I’m really not this prolific on my lunch hour; I just had a lot of drafts from the last couple days sitting in the queue.
Stephen Downes has posted an interesting essay, The Semantic Social Network, which I haven’t read as thoroughly as I should have, but it looks pretty well thought out.
Stephen says, “It is perhaps a bit of an oversimplification to say this, but the problem could be summarized with the following observation: the blogging network and RSS link content, but not identities, while the social software network links identities, but not content.”
I think his proposal is getting close to my dream social network, which is really an unbounded recommendation network.
Read more…
From the Washington Post, Private Bush Meeting Gets Blogged:
The White House press corps yesterday scrambled to figure out why a hastily-arranged “conversation” between President Bush and some regular Americans about the economy was suddenly closed to reporters — and what went on behind those closed doors.
Little did they know that behind those doors, one of the regular Americans whom Bush was meeting was a blogger.
Yesterday, the ADL announced a new reference model for Content Object Repository Discovery and Resolution Architecture (CORDRA).
What I wonder is when (if?) all of the repository and discovery work in the learning object crowd is going to come together with the repository and federated search in the library space. And who’s going to do it?
Hmm. Maybe I should. :-)
Yahoo has launched a new to compete with Google. As Brian points out it also finds the RSS feed of a site, if one exists. Fits in well with My Yahoo’s recently launched beta RSS aggregator. The nicest thing about the Yahoo search I’ve found so far? A puts me ahead of “10 Reasons to Believe in the Christian Faith.” Never managed to edge those dang Christians out on Google.
The Chronicle has an opinion piece titled “The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google.”
At the recent ALA Midwinter Conference, Roy Tenant of the California Digital Library referred to The Google Lesson: the number of results aren’t as important as how the results are presented. He said that librarians and library systems vendors have historically put more emphasis on delivering the most results instead the most relevant results. Roy dropped another jewel that partially explained this phenomenon:
“Only librarians like to search; everyone else likes to find.”
The birth of robotic mobile photo blogging. As Evan says: Laugh now . . . while you can!
Former President Jimmy Carter is blogging his trip to West Africa. It’s a bit dry and stat-laden and mostly about Guinea worm disease, but it’s nice to see that the idea of recording thoughts publicly is catching on with former presidents. Bill? George the First? Anything to say?
[link via BoingBoing]