Google's Powermeter helps monitor energy and perhaps even rescues social media

Google has launched a software application in the UK that will give consumers information about their energy consumption, usage pattern and carbon footprint thereby enabling them to save both money and energy. The "opt-in" tool receives information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provides it to customers on their screens.
Currently Google just has a deal with energy supplier first:utility in the UK. Users of other energey suppliers need to install a sensor device AlertMe Energy (for £69) to their meters and then view the data for an additional £3 monthly charges.
Powermeter provides energy information in the form of graphs on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and enables users to compare their usages and derive their average use.
However, in keeping up with users' demands for interactive tools, Powermeter aims to allow users to share their energy habits, tips and light-hearted energy-saving competitions, according to a report in the Guardian.
Google has expressed its wish to bring the social element on to the software, perhaps for a more robust uptake. But here in lies the future of interactive media - an innovative application build on the premise of providing crucial information and then building the interactive element on to it. A refreshing shift from standalone social media websites.
As rapid advances are being made in the web 2.0 tools and interactive technologies, several studies and surveys suggest that most of the user-generated content in Twitter is "banter" and that such tools are hampering people's productivity at workplaces.
Almost simultaneusly, niche and focus-group based social media applications such as Springer's The NeuroNetwork for neurology researchers and Sage's Methodspace to discuss research methodologies among others are proving beneficial in peer-to-peer information sharing, discussions and advice.
The primary function of the web - accurate information provision - was hijacked amid the launch of a slew of purely user-generated content through the latest web 2.0 tools.
Powermeter- that displays information on the web on users' customised iGoogle page brings progress in the area of information provision. It brings to our screens crucial information that is otherwise difficult to access and then builds interactive technologies around it, suggesting evolution in the mainstream social media space.

Social media technologies must do what they say

Micro-blogging website Twitter has managed to secure a "significant round of funding" from five investment firms, as was revealed through the blog post of its co-founder Evan Williams.
The new funding has reportedly come from two new investors Insight Venture Partners and T R Price, as well as its existing funders Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Benchmark Capital.
There are two problems to start with. First is that Williams was not as candid about the exact amount of investment because the investors want the deal to be a private affair. Isn't web 2.0 all about sharing information and encouraging transparent and candid conversations? Internet has liberated information and has always preached professionals to provide information. Shouldn't it apply the same rules to itself?.
Unless social media companies including Facebook - which is also known for shying away from sharing plans, projections and security measures - come out in the open, it is hard for information professionals who want to capitalise on these tools to chart out their plan or realise the potential.
Amid tight budgets, it's extremely important for marketers too to define the return on investment and unless there is more information, it is hard to define ROI. The lack of information also hinders discussion on whether the amount of investment was right in the first place. And it does not set a basis to evaluate other social media technologies.
Also presumably, Twitter has secured the funds and valued itself on the basis of its whopping 45 million users in its three-year history and expecting this to grow exponentially.
Twitter is planning to roll out adverts and even provide companies with initial insight and market reaction. But the second problem is that because information on web2.0 applications are user-generated, scattered across multiple platforms and at different times, professionals and advertisers would find it difficult to target the right information for the right set of audience.
There has to be more collaboration of content in the social media technologies before any plans to leverage on them take to the sky. And there definitely needs to be more engagement between users and social media companies.

Internet's evasive ways

Within most businesses crisis drives innovation. Within technology, business innovation leads to crisis.
Privacy crisis, IP crisis, security crisis and financial crisis are just a few conflicts to name.
Let us take the newspaper business. All was fairly well for the newspaper business until a time when consumers believed that news could be free- thanks to the internet. The feeds on Twitter page themediaisdying unfolds the turmoil in the industry in a "drip-drip" format. Newspaper publishers are seeking to revive themselves by retreating free content online.
However, such a retreat comes too late after the information explosion on the internet. The proliferating information on the internet is not easily controllable.
Newspapers that currently charge for some of its content find that the articles are accessible via Google news.
The online business model is not as simple as the selling of physical newspapers is. Some subscribers are likely to share the log-in details and the number would be too less for detection. Others would post the news stories they read online on to their Facebook and Twitter accounts to share and discuss it with friends.
The world wide web is just that - a world, wide, web that caches, tags, stores, crawls, spreads, reproduces and displays the information once it lands there.
In the world of technology, free and open source have always triumphed over pay-for and proprietary software. And the internet users think it could be the same for every business.
Ailing newspapers must simply join the bandwagon and perhaps begin to nudge the likes of Google (or broadband providers), who are gaining from consumers' free-content campaign, for support.
Meanwhile, benign consumers hope such a plan won't backfire at them.
But, by the time, a solution is devised, technology would have moved one-step ahead where consumers would prefer mobile computing and e-readers and its providers will offer complementary news services, leading to a new crisis.

Give us a newspaper revolution

And another newspaper [thelondonpaper] closes down because of falling advertising revenue. Archana Venkatraman
The scene will only get grimmer now on.
The fight for winning adverts turns bitter not just between the newspapers but also between newspapers and other consumer-facing companies and websites. Ailing airline company British Airways announced it was to sell advertising space on online boarding cards (presumably with some care- life insurance ads just before you get on a flight may not be quite the ticket). Meanwhile, property website Rightmove reported buoyant results citing its share of property advertising "grew substantially" even as advertising in traditional print media declined.
It is clear that advertisers operating on a shoe-string budget are swayed by a slew of companies with online presence that claim they can target users "more directly" than newspapers can. Companies such as British Airways step on the toes of traditional media institutions to rescue their business amid worsening economic climate.
Almost at the same time, consumers are increasingly considering news and information as something of a free-commodity and are not willing to pay for it.
So what seemed like a straight-forward and obvious business model for newspapers is turned upside down with the world wide web bringing along a slew of avenues for the advertisers and heralding a permanent gloom for the newspapers.
In case of BA and other brands, advertising will be complementary to their core revenue. Are newspapers too naïve to continue believing in advertising as the only and major source of income?
Arguably, the newspapers, with their compelling content have battled bravely with radio, television and even online news-sites and have continued to survive. But as the internet-savvy consumers crowd specific websites for booking tickets, shopping, viewing properties, and even investing their money and buying insurance, the newspapers must find an alternative to traditional advertising.
It may be hard to visualise a new revenue-earner different from advertising, but who would have thought of a "search engine" or "penicillin" in the early 1600s. Because, most times, identifying the problem is the first step for resolving a crisis.

In the fight between Google and Microsoft-Yahoo, users win

Archana Venkatraman
On Wednesday [July 29], Microsoft and Yahoo paired up to announce a ten-year deal in the search markets. The companies announced that the partnership would improve efficiency in reaching and tracking online audience.
Together Microsoft-Yahoo will hold less than 30% of the US market share, even though it is significantly more than their individual numbers. A research firm comScore suggests that Google handles 65% of the US search market. On a global context, however, the game looks even tougher for Microsoft and Yahoo with Google having 70% of the market share. But the two companies claim the deal to be a game changer within the search market.
Through the deal, Microsoft acquires a ten-year license to Yahoo's search technologies while Yahoo sites will use Microsoft Bing as their search platform.
Professionals navel-gazing to know 'what's in there for me' may not see a radically different search experience in the short run, but the competition introduced within the sector could result in innovation, more sophisticated search technology, meaning-based content, efficient organic search and further collaboration and consolidation.
In isolation, the development may mean little to professionals, but this just marks the beginning of maturity within the digital information industry. We could see more such collaborations not only between rival companies but even complementary collaboration between search companies, social networking sites and information management companies.
As one expert told me "the future of the search is about you and me", I see it coming true.

UPDATE: What Future for Search?

I was going to wait until tomorrow's keynote on Search before blogging about this, but I understand that the session will now count Andrew Kanter, Chief Operating Officer from Autonomy as a panellist.
As one of the senior figures at Autonomy it is going to be revealing what he has to say about search and what plans the organisation has for its technology. If you are involved in Enterprise search or just interested in semantic developments, this will be a must see.
With search guru Stephen E Arnold moderating the session I have a feeling that the panel will get a thorough grilling.
We will be blogging from the session so if you can't make it check back here around mid afternoon for a round up.

Reasons to be cheerful

First day of Online Information always has a special buzz about it and yesterday was no exception. The conference was crowded and at some points during the day it was standing (or sitting on the floor) only in some of the tracks. The exhibition was also buzzing with the usual range of meeting by chance of old friends and contacts, as well as the fulfilment of carefully planned meetings and briefings.
The IWR stand was particularly busy with the December issue in great demand (no surprise there). If you haven't seen a copy or you want to join or rejoin the circulation list, then come by the stand and leave your business card.
There is no doubt that much of the conversation at the conference and the exhibition revolved around how the profession would cope in a downturn. I think the answer is pretty positive. The profession is brimming with ideas and initiatives to help organisation do what they have to do better and there are a seemingly endless stream of new products and tools which should help to harness the brain power.
And yesterday's business pages in The Times agree with my assessment. Discussing Reed Elsevier the report suggested the information business is not "overly sensitive to the economic cycle".

A significant shift in behaviour

Evidence is mounting that professionals are seriously embracing online professional networking. Let me point you to two signs - involving the legal and the accountancy profession on both sides of the Atlantic - that may indicate a trend. The IT Faculty of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW) has launched a new professional development portal called IT Counts to help institute members to keep up to date with IT issues that impact their working lives. The ICAEW hopes to roll out more interest-based communities to its 132,000 members. You may have heard of IT Counts because it won Incisive Media's inaugural Web 2.0 innovation awards a few weeks back.
More recently a US-focused survey found that almost 50% of attorneys are members of online social networks and over 40% believe professional networking has the potential to change the business and practice of law over the next five years. The Networks for Counsel Survey conducted by Leader Networks and commissioned by LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell claims to be the first survey to examine social networking practices among the legal profession.
Leader Networks noted that the legal profession is traditionally slow to adopt new technologies so attorneys' readiness to use online networking tools represents a significant shift in behaviour. LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell certainly thinks that the legal profession is ready to embrace social networking as a serious work tool. It is looking to take advantage by launching a global network for the legal community later this year. This research was part of an exercise to assess what exactly lawyers wanted. Up to now social networking usage falls among older professionals but these guys aren't daft. If they see the benefit they'll learn.
Many professionals say they are finding it increasingly difficult to do the meeting and greeting necessary to find and keep work. Online professional networking tools offer the promise of an efficient and effective way of making and keeping contacts, especially in a global context. The professions are beginning to see that these online tools are now fit for a serious business purpose. It looks likely that online professional networks are coming of age.

At the heart of the knowledge economy

The 21st century is the era of the information professional. No, not another claim from the editor of IWR after a good lunch (I should be so lucky), but a summary of the prediction of the IBM Data Governance Council.
The council is a US-based industry group whose 50 members include big names from the corporate world including American Express, Deutsche Bank, Citi and Mastercard. Formed three years ago to help the business world take a more disciplined approach to how big companies handle data, it has produced an interesting assessment of life following the credit crunch.
The council concluded that failures in data governance were at the heart of the sub-prime crisis and that a regulatory backlash will see data governance becoming a regulatory requirement in some countries, initially in the banking and financial services industries. There is nothing like imposing a regulatory requirement for hoiking an issue up the corporate agenda. But the council goes even further. It is discussing the idea that the value of data should be recognised in the financial statements and should be treated as an asset on the balance sheet. The accountancy profession has always been a bit wary of intangible assets, with fierce arguments over if and how intellectual property assets such as goodwill, brands, and human capital should be recognised. The credit crunch and the argument over the value of financial instruments has underlined how difficult it is to inform investors about the changing asset values.
In the scenario painted by the council, the quality of data will become a technical reporting metric and key IT performance indicator. New accounting and reporting practices will emerge for measuring and assessing the value of data to help organisations demonstrate how data quality fuels business performance. Crucially the council sees the role of the chief information officer changing - with reporting on data quality and data risk to the board becoming a key task. The CIO will have the mandate to govern the use of information and report on the quality of the information provided to shareholders.
For information professionals it is an exciting idea, putting them at the heart of the knowledge economy and at the centre of corporate life. It is a vision which the profession should try to turn into reality.

You pay for what you get

Civil servants are reeling in the wake of the horrific news that CDs containing the records of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) database have been lost, and the futher news of DVLA data being lost. The full cost to tax paying members of the public may not be fully realised for years to come.

This debacle is not only an example of incredibly poor information management, but also a sign of a wider problem in the UK, that you get what you pay for. Or in this case you don't get what you pay for. 

Information management is, or rather was, at the heart of British life. Travel to former colonies like India or Australia and they'll gladly inform you of the regimented behaviour towards information that led to government structures that have served the sub-continent and prison colony well to date. Yet, those standards have dropped.

An IWR reporter remarked as we debated the issue, how come information of this value was so easy to simply download and burn to a CD?  Technology preventing such blunders is not new and is a basic function of many information management systems.

Revelations of the missing information came a day after a report on the BBC's Today programme that the Driving Standards Agency and vehicle licensing body the DVLA employees take on average three weeks sick leave a year. Missing information and low staff moral are examples of a civil service that is poorly funded and poorly managed.

It is too easy to wag the finger of blame at civil servants, when in truth a much wider debate needs to take place.  As tax payers and child benefit recipients we are angry and worried, as information professionals we are dumbfounded that such lapses could have occurred.  What of our role as citizens?  Since the 1980s we've wanted a John Lewis service, but only paid Tesco value brand prices.  If you want John Lewis quality, you pay John Lewis prices.  On the high street this modus operandi fits well with the public, as they choose when they want quality and when they want to increase their spending. So why is it that we expect our state services to manage high level information on a low level budget?

This needs to be a debate about our society and its values, literally, as well as an improvement in information management.

IWR Information Professional of the Year Award

The IWR American Psychological Association Information Professional of the Year award has been announced and went, deservedly to Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus for the UKOLN organisation.

The award is judged by a panel of previous winners and the IWR editorial team. As editor of IWR when I judge the award I look for an individual who is pushing the limits of information, technology and making the role of the information professional as far as possible and making it an exciting role.  When looking through the final results I could see that the other judges felt the same way and Brian was an excellent choice.

Brian's role is a national Web co-ordinator, an advisory post funded by the educational body JISC and the Museums, Library and Archives Council (MLA).

In this role Brian is looking at the web as central resource for learning and research in higher education and is looking at ways to make the web a successful resource, which is a challenging role, because the web is still very young and is constantly changing. This can be seen with the recent changes dubbed Web 2.0, therefore Brian is going to be pretty busy for some time to come.

Based at the University of Bath, I know from information professionals I have dealt with in the academic sector that he is very well respected and his thoughts are often the basis for great debate within the industry. Linked to this is his blog, which is one of the most popular blogs in the sector.

I hope all IWR readers will join me in congratulating Brian for an award very much well deserved. 

Jimmy Wales on the role of Wikipedia in society

Jimmy Wales, chairman of Wikipedia was the keynote speech of Online Information 2007 with a presentation Web 2.0 in action: Free culture & community on the move.

Starts with Britannica editor Charles van Doren 1962, who said the encyclopaedia should be radical, but Wales claims they have been anything but.

Small showing of hands for those that have edited, although Wales believes it’s a good showing, "but not as many as college kids".

I consider us to be the Red Cross of information, he says as he describes its charitable status. Have 10 full time staff and will spend about $2 to 3 million this year, which is tiny compared to the major publishers. Vast majority of the money is from small donations, which he likes because its grass routes and not dependent on advertisers.

Wales talks about the desire to extend the languages that are in use on Wikipedia, including Hindi and Afrikaans.

Wiki is free in the sense of GNU, its free to copy, modify and distribute.

Shows a video of his travels to India and how he learnt that the local communities want to use the English version, as the English language is a route out of poverty. His organisation has been out to South Africa teaching students how to edit Wikipedia. "One of the things we have learnt is that if you can get five to 10 editors working together, it can make a great difference." These groups make progress and then they look towards outreach and who they can include. Hence the organisation has set up an academy to find the founding editors. It has begun in India, with 10-20,000 articles a month being put together by academy organisations.

Wikia is his next subject, a separate organisation with 66 languages, including a 67th, Klingon. Wales goes on to demonstrate using Google search results for Muppets and how the top result is the official site, but the rest of the results are from web based conversation, ie Wikipedia pages, forums and fan sites. He demonstrates an article on the Ford motor company and how on Muppet Wiki site, there is an article on Muppet Ford ads and how this demonstrates this level of information would never have been available before.

The search engine is a political statement, in a small P sense, Wales says. The proprietary software of the main players is a mystery in that people have no control of the accountability. The Wikia search will publish its algorithm.

Wales believes that the trust of social networks and setting up trusted networks can be utilised in search. .

On the role of collaboration, he asks the audience to imagine that they are designing a restaurants, discussing the idea that we trust the people around us, we don't put people in cages in restaurants because they will be using knives.
The wiki philosophy is to allow people to do good.

Our tax levels cause disasters like HMRC

I was meant to be going to the House of Lords tonight. No I haven't spent the missing IWR marketing budget on a Labour party donation and offer of a peerage from Tony Blair. Tonight's rare opportunity to entered the hallowed chambers of the Lords was for the launch of Information Matters, a guide to good information management practise.

Obviously this has become a bit of a hot potato subject for the powers of Whitehall and I was not totally surprised to hear that the event has been "postponed", I am though disappointed, now I really will have donate money to some political party that will change its policies from day to day to suit its sponsors!

But cynical disbelief in political parties aside, the debacle at HMRC is not an opportunity to clobber the current Labour government, they can do that on their own. This now needs to be a debate about the quality of service we desire. The mistakes that took place at HMRC happened because of poor policy and in all likelihood, a demotivated and under appreciated and underpaid staff. These factors in any organisation will lead to a disaster.

Sadly as a nation we are demanding a John Lewis service, yet only prepared to pay a Tesco budget brand price for it. Our government and political parties fear spending public money, or worse, the public and the Daily Mail discovering that public money has been spent. Yet cuts in budgets and over stretched departments have led to this scenario and could lead to more.

It is ridiculous that a country as rich as the UK that is experiencing unparallelled levels of growth is trying to run its infrastructure, which after all is what our civil service is, on a shoestring. We have politicians tempting us with tax cuts, yet clearly they cannot balance the books with the revenue they have, how will public information be well managed and secured in a state that has even less revenue coming in?

The awful mess at the HMRC needs to spark a debate about how we want our nation to operate. Groups and parts of the media are quick to call for changes to immigration levels, but lets have a debate about the quality of our services, all of them, whether its schools and hospitals to departments looking after taxation or defence. We cannot lower taxes when our troops are being put at risk in Iraq to secure oil in ill equipped vehicles and our civil service is making basic mistakes with valuable data.

It may not be a popular move, but as a European nation that expects its authorities to provide child benefit, shouldn't we at least pay a proper level of taxation to meet those expectations?

Specialist publishers ride high at Frankfurt Book Fair

At a major international publishing event like the Frankfurt Book Fair the bright lights of trade publishing and all its household star names could easily drown out the academic and scientific publishers. But this has not been the case.

Talk at the event, in all circles, is about books and technology, in particular search and eBook readers. On both subjects the specialist publishers are leading the way and the trade publishers salute them.

Amazon and Sony were expected to steal the show with their eBook
readers, they are instead conspiquous in their absence, but that has
not stopped publishers and technology providers from talking about the
devices and their potential.

I was particularly interested in a conversation I had with sceintific,
technical and medical publishers WIley where they hinted that they and
other specialists may get involved in driving the adoption of eBook readers.
Could we see the eBook reader adopt a similar model to the mobile phone
where users sign up to a subscription service, content of a particular
kind in this case, and in return they get a sleek and sexy device? Its
certainly worked for the mobile industry, which now resembled the car
world with its emphasis on styling and marketing.

But such a move could also be a blind alley, as one expert said to me,
these devices don't support the interlinking and interactivity that
content users are currently enjoying with the web.

During the fair Google, Ingram Digital Group and Amazon have all used the scientific and academic publishers as case study beacons for just what can be done with books on the web.

Geographically the Far East is the leading adopter as its markets radically develop according to Mark Carden, Ingram senior vp.

Perhaps Amazon spread rumours of a possible launch to see if there was real interest, well if the level of conversation we've heard is anything to go by, the eBook reader is in demand.

Money men plan to cut informed British culture

The word 'cuts' has been rearing its ugly head in the information sector with far too much regularity in the last month or two. The latest two organisations to be threatened are the two jewels in the British crown of not only information, but also our culture – the BBC and the British Library.

No organisation can spend willy-nilly and difficult as they often are to deal with, the money men have their place. But if the focus becomes too narrow, in other words too short term, the damage can be lasting.  Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library penned an item in this weekend's Observer discussing what will happen if the money men starve our national library of cash. As she rightly points out, "I simply don't want to run a second rate organisation. Slipping from world leadership to the second tier is not something that can be reversed."

Talk to anyone on the street and they will believe that Britain is second at just about everything. We've lost our iron grip on manufacturing (it was only really in place because our Empire was the world market), we are no longer a military super power and other than the brilliant efforts of Lewis Hamilton we are not winning every sporting event about. Yet when you tell people that the UK is the world leader in the information world they are surprised. But once again the money men could very well cut the costs and accept second place whilst talking of being winners.

If funds are cut the quality will drop. The quality debate has, of late, been caught up in a debate about information literacy and egalitarianism born from the Web 2.0 movement. Yet an excellent analysis of the role of Radio 4 as it reaches 40 in the Saturday edition of the Guardian summed up what I've been feeling, "The confusion is the assumption that unstructured demotic chatter is more "accessible" than a well written talk by someone who really knows about a topic. As sources of information and comment proliferate, the demand for authoritative, well informed programmes increases rather than diminishes." The last sentence sums up what faces the information world at the moment, not a need to ditch our methods in place of Web 2.0, but to improve our resources to complement Web 2.0.

The same is true of the British Library, according to Brindley, for the cost of a cup of coffee and a muffin (presumably at the BL café) the nation has access to some of the most important cultural, academic; and informed works on earth, including the Magna Carta.

If these two scions of information and quality are reduced to silver medal holders then the information industry as a whole will suffer.

Fair use benefits the economy, so Free Our Data Mr Brown

A report from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) in the USA shows that fair use of copyrighted material is beneficial to the national economy. According to the CCIA industries that can use material under the terms of fair use earned  $4.5 trillion, which adds more weight to the arguments of the Free Our Data campaign from newspaper The Guardian.

Free Our Data wants information held by the government, and therefore paid for by tax payers, to be made freely available so that organisations can use it.

Amongst the organisations using fair use terms that have benefited the US national economy are media organisations, education sector and software developers. 

Industries bound by copyright control with no fair use aspect contributed just $1.3 trillion to the US economy.

Fair use under US copyright law is described as being the use and copying of copyright protected material to comment upon, criticise or parody. Examples include summaries and quotes from medical articles for news, use of media content for teaching or the use of copyright protected material as evidence in a court case.

The Guardian Free Our Data campaign, run by its Technology supplement argues, rightly, that information collected by the Highways Agency, the UK Hydrographic Office and Ordnance Survey should be made available to organisations in the UK without being encumbered by clunky copyright restrictions. Although designated as trading funds, these three organisations receive almost 50% of their income from the public sector, which means taxpayers pay for it. Access to this data is charged for and as a result, organisations are turning to Google Maps for mapping information rather than using information they have already paid for through their business rates.

IWR supports the Free Our Data campaign because we are passionate about online information and want to see the UK remain a leader in information provision and we want to see British information professionals continuing to manipulate information in innovate ways that is beneficial to their user community.

Partying like 1999

Earlier this week PaidContent.org launched its UK and European information service at a swanky Scottish bar in, err, London.  IWR went along and once underneath the deer antler chandelier it was as if a time and space wormhole had opened up and we were transported back to 1999 and they heady dot com boom.

The zeitgeist was unmistakable, young trendy professionals in Chris Evans glasses, sharp suits, bright shirts and an excitable level of conversation about "content" and "funding". It was uncanny. The headache's from the launch parties of Boo.com, Handbag.com and anything you like .com have only just cleared at the IWR Editor's desk and all of a sudden I get the feeling that it is all about to happen again.

The last web boom rapidly replaced CD-Rom in the professional information space and for those of us commentating on it for the traditional information sector, we were regularly told our days were numbered and the geeks would inherit the earth. In many ways everything has changed, yet also, nothing has changed.  Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia are significant changes, but despite falling ad revenues, the stalwarts of information still remain kings of the jungle.

Interestingly at this party, fund toting entrepreneurs didn't make the same mistake of predicting the demise of traditional information providers; instead I heard many conversations about partnerships, relationships and hosts. Kewego, just one of the bright (complete with lime green logo) Web 2.0 start ups present talked of the importance of the "content owners" and rattled off the names of respected information providers. The general feeling I left with is that if we are about to start partying again, but the difference is not that the new players think they have all the answers and will replace our libraries, publishing houses and research departments, instead they see themselves as a component and supplier.

Widgets is a term used widely in the blog world and already newspaper groups are adding widgets to their online portfolios. The next information wave appears to be about a wealth of new ("funded" and partying) companies offering to add their widget to your information. For information professionals this means understanding what a widget is, what it offers your users and negotiating a good deal for all parties involved.

Information professionals guiding you to the best bits of the Blogosphere - James Mullan

From this month onwards the Blogosphere print title page will be dedicated to information professionals who are shaping the blogosphere. Each month, one of your peers will explain why they blog and what benefits it provides, and reveal which bloggers they trust, or just plain enjoy.

Q Who are you?
A James Mullan, 32. It’s hard to have hobbies when you have a two-year-old child, but my ultimate goal is to catch up on sleep. I also enjoy going to the gym; in particular running. I’ve participated in a number of 10k races for charity. I also enjoy reading (not just RSS feeds), blogging (obviously), film and TV, and travelling. I’m currently Information Officer at CMS Cameron McKenna, where I have responsibility for the Library Management System, Internal Portal Pages, the production of statistics and several other applications.

Q Where can we find your blog?
A http://ligissues.blogspot.com

Q Describe your blog?
A It’s a bit of a mish-mash really, but I’m particularly interested in Web 2.0 and the impact it has on law libraries. I have posted about Facebook, Delicious, Second Life, lawyers use of online databases, Librarian 2.0, social media and social networking. Where possible I will post about how legal publishers are using Web 2.0, as I see this as a developing area for legal publishers, but one whose benefits are not fully understood.

Q How long have you been blogging?
A Eight months externally, three months internally

Q What started you blogging?
A I’m the chair of a British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) Committee, which works closely with publishers. One of the concerns myself and another member had is that we weren’t advertising the work we did and thought a blog might be the ideal solution as it would allow members to view posts just on issues relating to particular publishers. As it turned out, the blog became much more personal. To supplement this, we launched the BIALL Blog in May 2007 – the official BIALL Blog – which myself and a number of other BIALL committee chairs administer.

Q Do you comment on other blogs?
A I try to comment wherever possible on posts I find interesting. The problem with commenting is that there are a number of blogging platforms available, some of which ask you to log in while others don’t, so immediately there is a barrier to commenting. Blogs that have comment moderation enabled can also be frustrating because blogging is so immediate you want to see your comment immediately. Unfortunately, because of spam this isn’t possible. Commenting is important because blogging shouldn’t be done in isolation. Building this ‘collaborative community’ is one reason why I try to comment on other blogs. Having said that, I don’t see any value in commenting for the sake of it.

Q How does your organisation benefit from your presence in the blogosphere?
A In several ways. One of the benefits is that I am now considered a ‘subject matter expert’ on blogging to the extent that I work closely with a number of other groups developing blogs. The other benefit is exposure to information. I ‘unofficially’ monitor blogs for anything that may be of interest to my colleagues; for instance, where CMS Cameron McKenna may have been posted about.

Q Which blogs do you trust?
A Information Overlord and Binary Law – I consider these the most trustworthy. Trust is an interesting concept within blogging. I guess it comes down to whether you can rely on what the blogger has posted about.

Q How does it benefit your career?
A My blog has exposed me to many individuals and organisations. I’m writing for Information World Review for a start! Blogging can be hugely beneficial in terms of
exposure, but it is time-consuming.

Q What good things have come about because of your blogging?
A I’ve met a lot of people I would never have met otherwise. I’ve also spoken at a Knowledge Management Conference on Blogs, Wikis and Social Media, which I would have never imagined doing pre-blogging.

Q Which blogs do you read for fun?
A Police Camera Action – for insight into the work of the police. http://policecamerapaperwork.blogspot.com
Lifehacker – because there is no way you can’t. http://lifehacker.com
The Dilbert Blog – for my daily laugh http://dilbertblog.typepad.com

Q What bloggers do you watch and link to?
A Enquiring minds want to know http://enquiring-minds.blogspot.com
Lore Librarian http://lorelibrarian.blogspot.com
Lo-Fi Librarian www.lo-fi-librarian.co.uk
Library Etc http://neilstewart.wordpress.com
Jennie Law http://jennielaw.blogspot.com
Information Overlord www.informationoverlord.co.uk

Union group warns of Facebook sackings

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has warned Facebook users to be careful and for employers not to sack workers for using the social networking tool in work time.

The TUC has written a guide on acceptable Facebook usage in the workplace in response to growing unease from organisations that Facebook is reducing productivity in the workplace. Facebook has become popular for social and professional networking.

Staff across the UK have already faced discipline or sackings because of the overuse of Facebook at work. Daily newspaper The Guardian reports that employees of Kent county council have been sacked.

With 3.5 million registered users in the UK the TUC describes Facebook as an accident waiting to happen. "Simply cracking down on the use of new web tools like Facebook is not a sensible solution to a problem, which in only going to get bigger," said Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC. Instead he advises, "It is better to invest a little time in working out sensible conduct guidelines, so that there don't need to be any nasty surprises for staff and employees."

These are a set of good suggestions, so far IWR has not come across any figures which show how much work time and productivity has been lost to Facebook, but we have heard anecdotal evidence of sales being lost and workers spending considerable amounts of work time within social networks.

Policing social networks will be hard. IWR and many titles have promoted them as useful tools in the information landscape. Unlike games or even YouTube, it is difficult to see where using Facebook is purely for pleasure and where is a useful corporate tool. Add into the confusion the fact that many managers are using these tools to communicate with their teams both about corporate and social issues and the blur gets even fuzzier.

Ultimately, it will have to come from the top down within the organisation. Managers should be involved with these tools in order to garner the best from them, but they should also set the parameters for staff's usage and enforce it, before UK Plc is ground to halt by a winter of disreputable content.

Liberate information and join the Free Our Data Campaign

IWR has been keeping an eye on the Free Our Data campaign which the Technology supplement of daily newspaper The Guardian has been running. We've been watching it and supporting it. Now Charles Arthur, editor of the Technology Guardian supplement, has asked IWR and its readers to join the campaign.

"The more people and organisations we have on board, the better our chances of success," he said. The campaign seeks to make data which the public has paid for freely available, which will then stimulate new information resources for information professionals and the public alike to use.

The campaign uses a blog as its central repository and communications point, so its easy for all of us to add more information to the cause. So if you know of examples of government information costing you or your organisation, despite having already paid for it once through your taxes, let the campaign know. "If everyone joins, it would be sort of hard for the government to ignore," Arthur adds.

The campaign, which has been running since 2006 ,has highlighted some interesting disparities in

Whitehall

's information policies. Ordnance Survey (OS), known for its maps has been revealed to charging British citizens repeatedly for geographic information that is already funded by the public purse. It has been revealed that local authorities pay the OS for map information during the planning application process, planning authorities also pay separately for the same map information. During the campaign it has been revealed that a total of eight separate payments arrive at the OS as part of a planning application.

There are bound to be many more cases like this and it would be great if Information World Review and its readers can be part of a campaign to make the information we already own more easily available.