just published a blog post in which they ask their users to “accept our whole-hearted
apologies“.
I would agree Phil Bradley’s response to the blog post:
You’ve put this really nicely and thoughtfully. It’s going to be a harsh critic who’s still unhappy. As I said
elsewhere, it’s not making the mistake, it’s how you deal with, and recover from the mistake. This makes you
a bigger and better company. Thank you.
But what lessons can others learn from what by colleague Paul Walk has described as ‘Slidesharegate‘? I would
like to suggest three areas in which pranksters for next year’s April Fool should give some thought to:
Don’t tamper with data: Rashmi Sinha, SlideShare’s CEO has admitted that “Statistics are sacred. (don’t
mess with them, even in a prank!)”. Concerns were expressed by many Slideshare users over the way in
which their usage statistics had been artificially boosted. But as well as modifications to such data can upset
the owners of the data and other users, there are also dangers that data could be reused (by screen-scraping
software) and displayed in other environments. Let’s not foget that that software does not have a sense of
humour and won’t be aware of April Fool pranks.
Time zones: Of course software could know that it is before midday on 1st April. But in the global
environment of the Web, somewhere it will not be April Fool’s day. I have just come across the concept of
the ‘International day’, on the CSS Naked Day Web site: this event lasts for one international day, so that
“to ensure that everyone’s website will be publicly nude for the entire world to see at any given time during
April 9” the day when Web site owners are encouraged to remove CSS from there Web site will technically
speaking, will be correct somewhere in the world for 48 hours. But until a standards body agrees to
internationalise April Fool’s day there’s a need to remember that somewhere in the world it will not be April
Fool’s day (which isn’t to say that one shouldn’t carry out April Fools gags, however).
Unsolicited mail: The use of email to encourage users of a service to view an April Fool’s gag is probably a
mistake, since most users are likely to read such email when ‘April Fool is past and gone’ .
Rashmi Sinha has asked for comments on his blog post. I welcome his her apology and hope that my suggestions
can help the Slideshare team in deciding what to do next year. Will it be like last year’s “hoax announcement that
SlideShare would not allow bullets in presentations anymore” I wonder?
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (5)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 110 of 616
Have Slideshare Avoided Their Ratner Moment?
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
Background
Gerald Ratner was responsible for one of the most famous gaffes in corporate history when “he joked that one of
his firm’s products was “total crap”, and boasted that some of its ear rings were “cheaper than a prawn
sandwich“.
Did Slideshare come close to a Ratner moment with yesterday’s April Fool gag, I wonder? Yesterday I described
how Slideshare had sent out an email entitled “You’re a SlideShare RockStar” which contained spoof statistics on
the popularity of uploaded presentations.
The Reactions
Phil Bradley spotted the so-called joke and gave his reasons why he felt this was a “huge mistake” by Slideshare:
1. I don’t appreciate anyone manipulating data on my content. That Slideshare are so relaxed about this, and
feel they can do what they like is really sending entirely the wrong message about how they view users and
content.
2. Using an April Fool prank to generate comment and visits is dubious at best. If they’d not used the hashtag
suggestion I wouldn’t have worried about it, but it’s a deliberate attempt to get publicity.
3. This has lead to a huge spike in traffic to the site. This is the most annoying aspect because the whole
POINT of the site is to allow people to get access to slideshows directly from the site. It’s slowed down to a
point where it’s entirely unusable. I’m just grateful that I don’t have any need to use it professionally today.
4. There’s already a really big backlash against this prank on Twitter – people who are using the hashtag are
looking stupid, which is making them angry. Clicking on a link privately and realising you’ve been caught
is one thing – getting them to do it in public is another thing entirely.
Now rather than revisit yesterday’s discussion on Slideshare’s blog on whether the joke was funny or not I’d like
to explore the issue of reputation management. After all, those “po-faced and humourless” Slideshare users are at
liberty to migrate to other services such as Slideboom, Authorstream, Sliderocket or 280Slides. And if they feel
they have been made to look stupid they may respond in a similar fashion to custmomers who used to shop at
Ratner’s.
Reputation Monitoring and Management
In Ratner’s case his speech was picked up by the media, wiped an estimated £500m from the value of the
company. Could Slideshare, who Secured $3M for Embeddable Presentations in May 2008, suffer a similar
backlash?
In this case, however, I have to admire how quickly staff at Slideshare spotted that, in certain quarters, their joke
had misfired and their honesty in their apologies. Rashmi, Slideshare CEO & Cofounder, SlideShare, responded
to Phil Bradley’s blog post by saying “My sincere, personal apologies. Its just an April Fool’s prank. I
understand why you are upset, however, we did not mean to offend our users who we love. But I can see your
perspective“. This comment was repeated on my blog. In addition Jonathon Boutelle, Slideshare co-founder added
“Really sorry if we offended you. The prank was my idea, and I take full responsibility. There’s a lot of pressure
to get April fools day right (sounds bizarre but is true), and it looks like we got it way wrong.” with an additional
lengthy apology coming from Daniel in Slideshare’s marketing department.
In his blog post about this incident Phil Bradley commented that “I’m already seeing a lot of tweets from people
saying that they’re annoyed and unhappy” and went on to provide a link to a list of 25 alternatives to Slideshare.
Providing a well-read and well-respected blogger such as Phil with an opportunity to comment on rivals to
Slideshare shows how inappropriate April Fool gags can go wrong.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 111 of 616
Personally, though, I’m still a fan of Slideshare (although yesterday’s incident did cause me to sign up to
Slideboom – and I’m impressed with my initial experience). And I admire the way they have responded. I’d go
along with the comment from Steve Ellwood who said “kudos to the guys from slideshare for a clear explanation
and what appears to be a genuine apology“.
And to be honest, this probably wasn’t a Ratner moment. It was just a bit of April fool’s fun, which only sad
humourless people failed to get. Although, of course, Garland Ratner was also just having a bit of fun – although
for Gerald Ratner “It still hurts 16 years on“.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Slideshare | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
"You're a Slideshare Rockstar!" – Not!
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
The April 1 Joke
Yesterday (1 st April 2009) I received a couple of email messages from Slideshare which stated that some of the
slides which I have uploaded to the Slideshare repository have “been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours“.
Now back on 25th July 2008 I received an email informing me that a slideshow of mine on Web Preservation in a
Web 2.0 Environment had been included in the ‘Spotlight section’ on the SlideShare homepage. So I know that
Slideshare do have mechanisms for highlighting slideshows, which can help to maximise the impact of the slides
on behalf of the author. For me such exposure has resulted in a number of slides having up to about 10,000 views
(and one on Introduction To Facebook: Opportunities and Challenges For The Institution, which was a featured
Slidecast of the day shortly after Slideshare announced it slidecasting facility for synching audio with slides,
having over 9,000 views) . I’m pleased that Slideshare has allowed me to reach a much wider audience than
would have been possible when the slides were only available on the UKOLN Web site.
But on this occasion on checking the numbers
of visits I found that many of the slideshows were seemingly being viewed by 10,000, 20,000 and above
occasions.
As I was a bit suspicious of the statistics, I send a Twitter post warning others that these figures appeared
incorrect. I initially suspected that Slideshare had been the victim of a harvesting attack, as I suggested in my
tweet: “Slideshare have emailed me saying that http://bit.ly/rbKi is v. popular (200,398 views) I suspect a robot!
#bestofslideshare (not)“.
In response my Twitter followers suggested that this was “some kind of April Fool malarky” / “weird april fool
thing“. Someone else who appeared to have received a similar email message pointed out that it “looks like the
slides with 810 views are being displayed as 80010 view” – and this, I discovered, was also the case for me.
Is It Funny?
This seems to me some kind of April Fool joke, although not one that I find particularly funny – and although
some appeared to have accepted the email message at face value others appeared bemused or puzzled. Normally
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 112 of 616
there would be a subtle clue about the joke which would not be spotted on initial reading. So I revisited the email
which said:
Hi lisbk,
We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great
job … you must be doing something right.
Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.
Congratulations,
-SlideShare Team
Nothing obvious there, but there was an
embedded image in the email which is not displayed by default, as shown.
I right-clicked the image place-holder in order to download the image, but nothing was shown.
Viewing the source of the email I found the following image tag:
<img src=”http://marketer.slideshare.com/open.php?M=5662259&L=25&N=92&F=H”>
So rather than this being an innocent April Fool joke, it seems that I’m being stalked by Slideshare’s marketing
department. And they’ll also be able to relate my Slideshare ID to my Twitter ID if I use the “#bestofslideshare”
hashtag as they suggested in their email. At least they were honest when they said “so we can track the
conversation” – but I suspect most users won’t be aware of how intrusive such tracking would be.
Is this reaction over-the-top? Perhaps when Slideshare announce this joke they’ll also say that the extra
advertising revenue which the additional views generated will be donated to a worthy cause – which would make
me appear somewhat of a curmudgeon. And if I have got this wrong I’d be happy to apologise – after all I have in
the past admitted to being a fan of the Slideshare service.
But I still think we have to be very wary that April fool gags may be being exploited by marketing peope in ways
which would not be accepted during the rest of the year. What do you think? Phil Bradley, it seems, is in
agreement with me.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Slideshare | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (28)
Standards are for Catholics
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
Being brought up in an Irish Catholic environment in the 1960s meant that life was full of religious and moral
absolutes. If you were good you’d go to heaven (with some time in purgatory a likelihood) whereas protestants
would go to hell. Black babies, who never had the opportunity for redemption, would go to limbo (it was only in
2006 limbo that limbo was abolished). And I can recall the Irish missionary priests who came to school collecting
for the black babies – peer group pressure meant that the 12-sided 3d coin from your pocket money was the
expected contribution. (The local catholic junior school, incidentally, hadn’t been rebuilt after being bombed in
the war which meant we had the upstairs classroom in a protestant school – and we had staggered breaks so we
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 113 of 616
wouldn’t mix. Little did we realise in the annual ‘Wessie Road’ upper vs ‘Wessie Road’ lower grudge football
matches that the the over-the-top tackles were reflecting disagreements over the Virgin birth and Papal
infallibility).
Now although I have already confessed to losing my religion the Jesuits may well have been right in their views
on the power of indoctrination in early years. So although I no longer believe that I must not eat meat on Fridays,
I am aware of the meaning and power of the word must and can differentiate it from should.
Such an understanding is very relevant in the works of standards. If a programming language requires statements
to be terminated with a “;” then you must do so, otherwise your progam with fail (or, as is often said these days,
FAIL). It’s not a fuzzy choice – it works or it doesn’t. Period.
But it seems that the meaning of must is slowly being lost. This first struck me several years ago when UKOLN
was involved in the development of the standards and guidelines which support the national NOF-digitise
programme. We were told that the document should state that “All Web sites must be available 24×7″ (or words
to that effect). Our protestations were ignored – until projects reported that responses to the invitation to tender
were rather over budget (to put it mildly). We then described that 24*7 availability requires duplication of
servers, backup networking capacity, backup power supplies, etc. and was only likely to be required by
international organisations. It subsequently turn out that the requirement was that servers should not be turned off
at 5 pm on Friday evenings, as had been the case in some circumstances in the past. The document was updated
with the mandatory requirement being replaced by “Projects should seek to provide maximum availability of their
project Web site” – as there was a contractual requirement to implement all of the ‘musts’ in the document this
was needed in order to safe the entire NOF-digi budget being used to ensure 24×7 access for a single project!
Now I recently asked the question Is The UK Government Being Too Strict? as it similarly seemed to be requiring
a must in circumstances in which the evidence suggests that such strict conformance very seldom occurs.
Is this just me and my background, I wonder? When I see the word must in a standard, I think it really means
must – otherwise you’ll be dammed forever in a non-interoperable hell.
But maybe I should chill out a bit? Maybe when I read must I should think of the kind friendly maths teacher I
had at school who told me I should try harder, but he knew that it was sometime difficult, so he wasn’t too
concerned if I gort it wrong. After all, I’ll probably find it easier in the future.
So tell me, are there policy makers and authors of standards and specifications who really do feel that must means
must, whereas the developers interpret must as should? Is the problem that we have a non-interoperable mix of
religions involved?
Filed in standards | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
We Need More Critical Friends!
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
My First Encounter With The Term ‘Critical Friend’
I first came across the term ‘critical friend’ when it was used to describe my colleague Paul Walk when he was
interviewed at the JISC-funded Dev8D event. Shortly after the event I noticed the term being tweeted by a
number of participants at an e-learning event.
The Critical Friend Network
On further investigation I found the Critical Friends Network which quotes Professor John MacBeath, Professor
of Education Leadership, University of Cambridge:
“The Critical Friend is a powerful idea, perhaps because it contains an inherent tension. Friends bring a
high degree of unconditional positive regard. Critics are, at first sight at least, conditional, negative and
intolerant of failure.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 114 of 616
Perhaps the critical friend comes closest to what might be regarded as ‘true friendship’ – a successful
marrying of unconditional support and unconditional critique.“
The Critical Friend’s Network has been funded by the JISC Users and Innovation (U&I) Benefits Realisation
programme and aims to build a community of shared effective practice for current and future JISC Programme
Critical Friends. Membership of the CF Network is open to Critical Friends, JISC Programme Management and
project teams as well as the HE/FE sector as a whole.
Critical Friends I’ve Encountered
The term ‘critical friends’ would seem to be self-explanatory. And I find it a valuable concept to describe, for
example, the approaches myself, David Sloan and a number of other accessibility researchers and practitioners
have been taking over the past four years in our criticisms of the approaches taken by WAI in the developments of
guidelines to enhance the accessibility of Web resources.
Peter Murray-Rust is applying similar critical thinking in a series of blog posts on “Libraries of the Future” which
will inform his talk at the ‘Libraries of the Future’ debate to be held at the Bodleian Library on 2 April 2009.
We Need More Critical Friends!
I feel we need more critical friends, especially at a time in which organisations will find funding increasingly
difficult to obtain. We can see the need for such critical thinking by looking at recent history, such as the rise and
fall of the UK eUniversity, from the HEFCE Press Release published in 2002 described the appointment of the
senior management team for the “government-backed initiative to provide online delivery of UK higher education
courses to students worldwide and to give improved access to higher education for under-represented groups of
students in the UK” through to the The Real Story Behind the Failure of U.K. eUniversity (PDF) which described
how “The picture behind the public failure of the UKeU is more complex, interesting and salutary than many
reports would suggest“.
Frankie Roberto demonstrated how the role of a critical friend need not be resource intensive when he initiated a
discussion on the MCG (Museums Computer Group) JISCMail list with the one-word question “Why?” about the
launch of the Creative Spaces service by a group of museums. In the email messages about this newly launched
service, questions were raised as to whether the debate was really needed with the complexities of, for example,
copyright issues being suggested as a reason why discussions on an open mailing list where not helpful. Paul
Walk responded to this by saying:
So, this thread was started by Frankie Roberto asking the question, “Why?”. His approach, a simple one-
word question, was criticised – unfairly I think. Implicit in Frankie’s question is a challenge – it invites
someone to explain, very succinctly and convincingly what it is that that Creative Spaces (in its guise as a
user-facing application) is for. I think this challenge is well made, and deserves to be answered.
Well-said Paul. And if the general public can listen to, read about and , if they so desire, engage in discussions
about complex issues such as sub-prime markets and global warming professionals in the sector should also be
not allowed but encouraged to contribute to the discussions about the networked services we are seeking to
develop.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (11)
Pupils to Study Twitter and Blogs in Primary Shake-up
Friday, March 27th, 2009
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 115 of 616
It was announced in the lead article in yesterday’s Guardian
“Pupils to Study Twitter and Blogs in Primary Shake-up” (and note this was the main section of the paper, and not
the education supplement).
There have already been a number of blog posts about this headline, ranging from the sceptical (”It’s already bad
enough having students checking their mobile phones for text messages every five minutes. Soon they’ll all be
Twittering as well!“) to the neutral. But in my initial skim though the search results I couldn’t find any positive
responses. So I’ll position myself in this space.
John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers was quoted in the article saying “It [the report]
seems to jump on the latest trends such as Wikipedia and Twitter“. So once again, it would seem, defenders of the
status quo are dismissive of innovation as being merely trends (the term ‘fads’ is sometimes used in this context)
with the implication that is detracts from traditional areas of study.
My view is that there is a need to engage young people from a early age in understanding communications
technologies, especially those they are likely to be using before they become adults. And understanding how
micro-blogging tools such as Twitter and Yammer (and related technologies such as SMS messages) work, their
subtle differences and the ways in which they can be misused is a new media literacy skill which young people
need to develop.
Now Andy Powell pointed out that the “twitter terms of service prevent use by primary age children“. But for me
this is not a show-stopper: terms of conditions can change and the term “Twitter” may be being used to describes
a range of micro-blogging applications and not just the Twitter services itself.
I would expect many in the higher and further education sectors to particularly welcome this news, as ensuring
that student arriving at college or university will several years of experience of such technologies should help to
ensure that they can make use of such communications and collaborative tools more effectively when begin their
studies.
And I find this announcement particularly interesting coming as it does that day after Ewan McIntosh, in the
closing plenary talk at the recent JISC09 conference, praised the Twitterers in the audience who were engaging in
active learning and discussions during his talk, whilst others were being passive consumers – which is particularly
ironic as JISC and many learning developers are actively seeking ways in which innovation can enrich learning
experiences. Perhaps in a few year’s time those senior managers will be seeking help from their children – or
possibly grand-children – on how to make effective use of such micro-blogging services.
Filed in Blog, Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (6)
UKOLN and the FE Sector
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 116 of 616
A number of years ago, following the announcement that the LSC (Learning and Skills Council) was to be a co-
funder of JISC along with the various funding councils the various JISC-funded organisations set about extending
their remit to provide support for Further Education (FE) colleges. I was involved, for example, in running several
workshops which were organising in conjunction with JISC Regional Support Centres).
However following subsequent changes in funding it was suggested to us that we need not be pro-active in
engaging with the FE sector.
But recently we have been asked to provide evidence of ways in which we have engaged with the FE sector. Now
although some people are uncomfortable with the notion of metrics and impact measures, I am happy to go along
with this New Labour phenomenum, as am aware that the people requesting such information have no say over
the policy decisions. The question for me is how to gather such evidence, especially as we had felt that there was
no need to record such information.
At the recent JISC09 conference I was told that this blog is read by practitioners in the FE sector and it was
suggested that the blog may also be embedded in FE college Web sites – who may read the blog without being
aware of its provenance.
So if you are in the FE sector and are a regular reader of this blog , have attended any of our talks or workshops,
have made use of our QA Focus or Cultural Heritagebriefing documents or have benefitted from UKOLN’s work
in other ways (perhaps being influenced by our work in the area of Web accessibility, for example) then please let
me know, either by leaving a comment on this post or sending an email message to b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
Blessed Are The Software Developers
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
I have to admit that at one point I had somewhat of a downer on software developers. I felt that there was a
tendency for many in the development community to be driven by ideology rather than than supporting user-
needs. I encountered this amongst the Web community where there was a tendency to be dismissive of software
which wasn’t open source, even if it would provide benefits to the users. And similarly open source software was
often given an uncritical support, even if it was difficult for typical users to use.
In many respects things have progressed. Open source software is now being evaluated alongside proprietary
solutions and the failings of poor quality open source software will be acknowledged. And many developers will
themselves make use of proprietary software if it provides benefits over closed solutions – look at the popularity
of the iPhone, Skype, etc. for example.
I now feel that we should acknowledge the ways in which software developers are making today’s Web
environment, in particular, a much richer and easy-to-use environment. But there are still ideological positions
which are being held – in particular the view that light-weight development is to be preferred to ‘enterprise’
solutions and that tangible user benefits can be delivered quickly without the need for large-scale budgets.
The good news is that such views are being supported by the JISC in its Grant Funding Call 03/09: Rapid
Innovation Grants. Under this call funding is available for technical rapid innovation projects, lasting up to 6
months. Grants of £15,000 to £40,000 are available for individual projects. The call states, for example, that “Any
outputs (prototypes, services and/or code) should strive to maintain a lightweight architecture. Using, for
example, ReST, XML over HTTP, Cool URIs, JSON, etc, other machine interfaces such as SOAP will need to be
justified in terms of their ease in reuse“.
At a time of an economic recession I am pleased that the JISc is encouraged such initiatives. We still need to
recognise, however, that not everthing can be solved in this fashion – there will still be a need for heavy-weight
enterprise solutions in certain areas. But I do wonder whether those who many be critical of small levels of
funding for IT development work may be those who have vested interests in maintaining power bases and hoping
that large-scale investment in funding will tide them over until the econonmy recovers. But am I just being
paranoid about this?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (4)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 117 of 616
Metrics For Measuring The Impact Of Blogs
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
I have an interest in approaches to measuring the impact of Web 2.0 services such as blogs – and this is an area of
work which is being discussed with our funders, JISC and MLA.
The conventional approach when engaged in such activities could be to carry out a literature search (which of
course these days tends to mean Google, especially for Web-related areas of work).
Sometimes, however, rather than having to search for information, the information comes to you. What do I mean
by this? On this blog’s admin page I recently noticed a referrer link from a post on the Intelligent Measurement
blog which provided details of the Eleven Evaluation Blogs. This contained a link to a list of 11 blogs that focus
on evaluation published by the American Evaluation Association (which included the Intelligent Measurement
blog).
Incoming links are normally from pages which have a author-created reference to a post on the blog. However last
year WordPress announced a new feature on blogs hosted in WordPress.com which “show[s] posts related to
yours a little section at the end [of the post]“.
So resource discovery doesn’t have to mean going to a search engine – instead blog posts of interest to you can
arrive in your blog based on the title of and content of your blog posts. So if I write a blog post entitled “Metrics
For Measuring The Impact Of Blogs” I might discover incoming links for possibly related posts automatically
embedded at the bottom of this post.
It will be interesting to see how well this works. And will we be able to say that “blessed are the blog authors for
they shall find what they seek”?
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Attention – Services Unavailable!
Monday, March 16th, 2009
Background
Bath University Computing Services (BUCS) is planning engineering work from 4:30 pm on Friday 27 March
until 9:00 am on Monday 30th March 2009. This means that no UKOLN Web sites or services will be available
for that period. Further information is available on the BUCS Web site.
Dissemination
As a variety of UKOLN services will be unavailable over the period (which is the weekend after next) we will
need to ensure that our key stakeholders are informed (including our funders, JISC and MLA) and take steps to
ensure that we alert anyone who may be making use of such services over this period – and possibly afterwards, if
any unexpected problems are encountered.
Before alerting the key stakeholders we needed to identify affected services. As well as the obvious Web sites on
a .ukoln.ac.uk domain there are also the Web sites, such as Exploit Interactive (http://www.exploit-lib.org/) and
Cultivate Interactive (http://www.cultivate-int.org/) which, although they are hosted locally, do not have an
obvious dependency on UKOLN servers.
There was also a need to identify other network services besides Web sites. Being unable to send email messages
or receive incoming email may be obvious, but do we have any services which rely on automated processing of
emails (such as various Listserv mailing lists we host?) Similarly what about other networked services besides
Web and email – what about any LDAP services, streaming video services, Z39.50 services, etc. , etc.? And what
about the services outside of Bath which may make use of our services? Will they degrade gracefully if our
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 118 of 616
servers are unavailable over the weekend or mwill such services (which are not only external to us, but we may
not even know they exist) fail or timeout as they await a response from our servers?
Having (we hope!) identified the key services we need to disseminate the news of the unavailability of our
services and the possible implications for other service providers who have dependencies on our services and the
end user communities we need to make use of the various dissemination challenges in order to alert the various
affected communities.
Clearly email has an important role to play in communication with the key stakeholders. And we have provided
an alert on UKOLN’s news service, which is also available via RSS. These are the obvious dissemination
channels, but what else can we use?
In this blog post about the associated issues (which I’ll expand on in the following section) I’m also alerting
readers of this blog (who may also be users of UKOLN – and Bath – services) of the scheduled downtime. And I
will also use Twitter to send out an announcement about this post which will be followed by another tweet shortly
before the services are brought down.
I’ve also updated the RSS feed for the QA Focus Web site and will do something similar shortly for the Exploit
Interactive and Cultivate Interactive news feeds.
General Issues
For this scheduled downtime we have had time to discuss the implications and
make plans for informing our users. And we’ve had useful discussions with other affected parties in the
University, including the e-learning unit. But what about the wider issues such as whether a weekend of service
down-time should be regarded as acceptable, whether we should provide mechanisms for prov9ding backup
services which aren’t dependent on the local network or even looking to migrate our services to external
providers?
We, of course, aren’t alone in having to consider such issues. Last week there were a number of Twitter posts
about service problems with a number of MIMAS services including COPAC and the Archives Hub. And
although a MIMAS news item was published when the service was restored I felt that the various tweets which
were published when the services first became at risk demonstrated how Twitted can be useful in immediate
feedback and also a mechanism for feedback.
Back in January 2008 I wrote a post entitled When Web Sites Go Down which was concerned with the
announcement by the University of Southampton that its Web site was down for scheduled maintenance from 2-
4th January 2008. In light of the service unavailable of well-established services hosted by prestigious institutions
such as the universities of Bath, Manchester and Southampton it might be timely to ask ourselves whether
educational institutions need still to be involved in the hosting of widely used services? Wouldn’t it be better, we
may ask, to leave hosting to the global organisations such as Google and Yahoo? But if that’s your view, reflect
on a recent email sent out by Yahoo to users of the Yahoo Mail service:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 119 of 616
From: “Yahoo! Mail” <noreply@email.yahoo-inc.com>
Date: 10 March 2009 23:50:43 GMT
To: Subject: Scheduled Maintenance
We are undertaking some essential, but extensive, maintenance to improve Yahoo! Mail this weekend. The
maintenance is part of our ongoing efforts to give you the best Mail service we can.
Beginning the evening of Friday March 13th (PDT) you may experience problems accessing your Yahoo!
Mail account. If your account is affected, it should be available again by midday on Saturday March 14th
(PDT).
We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience.
Best regards,
The Yahoo! Mail team
I think we do need to keep asking such questions. But we also need to remember that the grass isn’t always
greener on the other side of the fence. And I hope the email send by Yahoo’s support team on the 10 March about
the downtime on 13-14 March wasn’t the only notification which Yahoo Mail users received!
But as well as asking ourselves the longer term question about how our services should be hosted, we still need to
address the issues of service downtime (whether scheduled or not) and how we alert our users and other service
providers who may be affected. Any thoughts?
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (7)
Guerilla Accessibility Researchers
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
The recent Dev8D Developer Happiness Days provided an environment for developers in the JISC development
community (and more widely) to engage in rapid software development. As the “Dev8D produces rapid results”
post described “Day three of Developer Happiness Days is only just beginning but two ideas have already been
made real by the keen coders here“.
As I attended only for parts of the first two days of the event I’ll not blog about the event – if you’d like to hear
more about what happened I suggest you look at some of the search results for the ‘dev8d’ tag. However the
enthusiasm I came across from developers who could see tangible outputs being produced over a period of a few
days (although the more significant outputs will probably have been finalised over the following week) I’ve
recently seen echoed in another context.
David Sloan, a researcher based at the University of Dundee (and co-author of several of our joint papers on Web
accessibility) recently announced, on Twitter, the launch of his blog. And in a post entitled “Sad Professors”
David described his frustration with “the slow process of peer reviewing” and went on to add that “If I find
accessing the research I need can be challenging what about the people who are making day to day decisions that
might affect the accessibility of the resources they produce, and who could benefit from the results of research?”
This is a heart-felt plea from someone who sees clearly the tangible benefits that his accessibility research can
have for people with disabilities.
Coincidentally a few days after reading David’s blog post in which he criticised slow peer-reviewing processes, I
received an email saying that a paper on “Accessibility 2.0: Next Steps For Web Accessibility” authored by
myself, David and several others had been published in the Journal of Access Services, Vol.6 Issues 1 & 2, 2009,
pp. 265-294. That was the good news – the bad news was that the deadline for submissions was 30 September
2007:-(
However rather than simply complaining about the seemingly glacial processes of engaging in publishing
research findings in peer-reviewed publications David has decided to engage in guerilla accessibility research.
This is “work typically done in a short period of time, to answer a very specific question, or target a very
particular group of web users and published online in a (usually) easy to find place, such as a blog“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 120 of 616
David goes on to add that:
As a bonus … research written for the web is generally easier to read than an academic paper, and easy to
extract the key points. It will be peer-reviewed, but after publication. If the work is good, people talk about it;
if it’s of poor quality, reaction in the blogosphere will be swift. And more and more often, the results of this
work are referenced in academic literature, yet I’ll bet is of more direct impact to the people it aims to
inform – web designers and developers, assistive technologists, policy makers and anyone else who needs
accessibility information quickly.
In David’s first post on his blog he admitted: “I succumbed! After resisting a blog for years, joining Twitter made
me realise that I do actually have things to say on a fairly regular basis, things that other people just might be
interested in reading” He went on to confess that “Yep, I work in a university, where there is a culture of
publishing information at conferences and peer-reviewed journal papers – not always the easiest (or quickest)
way to share information. This means we sometimes neglect more direct (and to be honest, probably more
effective) routes – such as blogs like this“.
Perhaps we could say, to paraphrase a recent post, that in the research community “slowly, one by one, the lights
are switching on“. David’s “The 58 Sound” blog should be a must read for anyone with interests in Web
accessibility and usability.
Filed in Accessibility, Blog | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (0)
From 'Archivus Coelacanth' to 'Archivus Sapiens'
Monday, March 9th, 2009
I’m pleased to report that a proposal for a talk on “A Risks and Opportunities Framework For Archives 2.0” has
been accepted for the “Archives 2.0: Shifting Dialogues between Users and Archivists” conference which will be
held in Manchester on 19-20th March 2009.
The risks of Web 2.0 are often mentioned but those who use this as an argument for refusing to engage may miss
out on the risks of doing nothing and the missed opportunities.
It struck me recently that Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhikers Guide series, provided a wonderful historical
perspective on the need to take risks in order to evolve. In the first series “The Book” described “an utterly
insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still
think digital watches are a pretty neat idea“.
The book then went on to add: “Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in
coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no
one should ever have left the oceans.”
In homage to Douglas Adams I’d therefore like to describe the evolutionary history of the Archives
profession. Feel free to adapt this to other scenarios – I’ve sure we are all familiar with theAcademus Coelancanth
and the Librarian Coelancanth (and if I’ve confused Latin and Greek terms I’d welcome more approariate
suggestions).
Archivus Coelancanth is rarely spotted in the wild these days, still
to be found but can still be spotted in the depths of the archives. This is the species which failed to evolve with the
changing environment. As documented in Wikipedia “the coelacanth is almost worthless” although it is worthy
of interest to those who have an interest in evolutionary dead ends.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 121 of 616
In contrast to Archivus Coelancanth the Archivist Raptor has failed
to survive.
This species was terrifying when it ruled, rapidly destroying many of its competitors. However the destruction of
the local IT Servitus proved to be its own undoing and the species is now in grave danger of becoming extinct
following an inability to respond to the rapidly changing (economic) climate.
Archivus Sapiens (the wise archivist) is not as intimidating as its predecessor. However it has the agility and
mental capacity to respond quickly to the changing environment. A distinctive feature of the Archivus Sapiens is
the ‘elbow patches’ on its outer garments which have no practical important but, like the appendix in the related
Homo Sapiens is a relic of a previous environment.
Which species, I wonder, is to be found in your archive?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
The Long Tail of the Topless Swedish Model
Friday, March 6th, 2009
What is the usage profile like for a typical blog post on this blog? I
suspect the statistics for the post on “Are You Able?” is fairly typical (although, as I confessed recently I did pimp
up this post on Twitter.
What we can see is the post was viewed by most users on the day it was published, with a steady drop after that,
although there was a slight increase in the numbers of viewers on the Monday after the weekend. It was also
pleasing to note that most uses have been via the syndicated RSS feed. This is good news and provides evidence
that much greater use is being made of RSS readers, by readers of this blog at least.
But let’s look at another blog post to see a very different usage profile. As can be seen we again saw a peak of
about 200 views (again mostly views of the syndicated feed) on the day the post was published. But since the
post was published there has been a long tail of daily views of the post and with a current total of 1,946 views on
23rd February 2009, most of the views of this post have taken place in the weeks and months after it was
published.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 122 of 616
What’s the reason for the difference? Although it may be felt that there aren’t significant differences as, over
time, the Are You Able post might have a long tail of views. I’ll address that point by concluding this post with
the usage statistics for a post published around the same time as the one mentioned above. And the title of that
post “Pinky and Perky and Swedish Topless Model Caught in Use as Learning Objects” might give a indication
for its popularity.
Yes, you’re right. This post is so popular because of the numbers of people searching for “topless model” and
“Swedish topless model“. And I’ve been caught out for the unethical approach of using an inappropriate title with
the sole intention of boosting the blog’s usage figures. Well, not (quite) true in my opinion. I did have a legitimate
interest in how use of such phrases could effect the amount of traffic. But I also have a need to think of new titles
for blog posts (I’ve published over 500 posts, and I can’t call them all stuff I think is interesting about Twitter,
Facebook, …). And I’ll continue to think of puns and word plays for the titles of the blog posts – and I know I’m
not alone in this. I will, though, try to ensure that the titles are relevant to the post (there was a photograph of a
topless Swedish model included in the post) – but a post called “Britney Spears nude” purely to pull in the traffic
would be inappropriate (as well as showing that I’m not up-to-date with the latest pop babe).
But what about concerns that although it may help to motivate me as the author to think up interesting titles, this
can skew the usage figures may may be requested by funding agencies? My response is that there are many ways
to enhance usage statistics – as I illustrated in a post on Lies, Dammed Lies, Blog Statistics and
Unexpected Spikes. So for me, if funding bodies wish to request inappropriate metrics, then that is their
prerogative. But at least I’ve been open about my awareness that the usage statistics are flawed. And hopefully
going public about the dangers of over-simplistic metrics will discourage the civil servants and bean-counters
from mandating their use.
As I mentioned above in order to provide a meaningful comparison
a graph of the usage statistics for a post on Butler Group Report on “Enterprise Web 2, published on 11th
December 2008, a week after the Swedish model post, is shown. As can be seen, after the first week the number
of views dropped off sharply, confirming, I believe, the reasons for the popularity of the Swedish model post.
Now isn’t it strange that the Swedish topless model has the long tail and not Pinky and Perky? I guess she must be
a mermaid.
Filed in Blog, General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
What Are the #jiscbid Evaluators Thinking?
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 123 of 616
A few weeks ago Gráinne Conole, a professor of e-learning at the Open University, used Twitter to ask for
suggestions on how to go about writing a bid for one of the forthcoming JISC calls. And, as I recently described,
many useful suggestions were given – despite that fact that this was a competitive process and the suggestions
were being provided in an open space. A great example of a community working in an open fashion, I feel. And
the benefits (better prepared submissions, clearer ideas of approaches to project management and dissemination
described, etc.) will be beneficial to many stakeholders, including the JISC programme managers, evaluators of
the proposals and, eventually, the users of the project deliverables.
But did this happen? Were the bids well-written and had they followed the guidelines? Or was marking the bids a
time-consuming and difficult process for the many evaluators who were involved in marking the bids?
Well we can get an insight into the evaluators though processes by looking
at the Twitter stream for tweets tagged with “jiscbids”. I think this tag was originally developed by an informal
process, although at one point Amber Thomas (JISC Programme Manager) did suggest that this should be the tag
adopted for sharing thoughts on the evaluation process:
#jiscbids dons [corporate hat] i am assuming all other markers are using this hashtag to offer constructive
comments on anonymised bids too
Subsequently Sam Easterby-Smith (CETIS) commented that he was:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 124 of 616
Finding the #jiscbids tweet feed rather too fascinating… @briankelly MUST do follow up to his blog post
from feb 5th – woo
I’ll not, however, discuss the details of the tweets, other than to say that having the opportunity to observe
evaluators’ thoughts on the marking process should provide immensely valuable feedback to those at JISC who
are responsible for managing the evaluation process. There have been discussions, for example, on whether bids
which were over the maximum number of pages allowed should be automatically discarded (possibly before
reaching the markers) or whether such bids should be marked down, but could still be funded it the bid is strong
enough.
Having been involved in bid marking in the past it has only just struck me that in my experience there has been
very little discussions on the evaluation process itself, perhaps because once the marks are returned to JISC the
programme managers will be busy comparing the responses, making final decisions, suggesting changes to
proposals, etc. By the time this is all over, I suspect there will be little energy left for reflecting on the evaluation
process.
So I hope that someone will find the time and energy to go through the various tweets made by the evaluators
(including those which did not have a #jiscbids tag). But as well as identifying aspects of the reviewing process
which can be improved, there will also be a need to consider whether the openness and informality which Twitter
has provided could be in conflict with a closed reviewing process. I disagree with Mike Ellis’s view that Twitter
“needs an edge, a voice, a riskiness” – in some cases this may be true, but in discussing a bidding process or, as
my colleague Marieke Guy has recently commented, in the context of discussing talks at conferences, we need to
establish best practices. But I hope the best practices which emerge acknowledge the benefits which can be gained
from using services such as Twitter.
Filed in General, Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(3)
Rethinking Web Accessibility for E-Learning
Monday, March 2nd, 2009
Why would we want to rethink Web accessibility in an elearning context? Surely
application of WAI’s WCAG guidelines will provide universal accessibility? And the recently released WCAG
2.0 guidelines should improve things further.
As described in a paper on “Developing A Holistic Approach For E-Learning Accessibility” the WAI approach
is flawed when applied in an elearning context. The WCAG guidelines seek to ensure that information can be
processed by people with disabilities using a variety of assistive technologies. But learning isn’t about the simple
processing of information (effective learning isn’t provided by encylopedia!).
This was the core of our initial work. Further research described flaws in WAI
guidelines and provided evidence that, although a political success, WCAG guidelines aren’t being implemented
to any significant extent. The reason for this isn’t that educational institutions aren’t aware of the guidelines or
don’t care about enhancing the quality of learning for students with disabilities. And although there are instances
in which accessibility could be enhanced relatively simply, there is a need for an alternative approach which
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 125 of 616
recognises the complexities of user needs and requirements, the rapidly changing technical environment, our
understandings of what is meant by ‘accessibility’ and ‘disability’ and our ability to implement desirable solutions
(and not just policies) within our institutions.
Our proposed approach (solution would be too bold a term)
describes a Web Adaptability framework which builds on our holistic framework and focusses on the accessibility
of learning outcomes rather than e-learning resources and the involvement of a broad spectrum of stakeholders.
And rather than a simplistic legal framework, institutions should deploy such approaches due to peer pressure,
involvement of learners with disabilities in the design process, corporate reputation management, peer group
pressure and sharing of solutions and failures.
Please join in the debate on how this goal can be realised!
Please note that this post was submitted to the Edu Blogger Scholarship contest and has been shortlisted in the 20
finalists. For details on why I am entering this contest see my previous post.
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged WAI, WCAG | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (0)
Entering the Edu Blogger 2009 Awards
Sunday, March 1st, 2009
I know from recent discussions that some people don’t like awards being given to
bloggers for various reasons (blogging is a personal activity; awards can be divisive; etc.). But although there may
be an element of truth in such comments I also feel that there can be benefits providing in entering such
competitions. For me entering a blog post in an international Edu Bloggers scholarship contest allows me to
reach a much wider audience and to have the potential that this wider audience can provide feedback on my ideas
and also, perhaps, be influenced by the topic of my post. And, to be honest, much of my work is about seeking to
influence the educational sector in making effective use of networked technologies. I may be getting on a bit, but
I still feel passionate about such things!
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 126 of 616
Tomorrow’s post will provide me with the challenge of saying something important and influential in 200-300
words. And that in itself will provide me with a valuable learning opportunity – Twitter has helped me develop
skills in writing pithy comments in 140 characters and my peer-reviewed papers are often about 5,00 words long.
But how will I do in a middle distance event?
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
Revisiting Web Accessibility Metadata
Friday, February 27th, 2009
At the OzeWAI 2009 conference Liddy Nevile gave a talk on “AccessForAll Metadata for all Australian
Resources”. I’ve known Liddy for over 10 years (I think we first met at a W3C working group meeting on PICS).
Liddy has interests in both metadata and accessibility and has been working on the development of standards for
accessibility metadata for some time. Liddy prefers the term ‘adaptability’ to ‘accessibility’ for reasons she
explains in her paper on “Adaptability and Accessibility: a New Framework” – and I’m in broad agreement with
her.
Liddy gave several reasons why the vision of making every digital resource universally accessible to all was
flawed (but unfortunately her talk was not recorded, so you’ll have to take my word for that .
Her talk reminded me of the ideas concerning accessibility and metadata which I had about 10 years go and
presented in a talk in May 1999 on “Accessibility, Automation and Metadata” at a WAI meeting held in Toronto
after the WWW 8 conference.
[slideshare id=966277&doc=metadata-1233241139293685-3&w=425]
It’s funny looking back at a presentation like this after a period of almost 10 years. Sentiments such as those
expressed by Julie Howell (who then worked at the RNIB):
“Rather than encouraging ’simplicity’ in Web design … we try to encourage ‘flexibility’, so that Web sites
can be tailored to individual need ’simply’. Flexibility affords the personalisation which people with sight
problems require.”
still do not seem to be accepted in some quarters (such as policy makers in the Government) where there still
seems to be a culture of mandating a single approach rather than responding to a diversity of requirements.
I suspect that the (rather vague) ideas suggested in my talk haven’t yet really surfaced in widespread use not
because of the lack of tools to implement such approaches, but because ideas based around personalisation
weren’t popular back then. But now that PLEs and PREs are in vogue, we need to be revisiting these issues – and
not just at the application level, but also the metadata standards needed to implement this. But as Liddy and I
admitted in a paper on “Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future” we also need
to acknowledge that good ideas are not necessarily implemented. There a need to learn from failures of the past
and take into account the following when seeking to develop alternative approaches:
• The need for acceptance in the market place for tools which support the a personalisation vision for
accessibility;
• The dangers of seeking to standardise too soon;
• The dangers of embedding technological decisions within legislation too soon;
• The need to ensure that solutions can scale to vast numbers of resources and users.
Are we, I wonder, now in a position in which such concerns can be addressed?
Filed in Accessibility | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
Impact Of This Blog On My Publication Record
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 127 of 616
Does The “Blogging Bug” Affect Academic Publishing?
Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University, recently wrote a blog post on
Blogging impacts on formal academic output in which he describes how the numbers of his published articles had
declined since being “bitten by the blog bug“. He didn’t regard this as necessarily a bad thing, though, as Martin
feels that “Blogging meets these needs [to share ideas and fulfill a creative urge to write] better than formal
publications” and the benefits of networking, which was an important factor in submitting papers to conferences
can now be achieved using online communications technologies such as blogs and micro-blogs.
My Publishing History
Martin asked if anyone else noticed a similar trend. So I checked
my publication record – the figures are illustrated in the accompanying diagram.
I started to write papers for peer-reviewed journals and conferences seriously in 2004 with four papers being
published: two based on a JISC-founded QA Focus which I was the project manager of, one on standards and the
fourth a short paper I co-authored with Andy Powell and Pete Johnston, then colleagues at UKOLN. Interestingly,
although one of the QA Focus papers was co-authored by fellow team members the second was written jointly
with staff from the University of Strathclyde, following a discussion in the pub after I gave a seminar in Glasgow.
The following year another four papers were published which cover three of my main areas of interest: Web
accessibility, social networks and interoperability. Again three of the papers were written with contacts I had
made professionally but another one arose from discussions in a pub in Bath, at a Semantic Web Southwest
meeting.
My most productive year for publications was 2005 with nine papers published, covering accessibility, social
networking and standards. In retrospect this was the year in which I had gained the confidence that I had
something worthy of publishing, the necessary writing skills, a good appreciation of the effort needed and
contacts who I knew could contribute to a joint papers.
By 2006 I was able to further develop ideas on Web accessibility and standards and contribute to a short paper in
a new area which I suspected would be of increasing relevance to myself and UKOLN, preservation of Web
resources. A total of six paper were published that year.
The UK Web Focus blog was launch in November 2006, so during 2007 I was developing my skills in writing
blog posts and responding to comments. But I still managed to publish four papers in the year, on accessibility,
open standards and the first on Web 2.0 – the lead author of this latter paper, incidentally, was Mike Ellis whom I
first got talking to in a pub in Leicester after the UK Museums on the Web conference. “Let’s write a paper” was
my parting shot to Mike as he left the pub – which we went on to do (and subsequently much more).
Six further papers were published in 2008, together with two contributions to books. The papers included one on
Web site preservation with fellow members of the JISC PoWR project (I was correct in 2007 when I felt this
would be an important area). The final paper of the year was an invited paper which was presented at the Bridging
Worlds Conference in Singapore. The co-authors for that paper included people I had met once at a workshop in
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 128 of 616
Wales, had met at a conference several year’s ago but re-established informal contact through Twitter and one
person who I have met primarily via blog posts, blog comments and on Twitter.
Discussion
Preamble
The first comment I should make is that I’m not attempting to suggest that there is any equivalence in quality
between my papers and Martin Weller’s. My papers, for example, include those which have been accepted by a
formal peer-reviewing processes, but also include short papers, papers for which only the abstract has been
reviewed and, in the final example, an invited paper for presentation at an international conference. But at least I
am aware of a level of consistency across my publications.
Finding Co-Authors
Writing this post has given my an insight into the ways I have gone about the task of discovering people to
collaborate with in writing such papers (I’ve realised that, apart from the two books, there have been only two
papers which I have written on my own). The approaches I have taken can be summarised as:
Initially the papers were a dissemination activity of a funded project (initially the QA Focus project) and
this has continued with, for example the recent JISC PoWR project).
I had also supported the staff development of colleagues in my team at UKOLN and regarded joint
authorship of papers as a way of developing writing skills and adding valuable content to their CVs.
Several of the papers were written with staff from our strategic partners – other JISC services with whom
we have good links with and a desire to work with (and be seen to work with) including JISC TechDis,
CETIS and OSS Watch.
But I was surprised when I did this analysis and found that significant numbers of my papers had been
written with people with whom I had developed good social links. And this is even more important than I’d
realised as the papers with strategic partners and project partners also reflected good social contacts with
individuals within those organisations.
For me it seems that the social contacts can be important in the writing process. On a number of occasions a paper
has arisen from discussions and a shared understanding which have taken place over several pints which has led
to papers been written and accepted for publication. More recently it seems that discussions based abound blog
posts and on Twitter have served to support the social lubrication when a pint (or two) of real ale was not
available.
Quality Issues
Discussions based on the content of blog posts supported by getting to know people on Twitter may have helped
to build links with authors and potential authors, but has blogging affected the quality of the papers themselves? I
feel my papers have improved in quality, although clearly this would be expected as one gains experience and
gets a better understanding of the topics of the papers.
But I also feel that blogging has been beneficial to the process of writing papers. I’ve used my blog as an open
notebook, recording ideas which previously I may have forgotten when it came around to writing a paper. And as
the ideas have been exposed to a wide audience I have benefitted from comments I have received (and perhaps
even a lack of comments which may possibly that the idea isn’t too outrageous).
And as a number of my papers have been about observing how the world is approaching particular uses of
technologies (such as Web accessibility) I’ve made use of blogs and microblogs (both as an author and reader) in
order to gain a better understanding of patterns of usage.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 129 of 616
Dissemination
The dissemination aspect of the blog for my papers is self-evident. For papers presented at conferences I normally
publish something on this blog. Over the past six months of so I have also recorded my talk on video, providing
an additional dimension for those who prefer the more chatty explanation of the ideas to the more formal prose of
the scholarly publication.
Conclusions
Returning to the question posed by Marin Weller “Does the ‘Blogging Bug’ Affect Academic Publishing?” I
would say it does. But for me, unlike Martin, I feel it has enhanced the quality of my publications, enhanced
awareness of the papers and the ideas they have explored and widened my circle of peers with whom I collaborate
with.
And although I recognise that thing may be different in other disciplines and for people with different working
styles and organisational priorities (e.g. the RAE) for me blogging and engaging with blogs (reading other blogs
and commenting on them) is now an essential part of my paper-writing process.
Filed in Blog, General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
Crowd-sourcing Ideas for IWMW 2009
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
In a trip report on the Institutional Web Managers Workshop 2008 Andy Stewart was full of praise for the event:
“it was absolutely fantastic“. Andy went on to say that although “The plenaries, parallel sessions, discussion
groups and social events are all extremely useful in their own right” for him “it’s the inspiration and sense of
belonging that one feels during and after the conference I think makes the difference“.
We’re currently inviting proposals for this year’s event, IWMW 2009, which will be held at the University of
Essex on 28-30th July 2009. Last year we providing an innovation competition and encouraged developers to
make use of the data provided by the university of Aberdeen, Bath and Edge Hill University. This encouragement
for openness within the community was welcomed by Andy:
“One theme which stuck out above all, to me, was that of transparency through initiatives to open up our
information allowing others to do what they feel with it“.
We are looking to build on this culture of openness. So this year rather than simply inviting submissions for talks
and workshop sessions to be sent to the chair of the event (my colleague Marieke Guy) we are using the Ideascale
service in order to crowd-source suggestions for content at the workshop.
We’re doing this to allow potential participants and other interested parties to provide suggestions on topics
they’ve like to see covered at the address (as well as provide other more general suggests for the event – such as
what type of social event we should provide). Doing this in this open fashion, as illustrated below, enables
participants to become more active participants in the processes of putting together the programme for the event.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 130 of 616
Now we have to be honest and admit that we can’t guarantee that the most popular options will necessarily be
provided or that seemingly unpopular topics won’t be covered. But at least everybody will have had the
opportunity to participate in this process. And this is also a learning process for ourselves – in retrospect we
realise that the suggested titles should have been neutral in tone, rather than the provocative title which could be
suited for a session itself (we don’t know if people are voting on the sentiment expressed in the title or on whether
the topic should be addressed at the workshop).
And I’m not sure what the usage statistics are meant to be saying. It doesn’t
seem likely that 16 users have cast 1018 votes!
But if you have views on topics which members of institutional Web management teams should be discussing feel
free to provude your suggestion. Now this won’t be regarded as a submission to the event, but if you would like to
give a talk or run a session at this year’s event details of how to submit proposals are available on the IWMW
2009 Web site.
Filed in iwmw2008, iwmw2009 | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (1)
Twitter Can Pimp Up Your Stuff – But Should It?
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
I recently published a blog post entitled “Are You Able?“. Shortly after it was published I wrote a tweet which
linked to the post. Although at one stage I had registered with a service which would automatically send a tweet
when I published a new post I no longer do this. Rather I’ll send a tweet if I think the post might be of particular
interest or is relevant to discussions which have taken place in my Twitter community.
Shortly after I sent out my tweet I received a response from George Brett who had retweeted my post (forwarded
my tweet to his group of followers):
RT @briankelly: Are your resources available, reusable, usable, accessible, exploitable and preservable? Is
it feasible? http://is.gd/jOWg
6:57 AM Feb 17th from TweetDeck
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 131 of 616
This was followed by another retweet by digicmb (Guus van den Brekel) tweeted:
RT @briankelly: R ur resources available, reusable, usable, accessible, exploitable & preservable? = ur
approach feasible? http://is.gd/jOWg
6:32 AM Feb 17th from TweetDeck
Now at recent Web 2.0 and blogging workshops I’ve facilitated for staff working in museums, libraries and
archives I have been asked how one can demonstrate that time spent in using various Web 2.0 technologies
provides an positive return on investment. The impression I get is that people in these sectors do need to
demonstrate tangible and measurable benefits in order to justify their usage (and perhaps even have firewalls
configured so that the services can be accessed).
How, then, might you provide evidence that Twitter can be used to support organisational aims? Well I currently
have 777 followers on Twitter, so I might argue that Twitter can provide a cost-effective dissemination
mechanism. And as George Brett has 1,109 followers and Guus van den Brekel has 332, there could be over 2,000
users who have received the notification of my latest blog post.
Job done, you may feel, I’ve provided an example of the how Twitter has the potential to maximise access to
one’s digital resources, whether this is a blog post, as in this example, an event, a new service or whatever
(although I should add that I haven’t said anything about whether those followers still use Twitter or that they
may not be people, but spam harvesters).
But yesterday (Sunday 22 February 2009) Mia Ridge sent a tweet saying:
You are not you, you are a brand. ‘no one enjoys someone who posts spontaneously’ http://bit.ly/qGRdk I
don’t get the obsession w followers
Mia was linking to a blog post on Being a Useful Twitter User [and receiving followers in the process] which
provided advice (”Be consistent and organized”; “Pace yourself!”; etc.) aimed at helping you to maximise the
number of your followers.
I think Mia was quite right to highlight the dangers of such depersonalisation of Twitter. And as the individual
and quirk, aspect of Twitter has played a role in its success following a set of guidelines which aim to provide a
sterile environment could well lead to a killing of the golden goose.
Which isn’t to say that one shouldn’t ‘pimp up’ one’s blog posts, however. Mia herself tweeted a few hours after
her previous post that she “blogged my dev8D talk (http://bit.ly/d9z5y) on happy museums, developers and
punters (right URL this time), open to suggestions, comments“.
But rather than Twitter users using the service to post factual information about themselves, their work and their
organisation I’d suggest that the emphasis should be on those aspects that you care about and, as Martin Weller
suggested recently, the things you love: your iPhone, your musical taste, your football team and the like.
And as Mike Ellis recently suggested that Twitter “needs an edge, a voice, a riskiness” I think I’ll announce this
post with the tweet “Pimping up my blog post on the attractions & dangers of pimping up blog posts:
http://is.gd/kt2t“.
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (10)
"Slowly, One By One, The Stars Were Going Out"
Friday, February 20th, 2009
I recently asked on Twitter “Who remembers the SciFi short story ‘Slowly, one by one, the stars were going
out’?” I went on to add “It’s happening with Twitter profile pictures“.
It turned out that this came from Arthur C Clark’s short story “The Nine Billion Names of God, although I’d
misremembered the final sentence which, according to the entry in Wikipedia, actually read “overhead, without
any fuss, the stars were going out“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 132 of 616
The reason many people are blacking out their profile image is to
express support for the New Zealand Internet Blackout campaign. This campaign, which has successfully made
use of a number of social networking services (and not just Twitter) in a viral fashion to protest against a new law
in New Zealand – the Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A’. As described in a post on the Read Write
Webblog “this law may have major implications for Internet users in NZ, because it calls for internet
disconnection “based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up
to court scrutiny.”
The use of social networking services as a way of exploiting the network effects in protests against political
decisions which seek to impose restrictions on Internet services is not restricted to just New Zealand. I was
surprised to learn recently that in Australia, as described on the No Clean Feed Web site: “The Australian Federal
Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers [ISPs] to censor the Internet for
all Australians. This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access“.
Regional protests, such as the No Clean Feed Canberra rally held in December 2008 made use of Facebook event
page. to provide details of the rally (with an alternate page provided for those who could not/would not access
Facebook).
Now I haven’t blacked out my Twitter (or Facebook) profile, although I would agree that the proposed
developments (in Australia as well as New Zealand) are to be regretted. I’ve chosen not to do this as I prefer to
reserve any protests I may wish to make to something I feel more strongly about – and rationing such protests
should enhance the impact of any campaigns which I may chose to support. I also find that blacked out profile
pictures is reducing the usefulness of Twitter, as it is more difficult to see who is writing the tweets.
However that is not to say that I do not want to contribute to the protests, so I am writing this post in order to alert
readers of this blog who may not be aware of the New Zealand Internet Blackout campaign (and I know that not
everyone is a regular Twitter user and so may not have seen these blacked out images). I also thought it would be
worth embedded this YouTube video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpbadsgW4Qg]
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 133 of 616
Note that if you wish to join in with this campaign you’ll have to hurry as the dates of the campaign are 16-23
February 2009
Filed in General, Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(2)
My Thoughts On The Facebook Debate
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
The blogosphere and the Twitterverse have been full of angry posts and tweets on the recent changes to
Facebook’s terms and conditions and the subsequent reversal in the light of the negative publicity. My, perhaps
somewhat controversial, view is that there has been a failure to recognise the complexities related to ownership of
data in a social networked environment and instead we have been seeing simplistic solutions being proposed
which, if applied generally, would undermine the development of the more open social networks which,
ironically, many of those engaged in the discussions would actually prefer to see.
Consider the view that “it’s my data and if I wish it to be deleted then this must be permitted“. There’s no
ambiguity in such a view which, on the surface, appears reasonable. But how might this be applied in other
contexts such as, for example, the UK’s JISC-funded JISCMail service. This service has a policy document which
is publicly available. This states that “When you leave JISCmail, your name, email address and, if relevant,
Shibboleth Targeted_ID will be removed from our database“. That sounds good, and is in keeping with the
expectations which have been raised in the context of Facebook’s changes to its terms and conditions. However
the JISCMail policy goes on to state that “However, any message you have posted to a list will remain in the
archives“. What? JISCMail are going to keep my data (forever, I assume) even though, in the policy on copyright,
JISCMail have admitted that “When you send a message to a JISCmail list, you retain your copyright in that
message“. JISCMail, it would seem, are behaving even worse than Facebook; at least Facebook have been honest
and openly stated that they won’t delete users’ data, with (new) users having to acept these terms and conditions.
JISCMail, on the other hand, states that it’s the user’s data but keeps the data if the user leaves the service. What
about all of those embarrassing messages I posted when I was young and naive, I may wonder?
Now I should hasten to add that I’m not saying there is anything wrong in JISCMail terms and conditions; I am
simply pointing out one example of the complexities. And yes, I am aware that an email message will be
replicated in many places, so deleting one instance in the JISCMail archive wouldn’t be of much use. And I am
also aware that deleting individual messages would undermine records of discussions.
And these are arguments which Mark Zuckerberg has been making in his defence of the changes to the terms and
conditions. But many of the initial responses have failed to acknowledge such complexities. The first post I read
which did have a more considered view was the Dataportability blog which, in a post on “Redefining and
Standardizing ‘Ownership“, acknowledged that “Facebook, by virtue of its sheer size and scope, is often the first
to run into issues that the rest of the social web will need to address sooner rather than later“.
The other post which gave carefully considered thoughts was published by my colleague Paul Walk in his post
which argued “Facebook wants your attention, not your photos“. Now Paul has admitted “I’m certainly not a fan
of Facebook. I have yet to find a use for it in my professional life and have criticised before the assumption that,
for example, Higher Education should be embracing it as a service because it is widely popular“. But rather than
taking an opportunity to join in the general condemnation, Paul describes how he “think[s] the furore about
Facebook’s ‘ownership’ of user-generated-content has, by and large, slightly missed the point“.
As someone who has posted a number of posts which have had a more positive view towards Facebook than Paul
it would be appropriate for me to agree that Facebook have made mistakes in the way it has handled the changes
to its terms and conditions. And yet, ironically, Facebook can manage (and delete) content held in its ‘walled
garden’ than would be the case in more open and distributed social networked environments.
But let’s join in with the Data Portability blog and Paul Walk in having a more mature and considered discussion
of the complexities of ownership and controlled within social networks.
Filed in Facebook | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 134 of 616
Are You Able?
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
There were two invited keynote speakers who travelled from Europe to speak at the OzeWAI 2009 conference.
As well as my talk (which I described recently ) Dr. Eva M. Méndez (an Associate Professor in the Library and
Information Science Department at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and not the American actor!) gave a talk
entitled “I say accessibility when I want to say availability: misunderstandings of the accessibility in the other
part of the world (EU and Spain)“.
Eva’s research focuses on metadata and web standards, digital information systems and services, accessibility and
Semantic Web. She has also served as an independent expert in the evaluation and review of European projects
since 2006, both for the eContentPlus program and the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies)
program and her talk was informed by her knowledge of the inner working of such development programmes
funded by the EU.
Her talk explored the ways in which well-meaning policies may be agreed with the EU, although such policies
may be misinterpreted or misunderstand and fail to be implemented, even by the EU itself.
I don’t have access to Eva’s slides, so I will give my own interpretation of Eva’s talk.
We might expect the EU to support the development of a networked environment across EU countries across a
range of areas. These areas might include:
Available: Have resources been digitised? Are they available via the Web?
Reusable: Are the resources available for use by others? Or they it trapped within a Web environment which
makes reuse by others difficult?
Findable: Can the resources be easily found? Have SEO techniques been applied to allow the resource to be
indexed by search engines such Google?
Exploitable: Are the resources available for others to reuse through, for example, use of Creative Commons
licences?
Usable: Are the resources available in a usable environment?
Accessible: Are the resources accessible to people with disabilities?
Preservable: Can the resources be preserved for use by future generations?
Since the acronym ARFEUAP isn’t particularly memorable (and ARE-U-API would be too contrived) we might
describe this as the Able approach to digitisation. But there is 0ne additional concept which I feel also needs to be
included:
Feasible: Are the policies which are proposed (or perhaps mandated) feasible (or achievable)? We might ask
are they actually possible (can we make all resources universally accessible to all?) and can they be achieved
with available budgets and with the standards and technologies which are currently available?
There is, of course, a question which tends to be forgotten question: is the proposed service of interest to people
and will it be used?
The worrying aspect of Eva’s talk was that the EU don’t appear to be asking such questions – or even used the
same vocabulary. We need to have the bigger picture in order to address tensions between these different areas
and the question (and power struggles) of how we prioritise achieving best practices – for example, should we be
digitizing resources, even if we can’t make them accessible; should we regard access by people with disabilities
as being of importance than ensuring the resources can be preserved? And let’s not fudge the issue by suggested
that each is equally important and all can be achieved by use of open standards. That simply isn’t the case – and if
you doubt this, ask managers of institutional repositories. They will probably say that they are addressing the
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 135 of 616
available, reusable, findable, preservable and, perhaps, exploitable issues, but I suspect that the repository
managers would probably admit that many of the PDFs in the repositories will not be accessible.
Filed in Accessibility, preservation, standards | Tagged
ozewai2009 | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
Should Projects Be Required To Have Blogs?
Monday, February 16th, 2009
The Context
Last week CETIS’s Mark Power started off a brief Twitter debate when he asked “Is the use of project blogs
becoming too formalised by JISC? Still strikes me that many set one up simply because they feel they *should*“.
Amber Thomas, a JISC Programme manager, responded by informing the Twitter community that she was
“interested in what you all think about project blogs. for lightweight projects we like the idea of enforced
transparency” concluding this request with “… thats easier said than done. we don’t expect every project blog
frequently but it does provide the chance to aggregate easily“.
The Tweet Debate
The responses received over the next few hours included:
Brian Kelly: @MarkPower I disagree. Project blogs mean words get written, content is public and content is
syndicable. let’s encourage such openness!
Sheila McNeil: @briankelly but how much really gets written in project blogs? I think still an onerous task
for many
Owen Stephens: @ambrouk don’t necessarily think you shouldn’t mandate, but keep in mind you are
mandating a tech/platform not attitude. What to achieve?
Andy Powell: @MarkPower blogging is an attitude not a technology, so simply “setting one up” doesn’t
necessarily lead to results anyway
Amber Thomas: project blogging: so … noone says make it mandatory, some say strongly encourage, some
say don’t. good blogging good, bad blogging bad. ok
Brian Kelly: @ambrouk bad blogging ok as part of learning proces. Allow mistakes please
Amber Thomas: @markpower scoping a Call as we speak where we want to make it mandatory to use a blog
or wiki
Paul Walk: @MarkPower not sure that JISC is culpable – but there are definitely examples of project blogs
where you wish they hadn’t felt the need
Amber Thomas: @sheilmcn i guess community engagement and collaboration are one thing, reflection is
another, transparency of progress is another again???
Andy Powell: @MarkPower blogging is an attitude not a technology, so simply “setting one up” doesn’t
necessarily lead to results anyway
Mark Power: @andypowe11 Exactly right…that’s why they won’t always work for a project and why the use
of them shouldn’t be mandatory…not that they
Paul Walk: @ambrouk the attitude of ‘publish early, publish often’ is worth cultivating. But team blogs are
often terrible. Encourage – don’t mandate
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 136 of 616
Amber Thomas: ..but is the issue that they create extra “noise” that makes it hard to spot the real voices
amongst the dutiful posts?
Brian Kelly: @ambrouk Project managers should encourage ‘noise’ and use good filtering tools . Noise is
better than silence!
Paul Walk: @ambrouk @briankelly ‘noise is better than silence’ just doesn’t work for lots of ppl –
especially researchers. It’s not appropriate for all
Now as Paul Walk’s last tweet was preceded by “@andyramsden nah – that one wasn’t James’s fault surely. The
Calamity will come in the second half. The dropped ball came close though” we can see that this discussion was
taking place at around 10pm, while people were also watching the Spain vs England match live on the TV. I think
from this dialogue we can see that a useful discussion can take place using Twitter, and that JISC are getting their
money’s worth from their investment in UKOLN and CETIS, with us (together with a number of others) being on
call on Wednesday evenings, even when we are in the pub watching England, once again being beaten!
My Thoughts
But what of the discussion itself? Should projects be required to have blogs? I think the Twitter debate brought
out many of the important issues, but as Mark Power commented “twitter [is] not the best for such an in-depth
discussion really“. However I do think it is worth exploring these issues in more depth.
I would very much agree with Amber’s comment on the need for transparency for JISC-funded project work and,
as a couple of people commented, blogs can provide a simple lightweight way in which projects can make visible
what they are doing, what they are thinking and what they are planning – and feedback can be easily obtained
using blog comments.
However concerns were raised regarding the time and effort in may take to write blog posts, the associated
(writing) skills needed and the dangers of too much information being published. There are also the dangers that
blog posts will be written for their own sake, so that contractual requirements or expectations will be achieved to
little concrete benefit.
But surely skills in writing useful blog posts will only be gained through experience? And we should remember
that blog posts can be useful for a variety of purposes: not only should project managers find blog posts useful in
seeing how project work is progressing and seeing how the project is engaging with its user community but
benefits can be gained by other project partners (through open sharing) and by the intended user community.
There can also be a public record which might prove useful if project staff leave.
The benefits of syndication of blog posts, which allow the content to be easily viewed on various devices as well
as on a range of RSS readers should also be considered. And this is where filtering capabilities and other
visualisation tools (e.g. Wordle) may help programme managers and other interested parties to have access in
ways which are appropriate to their specific interests.
Having said that, I’d still avoid a formal contractual requirement for project blogging, preferring, instead, an
expectation that the benefits of open engagement with the key stakeholders and ease of use and reuse of the
content would be provided. I would hope then that the bidding process would see projects which fulfilled such
requirements would be funded. This approach, it should be noted, should also be future-proofed, allowing new
technologies (Podcasting, micro-blogging or whatever) to be included in the range of options.
So for me, project blogging would be a strong should rather than a must. But how do we ensure that blogs are
useful? We all have come across the good, informative and perhaps opinionated blog with a clear voice and a
passion which engages our interests – and this is no doubt something we would like to see more of. But how do
we get there? And what about the dangers that we’ll end up with bland team blogs? Are such blogs an inevitable
part of a learning process and better than no blog at all? Or are counter-productive?
What’s are your view of blogs to support project work?
Filed in Blog, Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (16)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 137 of 616
"Standards Are Like Sausages"
Friday, February 13th, 2009
“Standards are like sausages” suggested Charles McCathieNevile at the OzeWAI 2009 conference. “I like
sausages” he went on to say “but I’m not keen on exploring too closely how they’re made“.
This was a wonderful metaphor which appealed to several Twitterers at the conference, including scenariogirl and
RuthEllison.
A quick Google suggests the origin of this saying is “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being
made” by Otto von Bismarck (although this origin is disputed) with the Healthcare Standards blog applying it to
standards-making in a post on The Making of Standards and Sausages published in August 2008.
Paul Downey, an advocate of Web Architecture at BT and formerly BT’s Chief Web Services Architect, chair
of the W3C XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Working Group and BT representative at various
organisations including OASIS and the WS-I, may has some sympathy with this view judging by the title of his
talk at the QCon conference ”Standards are Great, but Standardisation is a Really Bad Idea“. The abstract for this
talk is worth quoiting in full:
Standards arise from consensus between competitors signaling maturity in a marketplace. A good standard
can ensure interoperability and assist portability, allowing the switching of suppliers. A widely adopted
standard can create new markets, and impose useful constraints which in turn foster good design and
innovation. Standards are great, and as the old joke goes, that’s why we have so many of them!
If standards represent peace, then formal standardisation can be war! Dark, political, expensive and
exclusive games played out between large vendors often behind closed doors. There are better ways to forge
consensus and build agreements and the notion of a committee taking often a number of years to writing a
specification, especially in the absence of implementation experience appears archaic in today’s world of
Agile methods, test driven development, open source, Wikis and other Web base collaborations.
This talk will draw upon Paul’s personal experiences forged in the wonderful world of XML and Web service
standardisation, examine the risks of premature standardisation, unnatural constraints, partial
implementations and open extensions, puzzle how to avoid cloud computing lock-in, and contrast formal
activities with lightweight open processes as exemplified by open source, Microformats, OpenID, OAuth and
other Web conventions being ratified through open, lightweight, continuous agreement.
Now I’ve heard it suggested that in order to avoid choosing the wrong standard, you simply need to look at the
worthiness of the organisation which produced the standard, perhaps on the assumption that a reputable standards-
making organisation is like an approve sausage-making company. But as Paul Downey suggests, and Keith Boone
seems to confirm in his post on the Healthcare blog, the unsavoury standardisation processes take place in an
organisation responsible for delivering globally-accepted standards such as HTML, CSS and XML.
Selecting the standards that will not only work as specified but will be widely accepted and supported in the
marketplace is not an easy task. And it is good to see that evidence of such concerns is now becoming more
widely available.
Filed in standards | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
What Can We Learn From The eduWeb Conference?
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Background to IWMW
The Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW) series was launched in July 1997 and has been held
every year since, with the 3 day format being used since 1998. This event is aimed at members of institutional
Web management teams and has been attracting an audience of 150-200 for some time now.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 138 of 616
The eduWeb Conference
But what, I’ve wondered, is the equivalent in the US? I recently came across the eduWeb conference Web site,
which appears to be similar to IWMW. Reading the history of the eduWeb conference page I find that the original
conference started in 2000 although it previously had a different name and location. The event, which is privately
owned, was relaunched in 2005. I found it interesting to read about how it perceives its target audiences:
“The conference continues to focus on “both sides f the fence” (front end and back end) regarding a
website’s development.
• The “front end” includes marketing, communications, advancement, admissions – it includes any non-IT
office that now has a website and knows that part of its strategy is to communicate to internal and
external audiences.
• The “back end” includes information technology, database development, applications, instructional
design, mobile technology, RSS and more.
The core to having a conference like this was to bring these sides together…to learn from the other side, to
learn to talk each other’s language and hopefully bring a better working relationship among the personnel
that now create the Web.“
It was also interesting to view the call for papers, which has three strands: (1) Marketing Communications; (2)
Design & Development and (3) a Guest Track on Getting It Done!. An accompanying page provides suggestions
for possible topics. A draft timetable is also available which, although it doesn’t yet provide details of the
individual sessions, does show how the conference is themed into the three strands.
Comparisons
The IWMW event, like eduWeb, has sought to engage with the marketing, design and management communities
as well as those involvement in development work. And I have to admit that I find eduWeb’s terms ‘front end’
and ‘back end’ quite useful – although I’m unsure how those involved in RSS, XML and other TLA and XTLA
work will take to the ‘back end’ term. I wonder if developers in the UK, with the pantomime tradition which is
probably not significant in the US (”oh no it’s not”), would resent being relegated to the back end of the
pantomime horse?
Unlike eduWeb, plenary talks at IWMW are intended for all participants. We have wondered whether we should
provide streamed plenary talks, but feel that having a small number of plenary talks (ideally by charismatic
speakers, such as Ewan Mcinosh’s closing talk at IWMW 2008) can provide a unifying theme which we can all
talk about during the conference and afterwards. But is it time for a change?
As all twelve IWMW events have been organised by UKOLN with myself, initially and my colleague Marieke
Guy having responsibility for the events, we have been able to ensure continuity of access to the event Web sites.
This enables myself and Marieke to be able to review the content over the years and to spot trends and themes –
and as this Web site are publicly available, others can do the same. In the past few years we have also provided
RSS feeds for various data sources, which enables us to, for example, provide a Google Map of the locationof the
events and locations of the plenary speakers.
Trying to find out what had happened at previous eduWeb conferences has proved somewhat difficult. The best I
could find were the Google results for searches for “eduWeb 2008“, “eduWeb 2007“, etc. which typically take me
to individual blog posts about the event. I could find an official Web site or even a page which aggregates content
from blogs of the event.
In the bar at the recent dev8D event I did, however, learn that a number of developers from the UK repository
community had attended the eduWeb 2008 event. The developers, who attended several events in the US thanks
to funding from the JISC CRIG project, have provided a video in which Dave Flanders (who, despite his
American accent is based at Bloomsbury Colleges consortium and will shortly be starting work at the JISC)
describes how the University of Chicago winning web site could be made even more effective. As described in
the accompanying description of the video:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 139 of 616
The EduWeb Awards had the University of Chicago as the winning web site (CMS). It was acclaimed for its
minamalistic design, but we thought it could even take it a step further by utilising the Google minamalist
search approach. We also thought it might be worth looking into Google SiteMaps to provide a common way
of presenting University web sites to the user which could be optimised via the kinds of searches that took
place on the local search engine.Point being that better search facilities (analytics) should be put into the
institutional search engine so as to guarantee that the user is getting back what they want
It seems that valuable links have already been established with eduWeb. What other links could be made, I
wonder? And has anyone attended both the eduWeb and IWMW events? If so, it would be useful to hear about
the similarities, differences and things we can learn from each other.
Note that eduWeb 2009 will be held in Chicago on 20-23 July and IWMW 2009 in the University of Essex on the
following week (28-30 July). An enthusiastic University Web developer could therefore attend both!
Filed in Events | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
Is The UK Government Being Too Strict?
Monday, February 9th, 2009
I recently noticed a blog post published on the home page of the WASP (Web Standards Project) Web site. The
blog post, UK government browser guidelines: good sense prevails by Bruce Lawson, Opera applauded the UK
Government for responding to pressure from the Web standards and Web development communities on its
guidelines aimed at providers of UK Government Web services. The document initially stated that
… webmasters need not test in less popular browsers (those with less than 2% in that site’s usage statistics)
and that there should be a page on the site listing the popular browsers which had been tested with the
message “We advise you to upgrade your browser version as far as your computer allows and if possible to
one of those listed above”.
Following over 400 emails made in response to a plea from Bruce, Adam Batenin, author of the document,
published a revised browser testing guidelines, and, according to Bruce “he’s done a great job of including best-
practice development.” I too welcome that change.
However the guidelines also state (paragraphs 21-23) that:
All (X)HTML content must validate with respect to your chosen DTD.
Now although I’d agree with Bruce in his comments on the ”importance of valid code” I feel that a formal
requirement that all (X)HTML content must validate with the appropriate DTD will be counter-productive.
We should recognise that the vast majority of HTML content does not comply with HTML standards – and it will
be difficult for one sector to deviate substantially from the norm. This situation is likely to be made worse as use
of embedded Web 2.0 technologies grows (e.g. YouTube videos of the Prime Minister embedded in UK
Government pages) as embedding these services typical causes HTML validation problems.
Now such problems are (primarily) the responsibility of the third party Web 2.0 providers. And here we should be
lobbying them to ensure that code to embed their content does not break HTML standards. But they might argue
that, as global services, they need to be very conservative in making changes to services which work, even if they
don’t necessarily comply to published HTML DTDs. The companies could argue that they are being user-
focussed in such considerations, as isn’t there some truth in this? I can recall one hard-line ’standardista’ who, on
being told that a (University-developed) service didn’t render correctly in Internet Explorer, was told that the user
should upgrade to a standards-compliant browser. And of course the university’s provided browser, was Internet
Explorer! Such indulgences may occur in the public sector, but a commercial company which behaved likewise
would soon find itself out of business.
As well as concerns that a formal requirement that UK Government Web pages must be fully HTML compliant
may mean that pages aren’t rendered by the (flawed) browsers which people use, there is also a danger that this
requirement will stifle developments and innovation in Government.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 140 of 616
HTML itself has, sadly, proven a difficult language to evolve over time. We are now in a position in which the
usability and accessibility benefits which sensible use of AJAX technologies can provide and being made
accessible to, for example, screen-reading software and assistive technologies through a standard known as ARIA.
However use of WAI-ARIA (to use its official name) will normally mean that strict HTML compliance will not
be possible. And when I’ve raised this issue with people involved in development of the standards and assistive
technologies the response I have consistently received is that accessibility benefits which can be provided shown
be prioritised over strict HTML. And this view has been endorsed in WCAG 2.0, which has dropped WCAG 1.0’s
formal requirement for HTML compliance, requiring, instead, that markup elemnts are currectly opened and
closed.
I would therefore suggest that the guidelines document should state that:
(X)HTML content should validate with respect to your chosen DTD.
After all, if the Web Standards Project Web site isn’t able to fully comply with the standards, should we expect
every government Web site to?
And let’s also remember that these requirements only apply to (X)HTML content. If these requirements are too
difficult to achive, won’t we see content being trapped in PDFs? You might, for example, like to think that the
Digital Britain – Interim Report would be available as a HTML resource, but no, it’s only available in PDF and
MS Word formats. But at least the such PDF documents won’t fail the government guidelines I’ve described.
Let’s not pretend that mandating conformance with HTMLK guideines will result in better HTML documents.
I’m convinced that it won’t – it will result in documents being provided in formats such as PDFs. And who
bothers checking that PDFs conform with PDF standards?
Filed in standards | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (5)
Web Accessibility Framework in 3 Words
Friday, February 6th, 2009
Since 2005 I, in conjunction with a number of other accessibility researchers and practitioners in the UK and
Australia, have sought to develop a framework for Web accessibility which addresses the shortcomings of the
WAI model (which suggests that universal accessibility will be provided by a combination of guidelines for Web
content, authoring tools and user agents).
This work began with a paper on “A Holistic Approach to E-Learning Accessibility” by myself, Lawrie Phipps
and Elaine Swift published in the Canadian Journal of Learning and Research in 2005. Ten further papers weres
subsequently published which furter developed these ideas.
A fair amount of thinking and discussions have taken place in the past 5 years. However at the recent OzeWAI
2009 conference Lisa Harrod summarised our work in a Twitter post:
massive thanks and kudos to @briankelly for adding context & purpose to my accessibility methodology i.e.
Accessibility isn’t binary.
Yes, that’s a great summary: “Accessibility isn’t binary“. It’s not about following a set of rules to achieve
universal accessibility. It’s about shades of grey, differing interpretations, differing user requirements, differing
scenarios, etc. And the advocacy, the policies and the appropriate areas for standardisation all arise from those
three words.
Thanks to Lisa for spotting the key aspect – and for perhaps coming up with an appropriate title for my next talk
on this topic.
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged ozewai | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (3)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 141 of 616
Twitter For JISC Bid Writers And Web Developers
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
Twitter and Bid Writers
On Tuesday (3rd February 2009) Grainne Conole send off a Twitter post:
just about to do presentation at OU on how t get JISC dosh – any tweet suggestions to throw into the pot???
use #JISCBIDS
In response she received a fluffy of useful suggestions, which Lorna Campbell has helpfully summarised:
“Advice ranged from the obvious:
Make sure you read the call. sounds obvious, but you would be amazed at how many bidders
don’t!
We’ve all done it – it’s simply not fun, and risky, sending proposal on deadline day. Get into
mindset of deadline is week before.
Provide *all* info asked for – such a shame to mark down a bid because it didn’t include risk
assessment for example
10 page limit means 10 page limit. Do not put your budget on page 11.
Read the circular. Then read it again. Then do what it asks.
To the astute:
Don’t underbid to be competitive if this means your project will run out of money before the end.
Your background/intro section is too long. Ditch half of it and write a really good use case
scenario instead.
Make it clear what funding your proposal would do for the wider community.
To the obscure:
A project with an acronym that alludes to bodily functions or sexual practises will (almost)
always remain an unfunded project.“
What a wonderful example of how people involved in writing JISC proposals, those who have been involved in
bid-writing previously, potential markers and JISC programme managers themselves are willing to share their
thoughts and suggestions. And, of course, such sharing is good for everyone – better submissions should be
prepared which makes it easier for the markers and JISC and the wider community should benefit from the project
deliverables.
Twitter and Web Developers
I recently received an email from the manager of an institutional Web development team who asked
“Do you know of any universities which have implemented some kind of iGoogle like home page for their
students and staff? Something which lets users customise the data sources and layout and presentation of
their start page, and which supports both internal gadgets – my courses, my marks, my timetable, etc. – and
external ones; my Twitter, my Facebook, my news feed, etc. It seems like something someone must have
done already somewhere, but who? Any pointers very welcome.“
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 142 of 616
The University of Southampton’s iSoton service (which I wrote about a while ago) came to mind initially, but
that wasn’t quite what was wanted. Not being able to come up with any other suggestions (and not wanting to
give a negative reply and look stupid!) I turned to my Twitter community and asked:
Any universities provide an iGoogle-style page for staff / students with personalised links to remote (e.g.
delicious) & internal stuff ?
Responses appeared immediately:
Response 1:
my old university did. https://my.mq.edu.au/ both for staff and students. various boxes showing your inbox,
exam timetable etc.
Response 2:
do you have an example? Would this be as a personalised or general portal? Interesting idea.
Response 3:
OU has a couple of iGoogle widgets….?
Response 4:
Is iSotton (http://www.soton.ac.uk/isoton/) the kind of thing you mean?
Response 5:
check out http://www.uspace.org.uk. – jisc funded igoogle project. (must record I’ve used twitter as a
dissemination tool now)
Response 6:
we have some delicious links in our toolbox and looking are a few other things … what about you guys
Response 7:
is it still the case that iGoogle pages don’t have unique urls? (So publishing them to the world is
problematic.)
Response 8:
Sussex do. it’s called SPLASH http://splash.sussex.ac.uk/
Response 9:
See also the PADDLE project http://www.chester.ac.uk/ple/ both SPLASH and PADDLE are part of
http://tinyurl.com/75khnw
Response 10:
iGoogle/NetVibes/etc examples http://tinyurl.com/5jgucc
And it seems that these responses where of use to the person with the initial query as he commented “Brian, that’s
fantastic; thanks for your help”
Discussion
The UK HE’s development community has a well-established tradition of sharing, as can be seen by the
popularity of (initially) the Mailbase mailing list service, which was replaced by the JISCMail. But as
technologies develop well-established tools get replaced by new, and often more flexible alternatives. I think we
are now seeing this with Twitter. But what of the Twitter sceptics, the one’s who invite us to:
Imagine a world in which Twitter did not exist (give it a couple of years…) would you really invent a
constantly-updated trivia machine as the best way of communicating with [your] audiences?
Is Twitter a trivia machine? Yes, it can be. But then again, so can email. And did you stop using email when those
first Viagra posts appeared in your inbox?
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (10)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 143 of 616
The Launch of OPuS
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
The University of Bath’s OPuS service, the online archive for University of Bath research publications, was
launched yesterday (3rd February 2009) by Professor Jane Millar, the University’s Pro-Vice Chancellor
(Research).
OPuS (which, incidentally, stands for ‘Online Publications Store’) currently holds over 12,000 references
including journal articles, books and book sections, conference items, patents, reports and working papers, and
research degree theses. Some of these items, including the theses are available in full-text. The aim of the service
is to help strengthen the promotion and preservation of research outputs.
I recorded (with permission) Professor Jane Millar’s official launch of the service and this clip (which is also
available on YouTube) is embedded below:
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yrCYNlPDm30]
I should also add that the introduction to the launch was given by University Librarian, Howard Nicholson
(YouTube video clip available) and Kara Jones, the university’s Research Publications Librarian, concluded the
event by providing some facts and figures about the service and the role that she can play in supporting
departmental use of the service (YouTube video clip available).
Many thanks to Kara Jones for organising this launch event and ensuring that a large number of the University’s
research publications were uploaded to the service prior to the launch. Readers with particular interests in
repositories may wish to add Kara’s My:self Archive blog to their RSS reader.
Filed in Repositories | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
#uksnow and the Mainstreaming of Twitter
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
In Sunday’s post about the problems with Google search in passing I commented that I have learnt of this problem
from Twitter. I went on to add that:
Now I could use this as an example of showing the benefits of Twitter when something significant happens in
the world. And I suspect that when the next major incident (bombings, severe weather problems, major
accidents, etc.) occurs we’ll hear stories of how Twitter was used and we’ll have another of influx of
subscribers.
Little did I realise that the severe weather problems occurred the following day. And yes, Twitter did have a major
role to play. I noticed this first thing in the morning after I switched on my iPod Touch and downloaded my latest
Tweets. There were several updates on the state of the weather around the country. When I got to work I gave an
update on the weather at the University and in town (Bath University, being located at the top of a steep hill, has
its own microclimate). And I tagged my tweet with the #uksnow hashtag as I’d noticed many others doing.
And later that evening I discovered that people were adopted the convention of using this tag in conjunction with
the post code together with a scale of the intensity of the snow. So I should have tweeted “No snow in Bath BA1
0/10 #uksnow” but a few hours later given the update “Snow started at Bath University BA2 4/10 #uksnow“.
This use of Twitter to exploit the wisdom of the crowds at the advent of the snow was driven by Ben March, using
an approach which seems to have been inspired by Ben Smith, who built UK Trains Wiki which Tweets
disruption alerts for 25 UK train operators.
You can view the snow map which is built from an aggregation of tweets with the #uksnow tag on Ben Marshs’s
blog. And a follow-up post on the blog provides links to people who have commented on this approach which
includes The Guardian, The Telegraph and UK Techcrunch.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 144 of 616
Some people might regard this as trivia – and many of the photos uploaded to Flickr with the #uksnow tag show
kids making snowmen, sldeging, etc. But for me this is a great example of community benefits of Twitter. And if
I was travelling London today I would be reading the tweets from my Twitter contacts in London.
A recent high-profile BBC news item on Twitter suggested it was becoming popular because of the number of
celebrities, such as Jonathon Ross and Stephen Fry, who are on Twitter. Not for me. The reason it’s becoming
embraced beyond the early adopters and becoming mainstream is because of the benefits which early adopters
have been talking about for the past year or so. It provides a sense of community; it can be used for sharing and
for alerting. And I’m pleased that this has happened. Now where have the Twitter sceptics gone?
Filed in Twitter | Tagged uksnow | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (6)
Google Breaks!
Sunday, February 1st, 2009
There was much lively discussion from my Twitter community yesterday – and not on from the football fans
whose teams were involved in a flurry of goals in the second half. Josie Fraser was one of the first to report the
incident:
Google’s gone a bit mental. Every site it returns for any search comes with a ‘this site may harm your
computer’ warning 2:52 PM yesterday
Phil Bradley commented seconds later:
Google malware error running wild http://tinyurl.com/akuar3 Everyone is seeing this from what I can tell.
2:54 PM yesterday
And then there was a flurry of
comments from people confirming that the problem was widespread.
Now I could use this as an example of showing the benefits of Twitter when something significant happens in the
world. And I suspect that when the next major incident (bombings, severe weather problems, major accidents,
etc.) occurs we’ll hear stories of how Twitter was used and we’ll have another of influx of subscribers.
But as I suspect that many readers of this blog will be aware of the benefits which Twitter can provide I’ll instead
comment on the incident itself.
The official Google blog has described this incident in a post entitled “‘This site may harm your computer’ on
every search result !?!?“. The post summarised the incident:
If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the
message “This site may harm your computer” accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly
an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 145 of 616
And goes on to explain what happened:
What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message “This site may
harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise
surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We
maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. …
We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and
here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all
URLs.
So a simple human error caused all results returned by Google to be flagged with a worrying message. Now the
Google blog posts points out that the problem was quickly resolved, claiming that “the duration of the problem
for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes“.
But should this act a a wakeup call warning us of the dangers of a reliance on Web 2.0 companies?
It should be pointed out that this isn’t really a question of the ownership of the service. Does anyone really think
that if a global search engine was nationalised that it would be immune to human errors? The incidents we’ve
seen in recent years with government data clearly demonstrates this.
However as my colleague Paul Walk commented in an email shortly after this incident in a paper he had just
submitted to the Museums and the Web conference “ I talked about distributed web services and chains of
responsibility“. The Google incident would have provided a great example of such dangers, if it had only
happened before he had submitted the paper!
Now Phil Bradley has already written about this incident, including a screen image of a Google search warning
about the possible dangers of visiting the Goole Google site itself! But I think that I’d agree with Paul Walk that
the more interesting issues are to do with the chains of responsibility, rather than a destination site which people
visit, even one as popular as Google.
Google may have quickly fixed this particular problem. But we’ve not seen the end of discussions of the
implications of breakdowns in cloud services. And what will this incident do for the trust people may previously
have had in Google?
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (11)
"Britain Faces Worst Year Since 1930s"
Thursday, January 29th, 2009
“Britain Faces Worst Year Since 1930s, warns IMF” screams an article on the front page of today’s Guardian.
It seems that that the International Monetary Fund has warned Britain that it will be at the bottom of the league
table of major developed countries this year.
And although many will share a feeling of optimism at the recent political changes in the US, here in the UK we
can’t blame Thatcher for this one. And we can’t even blame Tony Blair – after all, who was the Chancellor of the
Exchequer for all those years?
So what does this means for our networked services? What does it mean for those Web 2.0 services many of us
know and love?
It now seems a long time since I used the line “People say Google may go out of business, but banks could also
go out of business. But we don’t put our savings under the mattress just in case this happens “. That later evolved
to “People say Google may go out of business, but, as we know, banks also go out of business. But we don’t put
our savings under the mattress as we know this has happened“. Should we now be saying “Google services have
gone out of business – look at Jaiku, for example. I’ve already moved my data to the safety of my institution.
You’re foolhardy if you don’t do likewise.“?
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 146 of 616
Well if you work at London Metropolitan University you’re probably more concerned about the sustainability of
your own position and your institution rather than Britain’s economic woes. As described on the UCU Web site
“London Metropolitan University has recently had a cut of £18 million in its teaching budget and HEFCE has
confirmed that it intends to ‘claw back’ £38 million in past funding as a result of inaccurate returns on student
completion rates“.
But to shrug our shoulders and say “we’ll all doomed – not just economically, but also with global warning” is a
defeatist attitude I don’t go along with.
I’ll be giving some thought about what I think we should be doing (in the context of exploiting Web 2.0 service
to support the aims of our institutions). But I’d welcome suggestions from others? Are any institutions making
any strategic decisions in this area? After all, we were warned about the implications for higher education last
August by HEFCE’s John Selby.
Filed in General, Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(5)
Do You Want The Good News Or The Bad News About Jaiku?
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
A service announces that the software is to be made available under an open source licence. That’s good news,
isn’t it?
A company announces that one of its is to be withdrawn. That’s bad news, isn’t it?
But what if a service makes both announcements in the same press release. How should we react to the news?
That’s the dilemma which uses of the Jaiku micro-blogging service are faced with following Google’s
announcement: “Changes for Jaiku and Farewell to Dodgeball and Mashup Editor“. Vic Gundotra, Vice
President, Engineering gave a positive spin to this announcement “we are in the process of porting Jaiku over to
Google App Engine. After the migration is complete, we will release the new open source Jaiku Engine project on
Google Code under the Apache License“. He then went on to add that “While Google will no longer actively
develop the Jaiku codebase, the service itself will live on thanks to a dedicated and passionate volunteer team of
Googlers“.
Some commenters focussed on the move to an open source licence (e.g. “Jaiku is going open source on Google
App Engine“) whilst other headlines were more negative (”Google kills Jaiku“). For me, however, the interesting
aspect of this news is how it should help to move the discussion on beyond simplistic cliches and perceptions.
A couple of articles struck me as particularly interesting. An article published in The Enquisitr entitled “Google
Massacre: Google Closes Jaiku, Dodgeball, Notebook, Catalog Search; Google Video Downgraded” felt that
“The cut to Jaiku puts what was once a promising platform out of its misery. Since acquiring Jaiku, Google has
all but ignored the service, culminating in a weekend long and seemingly unnoticed downtime in August.”
Meanwhile a Techcrunch article entitled “Jaiku Founder: ‘We’re Not Dying, We’re Morphing’” has generated
a lively discussion on Google’s motivations for this announcement. I needed to read the statement that “But few
people seem to care that handing out the code to the open source community and starting the ‘Jaiku Engine’
project is actually great news for companies, groups and individuals who were looking to roll their own,
decentralized microsharing / lifestreaming applications, initiatives we’ve seen pop up here and there already” in
order to make sense of it.
But the comment that “If the code that Google is releasing only makes it possible for you to run “Jaiku Engine”
only on Google’s App Engine, then it is not open enough. I have the feeling that this will be the case.” is
intriguing. Are Google buying software such as Jaiku in order to ensure they will run on their platform engine
before making the source code available to others in the belief that the big money is to be made in providing the
platform and not the application.
Now isn’t this the approach which has proved so profitable for Microsoft over the past 20 years? And, if so, isn’t
Jaiku just a pawn in a much bigger game? But on the other hand if you’re simply a user of such services, maybe
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 147 of 616
you don’t care about issues such as ownership and open source. And, after all, it’s the users who ultimately
determine whether a service will be used or note, not the developers.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Jaiku | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (7)
From Web Accessibility 2.0 to Web Adaptability
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
OzeWAI 2009
The opportunity to escape the depths of a cold January in the UK to give the opening talk at the OzeWAI 2009
conference was too good to miss. So last week’s trip to La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia provided me
with the opportunity to go into the mountains for a barbecue, go to the beach, take a ride along the Great Ocean
Road, see the koalas and kangaroos and try the local Cooper’s IPA (which needs to be rolled before drinking, I
discovered).
From Web Accessibility 2.0 to Web Adaptability (1.0)
But I had to earn my supper (the goat at the barbie) and so as well as giving the presentation on “From Web
Accessibility 2.0 to Web Adaptability (1.0)” I took part actively in the conferences discussions (and drinking). I
have also made the slides available on Slideshare (which is embedded below).
[slideshare id=880257&doc=from-web-accessibility-20-to-web-adaptability-101632&w=425]
The talk seemed to go down well – and I was particularly pleased that when I sat down after my talk and
refreshed the Twitterfon application on my iPod Touch it provided me with instant feedback on the talk from two
of the participants at the conference. RuthEllison told me that she “@briankelly enjoyed your presentation this
morning about a holistic approach to accessibility #ozewai” and scenariogirl also showed some Australian
warmth: “@briankelly Fantastic talk this morning, I will come up and say hi at lunch “.
The talk was an update on recent papers and presentations and contains much of the material I used in a talk on
“Holistic Approaches To Web Accessibility” which I blogged about recently. I therefore won’t expand on the
ideas and approaches which I explained in my talk. Rather I want to discuss the accessibility of the talk itself.
Accessibility of Talks at Conferences
As I’ve been doing for a couple of years now, the slides are made available under a Creative Commons licence.
In addition, as I’ve also been doing for some time the slides are available on Slideshare. These approaches
provide a number of benefits:
Creative Commons Licence:
• The content can be reused by others by minimising legal barriers to their reuse.
• The content can be preserved by others by minimising legal barriers to their preservation.
• The content can be integrated with other content (e.g. ‘mashed up’) by minimising legal barriers to their
preservation.
Use of Slideshare:
• The content can be reused by others by using a service which allows the content to be embedded in third
party services.
• The content can be commented on and annotated.
• The content can be tagged to facilitate discovery.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 148 of 616
Over the past few months I have also been making use of a Flip video camera to record the talks I give at
conferences. A video of the talk is now available on Blip.TV and embedded below. The video can also be
accessed from the UKOLN Web site, which also provides links to a variety of resources associated with the talk,
including the PowerPoint slide, a HTML version of the slides, the AVI master of the video and links related to the
presentation.
[blip.tv ?posts_id=1712779&dest=-1]
Discussion
But what benefits can the provision of videos of such talks provide? Using Web 2.0 video sharing services such as
Blip.TV (or Google Video, Vimeo, etc.) can clearly provide similar benefits to those provided by Slideshare – and
sharing a talk is often even more beneficial than simply sharing slides, I would argue. And if I reflect on the
underlying purposes behind my talk I think I would suggest:
• To describe an approach (to Web accessibility) which I think addresses some of the limitations in current
approaches.
• To seek to gain feedback on the ideas.
• To encourage others to make use of this approach.
The video helps with all of these purposes: the video can help to provide a better understanding than would be
provided by simply viewing the slides. And despite the hard work which has gone into the various peer-reviewed
papers which underpins the presentation, I’d be the first to admit that papers written for scholarly publications
aren’t necessarily easy to understand.
And Web 2.0 video sharing services can also facilitate feedback and reuse of the content. So if anyone would like
to embed the video in their own Web resources (to share with others; to comment on; to critique; etc.) then I
would encourage this.
But, and there is a but, is the video itself accessible? In the final panel session at OzeWAI 2009 I argued that the
OzeWAI 2010 conference should be an’ amplified conference’, with the talks being recorded and made freely
available for use (and reuse) by others. And in response to a question as to whether it would be affordable to
provide captioning for such videos, I argued that this may not also be needed. In UK legislation, for example, we
are required to take reasonable measures to ensure that people with disabilities aren’t differentiated against
unfairly. I feel that providing slides, audio and videos at conferences can now be done reasonably easily, but
captioning is an expensive process. And providing a variety of alternatives (slides, videos, links to papers, links to
resources) can enrich the impact of and access to the underling ideas of talks given at conferences, including
access for people with a range of disabilities.
Lisa Herod (scenariogirl) summarised the discussions on the Twitter back-channel thus:
Is it better to have some content or no content at all if some content == partial accessibility? Discuss.
#ozewai09 4:43 AM Jan 23rd
What’s your view? Should I remove the embedded Slideshare and Blip.TV resources from this post as they don’t
conform with accessibility guidelines? Or should my organisation request that I remove them as they could be
liable?
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged ozewai, ozewai2009 |
Permalink | Edit | Comments (14)
Growing Blog
Monday, January 26th, 2009
I’ve just noticed that on 13th January 2009 the UK Web Focus was included in Wordpress.com’s list of the top
growing blogs.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 149 of 616
It’s been a while (over a year) since the blog was included in this list. I thought it would be interesting to see
when the blog had been included in such daily lists. It seems that Wordpress.com provides a search interface for
the blogs it hosts, and this helped my to find record of the occasions when my blog was in the list of growing
blogs. The details were:
• 13 Jan 2009: No. 13 in list
• 8 Jan 2008: No. 78 in list
• 3 Apr 2007: No. 11 in list
• 20 Mar 2007: No. 26 in list
• 7 Feb 2007: No. 81 in list
• 15 Dec 2006: No. 1 in list
• 20 Nov 2006: No. 73 in list
There was also one occasion when a specific blog post was found to be one of the most widely read posts in a 24-
hour period: the post on “UK Universities on Facebook” published on 9th November 2007.
These metrics may be of interest to those who feel that there is a need for objective and measurable criteria for
determining the effectiveness of blogs – although, as will as Web statistics, remember the mantra hat there are
lies, dammed lies and Web statistics
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
You Don't Blog? You Don't Tweet? Next Applicant, Please!
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
Although I don’t feel that everyone should necessarily publish a blog, make use of Twitter or, indeed, give
presentations or appear on YouTube or Google Video, I do feel that these can be skills which will be valuable for
many information professionals and software developers at a time of economic difficulties.
And if that short-term project fails to receive continued funding how should staff ensure that they can continue to
find employment in the job market? I would argue that having demonstrable skills in making use of a range of
Web 2.0 technologies may well help.
This might include publishing a blog (which can demonstrate good written communications skills), creating and
editing content in wiki tools such as Wikipedia (demonstration of collaborative working), using micro-blogging
tools such as Twitter (the ability to interact with other users, including those you may not have met), using social
sharing tools such as del.icio.us (as awareness of the benefits of sharing resources using popular services) and
social networking services such as Facebook (all of the above together with an understanding of privacy and other
ethical issues). And of course as well as having skills in use of such social networking tools, having a community
of peers may well also be valuable in a new job. Hmm, will:
“You mean to tell me you worked in a library and you only ever used email and a word processor? You used
a Web browser but never used an RSS reader? You contributed to a newsletter but never published a blog?
Thank you for your interest in out company. Next candidate please.“
be the approach that employers will take when theree is a large pool of information professionals to chose from?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (6)
Are Your PDFs Conformant?
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
I’ve never been much of a fan of the PDF format. Back in the early days of the Web I had hoped that the
proprietary PDF format would be replaced by HTML and CSS. Back then there was an expectation that CSS
would be developed to provide the fine control over page layout that is available using word processing and DTP
applications. The development of the Document Object Model (DOM) for HTML/XML various also promised to
deliver an environment in which such resources could be interrogated and manipulated in ways which would not
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 150 of 616
be possible with more monolithic resources such as PDFs. And finally HTML and CSS provided accessibility
benefits not available in PDF.
However over the years it became apparent that HTML/CSS wouldn’t provide such fine layout control. And we
found that HTML as used in the real world tended to be a structural mess, sometimes referred to as ‘tag soup’.
We also discovered that in many cases users preferred PDFs, especially for resources which designed as printed
documents.
And last year PDF became an ISO standard, following on from the standardisation of PDF/A as an archival
format.
So PDF is now an open standard, is suitable for archival purposes, has widespread support, accessible PDFs can
now be created – and there is also an Adobe SDK which supports the development of applications to create and
process PDF files.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? But in practice, do PDF files actually conform to the PDF standard? And although PDF
files can be accessible, in practice do the PDF files which are produced in normal work flow processes actually
comply with accessible PDF guidelines?
I recently searched for PDF validation tools. I found that a number of tools were available, many of which were
expensive to purchase. I made use of one free email-based tools (Validatepdfa) and used it to report on the
conformance of a couple of PDF files for recent peer-reviewed papers which I had submitted to journal /
conference organisers. Although these files may have conformed with the publisher’s layout and house style
requirements, I found the tool found quite a number of error As you can see the error messages aren’t particualrly
helpful and it is difficult to see how such errors can be remedied:
Issues addressed (1) File structure Incorrect delimiter used for indirect object 340 0
Issues addressed (2) File structure Incorrect delimiter used for indirect object 370 0
Issues addressed (3) File structure Missing ID in trailer dictionary
…
Issues addressed (118) Fonts Font ‘TrebuchetMS-Bold’ was successfully substituted and embedded
Issues addressed (119) Fonts CID font subset without CIDSet
Issues addressed (120) Fonts CIDToGIDMap has been successfully embedded in Type2 font
LHCKAJ+SymbolMT.
Issues addressed (121) Fonts CID font subset without CIDSet
I then used the Adobe Acrobat software to report on any accessibility problems with the papers. I used this tool to
analyse all of my peer-reviewed papers which I have written in the past 10 years – and found that none of the
papers actually conformed with Adobe’s accessibility guidelines.
The error messages provided in Adobe Acrobat were mostly helpful and it seemed that one consistent problem
was the lack of a language to describe the contents of the document. Fortunately Adobe Acrobat does allow some
of the accessibility problems to be fixed with the software – so I assigned the language English to all of the
documents. Some of my papers now do conform with PDF accessibility guidelines (at least as far as automated
checking tools can detect) – but the documents which had been uploaded to the University of Bath’s institutional
repository a few months ago will be the non-accessible versions. There are issue about the workflow processes for
uploading papers to institutional repositories: who should have a responsibility for ensuring compliance with
guidelines; at what stage should appropriate metadata be added; who should ensure that the metadata is correct;
what tools can be used to create and maintain such metadata; what level of detail should be provided; how do we
ensure that the metadata isn’t corrupted during workflow processes; etc. Did you really think that using PDF was
easy?
I suspect that most people aren’t particularly interested in conformance of such resources with PDF standards and
accessibility guidelines – although it was reassuring to see the post on”Survey on malformed PDFs?” on the DCC
blog.
But if we are serious about the importance of standards, particularly in the context of digital preservation, and if
we are serious about the accessibility of digital resources, we will need to ensure that our workflow practices
result in resources on our Web sites and institutional repositories which are conformant.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 151 of 616
Or perhaps strict conformance with standards and accessibility guidelines is over-rated. Should we simply
acknowledge that the ease of creation of PDF resources is key to the creation of such resources and adding
additional steps into the workflow processes will add unnecessary complexities and barriers?
Filed in Addressing, standards | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (6)
Risk Management – the JISC infoNET Perspective
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
I’ve previously written about the need to adopt a risk management approach to the use of Web 2.0 services. This
was something I started doing back in 2006, when I wrote a risk assessment page which covered use of a variety
of Web 2.0 services which were used to support the IWMW 2006 event.
I’ve an interest in further developing a framework for the effective exploitation of Web 2.0 service and clearly the
risks management approach should form an important part of such a framework. So I found it very useful to read
the JISC infoNET Risk Management infoKit.
As pointed out in the introduction to this document “In education, as in any other environment, you can’t decide
not to take risks: that simply isn’t an option in today’s world. All of us take risks and it’s a question of which risks
we take“.
So we can’t avoid risk-taking. And yet the document suggests that public-sector organisations – which will
include the educational sector – tend to be very risk averse, as shown in the spectrum of attitudes to risk-taking:
There is therefore a challenge which we need to face, especially if we are seeking to be innovative. And an
important aspect of this challenge will be cultural change. Now many of the early adopters of Web innovations
might feel that this view of being risk adverse isn’t applicable to them. But my interest is in mainstream adoption
of innovative services and this requires a willingness to take risks associated with changes. And the document
provides examples of people who are likely to be adverse stakeholders:
• People who fear loss of their jobs
• People who will require re-training
• People who may be moved to a different department/team
• People who may be required to commit resources to the project
• People who fear loss of control over a function or resources
• People who will have to do their job in a different way
• People who will have to carry out new or additional functions
• People who will have to use a new technology
So what should the early adopters and developers do if they wish to see innovations which they feel will benefit
the organisation be adopted more widely? As the document points out “At the risk of labouring a very obvious
point you don’t create risks by identifying them. You are simply revealing them so that you can do something
about them”. So one thing we should be doing is being open about risks and failures (as I have done recently in
describing the failure of Squirl and Pownce). But we should also be open about the failures of in-house
developments and project work, too.
The JISC infoNET infoKit goes on to list five stages in its approach to risk management: risk identification;
qualitative risk analysis; quantative risk analysis; risk response planning and risk monitoring and control. In
further blog posts I intend to further explore approaches to risk management in a Web 2.0 context. I’d be
interested to hear if anyone else is taking a similar approach within their institution.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 152 of 616
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
What Makes a Good API?
Monday, January 19th, 2009
I previously mentioned “What Makes A Good API?” work which my colleague Marieke Guy is working on.
Marieke set up a very brief research survey asking developers about use of APIs (both providing and consuming).
The survey (which was first announced on Marieke’s Good APIs blog and subsequently picked up by Tony Hirst
and Mia Ridge) is due to be close tomorrow (21 January). So if you have an interest in having input into a
document which will provide advice and examples of best practices we’d encourage you to complete the survey.
If, however, you’ve missed the deadline, feel free to add comments and suggestions to this post.
Marieke and myself will also be attending the second day (10 February 2009) of the JISC Developer Happiness
Days event. Owen Stephens has already mentioned this event on his blog, and he picked up on the booking form’s
categories of participants: “developer / hacker / scriptkitty / user / uber-user / usability expert”. Now I’m not a
developer or hacker (although some of my best friends are). But no matter which ctaegoigy you are in, we’d
welcome your thoughts on good APIs. And if you are planning on attending the event, it would be good to meet
up with you.
Filed in Development | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
500 Posts and Counting
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
This is the 500th post which has been published on the UK Web Focus blog since it was launched on 1st
November 2006. That comes to an average of over 4 posts per week since the launch just over 2 years ago.
I’m pleased that I’ve maintained a consistent level of productivity. I made a decision shortly after the blog was
launched to use it for sharing my thoughts and ideas, including those which were at an early stage of
development, rather than using the blog purely for dissemination of well thought-out ideas or completed actions
and work activities. And I’m pleased at the level of and quality of responses I’ve received, even to ideas which
have been at a very early stage of development.
I’m also pleased to see that the numbers of visits to the blog continues to grow, with a particular rise in the last six
months of 2008 (although, as I’ve commented previously, these figures don’t always reflect reality).
Blog usage up to January 2009
But what of the future? In order to try and provide slightly more focus for this blog I will be using UKOLN’s
recently-launched Cultural Heritage blog to write about topics which are more directly related to use of the Web
by (public) libraries, museums and archives and will be using the JISC PoWR blog to write about issues related to
the preservation of Web resources. I intend to continue to write regular posts on this blog on topics such as Web
2.0, standards and accessibility – and I’ll continue to invite your feedback and comments.
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 153 of 616
"SOA Is Dead"
Friday, January 16th, 2009
“SOA is dead; long live services” announced Anne Thomas Manes recently. In her obituary for SOA she wrote:
SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic
recession. SOA is survived by its offspring: mashups, BPM, SaaS, Cloud Computing, and all other
architectural approaches that depend on “services”.
Her post has attracted a lot of comments, mostly but not all in agreement with her view.
Now I can recall a few years ago there was a lot of excitement about SOA. In retrospect, however, much of this
excitement seemed to come from funding bodies rather than developers or users – perhaps the benefits of SOA
(reduced costs and greater flexibility) appealed particularly to those responsible for funding IT development
rather than those involved in the development work itself.
But is SOA dead, I wonder? Or has it just been over-hyped and applied in inappropriate areas – I’ve heard it
suggested, for example, that SOA makes sense in the context of enterprise applications, but not for networked
applications.
What do you think?
Filed in Development | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
What I Would Like From The BS8878 Accessibility Code of Practice
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
I recently expressed reservations about the approaches being taken in the BS 8878 draft code of practice on
Building Accessible Experiences for Disabled People. But I do feel that such a Code of Practice is desirable.
However rather than the current approach which places the main emphasis on conformance with WCAG, together
with an inappropriate reliance on UAAG tools (which organisations providing Web sites have no control over)
and a reliance on use of ATAG-conformant tools (which ignores the complexity of workflows, the increasing
diversity of file formats and the growth in importance of user-generate content) I feel the Code of Practice should
provide a framework for a user-focussed approach to accessibility, which provides a content for use of good
practices for developing widely accessible Web sites, such as WCAG guidelines, usability guidelines, etc.
The BS 8878 draft code of practice already includes much valuable advice, especially on the need to engage users
with disabilities in both the design and testing phases of Web site development and on the need for organisations
to provide accessibility policies. These sections should be provided at the start of the document and not relegated
towards the end, as they currently are.
Once the need to include people with disabilities in the planning and development stages and the need for
organisations to explicitly state their accessibility policies, only then should the code of practice include
implementation details. And rather than repeat the advice included in WCAG, I feel the document should require
that such recommendations should only be used if they are proven to work in their intended context of use and
they can be implemented and maintained with reasonable levels of expenditure of resources.
And finally I feel that the code of practice should seek to be future-proofed, and recognise that technical
innovations are likely to take place which may enhance accessibility of services although infringing guidelines
developed in the past.
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged BS8878 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (1)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 154 of 616
A Framework For Making Use of Facebook
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
Many organisations are looking at ways in which they can make use of the Facebook social network. The Open
University, for example, provides details about its Facebook page (which, as I described last year seems to be one
of the most popular University pages available in Facebook). Jo Alcock wrote a guest blog post in which she
described how the University of Wolverhampton is using Facebook – and she’s written a post on her blog in
which she describes feedback she’s received from “students who feel it is a good way to be kept up-to-date with
Learning Centre services and resources as they use Facebook regularly“. And I could go on to describe other
ways in which Facebook is being used – as Jo commented in her blog post “It certainly seems that the use of
Facebook in libraries is becoming more mainstream“.
And yet others seem to argue that institutions shouldn’t be making use of Facebook. Stephen Downes, for
example, responded to my post entitled Facebook Saves Lives by arguing that “You don’t need Facebook to send
out appeals; it is merely one more channel in a universe full of channels ” before going on to conclude that
“There is only one context in which Facebook should not be avoided: the current one, in which there is no decent
alternative.” And Paul Walk in a post entitled Why I suppose I ought to become a Daily Mail reader was
dismissive of Facebook’s popularity although admitting that he “wouldn’t stand in the way of people wanting to
access Facebook“. Mike Ellis responded to Paul’s blog post and argued that the scale of Facebook’s user base
cannot be ignored: “100 million people is an enormous chunk to ignore for the sake of some niche argument about
content ownership and portability which *those same users* couldn’t give a crap about“. In response Paul stated
that he is not “arguing that we should ignore FaceBook – it has its uses for millions of people. I’m arguing that it
does not follow that we should necessarily advocate it’s use to support teaching and learning in HE for example.
There are reasons why it might not be appropriate.”
Paul is quite right – there will be times when Facebook will not be appropriate. But I am more interested in
exploring ways in which Facebook can be used to provide useful services whilst minimising the associated costs
and dangers.
I have previously suggested that one approach to minimising the time and effort needed to provide content within
Facebook for use by others is to simply provide access to content which is already available elsewhere on the
Web. This is an approach I use with RSS readers, Twitter, Slideshare, del.icio.us and other Facebook applications
automatically surfacing content within Facebook which is created elsewhere. I must admit that I had thought that
this approach was obvious, but when I ran a workshop up in Edinburgh last year I found at least one organisation
which was re-keying event details into Facebook. No! Let’s use RSS to syndicate such content, please!
But over on Wendell Dryden’s qualities – communities – literacies blog Wendell recently pointed out that not
all Facebook applications behave in a benign manner. Wendell mentioned how I had “suggested a work-around
which would allow users to harness Fb’s tremendous networking capabilities while still providing maximum
access to content: host the content elsewhere, and then provide a link or feed into Fb” but described his
experiences in using this approach with the Multiply photographic sharing service. However due to “Multiply’s
somewhat complicated services structure” Wendell found that Multiply’s “smarmy behaviour” forced him into
advertising “a beautiful photo calendar” to friends and colleague with whom he wished to share resources.
Now for Wendell “the search goes on. I still want a non-Facebook, real-world social networking site where
learners I and can connect“. He feels that “Multiply’s too scammy. Yahoo’s lost at sea. This spring, I guess, I
need to take another look at Orkut“.
But I suspect he may be on a time-consuming quest – and as I pointed out recently, Orkut currently doesn’t appear
to have much to offer. And as I don’t use Multiple, Wendell’s specific concerns aren’t an issue for me. So for me
the issue is how we can exploit the potential of today’s market leader whilst mimising various dangers.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 155 of 616
Framework for Making Use of Facebook
I’d like to suggest that we might like to build a framework by considering the advantages and disadvantages of the
two (?) main stakeholders: the institution and the individual.
The first draft of this framework is illustrated. As can be seen use of the framework requires decision makers to
document the benefits to the organisation and the user, the associated risks, the costs and resource implications for
using the service and the missed opportunity costs of not using the service.
The framework requires that these issues are addressed within the context of the particular usage which is
envisaged. So rather than resorting to generic slogans about the service itself ( “it’s a walled garden”, “it’s
proprietary”, …) the discussion should focus on specific aims of the service and the way it is being used.
And finally there is a recognition that there will be prejudices and biases when using the framework, and
suggested that it is better if such biases are openly acknowledged.
Is this approach useful? Is it worth developing further?
Filed in Facebook | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (6)
What Is A Web Site?
Monday, January 12th, 2009
What is a Web site? Strange question, you many feel – surely everyone knows what a Web site is. Why would we
want to try and define what a Web site is?
And yet if you consider last year’s announcement that all Government Web sites must comply with WCAG AA
guidelines by December 2009, I think it becomes clear that a clear unambiguous and agreed definition is needed.
Otherwise how will the Government know which Web sites – the ones which don’t comply with accessibility
guidelines – should be closed down (as they have threatened to do).
Here are some thoughts as to may be meant by an organisation’s Web site:
The domain name: an organisation’s Web sites refers to Web sites for which the domain name is owned by
the organisation. So www.bath.ac.uk and foo.bath.ac.uk are the University of Bath’s Web sites.
The Web server: Or perhaps an organisation’s Web sites should refer to Web sites which are hosted on
Web server hardware which are owned by the University.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 156 of 616
But perhaps a organisation’s Web site may also need to be defined at a more detailed level.
The HTTP protocol: Perhaps an organisation’s Web site refers to resources which are served by the http:
(and https:) protocol schemes. If a resource is accessed via the ftp: protocol from an organisation’s FTP
server, isn’t this on the FTP site rather than the Web site? And clearly http protocol schemes such as
mailto: don’t really related to Web resources. This was an argument made recently by “Roland the
Headless Thompson Gunner” in a comment on this blog who felt that “Regarding the web as being
“anything addressable with a URI” is not a reasonable definition. A URI might be used to address a file on
an FTP server; do FTP servers now have to provide HTML versions of all their content? The FTP server in
question may even have existed before Web!“.
The file formats: Or perhaps policies on a Web site should relate only to native Web formats, such as
HTML. This was another argument made by “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” in a comment on this
blog when he argued “sticking content in a powerpoint file isn’t ‘putting it on the web’, it’s deciding not to
put it on the web”.
Some further complications arise when we consider the different ways on which Web sites are now being used.
Agreements on the meaning of the term ‘Web site’ might make sense if we are thinking about a Web site as an
informational resource, but may break in the context of a Web site as an application (Web-based email services,
for example). And what if a Web page contains resources which are embedded from third party Web sites (e.g. an
embedded YouTube video or embedded RSS content). Should the resources embedded from elsewhere be
regarded as part of the organisational Web site or not?
Now I intend to avoid falling into the trap of seeking to create another definition. Rather I’d point out that when
standards bodies and institutions develop policies which apply to Web sites, they need to appreciate that this term
can mean different things to different people.
DO you haved a clear understanding of what you mean by a ‘Web site’?
Filed in Accessibility | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (15)
BS 8878: Building Accessible Experiences for Disabled People
Friday, January 9th, 2009
The BS 8878 Draft Code of Practice on Building Accessible
Experiences for Disabled People
The draft BS 8878 code of practice on “Building Accessible Experiences for Disabled People” is currently open
for review, with the deadline for comments being 31 January 2009.
That’s great, you may think, we do need to have an agreed set of national guidelines which can help organisations
commissioning and developing accessible Web sites. And the tight deadline seems to indicate that the code of
practice will be out quickly.
Limitations of The Reviewing Process
Sadly, I feel, this isn’t the case. If you register to access the draft document (that’s right, you need to register not
only to give comments but also to view the document) you’ll see that the first set of comments (29 at the time of
writing) are very critical of the usability of the processes for accessing, reading and commenting on the document:
“Given that this is a draft code of practice for web accessibility, it’s astounding the lengths to which BSI has
gone to make this document inaccessible and difficult to follow.“
“it is appaling that the BSI should even think of publishing this information in a non-accessible format.
Clearly the BSI has no moral authority to recommend accessibility standards to anyone else“
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 157 of 616
“Accessing this document was the hardest web related task i had to do today. Comical when the goal was
reaching a web accessibility document.“
“Is this supposed to be a demonstration of how NOT to make web documents accessible?“
I had similar difficulties accessing the draft document – and I am an experienced Web user . But eventually I
discovered that there were MS Word and PDF versions of the document available which I printed out for reading
at home.
Flaws in the Content
Despite this draft Code of Practice supposedly being intended, I understand, to document agreed industry
achievable best practices the document simply requires use of the WAI model (WCAG, ATAG and UAAG)
despite the fact that, for example, the document itself acknowledging that “At the time of publication, no single
authoring tool that supports all ATAG priority 1 checkpoints is known“.
The document also seems to have a view of the Web as it was in the late 1990s – there is no recognition of the
diversity ways in which the Web is being used, the complex workflows, the importance of user generated content,
etc. There is also a failure to take into account the work of the research community in gathering evidence and
using such evidence to develop more achievable approaches to Web accessibility.
The latter part of the document is better, requiring organisations to develop and publicise accessibility policies
and involve people with disabilities in the planning and testing processes.
Dangers in its Implementation
There’s a danger, I feel, that this document will end up being published with the expectations that public sector
organisations, in particular, will be forced to implement such recommendations. And I am concerned that this will
be counter-productive – if there’s one thing that is worse that a lack of standards or codes of practice it’s severly
flawed standards and codes or practice, in my opinion.
The document states that “Organizations wishing to claim conformance with BS 8878 should do so in hard copy,
electronic media or any other medium“. Now although I don’t understand the structure of this sentence
(organisations must claim conformance in any medium – how could they not do so?) it is clear that there is an
expectation that organisations will state that they conform with the code of practice. Indeed the document goes on
to mandate that “In making such a claim, a business or organization should address all of the provisions of BS
8878“. OK, so organisations can’t simply choose parts of the specification which they conform to (such as the
reasonable and achievable parts of the document!)
What Next?
Now you may disagree with me. And whilst I would welcome further discussion on this topic, I would encourage
you to read the document first, and give your feedback to the BSI. You should bear in mind that the code of
practice will be updated before publication to refer to the newly published WCAG 2.0 guidelines. And as that
document makes it clear that the guidelines are format-independent, the principles will apply to, for example, MS
Word and PDF documents on Web sites as well as HTML resources. If you don’t feel it is likely that you’ll be
providing accessible PDF and MS Word resources on your institutional Web sites (including institutional
repositories) surely you should ask the BSI to revisit this document in order to describe more achievable goals.
Or to put it another way, is this code of practice intended to describe best practices which are achievable in the
complex Web environment in which we now live or a set of well-meaning aspirations which are unlikely to be
achievable in practice? And remember, if the code of practice is accepted in its current form the danger is that
institutional conformance with the code of practice (in its entirety, remember) will be required. And what will
then happen if existing services fail to conform? Will we see institutional repositories containing inaccessible
PDF documents being removed from service in other that institutions can claim conformance?
Filed in Accessibility | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 158 of 616
JISC to Increase UKOLN Funding Significantly from 2009
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
UKOLN received a pleasing Christmas present recently, in the form of the JISC announcement of a significant
increase in our funding. As described in the press release “This increase is both a mark of confidence in the work
of UKOLN but also a recognition of the increasing importance of investment in a national e-infrastructure to
support the UK’s global competitiveness in science, research and innovation“.
Sarah Porter, Head of Innovation, JISC commented that “UKOLN has been central to the development of JISC
digital information programmes and services; it gives me great pleasure to announce this investment that will
help support the sector to respond to emerging requirements for research and learning and the opportunities that
new technologies offer“.
Now that’s a great start to the New Year And I should acknowledge the contributions made by my colleagues
at UKOLN.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
Remember Orkut?
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
In a post on Salesman, Salesman… Why don’t you sell me something…Wendell Dryden described problems he’d
encountered using the Multiply.com service from within Facebook. Wendell has still not found the ideal solution:
“So, the search goes on. I still want a non-Facebook, real-world social networking site where learners I and can
connect” and then concluded “Multiply’s too scammy. Yahoo’s lost at sea. This spring, I guess, I need to take
another look at Orkut.”
Now who remembers Orkut, Google’s social networking service?
As described in Wikipedia “Orkut is a social networking service which is run by Google and named after its
creator, an employee of Google – Orkut Büyükkökten“. The service was launched in 2004, initially by invitation
only. And it is now the most visited website in Brazil and second most visited site in India.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? And
I subscribed to the service shortly after it was launched. But what can it offer in 2009?
Logging on for the first time in ages I found the various discussion groups (forums) which I’d subscribed to after I
joined, which included one on Libraries. And what did I find? Well not much discussion – and the odd spam
comment, as illustrated. Similarly the Web Developers and Designers forum, which has over 3,500
members, seemed to contain mostly messages advertising Web design companies.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 159 of 616
But Orkut now provides more than just
discussion groups – it also provides access to Open Social applications. And looking at the list of applications
which I can add to my Orkut page I discovered, on the first page of applications, that I can add Photobuzz to
“Make [my] friends smile! Animate their photos with Hugs, kisses, hearts and much more“, Superscrap to “Send
christmas scraps and wish merry christmas to your friends. Dozens of new templates created to each occasion.
Handwrite your personal message and superscrap [my] friends. True friends deserve a super-scrap everyday!” or
use an ‘educational’ applications such as IQ Test to “Take a free 15 minute intelligence test to find out your IQ
and compare it with [my] friends to see who is the most intelligent“. You can even install Slapster which
promotes itself with the summary: “Don’t just poke your friends, slap’em around with Slapster! Select your
friend’s orkut profile picture and slap it around as hard as you can with this fun application!“. This will be an
undoubted favourite for Facebook users. Not!
Does Orkut have anything to offer me? I don’t think so. It seems to have been abandoned by the 35 colleagues I
had befriended. And what’s the point of a social network if nobody is using it? It looks like Facebook will
continue to provide the environment for me to keep in touch with friends and colleagues – despite the criticisms
which this service seems to attract.
Filed in Social Networking | Tagged Orkut | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (5)
Thoughts On Erik Duval's Post On Standards
Monday, January 5th, 2009
In a post entitled “Standards for Technology Enhanced Learning” Erik Duval gives his thoughts on the issues
related to the standards which have a role to play in providing technology enhanced learning.
Erik feels that:
1. The main issue is no longer that we do not have sufficient standards. Rather, we have maybe too many and,
more importantly, we don’t make use of them in very advanced ways… Tools are lacking or too much let
the standard shine through, rather than focusing on the user experience.
2. We should avoid continuing the ‘not invented here’ approach that has made us develop learning specific
standards when there may be quite appropriate standards already out there or being developed.
3. Standards should not be research oriented but rely on proven practice. Of course, standards enable
deployment at large scale, and therefor make it possible to do research on global infrastructures.
4. Standards enable openness, and that enables innovation – that is another way for standards to be relevant to
research.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 160 of 616
I would not only agree with Erik’s comments, but suggest that they are relevant beyond the e-learning
environment.
Erik’s comment that “Standards should not be research oriented but rely on proven practice” does, I feel, need to
be reflected upon by the research community and by organisations such as W3C. I’ve comment previously on the
failure of W3C standards to have any significant impact, and I feel that this is due to a failure to take into account
practical issues in preference to developing innovative or elegant solutions. And I feel that there may be problems
with funding streams which seek to encourage the development of new standards (which will, of course, promise
a whole set of rich possibilities) at the expense of encouraging greater uptake of standards which are already
available (and failing to exploit the rich possibilities which bright them abpout in the first place).
Erik’s suggestion that there’s a need to “rely on proven practice” does, to me, emphasise the need to engage with
the software developer community. In the past recommendations of standards had been taken by policy-makers,
often with little involvement of those engaging in using such standards. But now, I feel, this is beginning to
change. And I’m particularly pleased to see that JISC are sponsoring Developer Happiness Days in February
2009. I hope we will see more of such events – and that these will provide an opportunity to share proven
practice. And if the proof demonstrates that standards don’t work or are too complex to use, that will have been
valuable in itself.
And finally when Erik “We should avoid continuing the ‘not invented here’ approach” I would suggest that we
need to ensure that standards evolve slowly, with only minor fixes – and the fifth edition of the Extensible
Markup Language (XML) 1.0 provides a good example of this. It’s good that we aren’t at XML 5.0, with a new
generation of tools needing to be developed to support each new version.
Filed in standards | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
Revisiting Web Server Usage Statistics
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
Back in April 2008 I published a blog post entitled “The Rise and Fall of Apache?” which described the sharp
decline in use of the Apache Web server software – and the corresponding growth in use of Microsoft’s server
software.
This led to a debate as to whether the figures gave an accurate picture, with Mike Nolan, Phil Cunningham,
Stephen Downes and Phil Wilson pointing out some flaws in the statistics, outlining some of the complexities of
the server environment and commenting on another set of figures which showed that the numbers of active Web
sites using Apache was still growing, unlike the numbers for Microsoft.
Well the figures six months later show that the relative numbers of Web servers provided by Apache and
Microsoft have stabilised, as shown below.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 161 of 616
And I’m sure we will also find that these figures will continue to be interpreted in various ways, with marketing
departments for Microsoft and Apache (if such a beast exists) and proponents for the two products using the same
data to justify their own preferences.
But I also suspect that we’ll see similar responses being taken to graphs for a whole host of Web 2.0 services,
including services often mentioned in this blog such as Twitter, Facebook, Slideshare, etc. Indeed a tweet by Dion
Hitchcliffe alerted me to a post on The Poverty of Social Networks and the Death of Web 2.0 which argued that
“It is safe now to say that “Web 2.0″ is dead. The evidence is irrefutable …“.
We do need to monitor such trends, especially when we are using services to support important activities. But
let’s remember that the discussion often starts with the figures. The evidence is often not irrefutable and open to
discussion and debate – as many of the comments to Peter Schwartz’s post on the death of Web 2.0 has
demonstrated.
Filed in Web Server | Tagged Netcraft | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (1)
W3C's Financial Difficulties Affects Their Validators
Sunday, December 28th, 2008
Molly Holzschlag recently wrote a blog post entitled W3C Validators in Jeopardy in which she pointed out that
“As many folks who follow the W3C are aware, financial and bureaucratic issues have challenged the
organization for many years“. Molly went on to describe how “It’s come to pass that the funding necessary to
maintain and grow validation services at the W3C has become overwhelming to the W3C’s operational budget.
As such, the validators are in jeopardy.”
A donation system has been set up which is described on the W3C Validator Donation Program page.
As Molly says “we’ve had the use of validation tools via the W3C for so long and without cost has been a
significant component in the teaching and evangelism surrounding Web standards and best practices“.
But who will have the resources to support this request? And if funding for the validators is uncertain, what next?
Is W3C in a position in which the long term sustainability of its standards can be guaranteed? And didn’t we feel
that open standards brought about freedom from the uncertainties of commercial pressures? It’s time for the risk
assessment of standards organisations, I feel, and not just the providers of networked services.
Filed in standards | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
Facebook Saves Lives
Thursday, December 25th, 2008
“But let’s be honest – not all Facebook applications allow data to be exported. But need this be a overriding
reason why Facebook should be avoided?” I asked recently. And Stephen Downes’s response was unequivocal –
“Yes“.
Now Stephen is an intelligent man and I’m a regular reader of his blog. But I feel that he’s wrong in his
seemingly fixed position on Facebook – and note I say ’seemingly’ as Stephen is a Facebook contact of mine!
And when I read the article in the Guardian recently on how “Facebook is new tool in transplant donor appeals”
which described how “Facebook users are coming to the aid of children who need life-saving transplants“ it
struck me that if I or a friend or family member needed a transplant, I wouldn’t have a blinkered view on the
mechanism used to provide the solution.
But it’s true that their are issues which need to be acknowledged and decisions which need to made for
organisations which are thinking about making use of Facebook – and, let’s be honest, many organisations do
make use of Facebook.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 162 of 616
Richard Akerman (who, like Stephen Downes is from Canada – the country which has the highest Facebook
usage) touched on the complexities in a recent comment on my blog post:
Facebook is quite a complex example of a walled garden unfortunately. In a way, it’s more like a one-way
mirrored garden. You can easily bring content *in*, but it’s hard to let content *out*. And when we talk
about wall, it has a couple meanings: 1) can’t be seen unless you’re logged in 2) can’t be indexed by Google
(more important to me than #1). I guess the main issue I have with Facebook is it’s a garden where the plots
have no markers. *Some* things are indexed on the public web. Others are not. *Within* Facebook, some
kinds of content (e.g. notes) are very hard (impossible?) to search.
From this perspective we might regard Facebook as being like paper – it’s easy to get digital content into paper
content but more difficult to get it back to digital format again, especially if you want to get it into a rich digital
format. And Facebook, like paper, isn’t easy to search.
Perhaps, also like paper, we should be less fixated with having an institutional ‘position’ on Facebook. And yet
the development community does seem to want to continually discuss the problems with Facebook. I can
appreciate the need for user education on best practices for making use of Facebook (I was surprised when
recently I learnt that one museum was creating content about forthcoming events in Facebook rather than
surfacing an RSS feed of its events). Andf there’s a need to understand the terms and conditions – not many,
people, for example, seem to have read that “Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content;
rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all
of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User
Content“.
Last year the evidence showed us that “A student campaign using the social networking website Facebook has forced a multinational bank into a U-turn over
charges” and now Facebook seems to be saving lives. And maybe it can attract potential students to a university or
visitors to an exhibition. Is this so bad?
And to revisit the question “”not all Facebook applications allow data to be exported. But need this be a
overriding reason why Facebook should be avoided?” perhaps the answer has to be “It all depends on the
context”.
An answer which reflects a moral relativism which I suspect the Irish catholic priests who were responsible for
my education when I was young would not agree with – particularly on Christmas day. But lets leave the moral
simplicities to the past . And remember that as Kathryn Greenhill recently pointed out on this blog “… the recent
change to the Facebook video platform – which allows the user to upload a video to Facebook and then embed it
for public viewing outside Facebook – may be indicate a bit of experimentation with the usual “lock out”
approach ??” Perhaps we should be rejoicing for the sinner who has repented
Merry Xmas to all.
Filed in Facebook | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
14 UK Information Professionals to Follow on Twitter?
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
A tweet from Owen Stephens alerted me to the news that “TFPL blog has 14 info professionals to follow on
Twitter Inc. @andypowe11, @paulmiller, @psychemedia, @briankelly, @karenblakeman“.
And yes, a post of the TFPL lists “14 UK information professionals to follow on Twitter” and goes on to suggest
that “If you are not on Twitter, and are fed up of listening to everyone go on it, here are 14 UK information
professionals whose tweets should be interesting enough to tempt you to dip your toes into the water“.
But this, to my mind, is missing the point of Twitter. You don’t follow someone on Twitter to listen to pearls of
wisdom; rather Twitter is about your community and your engagement with the community.
I made a similar comment in a post on the “Directory of (E-)Learning Professionals on Twitter” which described
“Jane’s list of “100+ (E-)Learning Professionals to follow on Twitter“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 163 of 616
Now if the blog post had mentioned the briefing documents we have recently published on micro blogs or the
various posts about Twitter on this blog then the post might have been more useful to the readers. But when, I
wonder, will blogs published by information professionals start to get Twitter?
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
Just What Is A "Walled Garden"?
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
You read comments, from time to time, dismissing a service because it’s a ‘walled garden’. And no further
discussion seems to be needed. It’s a walled garden. Period.
Except the research community is expected to challenge received wisdom and to be prepared to challenge
conventional thinking. So let me ask the question. What is a walled garden?
The entry in Wikipedia states that the expression “refers to a closed set or exclusive set of information services
provided for users (a method of creating a monopoly or securing an information system)“. The entry goes on to
state that the term “is in contrast to providing consumers access to the open Internet for content and e-
commerce“.
The examples of walled garden’s provided include the original AOL Service (”AOL started its business with
revenue-sharing agreements with certain information providers in their subscriber-only space“), many of the
initial set of services provided on WAP and Apple’s iPhone service.
But the definition is related primarily to phone and mobile devices – there is no suggestion that a Web-based
service can be a walled garden.
The Whatis.com service’s definition does however address a broader notion of a walled garden: “On the Internet,
a walled garden is an environment that controls the user’s access to Web content and services”.
It is interesting that this definition is not judgmental. The entry explains that “AOL UK’s Kid Channel established
a walled garden to prevent access to inappropriate Web sites” although the entry does goe on to describe how a
more common use of a walled garden is to protect business revenue: “a common reason for the construction of
walled gardens is for the profits they generate: vendors collaborate to direct consumer’s Internet navigation to
each others’ Web sites and to try to keep them from accessing the Web sites of competitors“.
A walled garden then, may be established to protect members of a community. So if an educational institution
installs software “to prevent access to inappropriate Web sites” it then will be providing a walled garden.
Similarly as the UK’s JISCMail has been established to support the UK’s higher and further education
communities an has policies which restrict use by people outside this community, we might also regard JISCMail
as being part of a walled garden.
But the term walled garden seems to be more commonly used in a derogatory fashion, especially when used in the
context of social networking services. But is Facebook, for example, really a walled garden? And if it is, then how
significant is this fact?
I’m assuming that the criticism of Facebook is based on the belief that you can add data to Facebook but you can’t
get it out again. Such criticisms could also be applied to Apple with its iPhone service: applications can only be
installed using Apple’s iStore service, unless you are willing to take the (possibly criminal) risk of ‘jailbreaking’
the device. And recently I’ve read an article published in the Register which argues that Apple [is] more closed
than Microsoft.
The good news for Facebook users, though, is that there are ways in which you can use the service without facing
such barriers, Unlike, say, the situation with mobile phones there don’t seem to be significant barriers to getting
your stuff into Facebook. There are, for example, a variety of ways in which blog posts can be incorporated into
Facebook. And many other Web 2.0 services (such as Twitter, Slideshare, ) also provide Facebook applications
which provide the convenience of allow their services to be used within the Facebook environment. And the data
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 164 of 616
held in such services can still be managed by the host service – this, for example, is the approach I take with the
UK Web Focus blog, which is managed in the Wordpress.com environment, but is also surfaced within Facebook.
But let’s be honest – not all Facebook applications allow data to be exported. but need this be a overriding reason
why Facebook should be avoided? After all when, in August 2007, students made use of Facebook which was
successful in forcing the HSBC to make a U-turn on its plans to introduce student charges (a story which was
picked up by the BBC and by many newspapers and bloggers) the important aspect was the exploitation of a
popular communications medium. Job successfully done, many of the students who were involved would
probably argue. And to suggest that they should wait until a social networking service which the twittering classes
would prefer is to miss the point.
What do you think a walled garden is? And how should we respond (as individuals and, perhaps, as educators and
policy makers) to the popularity of services which may (or may not) be classed as walled gardens?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (10)
An Alternative to Europeana?
Friday, December 19th, 2008
A tweet from Owen Stephens alerted me to a blog post from Lorcan Dempsey entitled “Das Bundesarchiv and
Wikimedia Commons“.
Lorcan’s blog post described the announcement from Das Bundesarchiv (German National Archive) and
Wikimedia Commons:
Starting on Thursday Dec 4, 2008, Wikimedia Commons will witness a massive upload of new
images. We are anticipating about 100,000 files from a donation from the German Federal Archive.
These images are mostly related to the history of Germany (including the German Democratic
Republic) and are part of a cooperation between Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive.
[Commons:Bundesarchiv - Wikimedia Commons]
Lorcan went on to add that “This is another interesting example of a major cultural organization putting
materials in an important web destination. Presumably there is some background context which explains why they
are going here rather than in the Flickr Commons which has been providing a venue for image collections from
several cultural institutions (most recently The National Library of New Zealand and the Imperial War
Museum).”
Indeed. Where should we provide access to such valuable cultural resources – Flickr Commons, Wikimedia
Commons or elsewhere?
In his tweet Owen concluded with the question “An alternative to Europeana?“. Could services such Flickr
Commons and Wikimedia Commons provide alternative access points to cultural resources? Or could depositing
such resources in these services as well as in centrally-funded services maximise the impact and use of such
resources – whilst also sharing the bandwidth demands which caused Europeana to crash on the day of its launch
(a topic, incidentally, which was addressed in some depth my my colleague Paul Walk)?
What do you think? Is the future centralised and managed by public institutions, open to the commercial
providers or a hybrid of the above? And if the hybrid approach appears to provide a safe compromise how do we
establish where the boundaries should be?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Dipity Breaks – And Is Then Fixed
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
Back in August 2008 I wrote about problems with the Squirl.info service – and despite the “It works!” message
I’m currently receiving it seems that the service is now no more, it’s an ex-service, it’s gone to meet its maker.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 165 of 616
In light of the credit crunch we might expect to hear of more Web 2.0 failures (although, of course, it may be that
it’s the more heavyweight traditional IT companies which fail to respond to changing market conditions). And
when I went to my Dipity timeline for my involvement in Web accessibility work and discovered that no data was
being displayed I wondered if the Dipity service was starting to break.
But rather than curse technology for failing to work I filled in the Feedback form on the Dipity Web site. And
within a couple of hours I received the following response from Zack Steinkamp:
Hi Brian –
There seemed to be a small glitch in our rendering system. I’ve cleared it out, and your timeline is whole
again.
Regards,
Zack Steinkamp
dipity.com
Now I’ve encountered many small glitches in services provided locally. And I have to admit that they aren’t all
resolved so quickly (these days the speedy response will tend to come from an automated fault reporting system).
So my thanks to Zack for responding so quickly. And not only that – I now have more faith in Dipity as I know
that they’re not only providing the service but also have an effective fault reporting and fixing service.
But this, of course, doesn’t guarantee that the service will survive the economic crunch. So what should I do
about the data hosted by the service?
It may be that I don’t need to worry about the long term sustainability of the data. The reason I created the
timeline was to support a paper myself and David Sloan were writing on “Reflections on the Development of a
Holistic Approach to Web Accessibility”. The visualisation of our work, which I described in a blog post on ”
Over Ten Years Of Accessibility Work“, helped me to identify a number of distinct phases in my activities related
to Web accessibility work, from a period of naivety (when I felt that the WAI model would provide universal
accessibility), to a period of doubt (when I was doing littler work in this area), followed by a meeting of minds
when I discovered others with timilar reservation which then led to our first paper on “Developing A Holistic
Approach For E-Learning Accessibility“. This then led to a period in which the holistic approach was further
developed and extended to other areas, followed by a period of promoting this approach to various user
communities, the most recent event having been described in a post on “Designing for Disability Seminar“.
So for that example the timeline was used as part of the process of reflecting on my work and the paper (and
accompanying blog post) were the main outcomes of my use of the timeline. And just as I have thrown away the
various scraps of paper I used when I was working on the paper and have forgotten the various discussions I had
with my co-author, so I could regard the timeline as having fulfilled its main purpose. But I’ve left it (and have
recently updated it) because I feel it may have some additional worth. And if I wish to manage the underlying
data I can simply export the data as an RSS feed and host this elsewhere.
I’m pleased that the rich functionality provided by the Dipity service is based on the simplicity of this data:
<item>
<title><![CDATA[Holistic Approaches To Web Accessibility]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Brian Kelly gave a talk on
"Holistic Approaches To Web Accessibility" at the "Designing for Disability"
seminar held at the British Museum, London on 5th December 2008.]]></description>
<link>http://www.dipity.com/briankelly/Web_Accessibility_Timeline_For_
Brian_Kelly?eid=a5b0837020c5cef0</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false" >a5b0837020c5cef0</guid>
<pubDate>Fri, 5 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
But if I do wish to (or am forced to) move to another service, having the data isn’t sufficient. What alternative
service can I use? And how easy would it me to import the data and have an equivalent service up and running?
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Dipity | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (3)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 166 of 616
Disappearing Resources On Institutional Web Sites
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
I recently received the publisher’s proofs of an accessibility paper which will be published in the new year. The
reviewers spotted a number of broken links in the references. Some of them were links to previous papers I had
published, and the errors were introduced by the publisher (which I confirmed by checking the details of the paper
which I submitted). But for a couple of other references the pages did seem to have disappeared. I contact Stuart
Smith, one of the co-authors, and asked him if he knew anything about the references he had supplied which
seemed to have disappeared.
Stuart told me that a new e-learning team in his institution has rebuilt the e-learning Web site, resulting, it seems,
in the loss of existing resources. Stuart wrote a blog post about this incident entitled “Mummy I lost my MP3!“.
Stuart felt that “My MP3 problem shows to me that the argument that the ‘cloud’ is too unstable doesn’t hold
water … because institutional systems are open to the same criticisms“. Stuart concluded that “My solution to my
MP3 problem will probably lie in the ‘cloud’ I’ll find a suitable archiving host that I like and also keep a backup
offline (like I should have done in the first place) and if that host disappears at least I will know about it“.
I’m sure Stuart isn’t alone. How many resources do you think will have disappeared following the establishment
of new Web teams or the release of new software? Maybe institutional repositories will have a role to play, as
they try to address the persistent identifier problem by at least decoupling the address of the resource form the
technology used to access the resource. But repositories won’t be used to manage all resources on an institutional
Web site, will they?
Since our institutions don’t seem to have yet cracked the problem of management of resources across changes in
policies, staff and technologies, is Stuart right, I wonder, in regarding ‘the cloud’ (e.g. services such as the
Internet Archive, perhaps) as the place (or one of the places) to deposit resources for safe-keeping? Or perhaps
the question is whether such services may be more reliable than the institutional Web site. After all, if your own
institution misplaces your resources, you can;’t sue them, can you?
Filed in Web2.0, preservation | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
Why I'm A Fan Of The Edublog Awards
Monday, December 15th, 2008
I mentioned recently that the UK Web Focus blog had been shortlisted for the
Best Educational Tech Support blog in this year’s Edublog Awards. As I commented in the post there have been
criticisms of the idea of awards for blogging and Paul Walk has recently joined in the discussion.
I disagree and am pleased to have been nominated by Martin Weller andAJ Cann. And I’d like to give my
reasons.
In some quarters there is a view that because of the differences between blogs it would be unfair to have an annual
awards ceremony. But equally you could argue that you can’t judge the merits of different works of fiction – and
yet this is done, with the Booker awards being the best known. And as to the flaws in making worthwhile
comparisons of merit, you might also argue that the Premiership isn’t about the merits of 11 footballers over a
season, but the purchasing powers of American, Russian, Thai or Saudi billionaires. This may be true, but it’s also
irrelevant.
I don’t feel we should be living in an ideologically-pure IT environment, independent of the complexities,
challenges and flaws of the real world. Martin Weller put such differing perspectives in an historical context in his
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 167 of 616
post on Cato and Cicero – and, as I said in a post based on Martin’s observation, I am on the side of realism and
pragmatism. I suspect that Stephen Downes’ comment that “… the internet is already awash with really vile and
intrusive commercial activity“ (which I mentioned in that post will be regarded by the purists as applicable to
blog awards) is a view that will be shared by some. Indeed I’m aware of a certain antipathy towards those
involved in commercial and marketing activities from many involved in IT development. But as I say in my talks
about Web 2.0, “Web 2.0 is a marketing term” before going on to add that “there’s nothing wrong with that“.
Although I should add that despite acknowledging that I live in (and benefit from) a capitalist society I haven’t
benefitted financially from the 483 blog posts published in just over 2 years – and there’s no personal financial
reward for the winner of the Eddies.
Being shortlisted for awards such as the Edublogs will, however, be helpful in promoting the work I am involved
in. In brief this, and the main topics covered in this blog are standards, accessibility and Web 2.0. But rather than
having a one-dimensional view of these areas I also try to ensure that readers are aware of associated
complexities. For example:
Web accessibility: I have pointed out the limitations of WAI’s approaches to Web accessibility and
described approaches which show how WCAG can be used in context.
Standards: I have discussed the limitations of a one-dimensional view of open standards and have tried to
explore reasons why open standards have failed to live up to their expectations.
Web 2.0: I have described the potential benefits of Web 2.0, but have also described failures (such as
Pownce and Squirl) in a number of Web 2.0 services.
The approaches I have taken in exploring these issues has reflected the approach I take when I give presentations
– I give a personal view which I hope engages with the audience. And this is an approach I feel others should take
when they set up a blog. As I have said on a number of occasions recently, for workshops aimed at staff from
museums, libraries and archives, you should encourage the passions, interests and professionalism of your staff,
and avoid having a blog which is clearly the product of a committee, with any hint of controversy being
suppressed by the editorial processes. Avoid the temptations of the corporate blog, for users will tend to be
sceptical, as a recent blog post argued.
“But how can you give clear evidence to justify the ROI for a blog?” was a question I was asked when I ran a
blogging workshop recently. Now I don’t believe that responses such as “Blogs are all about the individual”
would be appropriate. So I spoke about the purposes of a blog (e.g. engaging with new audience) and
corresponding metrics which could be used . But in addition to figures which may indicate successful user
engagement (although, of course, I do blog about the limitations of such metrics) awards ceremonies can also
demonstrate the support of one’s peers – and can help in more effective promotion of one’s views.
So if you support such views and agree that this blog “manages to push at the comfort boundaries of IT services,
but does so with intelligence and insight into the practical issues“ and would like to see such views being
endorsed at an international awards ceremony I’d encourage you to vote for the blog. But if you disagree with
such views, you can always vote for one of the other shortlisted nominations (I also read the eFoundations blog
which I feel would be a worthy winner – although I should add that I know Andy Powell & Pete Johnston). And if
you fancy being contrary, you can always vote for Paul Walk’s blog in the Best Library/Librarian blog category.
Indeed as we’ve been nominated in different categories there’s nothing to stop you from voting from both our
blogs. And if we both won, we’d be in the position of myself graciously accepting the award and Paul turning it
down. Now that would make a wonderful publicity stunt! And as to whether we have engineered this, on the
advice of our agents, my response is “No comment”
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (8)
Pownce? It's About The Community, Stupid!
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
I was an early adopter of the Pownce micro-blogging service, sending my first Pownce post on 22nd January
2008. As you can see from the accompanying image I was interested in how Pownce differed from Twitter. After
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 168 of 616
discovering that Pownce provided richer functionality than Twitter I then realised that in order for Pownce to
provide a useful tool for me I needed to build a community of Pownce users.
But that’s where Pownce failed. Despite the functionality it provided it never caught on, whereas Twitter went
from strength to strength. And tomorrow (15th December 2008) Pownce will close. What, then, are the lessons to
be learnt? I’d suggest there is a simple lesson which the development community should reflect on – the most
important aspect of a social networking service is the community of users. And it doesn’t matter how great the
development methodologies are, how interoperable the standards may be, how widely accessible the interface is -
if you aren’t successful in attracting a sustainable user community the servicew will fail. Just as Pownce failed.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Pownce | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (4)
WCAG 2.0 is Now An Official W3C Recommendation
Friday, December 12th, 2008
The WCAG 2.0 guidelines for Web content accessibility were officially launched yesterday (11 December 2009).
Hurrah – the very dated and flawed WCAG 1.0 guidelines are no more! And organisations which require Web
resources to conform to WCAG 1.0 should be quickly updating their policies, their training course, their
workflow process, etc. Although as the WCAG 2.0 guidelines have been under development for several years
(the first draft was published in January 2001!) with a number of iterations of towards the published version
having been released over the past couple of years this should have given organisations plenty of time to plan
their migration strategy.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 169 of 616
The guidelines are much improved, with an emphasis on conformance with four key POUR principles (resources
should be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust). And although it should be remembered that the
guidelines have not yet been proven to demonstrably enhance accessibility and there is little experience in how
the guidelines will be implemented in a real world context it should also be pointed out that the WCAG 1.0
guidelines have been shown to be flawed. So there is no excuse not to move on.
The challenge will be knowing how to apply WCAG 2.0, based on the experiences we’ve had in the past. And as
I learnt from the Designing For Disability event I spoke at last week, the Deaf together with those with learning
disabilities do seem to find visually rich content more accessible – although I should hasten to add that these
findings were described as feedback from particular case studies and should not be regarded as universal truths.
Indeed I would suggest that it is a truth which should be universally acknowledged that universal accessibility is a
pipe dream, and that we should be seeking to enhance access and widening participation.
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged WCAG, wcag 2.0 |
Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
Butler Group Report on "Enterprise Web 2.0: Building the next
generation Workplace"
Thursday, December 11th, 2008
I recently was sent an evaluation copy of the Butler Group Report on “Enterprise Web 2.0: Building the next
generation Workplace” for me to read. Some brief thoughts on the report are given below.
The Butler Group reports are aimed at senior managers who need to understand how emerging technological
developments may affect organisational business processes and strategic decision-making. Often such reports fail
to engage me, but this report acknowledges that “it would be a mistake to dismiss technology altogether” and goes
on to describe how various technological and cultural aspects of Web 2.0 can have significant impact at a strategic
level. So I did find the report of interest – and do feel that senior managers who have responsibilities for strategic
policy-making which will be affected by use of Web 2.0 in an enterprise content need to be aware of the issues
raised in the report.
The technical Web 2.0 description provided is likely to be familiar to many readers of this blog, the four main
bullet points being:
1. The principle tenets of Web 2.0 are that the Web is the platform, software and content are delivered as
services, and that people participate.
2. The technologies in Web 2.0 are generally disruptive.
3. The technologies of Web 2.0 are still maturing and security and management are to be resolved.
4. Organisations must investigate the opportunities afforded by Web 2.0 technologies.
Now I would agree with the second point: yes, Web 2.0 is disruptive using the definition in Wikipedia that “A
disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is a technological innovation that improves a product or service in
ways that the market does not expect“. But I would also agree that organisations need to investigate the
opportunities afforded by Web 2.0 technologies.
The report went on to gives reasons why such evaluations are needed, ranging from the new business
opportunities which are being provided, the need for corporate managers to acknowledge the importance of the
user (something that was in many cases not regarded as a priority), together with a need for “Corporate IT
departments [to] reduce, reuse, recycle, re-engineer and re-think if they are to deliver a sustainable IT service to
the organisation“.
I think this is right – but I’m also worried that we’ll see large-scale public sector initiatives which fail to
acknowledge the disruptive aspects of the Enterprise Web 2.0 environment and simply seek to replicate existing
services using Web 2.0 technologies and fail to engage the users in the processes. The UK e-University (the
government-backed initiative to provide online delivery of UK higher education courses to students worldwide
and to give improved access to higher education for under-represented groups of students in the UK) provided a
good example of a top-down approach to a national service which was launched with great expectations but
“failed largely because it took a supply-driven rather than a demand-led approach to a very ambitious venture in
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 170 of 616
an emerging market. Sufficient market research into the level or nature of consumer demand was not undertaken,
and the project failed to form effective partnerships with private sector investors.” according to a report on
“Lessons to be learned from the failure of the UK e-University” (PDF) by Paul Bacsich.
Am I wrong in being concerned that similar top-down approaches to national networked services will be taken
without learning from the lessons of the past? So can I suggest that policy makers read this report to discover
why “Enterprise 2.0 is about business agility and IT flexibility” – and remember that this isn’t me (coming from a
technical perspective) speaking: it’s the considered reflections of a group of business analysts.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (8)
What Makes A Good API? Doing The Research Using Twitter
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 171 of 616
My colleague Marieke Guy is involved in work investigating
best practice on “What Makes A Good API?“. The work began with a half-day workshop at the CETIS 2008
conference – we were fortunate that the topic we had been invitd to facilitate coincided with Marieke’s current
area of work (although, of course, this wasn’t really coincidental, but reflects a growing awareness of the
importance of APIs).
The CETIS workshop was entitled “Technological Innovation in a World of Web APIs“. This provided a valuable
start for the work, with useful input from a number of important communities: developers who are already making
use of APIs (either consuming APIs provided by other services or providing APIs to the services they are
developing); project managers who may be considering the potential benefits – and correcpsonding costs – or
providing APIs for their project deliverables and and IT support staff who may have responsibilities of
supporting such services once they are deployed into service.
But there’s still a need for further research and for listening into to the discussions which are taking place
regarding use of APIs. How should one go about this, was a question Marieke and I discussed recently.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 172 of 616
One suggestion I made was to explore the potential of Twitter. As shown, you can set up a search query in
Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck. Will searching for a term such as “API” provide useful information, I
wonder? Well I’ve found one person who is very critical of Skype’s closed APIs, another will has made great
progress with iPhone APIs and someone who has responded to a query by stating that Tokbox APIs go out (are
deployed, I think) very quickly.
Is the useful? Clearly the approach is not scaleable to all areas of research. But you might expect software
developers to be early adopters of Twitter and to use Twitter to discuss their work. Indeed the final example I
gave above was from dbillian, a Toxbox employee. And as I have previously written about Tokbox I potentially
have a contact with someone who may be responsive to queries about, in this case, the APIs provided by the
Toxbox video chat service.
Now in a previous version of the Tweetdeck client I could select whether to search across the tweets from the
Twitter users I follow or across all tweets globally. I personally found the former more useful as, in some but not
all cases, I would know about them and their interests. However that feature seems to have disppeared following a
recent upgrade of the Tweetdeck software.
Will Twitter help in the research, I wonder? Let’s try it and see.
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
Designing for Disability Seminar
Monday, December 8th, 2008
The Designing for Disability
A recent blog post by Neil Witt on The VC’s New VLE inspired me to provide a new introduction to a talk I gave
at the “Designing for Disability” seminar held on Friday 5th December 2008 at the British Museum.
I was an invited speaker at this event was organised by the Museums Association and the Jodi Awards. The title
of my talk, the final talk of the day, was “Holistic Approaches To Web Accessibility“.
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Let me tell you the tale, I began, of the benevolent emperor. He was kind and wished to do his best for his
subjects. So when he was told of a secret formulae produced by a wizard from a far-off land which would ensure
that all of the subjects of his empire would be able to access all of his edicts, he wanted to know more. He was
told that the secret formulae would ensure that the blind, the handicapped and the crippled of his land (this story, I
should add, took place long ago, when,sadly, such politically incorrect words were the norm) were would all be
able to read his edicts. “This sounds truly wonderful” the emperor announced (thinking that it would also be good
if they could also read about the new taxes he intended to implement – for even in fairy tales, there is a need for
financial prudence and long term sustainability).
And so the emperor announced that henceforth all official pronouncements, all new laws, all new taxes must
comply with the WAI way (as the magic new approach became known. And so the lord chief justice issued the
proclamation and the Knights of the Accessible Table rode through the kingdom to ensure that the magic was
being used everywhere. “Anyone for fails to comply with the magic will be banished“, it was announced.
Life was good, in the land. And when one of the knights who was made blind in a battle complained that he could
read the edicts but couldn’t understand them, he was ignored. And when rumours appeared that there were places
in the far-flung regions of the empire where the magic wasn’t being used, but people could still read the
emperor’s edicts, this was dismissed.
“But it’s true!” said a little boy. “There’s a new magic, that’s even better. It’s not the WAI way magic, it’s called
‘Inclusive design“.
And in my talk I described the story which the little boy told.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 173 of 616
And this story is true, dear friends. For I was that little boy – and so, too, were David Sloan, Liddy Nevile, Jane
Seale, EA Draffan, Helen Petrie, Caro Howell, Lawrie Phipps, Andy Heath, Hamilton Fraser, Elaine Swift and
many others. For that little boy was a member of the Knights Who Gathered Evidence. And here is the tale I told,
which is available on Google Video and Zentation and is also embedded below (note video was added on 9th
December 2008, after the post was originally published).
Holistic Approaches To Web
Accessibility
52:16
Talk on ‘Holistic Approaches To Web
Accessibility’
The Evidence From The Day
This tale introduced the talk I gave, in which I summarised the various peer0reviewed papers I’ve contributed to
since 2004. I described the limitation of the WAI model and the WCAG guidelines, the evidence from a number
of Web accessibility surveys which demonstrates that conforming with the guidelines does not necessarily
provide accessible Web services and Web services which do not conform to the guidelines have been found to be
very accessible. I went on to describe some of the challenges to be faced in understanding what accessibility
means in the context of learning and cultural appreciation.
I was particularly pleased that the holistic approach to Web accessibility which I described seemed to apply so
closely to the various case studies which were described during the day.This included:
• Andy Minnion’s talk on “New Media for Access and Participation by People with Learning Disabilities“.
He concluded that universal access with a single interface and minor changes of style and appearance do
not meet the needs of this group. Content itself needs to be adapted and technical compliance, while
important for other groups, is not in itserlf and accessibility solution.
• Linda Ellis’s talk on the use of British Sign Language video guides to improve access for deaf visitors to
Bantock House and Park. She argued that content aimed specifically for Deaf visitors was needed and that,
as BSL is a language in its own right, information provided in BSL is needed, since Deaf visitors may find
it difficult to understand information provided in English.
• Andrew Payne, The National Archives, on a project to maximise access to the Prisoner 4099 archives.
Andrew mentioned how “Flash can be accessible, but you need to be careful”. Based on experiences such
as this Andrew concluded by suggest that we “Don’t believe the box tickers”.
I very much agree with Andrew – don’t believe the box tickers. And don’t believe anyone who suggests there’s a
simple solution to difficult and complex challenges – whether they be wicked elves or government policy makers!
Filed in Accessibility, Events | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
UK Web Focus Blog Nominated For Edublog Award
Friday, December 5th, 2008
I’m pleased to report that the UK Web Focus blog has been nominated for the Best educational tech support blog
category of the 2008 Edublog Awards. In addition my colleague Paul Walk’s blog has also been nominated in the
Best librarian / library blog category.
The other blogs nominated for the Best Educational Tech Support award are The Edublogger, The Clever Sheep,
The Wired Campus, Geeked, Tech Tutors, Teach42, Teacher in a Strange Land, Off on a Tangent, efoundations,
JoeWoodOnline, Teachers love Smartboards and Langwitches blogs.
Now I am aware of Stephen Downes criticisms of this year’s awards (although he does ask readers of his blog to
“be sure to vote“). And Stephen has cited Doug Johnson’s post “on ranking, awards and other nonsense“. But if
you feel that the Edublogs awards do have a role to play I’d invite you to look at the other blogs nominated in this
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 174 of 616
(and the other) categories – which might help you find new blogs which you find valuable – and, if you are so
included, to vote for your preferred blog.
Martin Weller nominated my blog, stating that “rather obviously I’m opting for Brian Kelly’s blog. Brian
manages to push at the comfort boundaries of IT services, but does so with intelligence and insight into the
practical issues“. AJ Cann also nominated my blog and James Clay was torn, nominating Steve Wheeler’s
Learning with ‘e’ blog for the Best individual blog, although he went on to add that “Other blogs that were in
the running include Josie Fraser’s SocialTech blog and Brian Kelly’s UK Web Focus. The key here was which
blog did I read on a regular basis and which inspired me the most“. James went on to state that in choosing his
selection for the Best educational tech support blog he “was torn between Andy Powell and Pete Johnston’s
eFoundations blog and Brian Kelly’s UK Web Focus” before choosing eFoundations for this category.
But the final choice is up to you!
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
Pinky and Perky and Swedish Topless Model Caught in Use as
Learning Objects
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
I introduced Pinky and Perky in a recent blog post and I used them when I presented my paper on “Library 2.0:
Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” at the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference. And
recently I used the dancing and singing pigs from the days of my youth when I gave the final invited plenary talk
on “Realising The Potential of Web 2.0” at the “Nordlib 2.0 – Get Inspired by Web 2.0 for Libraries” conference
held in Stockholm.
In Stockholm I used the video clip to illustrate how the dangers of an over-managed approach to popular culture
wasn’t introduced in the Web era – Pinky and Perky were banned from the BBC in 1996: there was a general
election about to be held and I assume the BBC were concerned about “pinko lefty” sentiments which they might
try to influence young and impressionable minds (after all, where do you think the term pinko came from .
This reference is available 47 minutes into the presentation (see Google Video or the Zentation link- where its
synched to the slide on “Inappropriate Content“).
On the day before the conference I visited the Nordiska Museum where I saw a cigarette case (I
think it was - I couldn’t read the Swedish description) which featured a topless model – from the 17th or 18th
century. Again I felt that this provided a useful example I could use at the conference to illustrate my point that
use of new technologies for ‘pornography’ is nothing new.
Now these two examples meant something to me and where likely to be new to the audience, thus avoiding reuse
of cliched presentational devices. In the talk in Stockholm I also updated my slides a hour or so before delivering
the talk, using a tweet and subsequent blog post from Karen Blakeman in which she commented that PageFlakes
had added advertisments on its Web site overnight, without prior notice. “How would you respond if that
happened to a Web 2.0 service you used in your organisation?” I asked the audience.
Non of these example made use of learning resources from a learning object repository. And for the objects I used
(a YouTube video of Pinky and Perky, a photograph I had taken in a local museum and an interesting discussion
point I’d came across a few hours previously) it would make little sense for me to deposit for reuse by others.
Their value, I feel, comes from their relevance to me and my style of presentation, their (regional) links with the
place I’m talking at and their timeliness. In fact I also made use of a Barack Obama image and the “Yes we can”
slogan which again will time out very quickly.
Do we need repositories for learning objects, I might ask. Or are such repositories for the chore presentations (yet
another talk on the same old subject to a large group of undergraduates), which won’t be used by speakers who
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 175 of 616
want to provide fresh and relevant talks? On the other hand, perhaps this is mere indulgencies on the part of the
speaker. After all, will a group of Nordic librarians ‘get’ Pinky and Perky? Mm, maybe I should have used the
Swedish chef from the Muppets? or Abba, perhaps, if I want to go for the more popular British stereotypes of
Swedish culture?
Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Tagged nordlib2008 | Permalink
| Edit | Comments (4)
Realising The Potential of Web 2.0
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
Earlier this year the JISC launched a debate of Libraries of the Future. UKOLN recently contributed to this debate
by sponsoring the Mashed Library event which was facilitated by Owen Stephens, Imperial College. My
contribution has been in exploring best practices for exploiting the potential of Library 2.0. I presented a paper on
“Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” at the Bridging Worlds 2008
conference on “Libraries in the 2.0 Age and Beyond” held at the National Library of Singapore and gave an
updated version of the talk at the Nordlib 2.0 conference on “Nordlib 2.0 – Get Inspired by Web 2.0 for Libraries”
held at Aula Magna, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden on 21st November 2008.
It was a privilege to be asked to give the final talk at the conference, and to have a full hour to describe my
thoughts on how libraries should go about “Realising The Potential of Web 2.0“.
The conference blog provides more information about the conference and the talks which were given. The talks
were streamed live and the videos are currently being edited and will be uploaded shortly. In addition I used a Flip
camera to record my own talk and this is available on Google Video (and Blip.tv) and embedded below.
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1320324411554029351&hl=en]
In addition I have used Zentation to synch the video with the PowerPoint slides, as illustrated below. The slides
are also available on Slideshare.
Realising The Potential of Web 2.0
59:32
Talk on Realising The Potential of Web 2.0
I hope these different versions of the talk are useful. But if I was to provide only one version of the talk what, I
wonder, should it be. The PowerPoint file on the UKOLN Web site, the HTML equivalent, the Slideshare
manifestation (with the ability to be embedded elsewhere), the original .AVI file (warning, large file), the Google
Video or Blip.TV video of the talk or the synched version of the talk and the slides on Zentation? And is the
provision of a variety of versions a sensible precaution at a time when the sustainability of Web 2.0 may be
questionable or confusing to the end user?
Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Tagged nordlib2008 | Permalink
| Edit | Comments (2)
A Year In The Life of IWR's Information Professional Of The Year
Monday, December 1st, 2008
It was last year on 5th December 2007 when I reported that I had been awarded the Information World Review’s
Information Professional of the Year. With this year’s winner due to be announced at the Online Information
2008 conference in the next few days I thought it would be timely to summarise what I’ve been up to during my
year as holder of the award (and also to update the portrait on the blog).
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 176 of 616
It’s been a very busy year for engaging with my user communities: I’ve given 32 presentations to date (with one
more presentation to come) together with 2 online presentations. As can be seen from the accompanying map,
talks have been given in Montreal (a half day blog workshop and a professional forum on openness at the
Museums and the Web 2008 conference), Taiwan (an invited presentation on “Library 2.0: Opportunities and
Challenges” at the NDAP 2008 conference), Singapore (an invited paper on “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks
and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” at the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference) and Stockholm (an invited
presentation on “Realising The Potential of Web 2.0” at the Nordlib 2.0 conference), as well as many talks
throughout the UK.
This year has also seen an increased amount of direct engagement with the cultural heritage sector. I’ve run a
number of day-long workshops for MLA regional agencies, as well as additional events in Scotland and Wales.
These have all gone done very well – one of the Sharing Made Simple workshops for example, was rated (on 1
score of 1 to 6) 5.91 for the facilitator’s knowledge of the subject, 5.82 for engagement with the participants and
had an overall rating of 5.82.
The workshops have also provided an opportunity to gain a much better insight into the ways in which Web 2.0
can be used within the cultural heritage sector and also the barriers to its effective use. This information has being
stored in a wiki (as opposed to the traditional approach of licking such potentially valuable information into the
walled garden of flip charts!). A task on the new year will be to synthesise this information and to make the
findings more widely available.
Reflections of my work activities have also been included in two books which I contributed to this year: “Web
Accessibility: Practical Advice for the Library and Information Professional” by Jenny Craven (ed.) and
“Information Literacy meets Library 2.0” by Peter Godwin and Jo Parker (eds).
This year has also seen me gaining more experiences in the support of Amplified Conferences and use of
networked technologies to provide distance support, with a couple of examples of participation in online
conferences.
In the past 12 months I have also published 190 blog posts on the UK Web Focus blog, with additional
contributions made to the JISC PoWR blog.
It has been an enjoyable 12 months in my role as Information Professional of the Year, made particularly
rewarding for seeing how the benefits of Web 2.0 are now becoming more widely accepted. As one person
commented on one of the workshop I facilitated earlier this year “Brian in particular displayed a real knowledge
and enthusiasm for the topic, which was infectious“. I’m looking forward to continue to inflect others with my
experise and enthusiams for many year’s to come
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 177 of 616
Edupunk begets Eduprog at CETIS 2008 Conference
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
I commented on the “Edupunk” meme a while ago. For some people this provides a useful metaphor for describes
a ‘anyone can do it’ approach to e-learning developments; although others are very critical of the term (and thus
provide further support for the edupunk meme, you could argue, articulating the anger which was felt in the late
1970s by Radio 2 presenters and others who felt challenged by radically new ideas!)
At the recent CETIS 2008 conference, the term “Eduprog” was coined. Lorna Campbell was the first to blog
about The dawn of eduprog and, as she describes “Eduprog has spread over the twittosphere like a gold lurex
cape and has already generated considerable sage discussion and chin stroking”. The term “reflects a domain that
generates questionable “concept” specifications of baroque complexity (cf. FRBR, IEEE LOM) and application
profiles and reports the equivalent of extend guitar solos“.
Twitter discussions on the term have included:
#eduprog much better reflects the true state of education technology- long-winded, self-indulgent,
boring standards-making
“long winded and self-indulgent” or virtuoso boundary pushing redefining forms and developing
new techniques?
Now some people don’t like the coining of new metaphors, but I find that the term has helped in providing an
additional insight into some of the criticism we have seen recently regarding the development of overblown
standards. The term itself might not catch on, but it has been useful. A point Tony Hirst made to me at the CETIS
conference about the ‘edupunk’ term – and he should know, as he did create what was possibly the first edupunk
video. Now is there a concept album to follow?
Filed in General | Tagged edupunk | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (3)
Ssh – Whisper It But Librarians Are Twittering!
Friday, November 28th, 2008
An email message sent on 8th October 2008 to the Scotslink JISCMail list announced that “The Scottish Library
and Information Council (SLIC) and CILIP in Scotland (CILIPS) have just introduced Twitter to their suite of
Web 2.0 services“.
When I mentioned this recently a colleague made the comment “if you Twitter in a library, does someone Twitter
Shhhh! back? ” But librarian stereotypes apart, I think this illustrates how information professions are now
beginning to make greater use of Web 2.0 services such as Twitter, in this case to enhance communications with
CILIP members and library professionals in Scotland.
As I mentioned recently UKOLN has launched a series of IntroByte briefing documents which aim to provide an
introduction to various topics of relevance to the cultural heritage sector. We have started work on the production
of a number of briefing paper which will covers the potential of micro-blogging services such as Twitter, as well
as video micro-blogging services such as Seesmic for use in the library and the wider cultural heritage sectors.
We would welcome examples of organisations which are using such tools in the cultural heritage sector which we
can include in the documents. So if your library, museum or archive is an early adopter of such technologies
please get in touch with me, either directly (email to B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk) or by leaving a comment to this post.
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 178 of 616
COPAC Developers Get Blogs
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
My colleague Paul Walk recently commented on developments to the COPAC services in a post entitled COPAC
gets RESTful. Paul linked to a blog post on the COPAC developer’s blog which described how the COPAC
service now provides Persistent identifiers for Copac records.
I was impressed with the COPAC blog when I came across a post which asked the question To Google or not to
Google. This post raised the issue of the tensions between the user benefits of providing links to Google Books
from the COPAC service and the privacy concerns expressed by “a vociferous few who questioned why Copac
would give Google ‘personal data’ about them as users“.
I feel that raising these issues in an open fashion is to be applauded. And it is far better that this is done on a blog,
rather than being trapped in the confines of a COPAC mailing list, which would probably only be read by
hardcore COPAC users.
And this is my response to the comment made on this blog recently in which a software developer argued that
“the fact that I choose not to talk about work on the internet should have no bearing on my ability to create
scalable, secure, and accessible services“. I feel that the IT profession should be talking more openly with the
user community and with other IT developers.
My thanks to the COPAC team for demonstrating how this should be done. Let’s hope that other national
services in the JISC community follow COPAC’s lead.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Lies, Dammed Lies, Blog Statistics and Unexpected Spikes
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
There was some discussion a while ago on standards for usage statistics for public sector Web sites. I have always
been a bit suspicious of initiatives which encourage use of simplistic metrics. There’s a real danger that rather
than using such data to provide evidence and to inform policies, achieving a top ranking is regarded as the main
objective itself. And such temptations can lead to organisations exploring ways of maximising their figures, even
if this fails to achieve any underlying benefits to the organisation or the user community.
This struck me
th
recently when I notice a huge peak in the usage statistics for this blog on 6 October 2008. Initially I thought the
blog may have been ‘Slashdotted’, with one of my posts being cited on a popular service. But this, it seems,
wasn’t the cause of the spike. I had, in fact, used the Adobe Acrobat software to create a PDF file of the blog
posts. This every individual page to be accessed. And when I discovered that the PDF file was thousands of
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 179 of 616
pages long rather than the 4-500 pages I had expected, I realised that individuals posts had been retrieved on
multiple occasions, as they are also grouped by month and by categories.
I hadn’t expected such retrievals to be recorded, as WordPress’s statistics page states that “we don’t count your
own visits to your blog“. But for some reason the Adobe Acrobat’s downloads have resulted in my statistics
being artificially skewed.
So if you want to impress people with a sudden growth in the numbers of accesses to you blog, run a tool such as
Adobe Acrobat over your blog. If, on the other hand, you feel this is unethical, then don’t do this with the aim of
massaging your figures. And fopr the sake of completeness, on 6th October 2008 there were 1,206 visits recorded,
but a more accurate figure, based on the numbers of visits the previous week, would be around 265.
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
You Talk At Conferences? That Must Be Scary!
Monday, November 24th, 2008
My recent talk on “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” at the Bridging
Worlds 2008 conference held in Singapore on 16-17th October (which was possibly the first Library 2.0
conference in Asia) brought back memories of the first time I spoke at a conference – the INET 94/JENC5
conference held in June 1994 in Prague in which I presented a paper entitled “Becoming an information provider
on the WWW“.
I can recall how nervous I felt when I submitted my first paper to an international conference and wondered how I
would cope with having to go onto a big stage (I later discovered that the auditorium held 1,000 people). While I
was waiting to hear if the paper had been accepted I went on holiday to Victoria Falls. And wile I was there I
decided to take a trip white-water rafting. After all, I convinced myself, if I can do this, I can do anything,
including giving a paper at an international conference. So I did the trip – and even afterwards booked to go
bunjee-jumping off the Victoria Falls Bridge (I was told it was the world’s highest commercial bunjee jump).
However the jump were cancelled on the day due to bad weather, so I had to console myself with the fact that I
had been white-water rafting down the mighty Zambesi. I went on to present my paper at the conference, and
have subsequently spoken at international conferences held in France, Portugal, Hungary, USA, Canada, Japan,
Taiwan and, most recently, Singapore. And all thanks to overcoming my nerves by going white-water rafting!
(Although knowing bit about the Web probably helped too .
These thoughts came back to me after I’d given my talk at the Bridging Worlds conference. As I mentioned the
talk was entitled “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” and in order to
demonstrate an approach I take in balancing risks and benefits I described how the slides for the talk were
available online with a Creative Commons licence. I also explained that I was happy for my talk to be recorded or
broadcast or for the talk to be blogged live – and described that I was using a Flip video camera to record my talk,
and would subsequently make this available on Google Video. I explained the reasons I was doing this. I was
aware of possible risks – I might make mistakes in my talk which would be preserved for other to see, for
example. However I also explained the benefits of doing this – I was speaking at the conference as I had a
message I wanted to communicate, and I wanted to maximise the impact of the message and the audience – and I
felt that this could be helped by the ‘amplification’ of my talk using a variety of networked technologies.
And it seems that this explanation was appreciated, with Ivan Chew (ramblinglib on Twitter) and a fellow speaker
at the conference commenting:
“Brilliant: your explanation of how you weighed the risks Vs benefits of allowing others to vid/ blog/ record
your talk“
Ivan went on to further summarise my talk in a subseqent blog post.
I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that many speakers do take risks when they give presentations – and that this
comes with the territory. And participating in amplified conferences can then be seen as a natural extension of the
risk-taking and not being fashionable or being rude.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 180 of 616
Filed in Events, Web2.0 | Tagged bw2008 | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (0)
Differences Between the WAI Standards Developer and User
Perspectives
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
Back in September I presented a paper on “Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The
Future” at the ADDW08 conference in which I described my criticisms of the WAI approach to Web accessibility
and argued the need to explore alternative approaches. Shadi Abou-Zhara, who works for W3C WAI was in the
audience and after I gave my talk he said that he didn’t disagree with many of the points I had made in my talk,
but didn’t see what relevance they had to the WAI approach to Web accessibility. Shadi had made a similar point
after I presented a paper on “Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes” at the W4A 2007 conference.
But if Shadi has no fundamental disagreements with the holistic approach to Web accessibility that myself, David
Sloan, Lawrie Phipps and other have been developing over the years how does this relate to the ongoing work of
Shadi, his colleagues in W3C WAI and those involved in WAI working group activities over the years?
Reflecting on the comments Shadi made and the discussions I had at the ADDW 2008 conference with David
MacDonald, an invited expert to the WCAG 2.0 group it seems to my that there is a mismatch between the work
being carried out by WAI and the expectations of users of the WAI guidelines.
In response to a question about the relationships between usability and accessibility it seems that WAI’s interest is
in usability only as far as it affects users with disabilities significantly more than most users. And I think this view
which focusses purely on the needs of users with disabilities results in an approach which is blind to real world
complexities and to the actual take-up and effectiveness of their solutions.
The developers of WAI accessibility guidelines seem to have a narrowly defined scope for their work. This seems
to cover the development of technical guidelines which will enhance accessibility for users with various types of
disabilities. In is not in scope for people at WAI to address the resource implications of conforming with their
guidelines, the complexities of implementing the guidelines or to consider alternatives ways in which accessibility
challenges can be addressed.
If these issues are out-of-scope for WAI, then there’s a need for the issues to be addressed by the user community.
And this will include addressing these difficult issues. It is the user community to decide when the WAI
guidelines may be the best way of providing accessible services, when other solutions may be relevant and to
ensure that cost-effective and sustainable solutions are provided.
The WAI guidelines have an important role to play in helping to enhance the accessibility of networked services –
but the user organisations have to make the more challenging decisions of deciding when to make use of WAI
guidelines and when other solutions may be relevant.
Filed in Accessibility | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
Joining The iPod Touch Generation
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
I succumbed! Well, I partly succumbed, buying myself an iPod Touch, rather than an iPhone (which is illustrated,
but the user interface for the two devices is similar). But I have to admit that I am impressed.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 181 of 616
Yes the user interface is cool – or if you don’t like the ‘c***’ word the
interface is intuitive and easy-to-use. But what I really like are the applications which exploit the device’s WiFi
capabilities. It’s good to access applications such as Twitter and Facebook from a mobile device – even if I have
to download the data while I’m connected to a WiFi network; unlike iPhone users I can’t access networked
services over a mobile phone network – but then again I’m not paying £40/month to O2!
I’m particularly excited when I speculate about the digital environment we’ll be living in in a few years time.
Imagine what it will be like when most people have a device like this as a replacement for the current generation
of mobile phones. And combine the richness and ease-of-use of such devices with, it is to be hoped, a more
pervasive and affordable networked environment. We with then have the personal information access point
(Google, probably!), communications tool (such as Twitter) and location-aware tool (such as BrightKite) together
with links with a desktop environment (I’m using the Netnewswire application on both my iPod Touch and my
desktop PC). The digital world will be very different, I feel.
Of course the device will have its critics. Unlike the Google Android the device, the iPod Touch/iPhone’s
operating system is proprietary; Google have made the operating system for Android available as open source.
And applications can only be (legitimately) installed from Apple’s walled garden – the iTunes Store.
But I think the world has moved on from the time when we seemed to prioritize certain aspects of the
development environment over satisfying the user – we’re no longer dogmatic about open source and open
standards, I feel; rather we seek to exploit open source and open standards if doing so can provide a satisfactory
user experience. I think it’s good that we have moved to a more pragmatic approach rather than the dogmatic
views we had in the past.
Yes, I like my new personal learning environment, personal research environment and personal social
environment. Everyone should have one, I feel.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (11)
Why Did SMIL and SVG Fail?
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 182 of 616
Following my blog post on Open Standards and the JISC IE which I wrote back in September Stephen Downes
responded with some comments which I include below:
“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 so. But these
standards didn’t fail because they were open. They failed because, for various reasons, they didn’t do what
people wanted. Open standards are still better – but the lesson here is that standards are not necessarily
better just because they’re open.
Absolutely, the standards didn’t fail because they were open. The point I was making in my post was that the
openness of a standard is no guarantee that it will be successful. And it is important to remember this to avoid
policy makers mandating open standards which in reality may fail to have any significant impact.
But why do open standards, such as SMIL and SVG, fail? Stephen suggests they failed “because, for various
reasons, they didn’t do what people wanted“. There may be something in this, but I feel there are other potential
reasons why standards may fail, which I’ve listed below.
Failure to promote the standards: A standards body may fail to promote the benefits of its standards to the
user community or to potential vendors. I don’t think this is the case for SMIL and SVG as W3C is very
good at promoting its technical developments.
Standards are not accessible: In an environment in which the accessibility of digital resources is becoming
important in the selection of formats by user organisations, especially in the public sector, there may be
reluctance to make use of standards which are not felt to be accessible. This is definitely not the case for
SMIL and SVG, which have been developed with the needs of users with disabilities being addressed right
from the start.
Failure to get vendor buy-in: Potential software vendors, such as Microsoft, Macromedia, Adobe, etc. are
W3C members and have been actively involved in the development of these standards.
Failure by vendors to promote: Tim Berners-Lee, in a post entitled “MS IE “slow in supporting SVG”
pointed out that “If you look around at browsers, you’ll find that most of them support scalable vector
graphics,” Berners-Lee said. “I’ll let you figure out which one has been slow in supporting SVG.“ The lack
of SVG is all Microsoft’s fault, you may feel. However an article on “SMIL Standards and Microsoft
Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8” touches on some of the complexities of vendor support for rapidly developing
standards. As described in this article other vendors have their doubts regarding the the effectiveness of W3C
standards such as SMIL, with the Macromedia Product Manager stating that Macromedia “[doesn't] feel that
SMIL integrates well with HTML and the current evolution of the DOM, SMIL is a decent standard for
synchronizing audio and video, but isn’t really a multimedia standard. And it does not enable an author to
create a rich, interactive multimedia presentation with any kind of sophistication.”“
Lack of interest by the users: And perhaps Stephen Downes is correct when he says that such standards
don’t do what people want. Do we have real evidence that there is sufficient interest in these standards for
the market place to support the standards?
Insufficient motivation to change existing working practices: Even if there is evidence that there is a
marketplace for SMIL and SVG are the benefits sufficient for users to be willing to change their existing
approaches, purchase new tools, training staff, etc.
I think it is clear that W3C have failed to deliver a solution which is being widely deployed. Now this may not be
of concern to W3C – they may regard their role as simply developing standards and are happy to leave it to the
marketplace to adopt or reject the standards. However as user organisations we can’t take this stance. So we will
need to ensure that we have learnt form the failures of well-promoted standards to have any significant impact. Or
perhaps we should simply be prepared to wait for a longer period for new standards to gain impact. Perhaps we
may find greater take-up of SMIL and SVG, with the mobile market providing the arena for the standards to
demonstrate their worth.
Or have I got this wrong and will I find a horde of happy SMIL and SVG users commenting on this post with
examples of how they are successfully using the standards?
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 183 of 616
Filed in standards | Tagged SMIL, SVG | Permalink | Edit
| Comments (8)
Twitter For Finding Out What They're Saying About You
Monday, November 17th, 2008
The recent UKOLN workshop on “Introduction To Blogs And Social Networks For Heritage Organisations” was
based on a half-day blog workshop which has been run for the library sector (on two occassions) and the
museums sector at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference. The workshop has recently been updated to
include a session on the potential of social networks, micro blogs and video blogs.
I described the potential of Twitter – and, indeed, made use of Twitter during the workshop in order to “ask a
friend” for suggestions on how to respond to a question I’d received at the workshop: “Do you have any evidence
that blogs provide a ROI for museums e.g increased visitor nos.?“. I’m pleased to say that I received a number of
speedy responses on Twitter (with more in-depth responses from Mike Ellis on Skype). Phil Bradley suggested
that I “smile at them and just say ‘yes, I was asked the same thing about the internet itself 10 years ago“ and Mike
Ellis told me to “remember that one (actually, two, I believe) of the DCMS measures are virtual, i.e. not just
physical that “counts“.
This example proved a useful way of demonstrating to the workshop participants how Skype can be used to
support a community of peopkewith shared interests, and is less intrusive than email. I also mentioned how
Twitter can be a useful tool for listening to what people may be saying about you and your organisation – and this
use seemed to be of particular interest to the marketing managers at the workshop. So I was particularly pleased
when I noticed that my TweetDeck client’s search window for recent tweets containing “UKOLN” listed a tweet
from Steve Ellwood which said:
admiring UKOLN briefing docs on Web2.0/blogging etc. http://is.gd/7kcY – as usual worth a look for
explaining “What’s it all for?”
Case proven?
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
What Should Be Out There, In The Cloud Perhaps ?
Friday, November 14th, 2008
One Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago I observed a brief Twitter discussion between Paul Miller and Paul Walk
which I found interesting. Paul Miller began by tweeted his thoughts:
Pondering… ’semantic web’ as ‘data cloud’? Cf COMPUTING Cloud metaphor
Paul Walk responded:
@PaulMiller not sure…. cloud works for processing cos we want it to be invisible commodity… want data to
be more visible?
Paul Miller replied:
@paulwalk – but shouldn’t data be commoditized too? Or at least AVAILABLE for ad hoc use
and Paul Walk concluded:
@PaulMiller not commoditized – we *care* about data, it’s provenance, accuracy. I don’t want to have to
care much where my cycles come from
Paul Miller then expended on his views in a blog post on “Welcome to the Data Cloud ?” and the following day
Paul Walk responded with his post on “Any any any old data“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 184 of 616
This discussion got me thinking what should be in the cloud or, more generally, what aspects of IT can be
provided outside the organisation? Some thoughts on the benefits of using a variety of outsourced services are
given below:
CPU cycles: As Paul suggested, nobody cares whether the CPU cycles are provided by the computer in front
of you, a server hosted within the organisation, a national service or a global service. And if those CPUs
cycles are provided by an organisation which can minimise the heat losses to the environment and provide
cost-effective and energy-effective delivery of the CPU cycles then this will ensure that the organisation
exploiting the service is addressing its own green agenda.
Applications: It’s not just the CPU cycles which can be delivered across the network, application software
need no longer by tied to the desktop PC or institutional server. We are seeing examples of this ranging from
bookmark management tools such as del.icio.us through to word processing and other office applications
such as Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Adobe Buzzword, Zoho, etc.
Data hosting: As Paul Miller has suggested the Semantic Web can perhaps be regarded as a data cloud. But
if this is a vision for the future, remote storage of data is very much a part of today’s IT environment, ranging
form the personal data management services provided by companies such as BT through to institutional use
of services such as Amazon’s S3.
Software development: Moving on from the IT infrastructure itself, we can also outsource IT development
work. We are familiar with this from JISC’s development activities in which software development is funded
by project money to develop software which is intended for deployment across the community.
Data creation, input and management: I recently read a press release entitled “Amazon Mechanical Turk
Launches New Web-Based Tools That Bring the Power of an On-Demand Workforce to Businesses
Worldwide” which announced the launch of “a new set of web-based tools for Amazon Mechanical Turk that
make it easy for businesses to use Mechanical Turk to outsource work to an on-demand, scalable workforce
via a simple graphical interface – in just a few minutes and without writing any code“. So yes, data input,
metadata creation and management, etc can now be more easily out-sourced. There’s now need to have large
teams of data preparation staff in your organisation – although, of course, this has been the case for some
time now.
Policies: If institutional or sectoral policies are too onerous to comply with, you could choose to outsource
your services which are more flexible. Consider, for example, the terms and conditions which cover
registration for the UK Government communities forum which I blogged about recently. If you feel these
terms and conditions are too stringent you can also make use of an alternative environment for hosting
discussions.
Now there will be many issues which need to be addressed if organisations wish to make greater use of the out-
sourcing options which are now available (sustainability, reliability, security, legal and ethical issues, etc.). But is
the future, I wonder, a world in which organisations focus on their own strengths and the services which only they
can provide, with the chore activities being provided by others? After all, as Andy Powell reported in his live blog
summary of a talk by Sam Peters, Google, “does anyone get a competetive advantage by running their own email
system?” (posted at 09.57). But if this future does appear to have much to offer we will need to develop a
framework to support institutions in making such policy decisions. Out-sourcing metadata management to an
environment which is more flexible, responsive and provides benefits of scale sounds great – but not if the work
is out-sourced to children working in IT sweatshops. We will need, I feel, an equivalent of Fair Trade which
ensures that the benefits are provided by more effective use of technologies and better management and not by
exploitation.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Materials For Blogging and Web 2.0 Workshops For Heritage
Organisations
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 185 of 616
Earlier today I ran a half-day workshop entitled “Introduction To Blogs And Social Networks For Heritage
Organisations“. This workshop was commissioned by ASVA (Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions,
following a seminar I gave on “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs And Social Networks” at the Museums and
Heritage Show.
The workshop made use of a series of briefing documents which have been developed to support the cultural
heritage sector. As well as the documents which have been published the workshop also provided an opportunity
to receive feedback on a number of additional documents we have produced, including An Introduction to Twitter
and An Introduction to Seesmic (the video micro-blogging tool).
A number of other briefing document were used in two day-long workshops which were commissioned by
CyMAL to support staff working in museums, libraries and archives in Wales. These events, entitled Sharing
Made Simple: A Practical Approach To Social Software, provided a broader overview of the potential of Web 2.0
in cultural heritage organisations, and also addressed barriers to the take-up of Web 2.0 and strategies for
addressing such barriers.
The feedback we receive on the documents (and on the need for additional documents) is an important part of the
quality assurance processes for the resources. It should also be noted that we are making these documents
available under a Creative Commons licence and encourage their reuse.
This approach to use of Creative Commons for resources I’ve created over the past few years has been taken
primarily in order to maximise the impact of the content of the resources. And I would encourage others to do
likewise. However, as Scott Leslie has recently described in a blog post on “Planning to Share versus Just
Sharing” there is a real danger of encountering “frustration with ineffective institutional collaborations“. The
summary of Scott’s post exhorts readers to “grow your network by sharing, not planning to share or deciding who
to share with“.
This approach reflects the views expressed by Mike Ellis and myself in a paper entitled “Web 2.0: How to Stop
Thinking and Start Doing: Addressing Organisational Barriers” presented at the Museums and the Web 2007
conference. As I described in blog post back in July 2007 back then the cry was “Just do it!“. A year on, despite
the economic problems we’re facing, the recent US election result seems to have resulted in a more positive
approach to the world and a willingness to makes changes. So perhaps our cry should now be “Set up a blog?
Use Creative Commons for our resources? Yes, we can!“
Filed in Blog, openness | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(3)
Let Blog Readers Respond
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
In my post on Openness in HE but not Elsewhere I suggested that requiring users to agree to complex terms and
conditions in order to respond to (and, even worse, view) discussions on government policies was counter-
productive. A post entitled It’s not a blog if…… on the JISC Access Management Team blog is in agreement with
these sentiments.
Mark Williams describes another barrier to the use of blogs for effective dialogue. In his post he complains about
his “wasted effort on writing replies on a couple of blogs this week only to find that after a suitable period for
much needed moderation (after all IT forums are hardly the place to endorse male vitality products) the sites are
clearly not putting any replies / comments up“. Marks feels that “If a an opinion piece doesn’t have scope for
comments then that’s what it is – a magazine style opinion piece not a blog“.
I would agree with that. Yes, there may be a cost in deleting inappropriate comments, but this need not be
onerous, and I think it is worth spending some effort in allowing users to give their thoughts and comments.
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 186 of 616
Twitter Analogy Tweets Missing
Monday, November 10th, 2008
Published back in September, Martin Weller’s post on Twitter, microblogging and living in the stream included
an embedded presentation from Slideshare which contained a number of analogies for Twitter including
suggestions that Twitter is:
• A digital watercooler
• A stream you dip into
• A cocktail party
• A virtual office
• What knowledgement always wanted to be
• Networking for Agoraphobics
Some of these examples had been floating around the ‘Twitterverse’ for some time. Indeed several months ago I
coined a number of analogies for Twitter and when Martin (and others) recently asked for such examples I tried to
find my tweets on the subject. I thought this would be easy – I’d just have to either browse through my old tweets
or search for a tweet from me containing the string ‘analogy’.
However I found that my old
tweets seemed not be be available. And using Google to search for ‘search old tweets‘ I found various discussions
including this one on the lack of a search and browse interface for old tweets.
However with some further searching I discovered I discovered that I could use the search interface on my
Friendfeed account to find a number of my missing tweets, as illustrated.
So I can now create links to the copy of my tweets which can be found in Friendfeed including Twitter is:
• Spouting off to strangers about the state of the government, trains, repositories, … [link]
• The family conversation [link]
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 187 of 616
• The digital watercooler for teetotallers who don’t talk to strangers in pubs [link]
• The bar where everyone knows your name; you’re greeted by the coffee drinkers’ footie fans share
moments of joy [link]
What have I learnt from this? I now realise that the tweets which summarise ideas I might wish to expand on or
the tweets from others which I may want to follow up will not necessarily be easily found again, and not because
of problems with the Twitter service itself but because it may not provide access to the data.
Does this mean I shouldn’t be using Twitter, because of these limitations? I would say no – in many cases I don’t
care about the old tweets. Indeed I regard Twitter, like an increasing number of Web services, not as a well-
defined and reproducible IT service but as a blended service, which has more parallels with real life. And as I
don’t lose any sleep over the pearls of wisdom which I may have shared with others in the pub which I then find I
can’t remember, so this is how I regard Twitter. And if I do want to keep a record of useful tweets I’ll do what I
did for the list of tweets on useful Web 2.0 music sites and document the resources somewhere.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (4)
Guest Post: Web 2.0 At The National Library of Wales
Friday, November 7th, 2008
In the guest blog post published on 1th October 2008 Jo Alcock Hannah Hiles described how the library at the
University of Wolverhampton is engaging with use of Web 2.0. Details of this work were included in the paper
on Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends which I recently presented at the
Bridging Worlds 2008 conference in Singapore.
This month’s guest blog post has been written by another co-author of the paper. Below Paul Bevan, National
Library of Wales describes how a national library is engaging with the opportunities provided by Web 2.0. Paul
has recently been appointed to the post of Senior Research Officer (Web 2.0) and, as he describes is “very keen to
work with libraries and librarians to explore all areas of emerging Web approaches“. If you have an interest in
the issues described in this post, feel free to respond to Paul, either on this blog or directly with Paul.
The National Library of Wales is one of the great libraries of the world and has a remit to:
“collect, preserve and give access to all kinds and forms of recorded knowledge, especially relating
to Wales and the other Celtic countries, for the benefit of the public, including those engaged in
research and learning“
As a result our readers represent a extremely varied demographic, reflecting the diversity of our published
material, archival and other collections.
The Web and the online delivery of resources has been integral to the Library’s service portfolio for many years,
providing a access to its resources in a way which helps to overcome distance and availability issues. To this end,
the Library has an extensive digitization programme which has provided virtual access to some of the greatest
treasures in the collections through a ‘Digital Mirror‘ using innovative access methods to deliver an enhanced
user experience for remote readers.
Looking to the Future: Web 2.0
We’re constantly building on this solid foundation by seeking new ways of providing access to our resources and
‘Web 2.0′ and the Social Web are key to realising the goal of enhancing our remote provision. The use of Web 2.0
approaches to achieve Library 2.0 delivery is ingrained in the new Library strategy ‘Shaping the Future’ [pdf]
which outlines the Library’s desire to explore collaborative and diverse models using external resources. This will
allow the Library to leverage Web platforms which are heavily focused on user engagement in order to deliver
future services. Leading up to this shift in emphasis for Web developments the Library conducted a review of how
a National Library might understand the concept of ‘Web 2.0′ and how we might best make use of our existing
digital resources in a Web 2.0 environment.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 188 of 616
Of course, the we’re not just looking at the way in which we can enhance our collections through new
technologies and platforms – the current Web content represents a proportion of the information produced by the
Library and there is a ‘hidden’ silo of professional, training and development information (some of which is
exposed through the Digital Asset Management Development Wiki, as well as a range of “lost
opportunities” (such as guest talks which could in the future be streamed via the Web). Beyond this there are clear
examples from other organisations of best practice in using the Web to communicate internally and to share
procedures and information through wikis and other technologies.
The Library has begun to increase the level of Web 2.0 services available by creating presences in online
environments (including presences on Facebook and YouTube) as well as by beginning to allow reuse of its data
– initially through a pilot Wikipedia project. The Library is also developing an XML feed of its events (including
exhibitions and talks) through the Typo3-based content management system underlying the Library’s main
website.
Third-party Web environments will be key to the future delivery of library services and we’re also actively
looking to explore how the exposure of data in open formats can allow the use of leading edge user interfaces and
Web front-ends. One concern for the Library is that the ’spreading out’ of services onto commercial and external
sites might conflict with existing policies around accessibility, sustainability, and the commitment to bilingual
access.
The Library is also host to a Welsh Assembly Government funded project to provide an innovative and flexible
service delivery platform for all types of libraries in Wales. The library.wales.org Web site employs Web 2.0
technologies including social bookmarking and RSS to provide an alternative environment engaging with the
public. This project explicitly includes the development of new services and the support of those services,
allowing libraries to explore Web 2.0 technologies in a ’safe’ environment where best practice can be easily
shared.
The Library is also home to the not-for-profit company Culturent Cymru, which has taken great steps in bringing
new levels of interaction to objects from cultural repositories from all accross Wales. Culturenet Cymru projects
include Community Archives Wales – where users can upload their images via Flickr – and Gathering the Jewels-
which has recently launched an enhanced GIS interface.
What Next for the National Library of Wales?
The Web’s ever-changing nature provides an exciting and challenging environment for any library service and the
National Library of Wales has sought to directly engage with the opportunities that Web 2.0 will offer. In order to
best do this the library has recently committed to a six-month review of the possibilities of Web 2.0 and emerging
Web Technologies.
In my role as Senior Research Officer (Web 2.0) I will be exploring best practice from knowledge organisations
around the world as well as possible technological approaches and content partnerships. The resulting Web 2.0
Strategy will provide the Library with a chance to build upon and mainstream the work detailed above and to
explore new ways of working with Library users in a networked environment. I’m very keen to work with
libraries and librarians to explore all areas of emerging Web approaches, so feel free to get in touch with me at
paul.bevan@llgc.org.uk.
Filed in Guest-post, Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (12)
Openness In HE, But Not Elsewhere
Thursday, November 6th, 2008
Approaches To Openness in UK Higher Education
I commented recently on Andy Powell’s decision to live blog at the conferences he attends, so that his thoughts,
opinions and comments can be shared with a wider community and his views discussed openly. This approach to
openness reflects a culture which we can see increasingly in the high education sector, which is now will to make
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 189 of 616
its research publications available though open access repositories, its data available under Science Commons
licences and documentation and other resources available under Creative Commons licences.
Such approaches to openness in general aren’t being taken on ideological stances, but rather a belief that the
benefits of education and research are best served by providing open access to the resources for use by others.
Approaches To Openness in the Wider Public Sector
It seems, though, that
such approaches are not necessarily being taken in other public sector organisations, This struck be recently
following one of posts on “Government Web Sites MUST Be WCAG AA Compliant!“. In response to my
concerns Adam Bailin of the Central Office of Information suggested that I give my comments on the Digital
People – Accessibility forum.
In order to contribute to this forum it seems you need to fill in a cumbersome registration form, with a string of
attached conditions. And, much worse, you even need to register in order to read the discussions on the forum. It’s
therefore hardly surprising that there is hardly any discussion taking place on the forum.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 190 of 616
Now the terms and conditions are much
worse than I realised when I signed up. As can be seen to read the terms and conditions you need to scroll
horizontally and vertically, although no scroll bars are displayed (so much for accessibility!). Of course when I
registered I never read the terms and conditions, but I though it would be interesting to see the terms and
conditions which the UK Government requires people to agree to in order to discuss UK government policies. So
the full details follow – but please mote they are very long.
Feel free to give your thoughts on these terms and conditions. One particular condition which struck me was:
“You acknowledge that www.communities.idea.gov.uk reserves the right to charge for the Community of
Practice and to change its fees from time to time in its discretion.“
Now why do I feel that such terms and conditions provided on services such as Facebook would be used to
condemn the service, but the Government seems to be able to get away with it?
Note that as the terms and conditions are so long, I have included a More tag in this blog post, so that you will
have to follow the link in order to view the full list of terms and conditions. Continued reading >
Filed in openness | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (5)
A Shared Digital Water Cooler Moment
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 191 of 616
They say that in a era of
multiple media channels we no longer have the shared water cooler moment’ the time after a momentous event
when we get together with our friends and colleagues and discuss the event.
It does, of course, still happen – the momentous sports result (which has to be national in order to get group buy-
in – perhaps England’s Johny Wilkinson moment in the Rugby World Cup final is the most recent one for English
fans); John Archer’s death in the Archers (for the liberal Guardian readers) or the first series of Big Brother
(admit it – you remember Nasty Nick). And, of course, the general election result in 1997.
But unless we are in a pub with friends, we normally have to wait until the next day in order to share the
memories of the occasion with our colleagues.
But less than an hour ago I had one of the jubilant water cooler moments as I watched the US election result being
declared. And although I was at home I could share the joy with many of my Twitter followers.
Maybe that’s the reason to get into Twitter – to be able to say, as I did “I was up for Obama” – and to get an
immediate response from someone who gets the reference to Labour’s victory in 1997, and the delight we shared
that night.
But let’s hope that in the long run it turns about better for Obama than it did for New Labour.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 192 of 616
Clogging Chris Gets Blogs
Monday, November 3rd, 2008
Chris Sexton, Director of Corporate Information and Computing Services at the University of Sheffield, recently
announced the first anniversary of her From a Distance blog which she uses to “share her work life with you“.
As Chris described her blog ”started as a way of keeping people in the department in touch with what I was
doing, and as an experiment to see if I could keep it up, and whether it was useful“. After a year (and 232 blog
posts) Chris concluded that “I haven’t found it a bore to write, I can usually think of something to say ( well,
about 4 times a week I can), and I know from google analytics that people are reading it“.
Chris initial posts covered her participation at the Educause 2007 conference and last week Chris wrote about the
Educause 2008 conference. Her post on Google Apps and Spiderman I found particularly interesting as it
provided a case study of the University of South California’s experience in deploying Google Apps for Education
– and in response to the questions “was it quick?”, “was it easy?” and “was in free?” the answer seems to have
been no.
Now when people ask me whether staff in IT Service departments should be writing blogs I would point them in
the direction of Chris Sexton’s blog as a great example of a senior manager’s blog which is useful and
informative, and ensures that the insights she gains through her participation at important international events
such as Educause are shared with the wider community (and not just trapped within a closed Computing Services
director’s mailing list).
Chris manages to provide a Twitter feed as well as her wortk blog, although as her Twitter id cloggingchris may
indicate, this tends to cover her social interests (clog dancing, sword dancing, folk festivals and drinking real ale).
And whene we where first introduced at the UCISA Management Conference in 2004 Chris and I discovered we
knew each other from the rapper dancing world – but didn’t recognise each other out of costume!
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Blessed Are The Pithy
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008
On the final evening of my holiday in Thailand I found myself catching up with developments in the world by
skimming the rolling headlines on the BBC World news. So, in tweetspeak I found that “Things look good for
Obama; Spurs 4, Rednapp happy and economic crisis continues“.
We seem, I feel, to have an ever-increasing need to be able to summarise information quickly in snippets. Yet
information professionals are expected, it seems, to write long, well-researched theses for their library and
information studies courses. And this continues in the profession – I can recall when I moved offices a few years
ago coming across long reports (which would have been costly to commission) on technologies which failed to
have any significant impact. Is this the best way of doing things – commissioning long reports which may be filed
without being read?
Where are the information professions who are skilled at being concise? Perhaps they are to be found writing
pithy comments in Twitterland.
And infobunny seems to be the type of information professional I feel we need more of. She twitters(where she
entertains me with her stories of life with her Lancastrian boyfriend and her gripes of travelling on the train to
work), she blogs about life as a legal librarian and she regularly keeps her twitter followers updated with news
about new Twitter applications.
With 14,434 Twitter updates infobunny (who is also known as the Lo-Fi-Librarian) is clearly passionate about
Twitter and the 856 Twitter followers she has shows that large numbers of users are interested in what she has to
say. And as infobunny herself also follows 762 other Twitter users she’s not only a writer, but also reads what
others are saying.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 193 of 616
Infobunny as this year’s Information Professional of the Year? Why not?
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
The Second Anniversary of The UK Web Focus Blog
Friday, October 31st, 2008
The UK Web Focus blog was launched on 1st November 2006. Two years later I felt it would be worth keeping a
note of some of the statistics for the blog.
There have been over 115,013 visits by 31st October 2008 and 1,971 comments on the 454 posts. The numbers of
visitors grew steadily from the launch until March 2007. The numbers of visits then remained steady although
there were two peaks in July and November 2007. However since June 2008 the traffic has started to increase
again, with September 2008 being the busiest month ever. Of course, many blog readers will be aware that there
are lies, dammed lies and blog statistics. So treat these figures with a pinch of salt!
Although the Wordpress administrator’s interface provides statistics on the numbers of blog posts, comments and
visits, it doesn’t provide any indication of the amount of content I’ve produced. So I thought I’d create a PDF of
blog posts, partly to get a feel for the size but also for work I’m doing regarding various approaches to preserving
the content of blogs (more of that in a subsequent post).
I created a backup copy of this blog and
played with the themes in order to use a single column theme (although I couldn’t find a theme that used the full
width of the screen). I then used the browsers Print function to create a PDF file which I then uploaded to Scribd.
As you can see if you visit the page on Scribd or view the accompanying image, over a period of 1 year and 11
months I have created over 500 A4 pages, although this figure is slightly inaccurate due to the white space on the
right hand side of the page and the embedded images which are displayed at full size (and this file was created on
3 October 2008).
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 194 of 616
I have found the process of using a blog for my reflective thinking really useful, and there are lots of ideas which I
can now access which I would probably have forgotten if I hadn’t written them down. And having these thoughts
exposed to a large readership has provided very valuable feedback, so thanks to everyone who has given their
comments.
I also hope that as well as being valuable to me that you have found the blog useful and interesting to read
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
No, You Don't Need to Blog, Tweet, …
Monday, October 27th, 2008
I’ve discussed potential benefits of a variety of Web 2.0 services including blogs, wikis, Twitter, use of audio and
video, etc. over the past two years on this blog. But it strikes me that a reason we can encounter resistance to use
of new technologies is that people think that they will have to use them. I personally don’t think everyone should
blog, use Twitter or make use of Second Life, for example – a point I made recently in a video blog post. Rather I
feel that the early users of such services and the enthusiasts should be willing to explain why such technologies
can provide benefits to others, but not mandate their use inappropriately. And the role of managers and policy
makers should be to provide an environment in which the diversity of tools which are available can be used to
support a diversity of tasks and a diversity of user preferences.
The problem, it seems to me, is the attitude of “I don’t see the point – therefore you should be doing it either” –
although I suspect that in my cases the unspoken fear is “I don’t get it, and I’m worried that if I don’t oppose it
I’ll be forced to do it“. Perhaps the tensions are between the positions of “I want diversity, you need convincing
and he wants things to stay the same“.
On the other hand if you decide that you don’t want to blog, tweet, make use of wikis, etc. and you are an
information professional, how employable will you be if you decide to change jobs?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (7)
No Risk…. No Innovation…
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
A job advertisement for ICT Programme Managers in JISC begins with the phrase:
No risk…. no innovation…
The advert goes on to say:
To innovate, you have to take risks… well managed ones. By undertaking innovation programmes with
universities and colleges we can build a world class ICT infrastructure for UK research and learning. To
keep us moving forward, we now need five Programme Managers with excellent people and programme
management skills to manage large-scale programmes …
This view of what it means to be a part of today’s IT development environment reflects a comment I made when I
was interviewed by Hilary Swain for an article on “Web 2.0: boon or bane for universities“ published in the
Education Guardian on 12th May 2008. The article concluded with my comment: “Universities should be risk-
taking organisations. Learning is a risky process.”
But its important to note the job advert’s comment on the need to take a ‘well-managed’ approach to risk-taking.
The need to identify approaches for managing risks was the main focus on my paper on “Library 2.0: Balancing
the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” and this is an area in which further work will be needed. And
this work will cover not just the JISC sector but also museums, libraries and archives. Roy Clare, the MLA’s
Chief Executive, recently called for “radical action on structure, far-sighted leadership vision and more public
Private Partnerships“ within this sector and an editorial in the CILIP Update magazine (June 2008, Vol. 7, No. 6)
had the byline “In This Climate, You Have To Innovate“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 195 of 616
I think 2009 will be a very interesting time for those involved in the development and support of networked
services.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged jisc | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (0)
Getting Twitter
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
I think Twitter has been the first application I’ve come across where people talk about ‘not getting it’. Such
comments don’t reflect a lack of understanding of how the software works or how to use the software but what
purpose it services and how it can be beneficial to the user. And as we know Twitter fans can be passionate about
the benefits it can bring.
A Google search for “getting twitter” reveals an early example of someone who didn’t get Twitter back in March
2007, with a response from DrewB who commented:
Twitter will be huge. Nobody gets it at first. For sure it seems strange and it won’t be for everyone, but
what it allows consumers to do will be re-spun in various ways, and soon having open, cross-platform
conversations across instant messenger, SMS, blogs and RSS will make one-dimensional conversations like
this message-board style blogging malarky seem really backward.
There are now various resources which provide advice on how to ‘get Twitter’ including one from PC World.
Rather than repeating ny of the suggestions given in that article I will make a couple of my own suggestions:
Unless your intended use of Twitter is for communications across a closed group (e.g. keeping in touch with
your family) you will need to follow a sufficient number of other Twitterers in order to gain the benefits
provided by a sustainable community.
If you only follow one Twitterer you are probably a stalker rather than a member of a community This
stuck me when one (female) colleague decided to test Twitter by following me (and only me) and having my
tweets delivered via SMS. I hate to think what her husband made of the frequency with which her mobile
phone beeped when she received my tweets
Twitter probably doesn’t work for lurkers; effective use of Twitter is likely to be gained by people who are
willing to tweet.
You should respond to other people’s queries and comments if you expect people to respond to queries you
may send.
You need to understand that @ and D commands and how such messages intended for a particular person
(@) and sent only to a particular person (D) will be processed.
You should try and understand the various Twitter clients work and, if you choose to use one, learn how to
configure it to suit your particular preferences.
An example of a Twitter client. Tweetdeck, is shown below which illustrates my Twitter stream, tweets I have
brought together in a group I have set up (based on people who live in or near Bath) and the results of a local
search (tweets from my Twitter followers containing the string ‘JISC’). I also have a global search for ‘UKOLN’
which contains details of all tweets containing this string, although this isn’t included in the screen shot.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 196 of 616
From this I can see some figures on the popularity of social networks at the University of Leicester (Facebook is
very popular, it seems), sympathise with Martin Weller who seems to be somewhat reluctantly reading EU reports
and, see Talat request for access to a Fedora test application. Over in the Bath group, I can see t1mmyb providing
a suggestion to pip, see discussions relating to repositories between Talat and PeteJ and eavesdrop of music
discussions. Finally looked at tweets from my followers containing ‘JISC’ I can see further sharing of resources
between Talat and PeteJ, an announcement of a repository deposit in Facebook using SWORD (this was news to
me), my response to a query from AlisonWildish and, finally, ostephens sharing his frustrations at the lack of
RSS feeds on a Web site discussing the future of libraries.
Does this help you get it? If you still don’t get it, perhaps Dave Flanders post on What is Twitter? might help,
with its explanation of the role Twitter can play in the development of an online community:
Twitter is small talk: a way of interfacing with other humans in a way that gives out information that may be
meaningless in terms of content (“what the weather is like”, “how the sports teams are playing”, “what the
hotel is like” etc) but is valuable in terms of establishing set patterns of trusting and communicating further
information with one another.
For Dave, it’s the building of trust relationships which are an important aspect of Twitter – something I’d not
really thought about until I read Dave’s post.
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (7)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 197 of 616
Who Is Suffering In The Economic Downturn?
Monday, October 20th, 2008
At the end of the first day of the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference the speakers took part in a panel session
during which the audience could ask questions related to the day’s series of talks. The question I asked was
whether the upbeat nature of all of the talks I listened to was appropriate in light of the economic downturn. The
speakers felt that the library sector should be feeling confident as there would be a continued demand for the
expertise of information professionals in a rapidly changing world. It was also felt that the skills gained by those
who were making use of Web 2.0 technologies would be particularly valuable. After all, suggested one of the
speakers, there’ll be no going back to an old way of working.
I would agree with this – but who will be the providers of the Web 2.0 infrastructure? Well a news item I could
on the BBC World described how “Google, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, [has seen its] third
-quarter profit climb[ing] more than 25% as more customers used Web search ads to spur sales in a slowing
economy” (as also reported in The Telegraph, amongst others).
And as government funding is being used to bail out banks (no I didn’t expect George Bush and Gordon Brown to
nationalise banks, either) on top of the costs associated with the “war against terrorism” and, in the UK, the
draining of public sector funds to pay for the costs of the 2012 London Olympics, wouldn’t it be ‘prudent’ to seek
to make use of commercial services where they can be used to support digital activities in the educational and
cultural heritage sectors? After all as I described back in August in a post on the JISC Innovation Forum John
Selby of HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council of England) “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“. And this was before the current financial turmoil. Isn’t a reliance on public
sector funding the risky alternative which we need to assess and manage carefully?
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged bw2008 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
The Long Tail of Pinky and Perky
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
The Guardian in a recent article In Praise of … preserving digital memories felt that “It ought to be reassuring
that while governments are living a day-to-day existence trying to prevent a global financial implosion, some
people are thinking centuries ahead“. The article went on to add that “If all goes well, we will have the capacity to
preserve as many of our memories, personal and national, as we want“.
But what memories is it that we may wish to preserve? I was thinking about this during a recent trip back home to
Liverpool for my Mum’s 80th birthday. After a trip on the ferry across the Mersey with a friend we became
nostalic about the music of our past, the 60s and 70s, which included the tacky music of that period. I found that
my feeble attempts (Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep) were trumped by Pinky and Perky singing Yellow Submarine –
a cheesy TV programme of my youth; the link with The Beatles while we were in Liverpool resulted in me
conceding. And if you don’t believe me listen to this double A side taken from YouTube featuring Those
Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machine (sadly it seems that their version of Yellow Submarine is not available
– for copyright reasons, perhaps?).
But if you’d prefer to see what Pinky and Perky looked like then I’ve embedded a video clip from YouTube of
their version of Let’s Twist Again, which is taken from their TV show.
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wA1nTaSrfB4]
But what does this have to do with preservation you may ask? Surely preservation is concerned with preserving
the quality memories? I would argue differently. The poor and the tacky, as well as the good and the worthy, are
significant parts of our personal memories and shared culture.
And such memories can help us in the discussions we have today. I was convinced that Pinky and Perky pre-dated
The Beatles but the evidence from YouTube, together with the entry in Wikipedia and the various Pinky and
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 198 of 616
Perky Web sites provides further information which I was unaware of – including the fact, from the H2G2 Web
site, that the show was banned in 1966 for being too political!.
Who, I wonder, can provide help and support for people who may be interested in gathering such information and
sharing it with others who have similar interests? In the case of Pinky and Perky this is likely to be small
numbers, but let’s not forget the long tail which can apply to Pinky and Perky as well as niche books available in
Amazon (and as the show originated in Czechoslovakia and had a long TV run in the US, there may be a global
interest in the history of the show.
My view is that the cultural heritage sector can have a role to play in supporting individuals or small groups who
wish to engage in such activities. I think it’s important to remember that the cultural heritage organisations need
not be restricted to managing and curating objects in their own organisations, but provide support to others who
may be interested in preserving our shared memories.
And this is one of the many reasons why I feel it is important to support staff within these organisations so that
they can support their own communities. And this might include providing advice and supporting in making use
of services such as Wikipedia and YouTube. I’d like to explore this idea at the next Web 2.0 workshop I will run,
on behalf of CyMAL in Bangor in November. Are any readers of this blog involved in making use of Web 2.0 to
support groups who have interests in topics which may be classed as part of the long tail?
And finally, for this, the 450th post on my blog, my friend has childhood memories of watching an automated
puppet show of Pinky and Perky near the beach at Christchurch, Dorset when they sang Yellow Submarine. Now
I can’t remember a Pinky and Perky automaton ever visiting Liverpool. Was their tour restricted to the south
coast? Or were they concerned over copyright infringment if they visited the home of the Beatles? Or perhaps
more seriously (but only slightly) was there a single Pinky and Perky automaton or were they mass produced?
Who made them? And are any left? Sadly it seems I’m developing an obsession But perhaps the long tail of
others who have an interest in automatons can help? And I notice that the Wikipedia entry doesn’t have much on
twentieth century example – an opportunity for someone, perhaps.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
What is the Evidence Suggesting About Facebook?
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
In a recent comment Mike Elllis reflected on the meaning of technology, where the complexity comes from, and
what the bits under the hood bring to the party. Mike concluded “My take is: users aren’t just quite important,
really important or reasonably vital: they are everything, bar none.”
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 199 of 616
If you accept this proposition how should you respond to
what appears to be the continuing popularity of Facebook? A quick snapshot of my friend’s status indicates that
my Facebook friends are regularly updating their status, using a variety of mechanisms, with Twitter users
automatically updating their Facebook status via Twitter.
Meanwhile Ruth Page on her Digital Narratives blog has written a post entitled “Facebook Fresher’s group:
Success story“. In a review of the induction week at Birmingham City University (BCU) Ruth states that:
One of the great things has definitely been the take up and use of the Facebook group for the Freshers. At the
beginning of the week we had 62 students joined up, and at the last look, 84 students out of an intake of
around 120. But the numbers aren’t everything – it’s how the students evaluated it.
She goes on to add that the students:
“loved the fact they could make friends with their fellow students before they even got here. That made a
huge difference on the first day when it was so much easier to strike up conversations. But they also really
appreciated the fact that they could ask questions and get the clarification they needed before arriving. Some
of this came from me, but some of it also came from the students too, especially our student mentors who
played a brilliant part in offering advice and encouragement from a student perspective.
Ruth concluded by saying:
The strength of using Facebook is that many of the students are already using it. I wasn’t asking them to take
on yet another new form information, but tapping into a forum they are already familiar with. And, as a
social networking site, that is what it is best at: encouraging friendships and connections that build the social
cohesion so important for good progression and retention.
Now many IT developers and policy makers don’t like Facebook. I’ve heard comments along the lines of it’s a
fad; it’s a walled garden; it’s commercial; it’s partly owned by Microsoft; the terms and conditions are
unacceptable; …
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 200 of 616
These comments do have an element of truth to them. But if the users are willing to use the service, then maybe,
as Mike suggests, these issues about the ‘behind the scenes’ factors simply aren’t as important as they are made
out to be.
On the other hand, as Stuart Smith has commented, perhaps “variety is good” and although from “a user
perspective the system doesn’t matter … from an educational grand plan perspective then lack of choice in
education is limiting“. Stuart then goes on to argue that “We need to be careful that we don’t become populist for
the sake of it, simply adopting systems because they are in mass use. Ideally we should consider why they are
popular and then ask if they have educational value.”
Now Stuart is right to acknowledge that popularity can be a
factor. Back in April 2008 in a post entitled Facebook Or Twitter – Or Facebook And Twitter I responded to those
who were arguing that Facebook’s popularity was on the wane by showing a graph comparing Facebook usage
with that of Twitter which demonstrated that that Facebook usage wasn’t in decline. And the latest figures
demonstrate that Facebook’s popularity is continuing to grow at a much greater rate than Twitter’s as illustrated
(with a graph available on compete.com).
But in avoiding being ‘populist for the sake of it, simply adopting systems because they are in mass use‘ don’t we
face the danger of being elitist, and prioritising our view and our prejudices over the preferences of the users?
And let’s remember that organisations can change – indeed as Andy Powell has just commented in a post on
Thoughts on FOWA:
“And finally… to that Mark Zuckerberg interview at the end of day 2. I really enjoyed it actually. Despite
being well rehearsed and choreographed I thought he came across very well. He certainly made all the right
kinds of noises about making Facebook more open though whether it is believable or not remains to be
seen!“.
What’s your take on this debate?
Filed in Facebook | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (7)
The Social Aspect Of Resource Discovery
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008
How do I discover new things, new places and new ideas? An approach I take is the approach I’ve used ever since
I was a child – I ask people and I eaves-drop on conversations. And on the Social Web this approach can be even
more useful as there are more people I can ask and more conversations I can listen to.
I’ve produced a slideshow with a 9 minute 25 second accompanying audio track which is available on Slideshare
and is embedded below explaining why I feel that the social aspect of resource discovery is under-rated.
[slideshare id=631787&doc=socialresourcediscovery-1222958311001678-8&w=425]
I should probably have added in the talk that when I publish peer-reviewed presentations the literature search and
use of more formal resource discovery services does take place – however this tends to be done by one of the co-
authors (David Sloan in the case of my accessibility papers). Which I think illustrates another example of the
social aspect of resource discovery – you have a co-author who is happy using traditional library-based resource
discovery tools, while you another co-author focus on the social aspects to discovery. Just as social Web tools
need not be to every researcher’s taste, so the more formal approaches do not have to be used by every researcher.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 201 of 616
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the
Dividends
Monday, October 13th, 2008
I’m attending the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference this week which will be held in Singapore on 16-17 October.
I’ve been invited to present a paper on “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the
Dividends“.
There are a number of interesting speakers at the conference. I’m particularly looking forward to meeting up with
Jenny Levine again and hearing her talk on “Librarian 2.0 – New Breed or Just Another Day at the Office?“,
meeting my former colleague Bernadette Daly Swanson and hearing what she has to say on “I am Library:
Exploring the Library Experience in Second Life” and chatting to Peter Godwin, co-editor of a book on
“Information Literacy meets Library 2.0” which I contributed a chapter to earlier this year.
As a blog post on the conference Web site describe, the conference will “try to give .. an insight into what for
many is the unfamiliar world of Library 2.0 … [including] Second Life, Folksonomies and new approaches
libraries, sharing and community“. The blog post goes on to suggest that the Library 2.0 Meme Map available on
Flickr with a Creative Commons licence, provides a useful insight into the topics which will be covered at the
conference.
My paper will provide examples of ways in which Library 2.0 services are being deployed, with brief case studies
provided by co-authors Paul Bevan, Jo Alcock and Richard Akerman on uses at the National Library of Wales,
University of Wolverhampton and NRC-CISTI, Canada. The main focus of the paper, however focusses on ways
of addressing the risks associated with use of externally-hosted services and user-generated content, with a section
on the Childnet International and Digizen work being provided by Josie Fraser.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 202 of 616
And after the conference finishes I’m looking forward to taking a well-deserved holiday!
Filed in Events, Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(2)
Experiments With Video Blogging To Support Presentations
Friday, October 10th, 2008
Use of Videos To Support Presentations
This year I’ve started to make use of video and audio technologies to support my work activities. This has
included giving a numbers of talks to remote audiences using the Elluminate software as part of the JISC Emerge
project. There have also two occasions when I have been invited to give a talk at a conference but was unable to
attend in person. The first on these was the UCISA 2008 Management Conference, where I had been invited to
give a talk on “Digital Natives Run by Digital Immigrants“. Unfortunately by the time the invitation had been
confirmed (i.e. the speaker the organisers really wanted had let them know he couldn’t attend!) I had found that I
was committed to attending another meeting. Not a problem, I thought, as video technologies are now fairly
mature. But as I was aware of (a) the risks of giving a live video presentation and (b) the dullness of a ‘talking
head’ on a screen I decided to pre-record my presentation. And I agreed with the conference audiences that the
talk would be a double act, with Andy Powell of the Eduserv Foundation, physically attending the conference and
contributing to the talk. And as neither Andy nor myself with keen on the proposed title, we jointly came up with
the entitled “IT Services are Dead, Long Live IT Services 2.0!“.
The video of my talk is still available on Zentation which have been synchronised with the PowerPoint slides –
unlike, of course, the talks given by Andy and the other speakers at the conference. Conference participants will
now only have faded memories of their talks, with (possibly) their PowerPoint slides being available on the
UCISA Web sites, together with any conference reports which may have been published.
More recently I have purchased a Flip camera and used it to record presentations I have given, including
presenting papers at the iPres2008 and ADDW08 conferences – and as I have suggested, this approach can
potentially enhance the impact of such papers and the accessibility of the resources.
Should We Leave It To The Professionals?
However in a blog post published back in August entitled What Web 2.0 teaches us… Andy Powell suggested
that “Web 2.0 technology democratises production but creative talent and presentation skills remain rare
commodities” (although to be fair to Andy, his post was prefixed with the remark that the post is “intended to be
somewhat tongue-in-cheek and humorous but like most such things, from my perspective at least, I think it
contains at least a grain or two of truth“).
Andy’s point was that “our desktop use of audio and video in particular tends to highlight an amateurish
approach to production“. And as well as his doubts regarding the production values he also felt that “Some
people’s voices simply become wooden when faced with a microphone and the ‘record’ light, to the point that
listening to them is painful.”
And more recently in response to a post on “Videoing Talks As A Means Of Providing Equivalent Experiences”
Andy suggested that for my video of a talk I gave at ADDW08 conference “Video is a nice gimmick (in this case)
but no more.
Is Andy right? Should we leave the production of audio and video resources to the AV experts? Should we leave
video presentation to those who have been received appropriate training in presentational skills? And is the use of
video a nice gimmick?
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 203 of 616
Experiments At IWMW 2008
In addition to recording videos of talks at conferences, either in advance or at the event itself, I have been
experimenting with the potential of video micro-blogging tools such as Seesmic.
Seesmic has been described as “the “Twitter of video” – you record a brief video giving your thoughts on a topic
and people can respond, also using video.
Now people who don’t get Twitter are unlikely to what Seesmic could offer. But it seems that people who are
happy to use Twitter and appreciate the benefits it can provide do not necessarily feel that Seesmic has much to
offer. And I myself was rather sceptical until I met with AJ Cann in Leicester a few months ago and he convinced
me that it was a tool worthy of some experimentation.
My first Seesmic posts were made prior to the IWMW 2008 events, and I published video blog posts giving an
Introduction to the IWMW 2008 Event, a summary of the Plenary Talks, the Social Aspect of the event and the
Barcamp. And I was pleased that Mike McConnell and Mike Whymet also demonstrated their willingness to try
out the service with their Welcome to Aberdeen. These experiments provided me with an opportunity to see how
the service worked, how the content could be re-used – and to worry out the visual impression I may be giving. I
was particularly pleased at the ease with which the video posts can be embedded in Web pages.
Further Experiments
I will be unable to facilitate a blogging workshop at ILI this year, but my colleague Marieke Guy and Ann
Chapman are able to take my place. They will be reusing materials I developed for previous blog workshops, but
it did occur to me that this workshop might provide an opportunity to experiment with Seesmic as a means of
providing additional multimedia materials for use during a workshop.
I have created a number of Seesmic video posts on
several topics related to blogging including:
1. Why do I blog? [link]
2. How do I find ideas to blog about? [link]
3. How do I find the time to blog? [link]
4. Is blogging rewarding? [link]
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 204 of 616
5. Do I comment on other people’s blogs?
6. Is blogging for everyone? [link]
7. How should you get started blogging? [link]
8. What’s best – a team blog or an individual’s blog? [link]
9. What are the pros and cons of externally-hosted blogs versus in-house blogs? [link]
These video blogs posts can be accessed on the Seesmic Web site, embedded in other Web pages or viewed using
desktop client tools such as the Twhirl Twitter client, illustrated.
For me an advantage which Seesmic may provide is the ability to receive video responses. This has already
happened with the author of the TechTicker blog, in particular, having provided a number of useful responses,
including one in which he describes why he feels that users who are happy to publish their reflections in a public
space are likely to be more willing to engage in public blogging activities.
Now at an event, such as the blogging workshop, this might be particularly useful in providing access to a
diversity of multimedia content. And I think this type of use addresses Andy’s concern that “the linear nature of
audio and video tends to defy attempts at scanning the content“. I would suggest that most participants at events
are familiar with the linear nature of presentations and are willing to accept that they can’t fast forward past the
boring parts
So if any readers of this blog post would be willing to give their thoughts on any of the topics I’ve mentioned feel
free to leave a video response. Who knows, there might be an opportunity for your thoughts – and your service –
to be featured at the event.
But should we leave video production to the experts? I don’t think so, but your view may differ. But if you do
feel that Seesmic may have something to offer, then there will be a need to identify best practices (e.g. stick to a
single topic in a blog post and in subsequent responses) and to be aware of potential pitfalls, including the dangers
of video content being locked within the service – this is a reason I create the video posts in a separate application
and have explored uploading the video to Seesmic via YouTube, as can be seen from the image above.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (6)
Videoing Talks As A Means Of Providing Equivalent Experiences
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
As I recently posted, a paper by myself and Liddy Nevile was accepted by the ADDW08 conference. In the paper
we argued that the conventional wisdom regarding Web accessibility (just follow the WCAG guidelines and the
Web environment will be universally accessible to all) has been shown to be flawed. We argued that in a world
of mass creation of digital objects, the hand-crafted approach which underpins the WCAG model doesn’t scale.
We argued the need to embrace a diversity of approaches, including an exploration of the potential for exploiting
the links between related resources in order to find equivalent resources.
Our paper is available (in MS Word, PDF and HTML formats) and our slides are also available (in MS
PowerPoint and in (dodgy) HTML formats). But in addition a video of the talk (which I took using a Flip video
camera) is available on Google Video (and is embedded below).
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6225623885632534881&hl=en]
And I’ve synched the video with the PowerPoint slides to provide an even richer experience. This is available on
Zentation and a screen image is illustrated below.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 205 of 616
Now although the HTML version of the paper should comply with WCAG guidelines (although as a peer-
reviewed paper the language and writing style may mean that is is not necessarily understandable by all), the MS
Word, PDF, MS PowerPoint, HTML version of the slides and the .AVI video files will not. Now I could make
the resources conform to WCAG guidelines if I removed all but the HTML version of the paper. But I would
argue that this would diminish the impact of and accessibility of the underlying ideas I wish to communicate.
And seeking to make the various versions of the resources conform to the various checklists would be very time-
consuming and would not, I would argue, provide an effective return on the tax-payers money. And such
consideration are, I suspect, informing policy decisions related to the provision of institutional repositories –
although perhaps without the provision of links to related resources.
Now as devices such as a Flip can be purchased for less than £100 pounds, and uploading videos on Google
Video can be done for free a question I would ask is “if conference organisers fail to make such alternatives for
papers presented at conferences, could this be regarded as a failure to take reasonable measures to provide access
to services for people with disabilities?” Isn’t it unreasonable to fail to invest £100 to enhance the effectiveness
of conferences along the lines I’ve suggested and demonstrated? And, indeed, doesn’t the informality used in
talks provide a valuable alternative to people who may be put off by the nature of the language which is found in
research publications.
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged addw08 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (15)
"Directory of (E-)Learning Professionals on Twitter"
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
Tony Hirst’s post on eduTwitterin’ alerted me to “Jane’s list of “100+ (E-)Learning Professionals to follow on
Twitter” which has subsequently been renamed “Directory of (E-)Learning Professionals on Twitter”. Tony
mentioned the staff at the Open University of the list (Tony himself, Martin Weller and Grainne Conole). These
are all people I know and follow on Twitter, so I thought I would see who else was on the list. I was surprised but
pleased (I think) to see myself on the list.
I had wondered if something was going on with Twitter after receiving an recent influx of email messages
announcing new people who were following me on Twitter. My first tweet after finding myself on this list was to
acknowledge that people were probably following people (and others on the list) in the expectation of reading
something special. So my first tweet was:
Pressure now on for insightful edu-tweet. Hmm. Thinking of going to Raven to see Joley
Rowan http://bit.ly/yFyR7 Will that do?
It’s my space after all And it was about 8pm on Monday night, when I was torn between going to watch music
in The Bell and The Raven, two of the music venues in Bath I live to frequent.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 206 of 616
I have added a couple of the people who have started to follow me recently to the people I follow, but these were
people I either knew or people whose blog seemed of interest to me. And I may stop following people if I feel I
don;t gain any benefits from their tweets. I guess the point being that there will be a limit to the size of one’s
personal twitterverse. But as well as the size of the network and the number of posts, I think the effectiveness of
Twitter is based on the nature of the communications within the community. Whether having a list of 100+ e-
learning professionals to follow is a good way of building a community I’m unsure about. Buit on the other hand,
there is a need to start somewhere. I’ll give some thought on how I feel one should start to engage with Twitter in
a subsequent post.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (5)
On-The-Fly Professional Development And Learning
Monday, October 6th, 2008
Last week I received a tweet from Andy
Powell announcing that he would be live-blogging at the Future of Technology in Education (FOTE) conference.
On Friday, on the morning of the event, Andy sent another tweet saying that the live-blog was available on
Eduserver’s new Livewire service. And so I went along (to the Web site, not to London for the event!) and read
Andy’s comments on one or two of the presentations and the comments made by others.
We’re seeing increasing examples of ‘amplified conferences’ in which commentary on the talks is being made
available to people who aren’t physically present. This is even more effective if the event provides streaming
video of the talks (which can, of course, be expensive) and if the slides used by the speakers are made available to
the remote audience on services such as Slideshare.
I’m really pleased to see this happening and it’s good to see the approaches which are being taken by Eduserv. I
think this is a good example of on-the-fly professional development. And it is particularly pleasing to see this
example of openness – a participant at a conference who is happy to make notes on the talks and to share them
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 207 of 616
with others. As Andy subsequently told me he has “have taken a decision to live blog most of the events that I
attend“.
I’d like to make some suggestions for those who are involved in providing live blogging services at events:
• Provide a clear statement of the rights issues, such as “Please note that this live blog is open to everyone.
Any comments you make on this service will have a Creative Commons licence“.
• Provide occasional statistics on the numbers of participants, if this isn’t provided by the software.
• Clarification of the status of the live-blog and ensure that any possible conflicts with other live-blogs are
addressed (i.e. avoiding having multiple live blogs which fragment discussions).
• Clarification of whether the reporter is providing a neutral commentary on what the speakers are saying, or
is giving personal comments on the talks.
I should add that Andy’s comments on the FOTE event did include his personal opinions including his final
conclusions: “i think there have been some very good talks today and some very bad talks. on balance, i think it
has been a good and useful day. as i mentioned, i think that suppliers (with the exception of huddle guy) have a
tendency to talk down to the audience – we know the world is changing – what we want is help in thinking about
how to respond“. In addition Andy’s also provided his opinions on the talks. This was fine for me and, I suspect,
those who know Andy, and helped to generate discussion and debate. But in other contexts I could envisage that
this might cause problems. And
Are there other suggestions which others would like to make?
One final question. Do we have a clear understanding of what we mean by live-blogging? This to me seems more
like a messaging environment. How should we refer to a blog which is taken during a talk and published
immediately afterwards, such as Chris Rusbridge’s report on sessions at the IPRES 2008 conference?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (11)
The Wow Factor, The Openness, The Developers Environment, …
Friday, October 3rd, 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):
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’.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 208 of 616
The hardware environment: The iPhone, like Macintosh hardware, is only 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 beneficial 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?
Filed in Gadgets | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (7)
iPres2008 Preservation Conference Gets Featured In The Guardian
Thursday, October 2nd, 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.
[slideshare id=626376&doc=jiscpowripres2008-1222762941459270-9&w=425]
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“.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
Library 2.0 at the University of Wolverhampton
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 209 of 616
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 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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 210 of 616
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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 211 of 616
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
Filed in Blog, Guest-post | Tagged Guest-post | Permalink
| Edit | Comments (6)
Institutional Repositories and the Costs Of Doing It Right
Monday, September 29th, 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:
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. 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 resource-intensive 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 212 of 616
– 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 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 labour-intensive manual efforts is a perverse solution in a public sector environment in
which should be demonstrating that we can provide cost effective solutions“?
Filed in Accessibility, Repositories | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (1)
Launch of UKOLN's Resources for the Culture Heritage Sector
Friday, September 26th, 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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 213 of 616
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 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 214 of 616
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.
Filed in General | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Google's G1 Phone: "Innovation For Tech Heads"
Thursday, September 25th, 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 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 became 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!)
Filed in Gadgets | Tagged G1, iPhone | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (12)
Web 2.0 In Troubled Economic Times
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 215 of 616
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 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’.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
What Can Web 2.0 Offer To The IAMIC Community?
Monday, September 22nd, 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 216 of 616
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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 217 of 616
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“.
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.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Web Accessibility 3.0
Friday, September 19th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 218 of 616
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.
[slideshare id=601697&doc=accessibility30-1221595508160698-9&w=425]
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.
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged addw08 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (5)
Killed By Complexity
Tuesday, September 16th, 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 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 219 of 616
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?
Filed in standards | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (7)
Serious Thinking at Bathcamp08
Sunday, September 14th, 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.
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.
[slideshare id=589646&doc=bathcampkellyblack-1220963592477499-9&w=425]
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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 220 of 616
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:
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.
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?
Filed in Events | Tagged bathcamp08 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (1)
On the Videos from the Repository Fringe 2008
Wednesday, September 10th, 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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 221 of 616
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) Dorothea 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.
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8823043830385196768]
Filed in Accessibility, standards | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (0)
Are Institutional Portals and VLEs Really "Creepy Treehouses"?
Tuesday, September 9th, 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-creepy-tree-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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 222 of 616
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 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.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged creepy treehouse | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (6)
On the Demise of the Free Twitter SMS Service
Monday, September 8th, 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.”
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 223 of 616
“**** ***! 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 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.“?
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
100,000 Views
Saturday, September 6th, 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 Oct Nov Dec To
2006 4 1,238 2,067 3,
2007 2,528 3,055 4,059 4,387 4,321 4,389 5,876 4,063 4,181 4,675 6,607 4,514 52,
2008 4,713 5,350 4,522 5,414 5,025 4,856 6,388 6,314 1,458 44,
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 Video-Conferencing Tool Or
Something Sinister?.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 224 of 616
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.
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
The George Bush and Microsoft Parallels
Friday, September 5th, 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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 225 of 616
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.
Filed in standards | Tagged OOXML | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (5)
Open Standards and the JISC IE
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 226 of 616
Library Programmes and Ideology Or Pragmatism? Open Standards And Cultural Heritage Web Sites). I suspect
it is time to revisit this topic.
Filed in standards | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (4)
Over Ten Years Of Accessibility Work
Tuesday, September 2nd, 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 different phases in my work which are summarised in the table below.
Date Phase Comments
The first few year were based on learning more about the WAI approach to Web
1997
accessibility, including the WCAG, ATAG and UAAG guidelines. Advice was provided
- Naivity
based of this approach. During this time I was also a member of the DISinHE Steering
1999
Group.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 227 of 616
The timeline indicates little activity in this period. Perhaps there was little new to say, as
2000 the view then was that WCAG conformance was all that Web developers need concern
- Silence themselves with. In this case, best practices would primarily be a training issue to be
2001 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
Evidence- levels of conformance, and as further manual testing would be needed in order to provide
2002
gathering 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
Debating conference and ”Web Accessibility: Will WCAG 2.0 Better Meet Today’s Challenges?”
2003 alternative at the WWW 2003 conference and a debate on “Web accessibility is difficult to
approaches 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
Alternative
University of Bath) have a paper on Developing A Holistic Approach For E-Learning
approaches for
2004 Accessibility published in the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology. These ideas
e-learning
- are further developed for a prize-winning paper on “Implementing A Holistic Approach
accesibility
To E-Learning Accessibility” presented at the ALT-C 2005 conference and a paper on
published
“Holistic Approaches to E-Learning Accessibility” published in the ALT-J journal in
2006.
A paper on “Forcing Standardization or AccommodatingDiversity? A Framework for
Applying the WCAG in the Real World” was presented at the W4A 2005 conference. This
Alternative
paper was co-authored by myself, Lawrie Phipps and David Sloan, who have been the
approaches to
main driving force behind this work. Further papers which further developed our holistic
2006 Web
framework for accessibility and applied the approach beyond e-learning accessibility
- accessibility
were published at the W4A 2006 (”Contextual Web Accessibility – Maximizing the
framework
Benefit of Accessibility Guidelines“), W4A 2007 (”Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and
published
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
Alternative
organise the Accessibility Summit II, giving a talk on “The Accessible Web” at the “Web
approaches to
2006 Adept: Museums and the Web 2007 conference”, facilitating a session on “What Does
Web
- Accessibility Mean To The Blogging Community?” at the blogs.ac.uk conference,
accessibility
facilitating a professional forum on “Accessibility 2.0: A Holistic And User-Centred
disseminated
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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 228 of 616
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 post.
Filed in Accessibility | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Guest Post: You’ve Got A Friend
Monday, September 1st, 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 (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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 229 of 616
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.
Filed in Guest-post | Tagged Guest-post | Permalink | Edit
| Comments (4)
Blog Day 2008
Sunday, August 31st, 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 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
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 230 of 616
The Final JISC PoWR Workshop
Friday, August 29th, 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:
[slideshare id=547261&doc=jiscpowrwildish-1218212254993921-9&w=425]
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
Filed in Web2.0, preservation | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (0)
Defining An "Amplified Conference"
Thursday, August 28th, 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 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’.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 231 of 616
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:
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 audio-conferencing 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 video-conferencing 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
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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 232 of 616
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?
Filed in Events, Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments
(2)
MyBristol Toolbar
Wednesday, August 27th, 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
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?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (5)
Squirl: When Web 2.0 Services Break
Monday, August 25th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 233 of 616
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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 234 of 616
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 broken@squirl.info.
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.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Squirl | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (6)
What Is JISC?
Friday, August 22nd, 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.“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 235 of 616
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 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:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 236 of 616
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged jisc, wikipedia | Permalink | Edit
| Comments (6)
The ILI Tenth Anniversary
Thursday, August 21st, 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 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).
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 237 of 616
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 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“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 238 of 616
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: 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.
Filed in Events | Tagged ili, ili2008 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (3)
The Markmail Service
Monday, August 18th, 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 239 of 616
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’s data 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 principles.
Filed in General | Tagged Markmail | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (5)
Fahrenheit 451
Friday, August 15th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 240 of 616
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 Forum dinner 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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 241 of 616
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 to this resource,
so you don’t need to cite the original source. Let’s be part of an underground movement
[slideshare id=530831&doc=preservationcampaign-1217237243578239-8&w=425]
Filed in preservation | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (14)
Usage Statistics for the IWMW 2008 Live Video Stream
Thursday, August 14th, 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 242 of 616
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.
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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 243 of 616
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, 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?
Filed in iwmw2008 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (5)
Revisiting Development Of Facebook Applications
Wednesday, August 13th, 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 244 of 616
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 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 245 of 616
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?
Filed in Facebook, Web2.0 | Tagged Copac, Suncat |
Permalink | Edit | Comments (12)
EDINA And Web 2.0
Monday, August 11th, 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 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 246 of 616
“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).
Filed in Accessibility | Tagged EDINA | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
Citizen 2.0, Strike 2.0, David Cameron 2.0 and Coldplay 2.0
Friday, August 8th, 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 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.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (0)
IWMW 2008 Bar Camps
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 247 of 616
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:
Wikipedia defines BarCamp as an international network of user generated conferences, open, participatory
workshop events, whose content is provided by participants. A BarCamp is typically one or two full days
held 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. Sex, Lies and Microsites [see Ning page]
2. So What Is A Good Open Source CMS? [see Ning page]
3. Stuff You Need To Know About iTunesU [see Ning page]
4. How Can A WCMS Save £3.4 Million In 12 Months? [see Ning page]
5. Tenish 5-Minute Ways To Improve Your Website [see Ning page]
6. Web Analytics Guiding Web Development [see Ning page]
7. Web 2.0 In Student Activism: What We Can Learn From Anonymous [see Ning page]
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]
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 248 of 616
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.
Filed in iwmw2008 | Tagged barcamp | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (3)
The 'Chat' Infrastructure At IWMW 2008
Tuesday, August 5th, 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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 249 of 616
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.
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?
Filed in iwmw2008 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
Why Don't Members of Institutional Web Teams Blog More?
Monday, August 4th, 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:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 250 of 616
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/
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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 251 of 616
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?
Filed in Blog | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (4)
Popular IWMW 2008 Presentations
Thursday, July 31st, 2008
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“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 252 of 616
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.
[slideshare id=525218&doc=iwmw2008-presentation-upload-1216806805079197-9&w=425]
Filed in iwmw2008 | Tagged Slideshare | Permalink | Edit
| Comments (2)
Use of Twitter to Support IWMW Events
Wednesday, July 30th, 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 253 of 616
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 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 254 of 616
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?
Filed in Twitter, Web2.0, iwmw2008 | | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (7)
Social Networks Can Be Just For Christmas
Tuesday, July 29th, 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.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=xVt0_4_FN24]
Please note that this video is available on YouTube (and further details of Claire’s talk are available on the
IWMW 2008 Web site).
Filed in Social Networking, iwmw2008 | | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (3)
IWMW 2008 Innovation Competition
Monday, July 28th, 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).
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=GviYvBxxIZc]
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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 255 of 616
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
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.
Filed in iwmw2008 | Tagged iwmw2008 | Permalink | Edit
| Comments (1)
Would You Like To Contribute To A Paper On Library 2.0?
Sunday, July 27th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 256 of 616
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.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (1)
Ewan Mcintosh's Talk At IWMW 2008
Friday, July 25th, 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 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.
[slideshare id=454356&doc=0h20-unleasing-the-tribe-screen-grabs-1212925858510972-9&w=425]
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.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged iwmw2008 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
Slideshare? Why Don't We Video Our Talks?
Thursday, July 24th, 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 257 of 616
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 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 258 of 616
of the speaker might provide a richer experience for the audience. Or is this just using the technologies for their
own sake?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (6)
International study of the use of Web 2.0 technologies
Monday, July 21st, 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.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (3)
Innovate, Innovate, Innovate
Sunday, July 20th, 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):
Innovation is typically understood as the successful introduction of something new and useful, for example
introducing new methods, techniques, or practices or new or altered products and services.
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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 259 of 616
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.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged iwmw2008 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
Institutional Use of Ning
Friday, July 18th, 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
“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.
Filed in Social Networking | Tagged Ning | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (9)
Using Searchcube
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 260 of 616
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 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?
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged searchcube | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (2)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 261 of 616
Nudge: Improving Decisions About RSS Usage
Sunday, July 13th, 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.
No. of
Institution RSS Thumbnail Comments RSS Feed
Feeds
University of No autodetect, but manual link to RSS
1 0 Events feed
Aberdeen news feed on home page
University of No autodetect, but manual link to RSS
2 0 News feed
Abertay news feed on home page
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 262 of 616
3 Bell College 0
University of
4 0
Dundee
University of
5 0
Edinburgh
Edinburgh
6 0
College of Art
Two comprehensive news feeds, one of News -
University of
7 2 current news and one of an archive of University in the
Glasgow
news items dating back to October 2007 news
Glasgow
8 Caledonian 0
University
Manual link to RSS page, containing
Heriot-Watt News -
8 0 links to two RSS feeds, together with help
University Events
information
Napier
9 0
University
(Thumbnail not
available)
University of
10 the West of 0
Scotland
Queen Margaret
11 University 0
College
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 263 of 616
Robert Gordon Two RSS feeds, one of current news and News -
12 2
University one of events Events
Royal Scottish
Academy of
13 0
Music and
Drama
News and events -
Crop issues this
week -
Farm
diversification -
Seven RSS feeds on news and events,
Research funding
farm diversification, crop issues this
Scottish bids (internal
week, research funding bids (internal use
14 Agricultural 6 only) -
only), student recruitment news,
College Student
undergraduate and postgraduate courses
recruitment news
and training courses
-
Undergraduate
and postgraduate
courses -
Training courses
University of St. Two RSS feeds, one of current news and News -
15 2
Andrews one of events Events
University of
16 0
Stirling
University of
17 1 RSS feed of press releases Press releases
Strathclyde
UHI Millennium
18 0
Institute
University of
19 the West of 0
Scotland
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 264 of 616
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:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” href=”http://www.rgu.ac.uk/common/xml/rssfeed.cfm”
title=”RGU News RSS Feed”>
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml”
href=”http://www.rgu.ac.uk/common/xml/rsseventfeed.cfm” title=”RGU Events 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 265 of 616
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.
Filed in rss | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (6)
Web Accessibility and Information Literacy Books
Friday, July 11th, 2008
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 266 of 616
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?
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Amazon | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (0)
Fragmentation, Ghettoisation and Polarisation or Diversification?
Thursday, July 10th, 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“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 267 of 616
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 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).
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 268 of 616
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
"How the Google generation thinks differently"
Wednesday, July 9th, 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 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.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (12)
Dipity Timeline Of IWMW Events
Tuesday, July 8th, 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 269 of 616
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.
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 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 270 of 616
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.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Dipity | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (1)
Experiments With Seesmic
Monday, July 7th, 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.
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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 271 of 616
interest in this type of service by the intended target audience. Creating the video posts might possibly be a waste
of time.
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.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged Seesmic, twhirl | Permalink |
Edit | Comments (5)
The Open University's Portfolio Of Web 2.0 Services
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
I’ve commented recently on the Open University’s use of Facebook (they have more ‘fans’ than any other
university).
And it seems the Open University is proactive in making corporate use of several other Web 2.0 services.
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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 272 of 616
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?
Filed
in
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 273 of 616
Web2.0 | Tagged Open University | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (11)
WordPress has Gears (and my Glass is Half Full)
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 274 of 616
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 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).
Filed in Blog | Tagged Wordpress | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (3)
UK Web Focus Blog Shortlisted for Web 2.0 and Business Blogs Award
Wednesday, July 2nd, 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!)
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.
Filed in Web2.0 | Tagged computer-weekly, cw08 |
Permalink | Edit | Comments (4)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 275 of 616
We Can Be Right And Wrong!
Tuesday, July 1st, 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 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.
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
The Mashed Museum Event
Monday, June 30th, 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 276 of 616
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.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwvdCn1jYHw]
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.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BArFuUzQUj4]
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 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!
Filed in mashups | Tagged ukmw08 | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (4)
Come Into My Twitterverse
Friday, June 27th, 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
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 277 of 616
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.
Filed in Twitter | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
When W3C Web Pages Break
Thursday, June 26th, 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:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 278 of 616
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 the Windows® ...
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 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:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 279 of 616
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?
Filed in standards | Tagged SVG | Permalink | Edit |
Comments (5)
Government Web Sites MUST Be WCAG AA Compliant!
Wednesday, June 25th, 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:
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 280 of 616
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
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“.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 281 of 616
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?”“. 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:-)
Filed in Accessibility | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (8)
What If We're Right?
Monday, June 23rd, 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:
• 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?
The question needs to be asked: what if we’re right?
Filed in Web2.0 | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (6)
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 282 of 616
RSS Training For Remote Workers (And Remote Users)
Friday, June 20th, 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.
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-321801341627869255]
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].
Filed in Web2.0, rss | | Permalink | Edit | Comments (2)
How Plenary Speakers Are Maximising Their Impact
Wednesday, June 18th, 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.
http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/ukwebfocus-backup/ 29/10/2009

ukwebfocus-backup > A Backup of the ukwebfocus blog Page 283 of 616
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 bene