• Wikispaces Blog: Announcing Wikispaces Private Label
  "Today, we’re thrilled to announce Wikispaces Private Label, a service for organizations that want their own dedicated Wikispaces environment." – Great news guys… congrats!

It’s taken a while but I’m delighted to announce that over the next week we’ll be rolling out free (and ad free!) Wikispaces for all edublogs.org users.

So all existing users will get a free Wikispace – which’ll get kinda integrated into their edublog space (through the admin menu and in the sidebar) – and all new users will too… moving edublogs.org towards what I really want it to be (I think): a one-stop, freely available, non-commercial shop for all your educational technology needs :)

Onwards & upwards!

Resources and audio for The Fang and The Kludger ConnectingUp production… wish I had been able to be there!

• mikes web log » I really like science.
  "For all this focus on ICT, blogging, podcasting, computers in the home etc etc I am really a scientist through and through…." I particularly like the PS at the bottom :)
• Anecdote – Whitepapers
  Kewl… all Anecdote whitepapers in one place :)

George Siemens points to an excellent article on the success of YouTube and MySpace which contains the rather wonderful sub header:

Point-and-click sites that don’t tell you what to do

Now I’m not going to say that I told you so, oh OK then I am, ‘cos I’ve got a name for this grand unifying theory… it’s called incorporating subversion :)

Seriously, simple principle beautifuly put… yes it’s gotta be easy, ridiculously easy, but more significantly:

MySpace isn’t that much easier to use than Friendster, or than other shared-user-content sites like Flickr (photo sharing), del.icio.us (bookmarks), or Digg (tech news). But it mixes multiple publishing models—blogs, photos, music, videos, friend networks—into one personal space. Most important, it doesn’t presume to know what your goals are. [emphasis me]

This is one of the reasons why WordPress and it’s evolution into a straightforward media publishing / website tool and Automattic with a first-line philosophy of ‘Blogging is too hard’ get me very very excited. Because combine that with David Squires advice that:

Designers should consider designing for subversive use, recognising that users fit the use of ICT environments into contextually tuned ‘situated’ learning environments

And forget, for one minute, the ‘learning’ bit and realise that he was talking about software, about the online and apply that to *real* people (i.e. not you or I… I’ve been saying for a looong time that blogging as we know it is not how this technology is gonna change the world) and it’s all starts to make a lot of sense:

The secret to success is to make everything one-button easy, then get out of the way.

Sweet.

• The Observer: England holds its breath as talismanic Rooney joins World Cup casualty list
  It just gets worse.
• Guardian Unlimited Football: Birmingham 0 – 0 Newcastle
  "Blues down and out" – Sigh… know it was too good to last :(
• Media Bloggers Association
  Good lookin’ organisation, particularly like the phrasing ‘citizen’s media’.
• Publishing 2.0 » Digital Editions of Print Pubs Are Publisher-Centric
  "There are two ways to consume print content: 1. Paper-based, where the print layout is the organizing principle 2. Digitally, where search, links, tagging, most-viewed/emailed, etc. are the organizing principles" – Interesting perspective on the value of the NYT work with Vista, have been wondering about the Guardian’s digital edition for a while now.
• EdTechUK: The New Worldwide Web
  Lots of good authors, lots of free stuff… why say no?

• Green Chameleon » Email: Trustworthy, Multipurpose, Overwhelming
  "in the maps that emerge: departments that are effectively machine-gunning everybody with information, while simultaneously everybody complains about not being informed … Lots of broadcast and very little listening, which comes from trying to do too much through one narrow channel."
• Trends in Newsrooms 2006
  New report based – free to WEF members – €139 to everyone else… anyone wanna, um, share a copy with me :)
• Much ado about blogging – Editors Weblog
  "There’s a lot of chatter about the blogosphere this week. Here are some of the best quotes and ideas laid by the mainstream press about the medium some consider threatens its own business"

Richard MacManus reports that news.com.au have launched a newsblog… and they certainly have.

While I’m not too sure about their claim to be:

a new project in online journalism for Australia.

there are some interesting interpretations of the medium here. As Richard notes, it’s anonymous – much like *some* aspects of the Guardian’s newsblog and in the vein of The Age’s ‘Your Say’… added to that I think comments are moderated (although I haven’t tested :-) and they’ve gone down the path of extracts on the front page linked through to by titles.

To be honest it’s that last bit, and the stuff that surrounds it that’s so disappointing… surely anyone who had the faintest idea of the dynamics of these sort of things wouldn’t have put up the horrible calendar and while I figured out that the titles lead to the full posts I don’t think the average reader will get that straight away… add that to some painful technical hitches (i.e. the comments on this post from another post) and you get a pretty unimpressive user experience.

Having said all that with the readership news.com.au enjoys there’s lots of potential there and at least they’ve started. But I can’t help feeling that a little consideration to the thematics, purpose, design and contextual application of the technology could have dramatically improved the initial outing.

Most excellent… methinks there’s a Lamb, Norman, Levine presentation contest hotting up :)

• Weblogg-ed » More Musings From Milken
  "If you are a woman in business, I mean high level business circles, you need to wear pointy shoes. Very pointy shoes. Shoes where the points get into the room about five seconds before the rest of the body."
• In spite of the blogosphere, the mainstream press still influences opinion – Editors Weblog- Analysis
  " The overwhelming majority of bloggers do absolutely no original reporting. They love to talk, but they depend on the mainstream press and its columnists to spark their discussions."
• MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | BBC unveils radical revamp of website
  "The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com."
• The FordLog » Blog Archive » The Age of Unreason.
  "For me the problem lies not in the evaluation of the latest software innovations but in the lack of real implementation at the chalkface." Hear frickin hear!