RSS
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PostRank as course content filter
I’ve been playing with PostRank. They use an algorithm to analyse which posts have got the most ‘engagement’ from a particular RSS source. The good thing about this is that it gets over some of my reservations in previous posts about the use of metrics to measure your blog value. These are often relative to everyone else, so as with Technorati, you’ll get lumped in with professional blogs. PostRank tells you about the engagement relative to your own posts. This is potentially useful, as it tells you, and more importantly, the reader which posts have generated feedback. They measure engagement not just by back links, as Technorati does, but by…
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We are digitalists – these are our tools
<Image Tatuagem geek no Barcamp – Tiago Doria http://flickr.com/photos/tiagodoria/432822929/> To avoid the digital natives and immigrants debate, let's opt for the term digitalists instead, and define them thus: "Those who are comfortable using a range of digital media and are open to the changes that digitisation brings to society." It's not exclusive, anyone can become a digitalist, and it's not absolute, you can be a digitalist in some areas and maybe have reservations in another. But you're not Andrew Keen. This follows on from previous post, where I took Scott Leslie's post about just sharing to argue that the mode of sharing has changed. Digitalists know this because they do…
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A critical mass of tagged, subscribable content
I haven’t looked at Pageflakes for a while and went there the other day. I registered as a new user, and it impressed me with the default content it provided. It picked up I was in Cardiff from my IP address and provided me with a decent set of Cardiff related content, including: Cardiff news stories Cardiff photos A google map with Cardiff events marked on it Cardiff weather Several things struck me about this, apart from thinking ‘that’s cool!’ (as an aside can a 40 year old actually use the term ‘cool’ in any context without embarrassment?). The first was that considering it only had one bit of info…
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Open as to…
The OU’s internal curriculum and technology conference ran over the last couple of days. As with all such events it is both inspiring and a bit deflating. Inspiring because you get to hear of all the good stuff going on and see the enthusiasm of your colleagues. Deflating because things you want to happen still seem a long way off, and some of the same old arguments keep coming up. One of the thoughts that occurred to me (not for the first time) was that the OU now needs to establish a new definition of openness, and by extension, new identity for itself. The OU’s mission statement is: open to…
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RSS as universal acid – revisited
I blogged before about RSS becoming the universal acid or lingua franca of web 2.0. Yahoo have just released the beta of their pipes, which is a way of remixing feeds and creating mash-ups without getting too dirty in the programming. With his talent for understatement Tim O’Reilly says it is "a milestone in the history of the internet." Tony Hirst has had a go creating a pipe for the openlearn content, and seems to like using them. I’m not quite as convinced that they are a) as easy to use as people think (what techies think is easy is not the same as the rest of us) and b)…
