Let's park this one for the time being..

Reading at the weekend ( Times Magazine 21st February p. 12 ) about a compilation of annoying phrases I feared that many web 2.0 expressions might have made the list. The compilation appears in a new book Damp Squid : the English Language Laid Bare by Jeremy Butterfield. Here are some highlights :

1 - At the end of the day 2 - Fairly unique3 - I personally4 - At this moment in time5 - With all due respect6 - Absolutely7 - It's a nightmare8 - Shouldn't of9 - 24/710 - It's not rocket science

I'm afraid I'm guilty as charged on a couple of these.....

Twitter : we all need to be in the loop

James Harkin ( author of Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea That's Changing How We Live and Who We Are) writes an interesting article in today's Times.
He says :
"Twitter's coming of age, however, is generally dated to the Mumbai terror attacks at the end of November, when minute-by-minute updates of the unfolding chaos zipped around the world by eye-witnesses armed with Twitter on their laptops and mobile phones."
He's concerned that all this tweeting activity, after the initial boost in productivity and creativity, where we are learning to do many things at once, is affecting our brains and could slow us down in the longer run. Are we just tweeting because it is the thing to do?
There's also a little starter's guide to Twitter.

Open Source: Narrowing the Divides between Education, Business, and Community

This article from Educause Review by Jim Whitehurst speaks of the importance of open source.
"Open source is a collaborative software-development method that harnesses the power of peer review and transparency of process to develop code that is freely accessible. Open source draws on an ecosystem of thousands of developers and customers all over the world to drive innovation. "

Starbuck's Twitter Feed

Starkbucks recently used their Twitter Feed ( where more than 40,000 people follow the company) to deny the fact that they no longer served decaffinated coffee in the afternoon.

Apparently it was all a mix up - and another example of corporations keeping in touch with their customers using Web 2.0 technologies.

Guide to corporate blogging

In his Guide to Corporate Blogging, Reim Abeido looks at 13 steps Fortune 500 companies take to creatye corporate blogs.

"In order to maintain a competitive edge, corporations are increasingly looking for opportunities to make them stand out. Although traditional media serves as a solid medium that disperses company messaging to the world, the trends of information consumption are evolving. After some initial hesitancy, corporations are slowly starting to realize that it is important to jump on the virtual bandwagon of blogging. This medium represents the missing ingredient that traditional media lacks: the ability to directly connect a company to its customers."

Happy Birthday Facebook

Five years old. Belated happy birthday. If it wasn't for the Facebook petitions there would be no Wispa bars.

Facebook won the US election ( allegedly ) for Barack Obama. He has 5 millions friends.

Even I have 53.

And it all started at Harvard University

Withdrawn from Stock and Lost Forever ?

While withdrawing this valuable item from our Statistics collection my mind turned to Lynne Brindley's article in Observer ( 25th Jan 2009 ). Who is able to access this information now....?

Particularly the brillant cover....

Are they Pods or are they Caves ?

In the University our Social Learning Space contains pods, including interactive whiteboards, and many of the new technologies. Unfortunately the Business School's facilities, rather larger but including the same type of materials are also called pods...

We have therefore started to refer to our spaces as the caves.

Here are some students working happily in a cave.