I continue to be sitting on the fence about the value of the bit of Open Government that’s about publishing datasets (and so is the UK National Audit Office) but every now and then something comes along that shows quite a bit of utility. The Bike Share Map covering various cities around the world is likely to be very useful if you’re planning to use this sort of service.
As the case for and against the Great Google Digitisation makes its weary way through the courts, here’s an alternative - but that one too is being beset by protracted deliberations on copyright, including copyright of metadata. They’re even arguing about the name: the Digital Public Library of America. It’s a grand idea, so let’s hope something happens some day.
It’s been an interesting time for users and providers of content over the Internet, with the High Court’s decision a few weeks ago that Australian ISP iiNet was not liable to do the work of the copyright holders in bringing to justice those who had infringed by downloading protected content. Of course that was not the end of the game in this country, but many people were surprised by a decision of the UK High Court yesterday that requires ISPs in that country to block access to The Pirate Bay, the best known of the sites that facilitate P2P file sharing. I’d expect that a similar case will be launched soon through our legal system to achieve the same result, and then the people who know about such things will work out how to circumvent this, and then … I really think that much of this effort could be directed at more worthy causes.
They say that competition is a wonderful thing and we should let a thousand flowers bloom, but I confess to becoming a little confused about what to use the various social media services for. Facebook is simple: it’s where I let my hair down, interact with friends and family, support my favourite football teams and “like” political comments that have very little to do with my future (as they’re from friends in other countries). Twitter is a little different, in that it’s more oriented towards my work and professional interests – and, I must admit, it’s where I gripe about the pronunciation practices of ABC newsreaders. To a large extent, this usage reflects my friends or followers. Google+ is something that I (with a lot of others) am still trying to work out.
The one I’m most perplexed about though is Linkedin. My connections there are almost exclusively professional contacts (despite the efforts of the system to dredge through my address book to suggest new people). And it seems that nearly all of them are likewise confused about what to do with it. Only a very few of them post any thoughts or useful links, but everyone is busy busy busy building up their network by making new connections. There can of course be some benefit in this, but it does seem there’s no end in view.
A couple of weeks ago I went to hear Roxanne Missingham speak at her new stamping ground - the ANU. Her topic was “Is the iPad killing academic publishing?” - not killing books, you understand, but academic publishing. It’s fair to say that she doesn’t think so, but that the World of the Tablet is going to be quite different from what we have been used to - and that new generations of students will bring a very critical eye to our efforts to meet their needs. The slides from her talk (and some very useful references) are at http://www.slideshare.net/roxannemissingham/ipad-12286087 .
An article from McKinsey Quarterly called “Demystifying Social Media” is worth reading and showing to your senior managers. It offers sound advice and describes a number of case studies, including measurable results from effective use of social media. The key message? “In short, today’s chief executive can no longer treat social media as a side activity run solely by managers in marketing or public relations.”
There’s been a right old kerfuffle this last week about the recent big win by CSIRO in the US courts, where they were awarded a $229 million settlement against a group of companies that used their patented technology in a lot of WiFi equipment. The main contributor to this heated discussion was an article in Ars Technica that took a stridently jingoistic line accusing CSIRO of being a patent troll - an unpleasant sort of company that buys up others for their IP and proceeds to sue whoever they can for patent infringement. That is a particularly inappropriate description of CSIRO’s activities.
What I found interesting was the many comments from Australian readers who found the tone of the article unpleasant, but the most notable strain in these comments was a series of arguments about whether the organisation’s name was commonly pronounced “siroh”, as claimed by the author. Days after people who had worked in or closely with CSIRO had confirmed that insiders often used this pronunciation, there were new comments coming in saying that they’d never heard such a thing.
Which just shows that in their haste to leave their mark on the landscape people don’t take the time to see what’s gone before.
It used to be that the elites derided Wikipedia because, well, it wasn’t Britannica. Or some other reason. Anyway they derided it. Now, it’s pretty well in the mainstream, and we all use it without thinking too much about the original criticisms. And then a story comes along that makes you realise what’s happening behind it all, and it’s not a pretty sight. Danny Sullivan, a noted expert on search engines, wrote about his experiences in trying to get something fixed in Wikipedia and received the usual blend of cheers and boos from the usual suspects. The quote that I liked from the comments was
”And that’s why Wikipedia can’t replace all other encyclopedias – because, in fact, it’s still a hermetic encyclopedia, but without experts on subjects it covers.”
In a story about recruitment practices in the age of Social Media, a Sheriff’s Office is reported to require job applicants to sign into social media sites so that they can be screened. Apparently they have the right to refuse to do this, but none have done so. The Sheriff’s Deputy said that this speaks well of their applicants. Well .. no .. it doesn’t really.
Last week, Lloyd Shepherd wrote an article in The Guardian about what happened when he found a book of his about to be pirated - and it started off a full-scale and generally polite discussion on copyright infringement and theft. At the end of three days of discussion, a couple of things were clearer to me: all analogies break down sooner or later - and many of us are quite unwilling to admit that what we continue to do is legally, morally and ethically wrong.