Attention, listeners!
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March 30th, 2005 by Alexandra
The folks over at Technorati have come up with a proposed XML standard, dubbed Attention.xml, aimed at ranking RSS feeds (like those generated by blogs) so that all us poor overwhelmed blog readers can make better, smarter, more efficient choices. Check out what it does with your own list of blog subscritions here.
E-democracy and egovernment tags - DoWire.Org
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March 29th, 2005 by Alex
Steve Clift has set up a wiki page for e-democracy and e-government tags, following up on my call for a common tag taxonomy.
If you work in the e-democracy or e-government field, please visit this page to add any tags or keywords that you use for tracking bookmarks or blog posts in this area.
Tagging e-democracy
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March 28th, 2005 by Alex
This week’s challenge: coming up with a common set of e-democracy tags for all of the e-democracy bloggers and bookmark collectors out there.
For those new to the tagging concept, here’s a brief intro: In the process of setting up Diablogue, I’ve been exploring the world of social bookmarking and tagging. Social bookmarking systems (like del.icio.us, furl, and my favourite, spurl) allow people to create online bookmark collections (or even complete web page archives) which they can share with other like-minded folks.
The key to sharing is the use of common “tags” — essentially keywords that indicate the subject of any given web page. The tagging concept has also moved into the blogging world, where Technorati (a fantastic tool for tracking what is going on in the “blogosphere”) uses tags to categorize different blog posts. Many blogging software systems (like WordPress and Movable Type) automatically tag blog posts by converting post categories to tags.
To see what tags can do for you, check out the Technorati page for the “e-democracy” tag which shows recent blog posts that have an e-democracy tag, as well as e-democracy bookmarks from del.icio.us and furl.
Tagging is a very powerful tool for collaboration, especially among groups of colleagues who share specific interests — like all of us e-democracy, dialogue, and Internet research types.
But because tagging is currently a “folksonomy” — a grassroots generated set of keywords — there is no consistency to how blog posts and bookmarks are tagged. That limits the possibilities for collaboration and knowledge-sharing. Want a sense of the problem? Check out the OTHER technorati edemocracy tag page.
Now back to our challenge…
It would seem that the time has come for us to pursue some sort of common tagging system.
John Gotze has made a great start at establishing a potential set of tags for e-democracy (and beyond). And Steve Clift has set up a set of keywords with links to shared bookmark collections (see also http://www.dowire.org/wiki/Shared_Bookmarks).
But even John and Steve aren’t in synch yet, and their keyword systems still leave lots of gaps to plug.
Any other tagging schemes or proposals out there? Any thoughts on how we can all get on the same page?
Drupal and Civic Space
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March 24th, 2005 by Alexandra
I’ve been checking out Drupal, a web-based content management system that could provide an interesting platform for online engagement projects (especially those with a limited budget — Drupal is open source).
For those who don’t know Drupal, it describes itself as a “dynamic web site platform which allows an individual or community of users to publish, manage and organize a variety of content, Drupal integrates many popular features of content management systems, weblogs, collaborative tools and discussion-based community software into one easy-to-use package.”
One interesting Drupal implementation at the edges of civic engagement is Civic Space. Civic Space aims more at grassroots organizing and campaigning than at consultation per se, but it’s an interesting starting point for organizations who are looking for a version of Drupal that is a little more tailored to civic engagement needs.
Academic IP rights
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March 16th, 2005 by Alex
Lawrence Lessig has drawn a line in the sands of intellectual property. He declares today that:
I will not agree to publish in any academic journal that does not permit me the freedoms of at least a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
I couldn’t be more delighted by his resolve. If academics of Lessig’s stature refuse to publish the absurdly restrictive copyright agreements required by so many academic publishers, it may put pressure on those publishers to develop more reasonable agreements. The question is how to best accelerate that process, and in particular, how to restructure the academic incentive sytem so that it becomes possible for more academics to make the same choice Lessig has.
Refusing to publish under restrictive agreements is a good option for senior academics with tenured positions at prestigious universities — academics whose future does not hinge on each publishing opportunity, in other words. But for junior academics, the price of challenging copyright can be much higher.
I recently withdrew from a forthcoming “Handbook on Internet Security”, to be published by Wiley Publishing, because the publishing agreement required me to relinquish my copyright. Given that the contribution was to be based on core material from my dissertation — which like many recent Ph.D.s, I hope to publish in fuller form — there were practical as well as principled reasons to refuse to sign the agreement. But if I were on the academic job market or in a tenure-track position, that foregone publication opportunity would be an advantage lost. Junior academics simply can’t afford to turn down publication opportunities.
Given the enormous publication pressures within academia, it’s simply not reasonable to expect individual (especially junior) academics to drive the process of change through individual adherence to the kind of policy Lessig himself has adopted. (Though kudos to anyone who is prepared to take that step.)
A more effective strategy might use some combination of social and institutional pressure. For social pressure, how about a system for rating the copyright agreements of different scholarly publications? A searchable online directory that lets academics find the most copyright-friendly journals in their field would encourage scholars to send their works to those journals, improving their quality, prestige, and hopefully, subscription base — thereby creating a market incentive for better copyright policy.
And at an institutional level, why shouldn’t academic libraries factor copyright policies into their purchasing decisions? I’d love to see university librarians adopt policies whereby journal subscription decisions systematically favour journals that give fair rights to their contributors.
Today’s bookmarks
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March 8th, 2005 by Alex
I’m trying a new tool that automatically adds my latest bookmarks to this blog via del.icio.us. (I’m user Alexandra Samuel.) I actually manage my bookmarks with Spurl, a terrific social bookmark system that integrates nicely with del.icio.us but has a more user-friendly interface.
- LazyWeb:
Here’s a neat tool for fans of online collaboration and spontaneous problem-solving: the Lazy Web, a place to post all your wishes and requests, in the hope that some benevolent web surfer will stumble along to offer a solution.
Pew Report on 2004 Campaign
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March 7th, 2005 by Alex
Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user Alexandra Samuel on 2005-03-08
- Pew Report on the Internet and Campaign 2004:
The Pew Internet & American Life project released its report on the 2004 election campaign this week. Michael Cornfield’s pithy summary reports helps explain how this year’s buzzwords — like blogging and meetup — became the hallmark innovations of the 2004 election cycle.
New Communications Forum 2005: Blog University
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March 1st, 2005 by awsamuel