Google Wave drowned by apathy

The Official Google Blog announced the close of Google Wave- the web app for real time communication and collaboration, developed by the search engine giant in 2009.
Urs Hölzle, senior vice president, operations & Google fellow wrote on the blog: "Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don't plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects."
Those who liked it really liked it- the twitter posts from its handful of fans are saying that loud and clear. "Google Wave was email evolved. It heralded a fundamental change, in my mind, of how we could interact with each other and our various locations on the net." And "a gem of a communicative tool goes down the drain" and so on.
Google Wave was truly collaborative. It enabled users to manage their total communication on the web- instant messaging, emailing, and communication on social networks.
It enthralled business users too with its document collaboration applications, easy and intuitive tools to share ideas, wikis, graphs, opinions, files and presentations. It allowed users to mash up a wide range of web based technologies like such as sharing a map or document and even allowed private communication within a group collaboration.
It allowed the sharing of images and other media in real time, enabled third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, allowed drag-and-drop of files from desktop and even playback the history within the web browser.
And it was free.
So, if it was indeed this good then why it failed. The search engine is partly to be blamed for Google Wave's failure. Apart from a few (and far between) tedious You Tube demos and introductory clips, Wave's true objective and potential was not communicated to the users. Left to people's own perception, its uptake was limited because many thought it was complicated and unnecessary.
Wave was rejected as yet another communicative tool that just brought together everything on the web that we managed separately.
In fact, Wave allowed group collaboration, but unlike social media, it allowed you to choose what you share and how much you share with whom.
A large part of its failure is down to us and our obsession with old-fashioned communication. While we appreciate and embrace new tools of communication, we are not truly embracing of collaboration. We still choose to do all things - email, IM, sharing - separately, when Wave allowed us to do them within a single browser.
We only appreciate digital resources that perk up our existing form of communication but if it is one that just brings together all that we do individually, we fail to see the point.
Of course Wave had problems- the predictive texts and the ability for multiple users to edit the same text brought in confusion, but nothing that couldn't be easily fixed.
Google Wave had a great future but our apathy drowned it.

The answer is with you, stupid

CrossKnowledge, the European expert in the remote development of leadership and management skills through new technologies, wanted to look at the social web from "every possible" angle, certain that it is the future of business, communication and information exchange. Interesting no one thought of conducting such an experiment before!
It asked the opinion of five observers from very different segments of the information sector- a publisher of web 2.0 solutions, a consultant specialising in social networks, an HR executive, a sociologist and a teacher - to study the impact of social networking on a company's strategic vision, structure and leadership.
The academic described the new forms of work organisation; another expert spoke about the impact of 2.0 applications in development practices and skills management; a third expert explained the link between tools and bu¬siness; the consultant spoke of his understanding of the impact of so¬cial networks on business; and finally the HR professional described the implementation of a tool created within a mobile phone company.
It found that the culture of exchange and openness encouraged by social networking sites enables companies to accelerate their decision-making processes, and increase their capacity for innovation and commercial productivity; social networks boost a company's competitiveness by providing it with improved responsiveness. Far more than just a technological revolution, the predicted arrival of the company as community translates above all into a cultural change.
By creating a networked organisation, social media encourage the lasting participation of employees, clients and partners, which in turn prompts reflection on both management's role in the corporate structure and the form that training takes.
That social media are about more than just technology, they're also all about combining social interaction and content creation: they use collective human intelligence, in the spirit of online collaboration. Consequently, the impact of professional networks will change the actual structure of corporate strategy.
Of course, collating such information is extremely useful for businesses and institutions that look to integrate social web in their communication strategy and allow technology democracy. But the ultimate factor that determines the direction of the social web is the user himself.
This is the beauty of interactive social web - making every user a publisher, researcher, aggregator, information provider and content generator. And he, who is empowered by the social web, must form a crucial part of such a research if we are to understand the mysterious world of web 2.0. Ask yourself why you use it, how you use it and what it has done to your personal and professional life, if you want social web explanations.

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.

Publishers showing spine in the ebook battle

Credit where credit is due. The publishing sector deserves a pat on its back for steering the future of the books.
Acknowledging the role that ebooks and ebook readers would play within the sector, the industry is not just keeping pace with the latest technology but is, in fact, a step ahead- forming alliances, consolidating and providing users a peek into the future.
Unlike the music industry, which was forced to evolve following innovations such as the MP3s, iPods and even Spotify that changed the consumption of music, publishers are bracing themselves with new technologies and organisations such as British Library is enabling consumers "to get to grips" with the hi-tech devices that could change the way we read.
Google Books, Google's online library has agreed to add one million books for free to Coolerbooks.com, for Interead's ebook reader Cool-ER.
The search giant, along with Sony, is also supporting the open EPUB- publishing format that can conform to any e-reader, liberating the market and challenging Amazon's model of ebooks compatible only with its own reader Kindle.
While on one hand, content-access is becoming sophisticated, Harry Potter publisher has given content too, a 21st century makeover. Bloomsbury Library Online has virtual bookshelves that allows one to access books via public libraries or through internet enabled mobile phones.
However, a lot still needs to be tackled- getting more publishers publish books in ebook-friendly formats, making the devices more affordable and user-friendly, digitising old books in ebook compatible formats and even collaborating with communication devices manufacturers.
Typical problems that challenge the music industry today are online piracy and file sharing issues. The issues are so deep-rooted that it requires government intervention and severe clampdown to restrict the damage.
We need due diligence process to combat similar file-sharing issues, legal compliances and piracy within the ebook market, its impact on book-sellers and physical newspapers, otherwise well-begun would remain half done.
By Archana Venkatraman

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.

Are we a digitally-confused society?

...Or is our digital consumption, marked by a classic characteristic of jumping on the bandwagon? Asks Archana Venkatraman
On one hand, Ofcom research suggests that people are willing to give up on celebrations and routine pleasures such as meals out and holidays to hold on to communication services, if a choice has to be made. That fits in with the EC's digital competitiveness report found that two in every three Europeans under 24 years of age use the internet every day.
But almost exactly at the same time, another research report from social media analytics company Sysymos analysed over 11 million Twitter accounts and found that about over 85% of Twitter users post less than one update a day and that 21% of users have never posted a Tweet. In addition, the social networking site Friends Reunited is sold off for a fraction of what it was worth in 2005.
Arguably, the reason for the burgeoning success for Facebook as against Friends Reunited could be attributed to its free access as against a subscription model, which was eventually dispensed with. Similar trend was spotted by the EC's report where it said that a third of young people would not pay for online services such as music and video downloads.
Have we assumed that most internet services we use will remain free and that we just have to factor the hardware costs? Media baron Rupert Murdoch has just shaken this belief to its core.
We haven't yet sorted out our digital behaviour and our inability to put a value to our digital services. We embrace digital services- general search engines, social networking sites, news sites, email accounts, YouTube and numerous download sites - that are free, without assessing their real value and importance to us. We all know of people who have opened a Twitter account to obtain a desired URL before it is too late.
The real question is how many of us would actually give up on holiday and dining-out to keep Facebook and Twitter and Skype if all three were in fact subscription-based? In such a scenario, people willing to keep communication services would have to pay for the devices, internet connection and individual websites.
It is time we start putting a price on the communication technologies we use and choose more selectively. Web 2.0 has certainly revolutionised the way we live and communicate but if we do not exercise our discretion then the companies providing these services will gain revenge, either by charging or disappearing.

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.

You can't close down people

It is time to see social networking sites as just that. Networking sites. Says Archana Venkatraman
Two incidents earlier this week took the paranoia around networking tools to an absurd level. One was when MI6 chief Sir John Sawers's personal life became public when his wife innocently uploaded their holiday photographs to her Facebook account. The other was concerns expressed by UK intelligence agencies that Facebook and other social networking tools ruin the spy industry, as finding new recruits without an online trail has become nearly impossible.
In the first instance, Sawers faces a probe, and in the second, consultants are saying that having a Facebook profile is like "opening up a Pandora's box of online traceability that one can't ever truly close". The message from security experts is loud and clear - maintain a low profile at all times.
That means having no images in the public domain, or being associated with any person or organisation. What we need to understand is that while the latter is in people's control, the former is not. In today's internet age, it is hard to control information that is visible and searchable in the world wide web.
For instance, the MI6 chief was unaware of the availability of information while his wife did not consider the implications of her enthusiastic and seemingly harmless activity. Even if she had been careful with the security settings, his friends could have published the photographs and "tagged" friends' friends and so on, or he could have featured in other holidaymakers' pictures.
High profile officials must indeed have Facebook and Twitter accounts as information coming from them is fast, first hand and extremely useful. It also is important for the info pros of the future as references while documenting an event.
Instead of making them digital outcasts, they and their loved ones must be informed about the security aspects of these websites. More importantly, instead of controlling the prolific adoption of these inevitable sites, experts must advise search engines and those who run social networking sites to stop crawling through their pages for easy find-ability and to stop presenting a vast amount of information to random web search-ers.
It is the technology that has to become smarter with sensitive personal information, not people.

Tweeters and non-Tweeters

It is well worth repeating the cliché - internet has transformed our lives. Information, news, file-sharing, catch up television, blogs, entertainment and social networking. Layer upon layer, it is a world unto itself.
While this virtual world exposes us to new challenges and conflicts, it also dangerously divides our real world into separate sects.
A YouGov survey of almost 2000 adults have revealed varying attitude towards social media. While many welcomed its adoption in business, 71% respondents said teaching social media technologies such as Twitter in schools is "inappropriate".
Meanwhile, the old school of thought is still prevalent- 50% of the UK workforce are banned from using social media in the workplace- presumably for productivity reasons. Contrarily, 20% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that a corporate Facebook would be better for sharing information and collaborating on projects.
As I have always argued, the majority of respondents who were inclined towards social media in the workplace were Generation Y-ers. This reflects how the young have changed the way they communicate.
Traditional organisations must provide social media platform to its employees for sharing ideas and views and to collaborate in a medium of their choice. Social media sites are not just a means to connect or not just used to advertise the positive aspect of one's life. Today, they are beyond a mere public relations weapon of every individual.
Several Tweeters have a fan-following for their valuable information, some human resource departments vet people by tracking their social media activity. Ambitious companies have extended their online presence with the use of these tools and even promoted products and services through them.
Business social media site LinkedIn boasts of 40 million plus members. This shows the importance of these applications and the role they are likely to play in future generations' personal and professional lives. Social networking sites such as Facebook host a multitude of groups fighting for social, economic and environmental causes. And that is why, it is important to allow children familiarise themselves with these technologies which they have a great aptitude and appetite for.
What is also shocking about the survey is that 6% have admitted that they'd go as far as not taking a job if social media tools were not made available to them. Although nominal, it reflects the division in ideologies. Besides, a survey of even younger sample could provide more alarming insights.
It must be about a happy marriage- making social media technologies a tool to achieve traditional objectives- than slipping into a divided society of Tweeters and non-Tweeters.

Government's monumental snooping plan

Here we go again. The government wants to get more data about us. And store it in a monumental database. Although a Home Office spokesman has said, "Ministers have made no decision on whether a central database will be included in the draft Bill." That's probably just a way of keeping troublemakers, like the press, at bay until the inevitable decision has been made.

Dig a little deeper and you find embedded in the proposal for a Communications Data Bill and you'll find that a main element is to "Transpose EU Directive 2006/24/EC on the retention of communications data into UK law." This data retention law has already been challenged for breaching human rights. Yet our lot press on regardless. I'm never sure whether our government decides what snooping it wants to do, then finds a handy European directive to cover it, or whether it is just utterly supine.

Anyway, the ball is rolling. If the plans come to pass, our communications and ISP networks will sport the equivalent of street cameras except they will be black boxes snooping on our telephone and internet activities and feeding them in real time to the database. It will know how long we spend online, who we talk to, what web pages we connect to, what emails and IMs we exchange, with whom, and so on.

The government's proposal reassures us that, "ensure strict safeguards continue to strike the proper balance between privacy and protecting the public." In other words it is using the threat of crime - terrorism specifically - to snoop on us all. If the past is a good guide to the future, it is likely cost a fortune, be late, cost even more than planned, be insecure, run up huge carbon debts and fail in its primary task.

Seems to me that the government really is biting off more than it can chew with this one.

Big Broadband Bournemouth

The lucky citizens of Bournemouth are soon to get 'up to 100Mbps' internet access from their homes and businesses. If the project goes according to plan, it could either make Bournemouth an attractive place to work and live or it could give a kick up the bottom to BT et al to bring high speed broadband to the rest of the country.

Talking of bottoms, I should mention that the cabling is being installed in the city's sewers by the misnamed H20 Networks. Shouldn't that be CH4 Networks? Oh well. At least the Bournemouth project itself goes under the moniker 'fibrecity'.

In terms of speed, impact on the environment, security and cost, this approach beats the digging-up-of-roads method hands-down. A couple of kilometres of broadband can be laid in four hours at a cost of less than a third of conventional approaches.

The backbone capacity is described as 'unlimited', which suggests that 100Mbps is theoretically possible. So what would it mean in everyday life? Video, videoconferencing and IP telephony without hiccups for a start. Fast uploads and downloads of all manner of information, suggesting the possibility of offloading hefty computing activities to the 'cloud'. Remote visual monitoring of people, equipment or property. And, for those so-minded, vastly improved multiplayer games and other virtual experiences.

Without wishing to be a wet blanket, I should point out that not every provider of services to the internet wants to gear up for high speed. It will cost a lot of hard-to-recoup money. Others will see an immediate commercial value - video rentals, online training etc - and will move swiftly. We'll end up with a two-tier internet in the short term and the good citizens of Bournemouth will be watched as closely as laboratory rats.

Oh darn it. I didn't mean to mention rats.

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.

Blackwell's boss resigns

René Olivieri, chief operating officer at Wiley-Blackwell, the academic book and journals publisher has resigned, reports The Bookseller.

Olivieri was ceo of Blackwell when the company merged with Wiley in a surprise move last November. Since the merger Olivieri has been heading up the transition team as chief operating officer, a role he has held since May.

He has had a long and illustrious career at the Oxford based publisher, starting out as a publisher in the 1980s, before becoming an editorial direct, deputy md, and managing director. The Bookseller reports he became ceo of Blackwell Science in 2000 and stepped into the role of Blackwell Publishing ceo a year later.

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.

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.