Andrew Keen blogging on the Telegraph

Andrew Keen, author of the wonderfully anti-web 2.0 book The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube and the rest of today's user-generated media are killing our culture and economy is about to get a blog on the Daily Telegraph. He is also about to start a new book Digital Vertigo: Loneliness, Anxiety and Inequality in the Social Media Age. Will inform when the blog starts.

Big business makes poor decisions.....

Seems a couple businesses are trying to use the social web for there corporate means. Firstly, Reed Elsevier officials have admitted that it was a mistake for the STM publisher's marketing division to offer $25 (£15).
Secondly, Habitat have had to apologise for using Hashtags on the Iranian unrest on twitter to direct users to there website.
You got to laugh.

Is blogging really dying.....

The Guardian has an interesting article Blogging : The long and Short of it, which looks at how over the last 6 months that blogging is becoming less popular. The arguments are pretty much on the money. Saying :-

Where is everybody? Anecdotally and experimentally, they've all gone to Facebook, and especially Twitter. At least with Twitter, one can search for comments via backtweets.com – though it's still quite rare for people to make a comment on a piece in a tweet; more usually it's a "retweet", echoing the headline. The New York Times also noticed this trend, with a piece on 9 June about "Blogs Falling In An Empty Forest", which pointed to Technorati's 2008 survey of the state of the blogosphere, which found that only 7.4m out of the 133m blogs it tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. As the New York Times put it, "that translates to 95% of blogs being essentially abandoned".

I think it maybe true. I've noted how I've increased my RSS feeds and get less Blogs.

400 not out....Chris Anderson Caught out......

This is my 400Th entry. 3 years and 1 month of blogging here and still going strong.
Anyhow, news from Valley wag has it the Chris Anderson, Wired Editor, famed writer of the long tail. Has been caught stealing content from Wikipedia for his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price: The Economics of Abundance and Why Zero Pricing Is Changing the Face of Business. Seems he's saying it was a mistake, but a pretty silly one seeing he is editor of wired not citing things correctly. Citizen journalism can't be cracked up to what its supposed to be then ;)

Stop the tower

Whilst in the beautiful city of Seville (as mentioned previously), we came across a protect against the building of the Tower Cajasol. A monstrosity that will tower above the streets of this fantastic city. After signing a petition, we were given a leaflet with a link to there blog (translated to English here). Anyhow, well worth reading, and I just hope it never gets built.

Good news for me

Firstly, i'm off to Seville with my Girlfriend for a long weekend today and taking no phone, ipod or internet. We have one day around the town on friday and a wedding saturday, but it will be nice to get away.
Secondly, my contract was extended for a year and being moved to a new department.
Thirdly, because of two I can start my Cilip Chartership. This was spurred on by a recent post I read and that I know have a years security.
This also means I can use some of my holiday time up on projects like using Yahoo Pipes, Moodle and Flash MX. Am I happy ;)

An interesting book out on monday

Thomas Vander Wal releases his book on monday called Understanding Folksonomy: Catalyzing Users to Enrich Information. Most people know Thomas Vander Wal as the inventor of the term Folksonomy. It is well worth getting alongside Gene Smith's Tagging book.

An interesting course from OU

(Found via here) I saw this Open University course called The evolving information professional: challenges in a digital world. Its £495, so not something I can afford at the moment then, but something I might do in the future (aka when I am no longer a temp).

My favourite London Bookshop

I read recently a meme about your favourite bookshop (I can't remember where), but this is my favourite shop its Judd books. Its brilliant for social science, history and fiction and the books are fairly cheap. I have picked up these two books there. If you get chance, go in.

10 things librarians hate....

(Found via Adventures in Library Land) pointed me in the direction of Swiss Army Librarian blog entitled Top 10 Patron Pet Peeves. There really had some resonance upon me. Especially number five which says:-

Patrons with no cell phone etiquette Cell phones aren’t banned from my library - we just ask people use them politely.

I did also feel that i'm a bit of a grouch at work when I read Liz's comments in which she points out librarians failings:-

Fair enough. But having been to three separate libraries in the span of four days recently, please allow me to pose a few Librarian Pet Peeves:

1. Treating patrons as inconveniences. I’m so sorry to tear you away from your hard work on eBay or that juicy phone call about your sister-in-law’s illegitimate child’s paternity suit, but may I please ask you a question without being sneered at? If it is something important and work-related, a simple “I’ll be with you in a moment” is greatly appreciated.

2. Using nondescript or derogatory references to coworkers. For some reason, it bugs me when one librarian will say to his or her colleague, “Yeah, this girl / lady / woman has a question about WestLaw” - how about “This PATRON has a question”? My favorite was a reference helper who had to get the head reference librarian; when she came from her office and asked him who had the question, he responded “The chick in the blue shirt over there.” Nice and professional.

3. Pointing. Me: “Excuse me, can you tell me where I can find the updated State Codes and Regulations, please?” Help Desk Librarian: (points to the… SSE’ern-ish corner?) “Over there.” I understand time is short and I don’t expect to be led there by the hand, but descriptive directions, such as “Just past the reference materials here on the last shelves on the left” is far more helpful than a finger.

4. Disappearing. This happens more than I care to admit. Occasionally while answering my question or checking out materials, the librarian who has been assisting me will just get up and wander away. Usually it’s to get more information or to ask a colleague for help, but I would appreciate knowing that. This is another instance in which a few extra words, such as “This book isn’t scanning properly - I’ll be right back” are incredibly appreciated.

I’m sure none of you wonderful and dedicated individuals reading this blog are guilty of any of the above, but maybe you have a colleague or two who has a habit of doing them. Of course I don’t wish to sound ungrateful - my school and county libraries are wonderful and the staff works hard to be helpful, but these little annoyances often keep me at home accessing materials electronically rather than in person.

Interesting stuff.

Should we stop blogging and go to twitter........

(Found Via David Lee King), I was pointed to Kathryn Greenhill blog post entitled When should you stop blogging ? in which she says:-

While I don’t think I have any intention of stopping Librarians Matter, I’ve noticed my posts are slowing down as I enter my third year. I’ve been spending more time twittering, on new work projects, blogging elsewhere , getting slowly interested in videoblogging - and even trying to go walking at 6am to spend some one-on-one time with Mr10.

I've gone through periods where i have struggled to blog, but the idea of just twitter or not blogging seems a sad loss. I like blogging as I feel it keeps me up to date, I have to read something current and I interact with people I respect. I even wish it made me a better writter, but thats not so i'm afraid. If your thinking of quitting blogging check Walt Crawford's Thinking about Blogging in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

I feel cheated.....

I've just been looking at filling out a job application for Kingston University, which is 73rd in the Guardian University league. I tried to open the job description but to no avail. Then I noted the following message on there website:-

If you are using a Mac computer you may experience compatibility issues. The issues could result in you not being able to submit your application online. We strongly recommend you click here to request an email pack.

How ridicolous is that? Are we still in 1999 in Surrey then?

What is web 3.0?

(Found via ilibrarian) a good explanation of what web 3.0 is. Worth a check if you get chance.

UCL opens up

(Found via Library & Information Update blog). It seems UCL have announced saying the following inthere press release on June 3rd :-

UCL (University College London) has today announced the establishment of a UCL Publications Board that will implement the university’s Open Access policy and be responsible for ensuring that, subject to copyright permissions, all UCL research is placed online in the university’s institutional repository, freely accessible to all. This move places UCL at the forefront of academic institutions who are pioneering the move to Open Access, as the first European university ranked in the global top ten in the THE – QS world university rankings to do so.

UCL has already given all of its PhD students the option of making their theses available in its online repository, open access, giving these far greater visibility than they would enjoy as paper copy on library shelves. In academic departments across UCL there is already a broad take-up of Open Access, and the records of the whole of UCL’s 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) return have been loaded into the repository, with links added to the relevant version of the full text where copyright permissions allow. The creation of the UCL Publications Board extends this situation to the whole of UCL’s published research output. The Publications Board will oversee the rollout of UCL’s Open Access mandate, and promote Open Access both within UCL and beyond as an important scholarly medium for the dissemination of research.

This will be interesting, especially as UCL are a premier university. I wonder if the other UOL are big enough to follow suit?

Zotero case dismissed

(Found via Disruptive Library Technology Jester). Having mentioned previously that Zotero was being sued by Thomson Reuters it now seems the case has been overturned. Well, i'm glad about that, i really like Zotero.

Crowdsourcing for job applications

Since starting my own Wiki I have been interested in what I could add to it. I have thought of practical and web 2.0 idea's I could also add to it (i'm so last year I know).
Anyhow, since reading Tapscott's Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. This book along with Jeff Howe's Book Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business and his Wired article. I was wondering how to use this practically, the crowdsourcing and wiki.
Therefore, my idea was whilst looking for jobs, to put my application forms up, give feedback and recieve updates from other people. The items could then be tagged, reference and used by other people and companies to use. I reckon it could be a winner (unless all my applications are rejected, no one gives feedback etc). I wonder why no one else has done it.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure if some people might see it as either a free dinner or plagarism to a degree. What do others of you think?

My own wetpaint wiki

I decided to centralise all my social media information into one wiki, that can be found here. I've put my dissertation up there, which I previously said was on my website (but is no more). Anyhow, hope to add more features before long.