Comments for UK Web Focus

Comment on TokBox – A Useful Video-Conferencing Tool Or Something Sinister? by Elena

Elena — Fri, 24 May 2013 01:13:37 +0000

Highly descriptive article, I loved that a lot.
Will there be a part 2?

Comment on Janet Agreement With Microsoft Boosts Cloud Access For UK Universities by http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9Yi_xo7M_I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9Yi_xo7M_I — Thu, 23 May 2013 22:30:42 +0000

Today, I went to the beachfront with my children.
I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put
the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit
crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go
back! LoL I know this is totally off topic but I had to tell someone!

Comment on Analysis of Incoming Links to Russell Group University Home Pages by argan oil from Morocco

argan oil from Morocco — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:46:11 +0000

Please let me know if you’re looking for a article writer for your site. You have some really good articles and I believe I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I’d absolutely love to write some material for your blog in
exchange for a link back to mine. Please blast me an e-mail if interested.
Thanks!

Comment on Janet Agreement With Microsoft Boosts Cloud Access For UK Universities by ancormack

ancormack — Thu, 23 May 2013 07:42:50 +0000

It’s the individual organisations, not Janet, that will sign, if they choose to do so. What Janet is doing (with a lot of help from the community) is helping service providers offer you legal documents that should be more suitable for UK education organisations than their standard ones. We’re doing our best to protect everyone’s interests

Comment on Janet Agreement With Microsoft Boosts Cloud Access For UK Universities by manmalik

manmalik — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:57:51 +0000

what will be of interest will be the legal document that Janet is signing with these providers. Google and MS (and many others) should be welcomed but care needs to be taken to not sell our souls to free providers.

Comment on Janet Agreement With Microsoft Boosts Cloud Access For UK Universities by Julian Prior

Julian Prior — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:34:37 +0000

I voted ‘Too soon to say’. In principle it sounds a great idea and I’m delighted that Janet are investigating a deal with Dropbox for teams. I use a range of cloud services in my day to day work (including Google, Dropbox, iCloud) and my worry would be that institutions down the road will force staff/students only to use Janet-approved cloud services and block access to others.

Comment on Janet Agreement With Microsoft Boosts Cloud Access For UK Universities by ancormack

ancormack — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:20:01 +0000

Brian: thanks for the post. Just to reassure you: we are already working on deals with Google and Dropbox – see https://www.ja.net/products-services/janet-cloud-services. Feel free to suggest others we should add to the wishlist, though we can’t work on all of them at once. Best wishes, Andrew

Comment on Fixing the Web – for People with Disabilities by Crowdsourcing to Fix the Web | dwrgi

Crowdsourcing to Fix the Web | dwrgi — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:21:21 +0000

[…] Fixing the Web – for People with Disabilities « UK Web Focus says: March 28, 2011 at 09:05 […]

Comment on Students Complain of ‘poor value’ Courses! How Should we Respond? by David Kernohan (@dkernohan)

David Kernohan (@dkernohan) — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:46:13 +0000

Didn’t the same report say that 9/10 students were satisfied with the quality of their course? The questions we should be asking are not “how can we demonstrate value for money”, but “who are these people demanding that we use crude measures like this as a poor proxy for student needs and why are they doing it?”

Comment on Twitter Friday by All noise, no signal. Lifestreaming is a timesink | variousbits // blog

All noise, no signal. Lifestreaming is a timesink | variousbits // blog — Sun, 12 May 2013 18:28:54 +0000

[…] fascination with various “lifestreaming” tools continues apace. Brian Kelly has been getting particularly excited about the regulation (or not, as his fellow Twitterers are shouting) of these tools. “We should […]

Comment on #altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule by John Kirriemuir

John Kirriemuir — Sat, 11 May 2013 19:29:23 +0000

A small bit of dark humor, but suspect you would be the one person disappointed that he couldn’t measure the amount of tweeting taking place at his own (hopefully several decades away) funeral service :) (btw that is *not* a challenge)

Comment on My Redundancy Letter Arrived Today by Tavis Reddick

Tavis Reddick — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:25:46 +0000

Sorry to hear this, Brian, for all your raising and framing and formulating web issues, and stimulating debate. And when my colleagues didn’t believe that “metadata” was a real word, let alone a critical concept, where else would I point them but http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/ ?

Comment on #altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule by altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 R...

altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 R... — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:41:28 +0000

[...] A second talk entitled “altmetrics: What Are They Good For?” was given at the session by Peter Groth. In his trip report Peter commented that “my main point was that altmetrics is at a stage where it can be advantageously used … [...]

Comment on #altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus)

Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) — Tue, 07 May 2013 07:34:56 +0000

Oops, sorry Paul. Have corrected the post.

Comment on #altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule by paulgroth

paulgroth — Mon, 06 May 2013 19:24:26 +0000

By the way it’s not “Peter Groth” but “Paul Groth” :-)

Comment on Why I’m Evaluating ResearchGate by AC Sparavigna (@acarspar)

AC Sparavigna (@acarspar) — Mon, 06 May 2013 08:46:40 +0000

Researchgate solved quickly (6 may, 2013) the problem! Now all is OK!
i

Comment on Why I’m Evaluating ResearchGate by AC Sparavigna (@acarspar)

AC Sparavigna (@acarspar) — Sun, 05 May 2013 17:04:26 +0000

I consider an evaluation of Researchgate necessary.
After receiving several e-mails in a day, I decided yesterday (may 4, 2013) to remove myself from RESEARCHGATE. https://www.researchgate.net/ Today (may 5), I see that several of my papers, with author’s name A Sparavigna (affiliation Politecnico di Torino), coauthors Marazzato and Omini, have been automatically assigned to another researchgate user (Adele Sparavigna).
This means that I must enter Researchgate again and request all my papers!!!!
I suppose that this can happen to several other authors.

Comment on Social Media Analytics for R&D: a Catalan Vision by Open online courses force current universities to rethink and change their educational model | My Teaching Adventure

Sun, 05 May 2013 01:35:42 +0000

[...] Catalan Vision. UK Web Focus Reflections on the Web and Web 2.0, [blog] 5th November, Available at: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/social-media-analytics-for-rd-a-catalan-vision/ [Accessed: 5th May [...]

Comment on My Redundancy Letter Arrived Today by Xavier Lasauca i Cisa

Xavier Lasauca i Cisa — Sat, 04 May 2013 18:51:27 +0000

I am really shocked and so sorry to hear this, Brian. We follow your work at JISC and UKOLN and for us, in Catalonia, it has been highly appreciated.

I wish you the very best for the future.

Comment on “For every £1 spent, £6 was generated for the economy” by Jonathan O'Donnell

Jonathan O'Donnell — Sat, 04 May 2013 03:36:33 +0000

If all the reports where Deloitte showed X industry generating a 6:1 profit for the economy were true, the economy would be in much better shape.

Having said that, I can remember being shown university student cards with a Coke symbol on them. I (and the academics around me) expressed distain until someone pointed out that Coke paid $1 _per card_ to the university for the privilege. That was a long time ago – I don’t know what the situation is now.

Comment on My Redundancy Letter Arrived Today by “For every £1 spent, £6 was generated for the economy” « UK Web Focus

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:12:23 +0000

[...] My Redundancy Letter Arrived Today [...]

Comment on #altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule by gill kerry

gill kerry — Thu, 02 May 2013 10:03:13 +0000

Just found this blog Brian, after seeing your redundancy post on FB. Must admit to my ignorance about the bit.ly address. Didn’t know that! Hope all goes well for you. Gill

Comment on My Redundancy Letter Arrived Today by Luke Taylor

Luke Taylor — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:12:25 +0000

Hi Brian, I can’t believe such an influential individual and organisation is being reduced to next to nothing. Thank you for all your help going back years. I hope to benefit from your wisdom for years to come.

Comment on Why I’m Evaluating ResearchGate by MikeS

MikeS — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:29:06 +0000

Frankly, I find ResearchGate to be hit and miss and very, VERY sloppy in how it reflects research output and impact. After a long time it still only lists about half my peer reviewed publications (missing out on many of my key publications). When it asks me to update my publication list I have to wade through an enormous number of stupid suggestions. Google Scholar almost never gets it wrong, and when it does get it wrong it is very easy to delete the incorrect papers. My feeling is that ResearchGate is trying to be some kind of Facebook for Science, but without the rigor that we need in Science. I am wary. I also worry about how it encourages someone to become a “follower”. for some time I thought I was being stalked, then I found out I was also ‘following’ all these other people that I had no intention of ‘following’. Pressing the wrong button might be a trap made easy. So be careful. If you want other people to know you are ‘following’ them, first ask yourself how they would interpret the message that they are being ‘followed’.

Comment on #altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule by Phil

Phil — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:30:40 +0000

That alert mechanism on “(new) Android devices”–you mean the one that has been there since Android 1.0 (2009)? http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/12/23/the-history-of-android

Comment on My Redundancy Letter Arrived Today by Anonymous Cowherd

Anonymous Cowherd — Wed, 01 May 2013 10:47:42 +0000

@Scott Wilson
Indeed.

@Paul Walk
‘There is no money left’, a typically pusillanimous bit of misdirection from the transitional set.

Comment on My Redundancy Letter Arrived Today by Paul Walk

Paul Walk — Wed, 01 May 2013 10:36:26 +0000

The assumption of funding cuts being the issue is an interesting aspect of this – I’ve heard that assumption stated elsewhere too.

Comment on #altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus)

Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) — Wed, 01 May 2013 10:23:42 +0000

Hi Peter
Thanks for the comment. I suspect you are right. In addition to the role of social media in bringing people’s attention to new content, my colleague Paul Walk mentioned how the alert mechanism (the pull-down items) on (new) Android devices and iPhones (as well as Apple Macintosh computers) is compounding this. This then places the Android and Apple providers, and apps which use their APIs, at centre stage in making people, aware of new content.

Comment on #altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule by Peter Millington

Peter Millington — Wed, 01 May 2013 10:14:07 +0000

Another interesting thing I have observed is that the half life of new postings is nowadays much shorter than it was. A few years ago, when I posted new items on my websites, there would a be peak of usage on the first day, as you would expect, and then reducing usage over subsequent days. This was a typical half life curve, and usage reached a stable level after about a week. I would guestimate the half life was 1 to 2 days.

Nowadays, I find the usage curve for new posts is much more compressed, still with a peak on day one, above background usage on day two, but stabilising about day three. I therefore guestimate a half life of 0.5 days or possibly less. The curve for your post, Brian, seems to fit this pattern.

What does this mean? Perhaps it could be something to do with the immediate news value of the information, but I suspect it might be more to do with the flood of information that social media sends in our direction. Stuff scrolls off the bottom of the bottom of Facebook and Twitter pages so quickly, and most people will only scroll down so far. How many times have you found that you have missed vital news because it has scrolled off the page too quickly? Sorting posts by “most popular” instead of “most recent” does not fix this. Would sorting by “longest lived” (i.e. “longest half life”) help? Would anyone use such an option?

Comment on #altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule by Anthony Leonard

Anthony Leonard — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:43:45 +0000

I admit to lurking on your redundancy blog post Brian :) I was very sorry to hear the news and was tempted to comment, except you tweeted that the blog comments were interesting, “particularly the last three”, which put me off! This blog, your work and the IWMW workshops have given me a lot of pleasure, interest and pause for thought over the last good few years. My thanks to you, and here’s hoping that this good work can continue somehow…

Comment on Paradata for Online Surveys by #altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule « UK Web Focus

#altmetrics, My Redundancy Post and the 1-9-90 Rule « UK Web Focus — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:35:29 +0000

[...] as I have described in a post on Paradata for Online Surveys, I feel that it is important to document the survey methodology and to be open about implied [...]