This report from JISC has just been published - Graeme contributed some information about Padova to feed into this last year …. we should try and look at this and discuss implications for our own services development.

What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education (TSW0701)
by Paul Anderson

Download the report from the JISc web site

Summary

Within 15 years the Web has grown from a group work tool for scientists at CERN into a global information space with more than a billion users. Currently, it is both returning to its roots as a read/write tool and also entering a new, more social and participatory phase. These trends have led to a feeling that the Web is entering a ‘second phase’—a new, ‘improved’ Web version 2.0. But how justified is this perception?

This TechWatch report was commissioned to investigate the substance behind the hyperbole surrounding ‘Web 2.0’. It reports on the implications this may have for the UK Higher and Further Education sector, with a special focus on collection and preservation activities within libraries.

The report establishes that Web 2.0 is more than a set of ‘cool’ and new technologies and services, important though some of these are. It has, at its heart, a set of at least six powerful ideas that are changing the way some people interact. Secondly, it is also important to acknowledge that these ideas are not necessarily the preserve of ‘Web 2.0’, but are, in fact, direct or indirect reflections of the power of the network: the strange effects and topologies at the micro and macro level that a billion Internet users produce.

The report argues that by separating out the discussion of Web technologies (ongoing Web development overseen by the W3C), from the more recent applications and services (social software), and attempts to understand the manifestations and adoption of these services (the ‘big ideas’), decision makers will find it easier to understand and act on the strategic implications of ‘Web 2.0’. Indeed, analysing the composition and interplay of these strands provides a useful framework for understanding its significance.

More interesting developments from BBC Future Media and Technology …..
BBC Press Release 2nd March 2007

YouTube content to include two BBC-branded entertainment channels showing short-form videos

Dedicated channel for BBC News clips also to be featured on YouTube

The BBC, BBC Worldwide and YouTube today announced the beginning of a partnership to offer Internet users across the world new and innovative ways to experience and enjoy BBC content through YouTube.

This non-exclusive partnership will create branded BBC “Channels” on YouTube operating under separate BBC and BBC Worldwide agreements.

The partnership reflects YouTube’s commitment to work with content owners to make compelling video accessible online, and the BBC’s commitment to increase reach through the partnership, to bring new audiences to the proposed BBC iPlayer service, and to secure commercial revenue via BBC Worldwide, its commercial subsidiary, to supplement the licence fee.

The partnership, which will build over time, comprises three elements:

From the BBC: Clips of new shows and specially commissioned promotional content linked to popular series suchas Doctor Who and Life On Mars. At launch, the YouTube community will be able to enjoy a range of specially- created video diaries including David Tennant and Freema Agyeman, who’ll take viewers around the set of Doctor Who; John Simm going back in time for Life On Mars; and Clive Myrie on the streets of the red zone of Baghdad

From BBC Worldwide: An entertainment channel called “BBC Worldwide” showing clips from material such as Top Gear, Spooks, The Catherine Tate Show, The Mighty Boosh and a range of factual programmes including those presented by David Attenborough. The channel will include a limited amount of advertising.

From BBC World, the BBC’s international commercial television channel: Around 30 news clips per day will be offered, with up-to-the-minute news and analysis from around the world. The advertising-funded clips will be available to users outside the UK only.

Users will be able to comment on clips, rate them, recommend them to friends and post their own video responses to communicate with the BBC and other viewers.

Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, said: “This ground-breaking partnership between the BBC and YouTube is fantastic news for our audiences. YouTube is a key gateway through which to engage new audiences in the UK and abroad.

“The partnership provides both a creative outlet for a range of short-form content from BBC programme makers and the opportunity to learn about new forms of audience behaviour.

“It’s essential that the BBC embraces new ways of reaching wider audiences with non-exclusive partnerships such as these.”

Eric Schmidt, CEO and Chairman of Google, said: “We’re delighted to be joining forces with the BBC to bring the best TV programming available to the YouTube community.

“We will continue to invest in our platforms and technologies to help our partners make the most of the enormous opportunities presented by the billion people now online.”

Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube, said: “We’re constantly looking for innovative ways to bring the best content to our community.

“The BBC is a premier source for quality programming, and we’re excited that they are leading the way in enabling two-way dialogue and real engagement with an entirely new audience. We hope to open up an entirely new audience for their content, while deepening their relationship with their existing viewers.”

Benefits

The non-exclusive partnership reflects the BBC’s commitment to reach audiences in new ways.

The aim is to offer audiences a taste of BBC programming with clips which will (subject to the conclusion of the ongoing PVT process) link them to the BBC’s proposed iPlayer service on bbc.co.uk.

For BBC Worldwide the partnership forms part of a strategy to bring great British content to new audiences around the world through its global TV channels and its proposed new digital businesses - the commercial iPlayer and the commercialisation of international traffic to bbc.co.uk. Increasing levels of funds will be returned to the BBC for investment in new programming.

Clips on BBC News (available to users outside the UK only) and “BBC Worldwide” will benefit from Google and YouTube’s advertising platforms, generating new revenues for investment in BBC programme development and creation. Advertising will be governed by a comprehensive set of guidelines.

Full BBC Press Release

This link is straight from the pages of Ofcom. It highlights an assessment of the market impact of the BBC’s proposals for an on demand service.  Many of the BBC’s commercial rivals are weary of the corporation’s plans and are lobbying for Ofcom to take on the role of regulating BBC activity. The link can be found by clicking here.

An interesting discussion is going on at this blog over what constitutes, and what should constitute, the standard way of ‘tagging’. It criticises the usual suspect in this area, del.icio.us, which forces users to use contiguous tags by using ’space’ as its tag delimiter. Most other sites employing tagging, such as Flickr, Technorati and also the WordPress tagging system Ultimate Tag Warrior, allow the use of some other delimiter (commas or speech marks mostly).

Read the rest of this entry for a more in-depth discussion of this issue.

(more…)

I’ve started a new blog called ‘Library Futures‘ for personal musings on library developments, especially Library 2.0. The RSS feed is http://libraryfutures.wordpress.com/feed/

Iain

More Web 2.0 shenanigans: this time it’s a video aggregation and annotation tool, Mojiti. Looks interesting, and is built in Flash on the client side.

Annotate online video with Mojiti:

Video sharing web site Mojiti lets you add your own comments and notes to internet video.

Mojiti is a little strange in that if you want to add a video, you just paste a link to the video and Mojiti yanks it from the site of origin to their own - meaning that you can use Mojiti to annotate any YouTube video really quickly and easily. To get a better idea of what I’m talking about, check out the video after the jump.

If you go to the source page, you can see that this video was snagged from YouTube - a process that takes only a few seconds.

Mojiti really does make adding notes and spotlights to videos a cinch, so if you’ve been looking for something like this - maybe you want to share a YouTube video with your friends with a couple of notes of your own - Mojiti makes it simple. — Adam Pash

(Via Lifehacker).

Following hot on the heels of their acquisition of the video sharing site YouTube, Google’s quest for world (wide web) domination continues. I noticed today for the first time that my Writely account at http://www.writely.com now redirects to http://docs.google.com - ‘Google Docs and Spreadsheets’, complete with lots of new features. Import and export features are very strong. So far using office type software online is working for me, although I still find myself opening Microsoft Word out of sheer force of habit

The BBC has entered a formal relationship with Microsoft, opening the door to future deals on the delivery of digital content. In some ways this is similar the Beeb’s broadband service, under which it has signed agreements with many UK ISPs to provide access to superior-quality streams of BBC content.

Yet this could go much further - the possibilities raised in the ZDnet article include content pushed to Xbox 360s and Windows Live Messenger.

Hopefully the promise of these facilities won’t be overshadowed by the BBC neglecting efforts to support relatively open methods of distribution, e.g. their multicast video trial (which uses the MPEG4/AVC a.k.a. H.264 video codec).

BBC Signs ‘Memo of Understanding’ With Microsoft:

An anonymous reader writes “Microsoft has signed a memorandum of understanding with the BBC for ’strategic partnerships’ in the development of next-generation digital broadcasting techniques. They are also speaking to other companies such as Real and Linden Labs. Windows Media Centre platform, Windows Live Messenger application and the Xbox 360 console have all been suggested as potential gateways for BBC content. It is unclear how this impacts on existing BBC research projects such as Dirac, although it is understood that the BBC would face heavy criticism if its content was only available via Microsoft products.”

(Via Slashdot).

Great to see someone standing up to the Chinese government - take note Google!

‘The founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries.

Jimmy Wales, one of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine, challenged other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing…..’

Via the Observer - Read more at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1869074,00.html

Another week, another exciting press release from Google. The latest announcement sees the launch of the Google News Archive search service. More from BBC News

…The web-based tool allows users to explore existing digitised newspaper articles spanning the last 200 years and more recent online content. People using the search are shown results from both free and subscription-based news outlets. Partners in the project include the websites of US newspaper the New York Times and the Guardian from the UK.

…The launch of the news archive search extends Google’s influence over how the world’s information is indexed, searched and accessed.

According to online research firm Nielsen/NetRatings, more than 380 million people used the search engine every month in 2005. The earliest known searchable story is, he said, from “somewhere in the mid-1700s” - considerably older than the current 30-day archive offered through Google News.

The service is accessed through the news archive website or the Google news page. It is also activated when it can provide relevant results to a user’s search on google.com.

Story via BBC News

It would be exciting to see if we can pass date queries from Padova to this archive, in the same way that we currently pass people queries to Google Scholar. I also propose again that we consider passing date queries to the BBC ‘On This Day‘  and ‘The Time When ‘ services to offer our users a range of supporting resources for their own timeline of interest.