Monthly Archives: April 2006

BBC Expands Website Interactivity

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

The BBC has announced plans to engage in the Web 2.0 community of consumer-generated content, which he calls a second digital wave.

I believe that this second digital wave will turn out to
be far more disruptive than the first, that it will be fundamentally
disruptive, and that the foundations on which much of traditional media
is built may be swept away entirely…

[It is characterized by all] media – sound, picture, text – available on all devices, all the time.  Searchable, movable, share-able… [and] People will also be able to make and distribute pretty much anything they want to…

For broadcasters, the digital revolution can be summed up in four words:  audiences have a choice.

Net Neutrality Markup Set Wednesday

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

The House Energy and Commerce Committee takes up the issue of network neutrality at 10 am Wednesday as part of an overhaul of the Telecommunications Act.

The bone of contention: will current internet neutrality go by the
wayside or does it need to be codified? Net neutrality means that
Internet service providers and network owners concern themselves only
with efficiently moving bits — not with the content embodied by the
bits.

I’m with Lessig and Cerf on this one. Full post at About and issue analysis, too.

Microsoft Launches Academic Search

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

Windows Live Academic (WLA) search (beta) is scheduled to go live after midnight, focusing on (not surprisingly) computer science, physics and engineering subjects. The Microsoft tool provides abstract previews via a preview pane, sort
and group by capability, and citation export, according to the website.

WLA contains both freely available and access-restricted content, just like Google Scholar. A key difference between this search and Google Scholar may be authentication. Microsoft has worked with publishers and universities to provide (seamless?) access to subscription content, according to the website. Google is also working with libraries — “offering the option to include a link for their patrons” — to make their tool more useful for students and researchers.

When I tried the service — 2.00 – 2.30 am — it wasn’t yet working (or the servers were being hammered – but in the wee hours of the morning?). I switched from Firefox to MSIE in case the tool didn’t like my browser — but that didn’t help. My search results screen stayed in a perpetual state of “Loading…” Will update later today.