Yahoo! Announces Support for OpenID

Yahoo! Announces Support for OpenID – quite a big announcement for OpenID fans. This starts in beta on 30th January – Plaxo will be one of the first services that will allow you to use the OpenID aspect of your Yahoo account to authenticate.

For those who haven’t come across OpenID, it is a way of using a single ‘identity’ across a number of services, with the control of the OpenID resting largely with the user, rather than with an organisation.

The Official OpenID site has a better explanation than I have time for here…

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BiomedExperts

(via ALA Techsource Blog)

BiomedExperts looks similar to Nature Network but perhaps with some extra cleverness which tries to exploit citations to make connections. It includes “1.4 million expert profiles in the biomedical field based on a computed co-author network of the Pubmed database from 1997 onwards”. Although all can join, those who have “published at least three papers over the last ten years that have been indexed in the Pubmed database” you get a “pre-calculated expert profile and network”

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BiomedExperts

(via ALA Techsource Blog)

BiomedExperts looks similar to Nature Network but perhaps with some extra cleverness which tries to exploit citations to make connections. It includes “1.4 million expert profiles in the biomedical field based on a computed co-author network of the Pubmed database from 1997 onwards”. Although all can join, those who have “published at least three papers over the last ten years that have been indexed in the Pubmed database” you get a “pre-calculated expert profile and network”

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Live Blogging

(via I want to)

COVERITLIVE.COM

I’ve not come across the concept of a ‘live blogging’ application before (although I usually blog conferences I attend ‘live’, and of course I’ve seen this kind of blog for sports events, tech launches etc.)

However, this seems to take it a step further – and it strikes me would be an interesting way of running a live ‘lesson’ in a virtual environment.

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Live Blogging

(via I want to)

COVERITLIVE.COM

I’ve not come across the concept of a ‘live blogging’ application before (although I usually blog conferences I attend ‘live’, and of course I’ve seen this kind of blog for sports events, tech launches etc.)

However, this seems to take it a step further – and it strikes me would be an interesting way of running a live ‘lesson’ in a virtual environment.

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The Google Generation (not)

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/resourcediscovery/googlegen.aspx

This report commissioned by JISC and the British Library suggests that although young people are more technologically savvy, this isn’t developing hand in hand with effective use of the web for information.

The report was previewed in a Guardian article yesterday, and is now available online.

I haven’t had time to read the full report, although I have skimmed it, and it looks full of interesting stuff like:

“Electronic books, driven by consumer demand, will finally become established as the primary format for educational textbooks and scholarly books and monographs, as well as reference formats.”

“Our view is that the semantic web is a tool that will reach its tipping point fairly soon.”

“Our overall conclusion is that much writing on the topic of this report overestimates the impact of ICTs on the young and underestimates its effect on older generations.”

The report makes especially interesting reading alongside a report on the viewing and surfing habits of Children in the UK reported in the Guardian this morning. I found the following paragraph particularly interesting:

“Anecdotal evidence indicated that children now multitask, keeping one eye on the television as they flick through magazines or use the computer, Duff added. Boys asked by the company to choose between programmes on different channels frequently refused, saying they would “watch both”. “They flick from one to another and cannot conceive that they should have to make a decision. They are puzzled that you should put them in a situation of having to make one or anther choice.”

The press release is accompanied by a quote from Lynne Brindley (Chief Exec of the BL):

“Libraries have to accept that the future is now. At the British Library we have adopted the ‘Wiki’ view and the ‘Beta’ mindset.”

It’s really good to see the BL taking this attitude – something we can learn from.

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The Google Generation (not)

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/resourcediscovery/googlegen.aspx

This report commissioned by JISC and the British Library suggests that although young people are more technologically savvy, this isn’t developing hand in hand with effective use of the web for information.

The report was previewed in a Guardian article yesterday, and is now available online.

I haven’t had time to read the full report, although I have skimmed it, and it looks full of interesting stuff like:

“Electronic books, driven by consumer demand, will finally become established as the primary format for educational textbooks and scholarly books and monographs, as well as reference formats.”

“Our view is that the semantic web is a tool that will reach its tipping point fairly soon.”

“Our overall conclusion is that much writing on the topic of this report overestimates the impact of ICTs on the young and underestimates its effect on older generations.”

The report makes especially interesting reading alongside a report on the viewing and surfing habits of Children in the UK reported in the Guardian this morning. I found the following paragraph particularly interesting:

“Anecdotal evidence indicated that children now multitask, keeping one eye on the television as they flick through magazines or use the computer, Duff added. Boys asked by the company to choose between programmes on different channels frequently refused, saying they would “watch both”. “They flick from one to another and cannot conceive that they should have to make a decision. They are puzzled that you should put them in a situation of having to make one or anther choice.”

The press release is accompanied by a quote from Lynne Brindley (Chief Exec of the BL):

“Libraries have to accept that the future is now. At the British Library we have adopted the ‘Wiki’ view and the ‘Beta’ mindset.”

It’s really good to see the BL taking this attitude – something we can learn from.

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Innkeeper at the Roach Motel

MINDS @ UW: Innkeeper at the Roach Motel

A slightly depressing look at the state of Institutional Repositories from the Library perspective – however, contains some interesting points, and can’t help pointing at it for the quote:

“Likewise, Imperial College London’s effort to embed the repository in existing campus practice
and technology (Afshari and Jones 2007) is exemplary.”

One of the issues raised by the article is the state of repository software, but I think it is a shame that it focusses solely on the Open Source offerings, without considering what the alternatives might be. Although they don’t get the coverage online of DSpace and e-Prints, there are many commercial products out there which can be used for an Insitutional Repository:

DigiTool
Equella
The Hive
Intralibrary
Symposia
Contentdm

These products are not necessarily targetted directly at IR – some are from a library digital collections background, and some e-learning repository background, but they support the relevant standards.

I’m not making an argument for commercial over Open Source here, but just wondering why the Open Source products in this particular area get all the attention?

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Twittering

I’ve started experimenting with Twitter – for those who don’t know this is a ‘micro-blogging‘ tool which essentially asks you to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ in 140 characters or less.
Although initially this may seem like a trivial or pointless exercise, there is something intriguing and immediate about the format. It allows you to share minutiae which can give insight without being overly intrusive.

To give a personal example (which I used to try to persuade my Mum that Twitter wasn’t a complete waste of space), my brother and his family live in the US – how nice would it be for my parents to get updates about the activities of their grandchildren like ‘B riding a bike for the first time’, ‘Zs first day at school’ etc.?

Twitter can be updated from the web, IM clients, by SMS, and via a number of applications built to help Twitter (e.g. Twitterrific, Twitteroo). There is an API if you want to develop your own applications.
You should be able to see my ‘Twitters’ in the lefthand column of this blog (those reading from a feed will need to click through of course).
Twitter only really comes into its own once you are ‘following’ people – that is, you get their Twitter updates (again, lots of options how you get these, I’m currently using Flock’s People sidebar), and hopefully have people following you. In this way you can form a community with others – you can also limit who can follow your Twits if you want. You can ‘reply’ to other people’s Twitters by putting @username in your Twitter, and this can lead to something approximating to a Twitter conversation (worth noting that this goes against the ‘10 commandments of Twitter‘ – although I prefer the ‘Are you a Twitter Twit or a Twerp‘ approach to this issue.)

Those of you who are Facebook users may see the parallel between Twitter and the Facebook ‘status’ – which serves not a dissimilar service. So, I (along with others) wanted to update both my Twitter and Facebook status simultaneously. The most straightforward is to install the Twitter app in Facebook (remembering to click the ‘Want Twitter to update your Facebook status?’ link which is large and obvious, but I inexpicably missed it when I first installed the app). Once this is installed, when you Twitter, each Twitter will automatically appear as your Facebook status, prepended with ‘is twittering:’.

However, the way I first came across was to allow the RSS feed of your Facebook status to update your Twitter using Twitterfeed, a web app which allows you to update Twitter via any RSS feed. This works in the other direction, meaning that when you update your Facebook status, it updates your Twitter – and Twitterfeed allows you define any pre-pended text to your Twitter per RSS feed.

What I actually wanted was to allow Twitter to update Facebook AND Facebook to update Twitter. So I setup both the above methods. Unfortunately overnight I discovered a problem, which was that because the Twitter app in Facebook pre-pends the status with ‘Is twittering:’ I found that the following happened:

  • I update Twitter with ‘back at work’
  • Fb is updated ‘is twittering: back at work’
  • Twitter is updated ‘is twittering: back at work’
  • Fb is updated ‘is twittering: is twittering: back at work’

and so on, until by the morning my Fb status said ‘is twittering: is twittering: is twittering: is twittering’ until it ran out of room! Although this was a good advertisement for Twitter, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted.

Someone suggested to me that you need to decide your ‘authoritative’ source for Twitter, but sometimes I’m working in Facebook and sometimes Twitter.
For the moment, I decided to stick to Facebook to Twitter updates using Twitterfeed. The reason for this is that I’m also using Twitterfeed to acheive a couple of other things. Firstly I’ve setup Twitterfeed to moniter the RSS feed from this blog – and when I post to it, it updates my Twitter with ‘Is blogging: ‘ and the title of the post.

Secondly, I wanted to be able to update my Twitter feed from my work calendar (afterall, what better source of information about what I’m doing at any particular time?). Unfortunately this proved a bit of a tortuous to setup – I managed it as follows (there may be better ways):

  1. Set my Exchange-backed Outlook calendar to sychronise with a ‘ScheduleWorld’ calendar, and set the ScheduleWorld calendar to sychronise with my Google Calendar – I got this from  the Internet Duct Tape blog.
  2. Created a Yahoo Pipe to take a iCal feed from Google Calendar, and output events happening either up to an hour before or up to an hour after the current time (I’ve published this as Google Calendar iCal feed filter public version)
  3. Subscribed Twitterfeed to the RSS output of this Pipe

I have to admit that it seems slightly flaky, and I’m not sure if this is Twitterfeed (which is a free service, and so comes with no guarantees), the Yahoo Pipe (either the service, or my setup), or something else.

So, for the moment, I’m leaving it there – I’ll see how both Twitter and FB develop over the year – who knows, by 2009 I might not be using either…

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zotero and google tools [Zotero Documentation]

zotero and google tools [Zotero Documentation] A great demonstration of how Zotero can work together with Google Scholar/Books/Docs – Zotero keeps developing – see this announcement on the collaboration between Zotero and the Internet Archive for example. I’ve been impressed by Zotero – it’s got some stiff competition from EndNote, RefMan, CrossRef, etc. and it would be nice to see it break through in 2008 – I think that if the Zotero server is released, with the ability to run a institutional version, then it stands a real chance of getting some traction with whole institutions rather than just individuals…

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