Service cloud covers Microsoft

October 3, 2007

In August I wrote about a report on the future of office document software (e.g. Microsoft Office, Open Office), that I was involved in editing. One of the things that the report’s author, Walter Ditch, highlighted when looking to the future direction of these systems was the possibility that they would be superseded by online services that will allow us to create, edit and store our word processing and spreadsheet files online, without any need to install software on our computer. Such services are sometimes referred to as provision through ‘service clouds’.

An example of this is GoogleDocs, which allows you to create and edit files online, and there has been some speculation that Microsoft would follow suit. On Monday, Microsoft duly announced a limited, beta trial of its Office Live Workspace, which provides some of its Office document functionality through a service cloud.

However, Office Live Workspace is limited in scope: it lets you upload and share your existing Office documents through an online workspace but does not allow you to create new documents or edit existing ones. It is pitched as a collaboration tool that allows you access to your documents, through the browser, from any computer.
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Opening University research papers to the public

September 27, 2007

The Open University officially launched a website today that allows public access to the research papers that its academics produce. The Open Research Online website allows anyone to search the online database by author’s name, or to use keywords from the title or abstract of the paper. You can also browse through a list of departments and disciplines and subscribe to an RSS feed of announcements about new papers.

This project, which is the sixth largest such repository in the UK according to today’s search on the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), is part of a growing movement to provide free access to publicly funded research. This is being driven by the fact that universities have become increasingly concerned by the increase in subscription fees that are charged by the international journals. Up until now, these journals have been the only places where research papers are published.

An excellent by-product of this is that the general public and small businesses can gain relatively easy access to the fruits of university research. As the OU says: “The repository serves the dual purpose of recording the University’s research activity and, where possible, making the full text of the research publicly available”. As we all pay the taxes that ultimately fund most academic research, this is an important and welcome development.

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Three-dimensional lunch

September 25, 2007

Several years ago I shared office space with a university team that was developing what was then the new fangled technology of 3-D printing. These rapid prototyping machines could generate a solid, three-dimensional model of an object that had been designed on a computer screen. Watching them weave something solid out of thin air using tiny, two-dimensional layers of special plastics and resins, sprayed one on top of another, was fascinating.

Things seem to have moved on though. Wired magazine reports that an artist husband and wife team have developed the CandyFab 4000 – a 3-D printer that uses sugar rather than plastics and resins. With this machine they can construct solid, caramelised versions of objects drawn on a computer.

Think of the potential. A crème brûlée that plays your iTunes. Surely this has to be the epitome of Tech Lunch?

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Thirds

September 20, 2007

I recently had a comment from a reader who is active in the media industry (you know who you are) that I don’t feature enough material on lunch. Whether this says something about the habits of film-making types I’m not sure, but in the interest of redressing the balance I thought I’d mention something I was coerced into trying in York the other day.

The York Brewery’s three pubs serve a taster tray Tray of Thirdsof four of their real ales (see picture). Each is served in a one-third-of-a-pint glass, which I think is a brilliant way to find out what you like before moving onto the full monty. In recent years CAMRA have been campaigning to get more pubs to introduce this smaller measure.

I suppose this is more of a liquid lunch kind of thing, so maybe you’ll argue that it’s out of scope for this blog—certainly a bad idea if you have much work to do in the afternoon. So a nice one for those who work in media…

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nOU to blogging

September 14, 2007

The Open University is one of the world’s largest, oldest and most respected practitioners in technology-supported distance learning. So you’d think blogging would be the technology du jour.

However, it appears this is not necessarily the case. A very interesting survey by Lucinda Kerawalla and colleagues at the OU found that, of nearly 800 Open University distance learners, only 18% thought that blogs and blogging would be ‘useful’ or ‘fairly useful’ within the course. Even more interesting was the fact that only 8% of the students who were about to embark on courses that may well utilise blog-based work had their own blog, and only just over half had ever even read a blog. A further 35% of the sample did not want the OU to provide a blog as part of their studies.

The authors note in their conclusions: “These findings suggest that, although educators recognise the potential for blogging to support learning, most students do not agree” (p. 176).

Of course the OU caters for an audience that is likely to be older than the typical cohort of a traditional university, but, given the astonishing levels of media-hype and supposed general public interest in Web 2.0 services and technologies these figures make sobering reading.

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Eating in the library

September 11, 2007

A wine bar near where I work has just had a make-over and acquired a new name: The Library. Such a name is guaranteed to attract the interest of a writer, especially one who spends some of the working week on projects for UK universities. So in the interests of expanding the possible venues for business lunches I have been undertaking some detailed research.

On my first visit I tried Tunnbröd med Makrill, Dill Våfflor med Skagen Röra and Tosca kaka med Vaniljsås. Now, if this sounds to you like the cast-list of an Ingmar Bergman film, then you are not far wrong. The Library serves Swedish tapas. No, I didn’t know the Swedes did tapas either, but it is basically a selection of lots of small, mainly fish-related dishes – a kind of mini-version of their famous smörgåsbord.

In fact, this translated into Swedish flatbread with peppery mackerel and potato salad; prawns and smoked salmon in lemon mayo with savoury dill waffles; and, for dessert, almond cake with vanilla sauce. It was superb! Sadly, the restaurant doesn’t have a website yet, or I’d post a link.

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Small Schools + Big Buildings = Better Learning?

September 6, 2007

On Tuesday the Conservative Party announced the results of a policy working group which has looked at education and other public services (entitled Restoring Pride in our Public Services). One of the proposals (no. 7) discusses the role of smaller schools and recommends investigating the use of ‘several small schools under one roof’, an idea that has been tried in a number of American States.

As luck would have it, I was at the Association of Learning Technologies’ annual conference (ALT-C 2007: beyond control) yesterday, and by the far the most interesting talk was the keynote given by Professor Dylan Wiliam, who made what must be one of the first public responses by a leading educationalist to these proposals.
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Pantone Mugs

September 5, 2007

Sometimes, whilst flicking idly through a trade magazine, a product catches my eye that just makes me laugh out loud with a burst of geek joy. The people I share an office with usually raise their eyes from their screens just long enough to acknowledge me but not enough to encourage me. So rather than being indulged by my colleagues who, I suspect, just don’t appreciate my sense of humour, I thought I’d blog about it: Pantone mugs.

Each bone china coffee mug is adorned with one of just ten Pantone colours, complete with the associated code, for example Royal Blue 286C. The mugs are produced by W2 Products and you have to see them to appreciate the effect. You can read all about them on their website including the news that they can all be dishwashered safely except the Pink 239C mug. If you work in Web design, illustration or another related industry what could be better for the office?

This got me thinking. A long, long time ago I kept a Pantone swatch card on my desk which listed the code numbers for the restricted list of 216 colours (there are actually thousands of Pantone colours) that had to be used on the early Web. The reason for limiting the colour spectrum on the Web was due to the browsers’ widespread adoption of something called the Netscape colour cube which defined the ‘Web safe’ colours. Perhaps the W2 company should consider producing a limited edition range that is both fully Web and dishwasher safe?

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Ning

August 16, 2007

Remember Marc Andreessen? Perhaps not. But he played his part in the history of the Internet. Way back in 1993 he built X Mosaic, the first widely used Web browser. He’s now involved in social networking – building the software that is, rather than the actual getting out and meeting people. Ning is his latest project and TechCrunch, a blog that devotes itself to news of deals in the computer world, reports that it has just secured major funding.

Ning is unlike the mainstream social networking services like Facebook and MySpace in that you can create your own networks, or what MIT’s Technology Review calls ‘mini-MySpaces’ or ‘social nicheworks’. Ning is one of the growing band of what TechCrunch describes as ‘white label’ social networking sites: ones in which Ning provides the networking infrastructure and then steps back, allowing the user to build, customise and brand their own network.
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House of Lords 2.0

August 10, 2007

Today’s report on Personal Internet Security from the House of Lords Science and Technology committee makes a small reference to the issue of the ‘openness’ of Apple’s iPhone, which I discussed on this blog last month. The first section of chapter 4 looks at usability vs security and presents an argument, based on expert evidence given to the committee, that there is always a trade off between security and usability (flexibility).

The report argues that interoperability with lots of different third party hardware devices and software products has been the priority for leading operating systems like Windows until very recently. This is Microsoft’s view of the system as ‘complex eco-system’. The report then goes on to note, however, that, because of the increasing level of concern about security, there may be a move towards locking users in to the products and software of one company in order to improve and guarantee security.

This ties neatly in to Apple’s approach, which the report summarises as: “Microsoft might seek to maximise flexibility at the expense of possible insecurity, Apple would sometimes make [security] decisions on behalf of users even if that made it more difficult to download and run third party applications” (p.36). It then notes that Apple plan to make iPhone a closed platform on which it is not possible to execute any non-Apple applications. But, as far as I can make out from Apple’s press release, the iPhone will support third party Web 2.0 applications. Indeed, Apple argue in the release that this allows them to extend the capabilities of the phone, via third party solutions, without compromising the security.

However, I’m not convinced about this. If the House of Lords are investigating Internet-based security, I think it’s highly likely that these kinds of applications represent some of the security worries the committee is looking into.

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