Jul

27

Jock Coats, local Lib Dem activist, wants private rubbish collection?

July 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Time to open up waste collection to proper competition I’d say.
These people are your servants not your masters.

via jockcoats.me
Jock Coats writes in Refuseniks (http://jockcoats.me/refuseniks), objecting to the council trying to maintain city-wide standards of service for rubbish collection. He says, with some contempt, that “These people are your servants not your masters” and, like a [...]

Jul

27

“You+” Can we get smarter? via http://bit.ly/16Xc7T For cyborg babies’ sake I hope not

July 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment

the next few decades will pose enormous hurdles that go beyond the climate crisis. The end of the fossil-fuel era, the fragility of the global food web, growing population density, and the spread of pandemics, as well as the emergence of radically transformative bio- and nano­technologies—each of these threatens us with broad disruption or even [...]

Jul

24

The Equality Trust

July 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment

We believe that in order to gain substantial improvements in the real quality of life of the populations of developed countries it is necessary that differences in income and wealth are greatly reduced.
via equalitytrust.org.uk
OK, so we joke about how we have the randiest teenage liggers in Europe, can out-belch the Belgians and [...]

Jul

13

Glad to be led back to DBpedia;

July 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment

DBpedia is a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and to make this information available on the Web. DBpedia allows you to ask sophisticated queries against Wikipedia, and to link other data sets on the Web to Wikipedia data.
via wiki.dbpedia.org
Strikes me this is a route worth following for anyone interested in contemporary epistemological questions.

Posted via web from George’s posterous

Jul

13

Love the Faviki approach to restricted vocabulary & wish posterous and Diigo did the same

July 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Faviki is a tool that brings together social bookmarking and Wikipedia. It lets you bookmark web pages using Wikipedia’s terms. In Faviki, everybody uses the same names for tags from the world’s largest collection of knowledge!
via faviki.com
I do think this is a neat idea, addressing one of the big problems of folksonomies. In part it [...]

Jul

12

Can a PeopleWeb be built on restricted vocabularies? @andypowe11

July 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Andy Powell (@andypowe11) shared the text of Ramakrishnan & Tomkins (2007) “Toward a PeopleWeb”. According to the authors, “Attentional metadata is increasingly sought after and is beginning to accumulate in significant volume, suggesting a paradigm shift - and simultaneously raising serious questions about user privacy.” (63) A shift from what to what, I wonder? They [...]

Jul

10

@eframework technical model: a key enabler of open education dialogue? #jiscssbr

July 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment

e-framework.org
The eFramework people have published their technical model here: http://www.e-framework.org/Resources/TechnicalModel/tabid/1008/Default.aspx The model depends on continuing feedback from the community. Their aim is to develop “… a common approach to the description of service-oriented design and analysis,” and provide “… a neutral means to articulate the design of software services” in order “…to assist international education [...]

Jul

3

Higher education in regional and city development - Prof Mike Osborne #facecon09

July 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Universities and other higher education institutions (HEIs) can play a key role in human capital development and innovation systems. In the time of globalisation, growth and development continue to cluster around specific regions that have a high concentration of skilled and creative workforce and infrastructure for innovation. HEIs can help their cities and regions become [...]