Tories2.0? yeah right.

The tories have launched webcamron, in an attempt to ‘reach disaffected young voters‘. Isn’t sometimes embarrassing when someone tries too hard? Like a 60 year old banker with a leather jacket and a mohawk.

The thing is, boys, that it’s not about having your videos on the web. Its about having ours. Its not about you tagging the content, its us. But hey – here’s an idea. I can download your clips, upload them to youtube, and then really have me some fun.

I gotta admit though, you have a good copywriter. webcam-ron. cute. just watch out you don’t slip too far down that slope.

digg story

design faults in democracy?

Muhammad Saleem has a very perceptive article on the Wisdom of Crowds and why it fails on Digg.

and the winner is..

Wired’s webmonkey has just published the results of their user survey on tinkers & stinkers of web-too-oh. I liked LibraryThing. Even the name is enough to make you feel warm. Basecamp, on the other hand, seems very useful.

Interestingly, MySpace seems to be out. Have we (as in we 12 yr old girls) outgrown it? Migrated to facebook? Or simply got bored of looking at ourselves making funny faces in the mirror-on-the-web?

Is this actually the first survey of web2.1 apps – things that don’t make a fuss about sharing, ajax, social features – simply use them as given to do something useful?

Bazaar seminar: Hey Dude, Where’s My Data?

With Web 2.0, more and more people have their documents, products, personal details and photos stashed all over the internet – what issues does this raise for education?

- and, it’s in lovely Barcelona! (25 October, 2006)

Honey, where did you put the cat’s RSS?

Web-too-oh: Wondermark sums it up.

read more | digg story

Some stats on market share email, news, messaging, maps, social networking

From the New York Times. Interesting stats.

Web 2.1?

MarkaBoo is far from ready for use. For example:

• It only shows you yout 50 most common tags, but has no link to 'all tags'.
• It has no search facilty. I kid you not. MarkaBoo: bookmarking without search is like camping without a sleeping bag.
• It doesn't show clouds etc.

Yet it marks a significant milestone in the emergence of combined social web services. Markaboo is a tagging / social bookmarking tool which also allows you to upload media files and create pages online. Now isn't that a 'how didn't they think of that before' moment?

Well, in a way – they did. Flickr was one of the first to do tags. But Flick (youtube, etc.) doesn't allow you to tag stuff that isn't Flickr. 

Create, store, share, tag – all in one shop. Briliant. Now they just need to get their act together. And add social networking.

Social computing diagram/table

I found a diagram/table of The many Forms of Social Computing on of all places, a wine blog, via this post, which has some potential additions to the diagram.

For anyone who likes pictures, here's the diagram:

Netscape goes too-oh

The die-hard of the web is making an interesting attempt to re-position itself as nu-media. CNet is impressed, but Digg users are (suprise, suprise) not. 

Maybe they should have a look at BBC's reboot. 

Personal Learning Environments at Fortnightly Mailing

I wrote a short piece on PLEs that was inspired by the CETIS Personal Learning Environments Meeting held in Manchester this week.

Both Phillip and I attended. And guess what? We could actually sit outside without getting wet.

The piece appears in Seb Schmoller's Fortnightly Mailing, which is a great resource for anyone interested in e-learning and related topics.

In the mean time I've been building up a collection of PLE-related resources over on the wiki.