On participation

I was listening to the radio this week when I heard an interview with a film producer on triple j. Of special note was the comment by the female dj that perhaps casting for movies should be done the same way as decisions are made in those reality tv shows. Just sms your vote! The film producer was [...]

On SXSW 2008

I am really disappointed that I wasn’t able to get to Austin, Texas, this year to attend SXSW Interactive. I will get there one day (I hope) but in the meantime we are fortunate that the organisers provide podcasts of the presentations and discussions.
Check out this interview with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame - some [...]

On being in touch

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has just released a report based on a survey, How Australians spend their time. The section I want to comment on says this (from the media release):
“Time spent on recreation and leisure activities has decreased by 1 hour 45 minutes per week since 1997 (to 29 hours 31 minutes a [...]

On real work

A couple of weeks ago Euan Semple wrote a blog comment about real work. I made a hastily scribbled note to come back to the sentiment at a later date.
The prompt for me was the notion held by some people that social computing activities (blogs, wikis, virtual communities, social networks) are not of value for real work. And this negative [...]

On tagging and the enterprise (and RSS)

I want to conclude my blog summary from the presentation I gave last week on tagging and the enterprise. The previous three entries should be read in conjunction with this instalment, if you haven’t followed the story so far…
I used IBM’s dogear as an example of an enterprise using tagging within the firm. However, instead of me explaining all about [...]

On tagging, the grey side

My last two posts have been about tagging based on my presentation last week at the conference in Sydney, ”Enhancing search and retrieval capabilities and performance”.
I want to look at some of the perceived disadvantages of tagging that I briefly mentioned in my presentation:

Lack of specificity - refers to the fact that an item can have [...]

On the positive side of tagging

In the light of what I discussed yesterday with respect to my conference presentation on Tuesday, I want to move on to tagging. Tagging is essentially unstructured metadata that is assigned by the content creator and the readers/users of the content, the latter called collaborative tagging. The user-generated classification that emerges is called a folksonomy.
Examples of digital content using [...]

On search and tagging

Yesterday I gave a presentation at the Ark Group conference, “Enhancing search and retrieval capabilities and performance”, in Sydney. The presentation, called “Tagging and the enterprise”,  is available to conference attendees and I am rejigging some of the slides to load up onto Slideshare.
There were two key points I tried to emphasise yesterday in a conference [...]

On government 2.0

Stephen Collins blogged yesterday about government 2.0, lamenting the fact that the opportunity to leverage “the power of the Internet to connect with and enable their constituents” to have a say could be well and truly improved in Australia.
The issue is not new, there are already government initiatives underway with government 2.0 in the UK and in Canada. Germany has [...]

On the internet and books

Just a quick post on this news story I read today about Nobel prize winner for literature, Doris Lessing, and her tirade against the internet.
Doris Lessing is one of my favourite novelists, The grass is singing being a particular favourite of mine. And I have a lot of respect for her views on quality literature and [...]

On Jeremiah’s weekly digest on social networking

Today I want to highlight Jeremiah’s weekly digest on social networking. I find it a valuable and quick read about the social networking space. Jeremiah Owyang is on my blog roll but his weekly digest is too good to hide behind that!

On the future of software

Today in my e-mail I received my Knowledge at Wharton with this particular article that discusses Software’s future: melding the web and the desktop.
Here’s a snippet: “the big question isn’t whether this desktop/webtop hybrid is the future. That … is a “virtual certainty.” The question is which company — Microsoft, Adobe or Google — will provide the [...]

On actKM Conference 2007

Yesterday I attended day two of the actKM conference in Canberra. The day was full of thoughtful speakers and enjoyable conversation. The venue was in an unpretentious room located in the lovely grounds of University House at the Australian National University.
David Gurteen opened the morning session with an overview of a range of social networking tools and technologies. David emphasised [...]

On e-learning and effectiveness

My regular dose of Australian Policy Online has alerted me to the 2007 e-learning benchmarking project.
“The 2007 surveys show use of technology in vocational education and training (VET) has quadrupled in three years since the first benchmarking survey in 2005. The 2005 survey revealed 6-8% of VET activity involved technology, which rose to 17% in 2006 [...]

On tagging

I have been giving some attention of late to tagging, partly because of some research I am doing for university, and partly in response to a challenge Matt Moore gave me a while back to start putting some of my photos up on Flickr.
A key feature of Flickr is tagging, but tagging has become much more [...]