The lucky citizens of Bournemouth are soon to get 'up to 100Mbps' internet access from their homes and businesses. If the project goes according to plan, it could either make Bournemouth an attractive place to work and live or it could give a kick up the bottom to BT et al to bring high speed broadband to the rest of the country.

Talking of bottoms, I should mention that the cabling is being installed in the city's sewers by the misnamed H20 Networks. Shouldn't that be CH4 Networks? Oh well. At least the Bournemouth project itself goes under the moniker 'fibrecity'.

In terms of speed, impact on the environment, security and cost, this approach beats the digging-up-of-roads method hands-down. A couple of kilometres of broadband can be laid in four hours at a cost of less than a third of conventional approaches.

The backbone capacity is described as 'unlimited', which suggests that 100Mbps is theoretically possible. So what would it mean in everyday life? Video, videoconferencing and IP telephony without hiccups for a start. Fast uploads and downloads of all manner of information, suggesting the possibility of offloading hefty computing activities to the 'cloud'. Remote visual monitoring of people, equipment or property. And, for those so-minded, vastly improved multiplayer games and other virtual experiences.

Without wishing to be a wet blanket, I should point out that not every provider of services to the internet wants to gear up for high speed. It will cost a lot of hard-to-recoup money. Others will see an immediate commercial value - video rentals, online training etc - and will move swiftly. We'll end up with a two-tier internet in the short term and the good citizens of Bournemouth will be watched as closely as laboratory rats.

Oh darn it. I didn't mean to mention rats.

The IWR American Psychological Association Information Professional of the Year award has been announced and went, deservedly to Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus for the UKOLN organisation.

The award is judged by a panel of previous winners and the IWR editorial team. As editor of IWR when I judge the award I look for an individual who is pushing the limits of information, technology and making the role of the information professional as far as possible and making it an exciting role.  When looking through the final results I could see that the other judges felt the same way and Brian was an excellent choice.

Brian's role is a national Web co-ordinator, an advisory post funded by the educational body JISC and the Museums, Library and Archives Council (MLA).

In this role Brian is looking at the web as central resource for learning and research in higher education and is looking at ways to make the web a successful resource, which is a challenging role, because the web is still very young and is constantly changing. This can be seen with the recent changes dubbed Web 2.0, therefore Brian is going to be pretty busy for some time to come.

Based at the University of Bath, I know from information professionals I have dealt with in the academic sector that he is very well respected and his thoughts are often the basis for great debate within the industry. Linked to this is his blog, which is one of the most popular blogs in the sector.

I hope all IWR readers will join me in congratulating Brian for an award very much well deserved. 

Jimmy Wales, chairman of Wikipedia was the keynote speech of Online Information 2007 with a presentation Web 2.0 in action: Free culture & community on the move.

Starts with Britannica editor Charles van Doren 1962, who said the encyclopaedia should be radical, but Wales claims they have been anything but.

Small showing of hands for those that have edited, although Wales believes it’s a good showing, "but not as many as college kids".

I consider us to be the Red Cross of information, he says as he describes its charitable status. Have 10 full time staff and will spend about $2 to 3 million this year, which is tiny compared to the major publishers. Vast majority of the money is from small donations, which he likes because its grass routes and not dependent on advertisers.

Wales talks about the desire to extend the languages that are in use on Wikipedia, including Hindi and Afrikaans.

Wiki is free in the sense of GNU, its free to copy, modify and distribute.

Shows a video of his travels to India and how he learnt that the local communities want to use the English version, as the English language is a route out of poverty. His organisation has been out to South Africa teaching students how to edit Wikipedia. "One of the things we have learnt is that if you can get five to 10 editors working together, it can make a great difference." These groups make progress and then they look towards outreach and who they can include. Hence the organisation has set up an academy to find the founding editors. It has begun in India, with 10-20,000 articles a month being put together by academy organisations.

Wikia is his next subject, a separate organisation with 66 languages, including a 67th, Klingon. Wales goes on to demonstrate using Google search results for Muppets and how the top result is the official site, but the rest of the results are from web based conversation, ie Wikipedia pages, forums and fan sites. He demonstrates an article on the Ford motor company and how on Muppet Wiki site, there is an article on Muppet Ford ads and how this demonstrates this level of information would never have been available before.

The search engine is a political statement, in a small P sense, Wales says. The proprietary software of the main players is a mystery in that people have no control of the accountability. The Wikia search will publish its algorithm.

Wales believes that the trust of social networks and setting up trusted networks can be utilised in search. .

On the role of collaboration, he asks the audience to imagine that they are designing a restaurants, discussing the idea that we trust the people around us, we don't put people in cages in restaurants because they will be using knives.
The wiki philosophy is to allow people to do good.

René Olivieri, chief operating officer at Wiley-Blackwell, the academic book and journals publisher has resigned, reports The Bookseller.

Olivieri was ceo of Blackwell when the company merged with Wiley in a surprise move last November. Since the merger Olivieri has been heading up the transition team as chief operating officer, a role he has held since May.

He has had a long and illustrious career at the Oxford based publisher, starting out as a publisher in the 1980s, before becoming an editorial direct, deputy md, and managing director. The Bookseller reports he became ceo of Blackwell Science in 2000 and stepped into the role of Blackwell Publishing ceo a year later.

At a major international publishing event like the Frankfurt Book Fair the bright lights of trade publishing and all its household star names could easily drown out the academic and scientific publishers. But this has not been the case.

Talk at the event, in all circles, is about books and technology, in particular search and eBook readers. On both subjects the specialist publishers are leading the way and the trade publishers salute them.

Amazon and Sony were expected to steal the show with their eBook readers, they are instead conspiquous in their absence, but that has not stopped publishers and technology providers from talking about the devices and their potential.

I was particularly interested in a conversation I had with sceintific, technical and medical publishers WIley where they hinted that they and other specialists may get involved in driving the adoption of eBook readers. Could we see the eBook reader adopt a similar model to the mobile phone where users sign up to a subscription service, content of a particular kind in this case, and in return they get a sleek and sexy device? Its certainly worked for the mobile industry, which now resembled the car world with its emphasis on styling and marketing.

But such a move could also be a blind alley, as one expert said to me, these devices don't support the interlinking and interactivity that content users are currently enjoying with the web.

During the fair Google, Ingram Digital Group and Amazon have all used the scientific and academic publishers as case study beacons for just what can be done with books on the web.

Geographically the Far East is the leading adopter as its markets radically develop according to Mark Carden, Ingram senior vp.

Perhaps Amazon spread rumours of a possible launch to see if there was real interest, well if the level of conversation we've heard is anything to go by, the eBook reader is in demand.

The word 'cuts' has been rearing its ugly head in the information sector with far too much regularity in the last month or two. The latest two organisations to be threatened are the two jewels in the British crown of not only information, but also our culture – the BBC and the British Library.

No organisation can spend willy-nilly and difficult as they often are to deal with, the money men have their place. But if the focus becomes too narrow, in other words too short term, the damage can be lasting.  Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library penned an item in this weekend's Observer discussing what will happen if the money men starve our national library of cash. As she rightly points out, "I simply don't want to run a second rate organisation. Slipping from world leadership to the second tier is not something that can be reversed."

Talk to anyone on the street and they will believe that Britain is second at just about everything. We've lost our iron grip on manufacturing (it was only really in place because our Empire was the world market), we are no longer a military super power and other than the brilliant efforts of Lewis Hamilton we are not winning every sporting event about. Yet when you tell people that the UK is the world leader in the information world they are surprised. But once again the money men could very well cut the costs and accept second place whilst talking of being winners.

If funds are cut the quality will drop. The quality debate has, of late, been caught up in a debate about information literacy and egalitarianism born from the Web 2.0 movement. Yet an excellent analysis of the role of Radio 4 as it reaches 40 in the Saturday edition of the Guardian summed up what I've been feeling, "The confusion is the assumption that unstructured demotic chatter is more "accessible" than a well written talk by someone who really knows about a topic. As sources of information and comment proliferate, the demand for authoritative, well informed programmes increases rather than diminishes." The last sentence sums up what faces the information world at the moment, not a need to ditch our methods in place of Web 2.0, but to improve our resources to complement Web 2.0.

The same is true of the British Library, according to Brindley, for the cost of a cup of coffee and a muffin (presumably at the BL café) the nation has access to some of the most important cultural, academic; and informed works on earth, including the Magna Carta.

If these two scions of information and quality are reduced to silver medal holders then the information industry as a whole will suffer.

A report from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) in the USA shows that fair use of copyrighted material is beneficial to the national economy. According to the CCIA industries that can use material under the terms of fair use earned  $4.5 trillion, which adds more weight to the arguments of the Free Our Data campaign from newspaper The Guardian.

Free Our Data wants information held by the government, and therefore paid for by tax payers, to be made freely available so that organisations can use it.

Amongst the organisations using fair use terms that have benefited the US national economy are media organisations, education sector and software developers. 

Industries bound by copyright control with no fair use aspect contributed just $1.3 trillion to the US economy.

Fair use under US copyright law is described as being the use and copying of copyright protected material to comment upon, criticise or parody. Examples include summaries and quotes from medical articles for news, use of media content for teaching or the use of copyright protected material as evidence in a court case.

The Guardian Free Our Data campaign, run by its Technology supplement argues, rightly, that information collected by the Highways Agency, the UK Hydrographic Office and Ordnance Survey should be made available to organisations in the UK without being encumbered by clunky copyright restrictions. Although designated as trading funds, these three organisations receive almost 50% of their income from the public sector, which means taxpayers pay for it. Access to this data is charged for and as a result, organisations are turning to Google Maps for mapping information rather than using information they have already paid for through their business rates.

IWR supports the Free Our Data campaign because we are passionate about online information and want to see the UK remain a leader in information provision and we want to see British information professionals continuing to manipulate information in innovate ways that is beneficial to their user community.

Earlier this week PaidContent.org launched its UK and European information service at a swanky Scottish bar in, err, London.  IWR went along and once underneath the deer antler chandelier it was as if a time and space wormhole had opened up and we were transported back to 1999 and they heady dot com boom.

The zeitgeist was unmistakable, young trendy professionals in Chris Evans glasses, sharp suits, bright shirts and an excitable level of conversation about "content" and "funding". It was uncanny. The headache's from the launch parties of Boo.com, Handbag.com and anything you like .com have only just cleared at the IWR Editor's desk and all of a sudden I get the feeling that it is all about to happen again.

The last web boom rapidly replaced CD-Rom in the professional information space and for those of us commentating on it for the traditional information sector, we were regularly told our days were numbered and the geeks would inherit the earth. In many ways everything has changed, yet also, nothing has changed.  Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia are significant changes, but despite falling ad revenues, the stalwarts of information still remain kings of the jungle.

Interestingly at this party, fund toting entrepreneurs didn't make the same mistake of predicting the demise of traditional information providers; instead I heard many conversations about partnerships, relationships and hosts. Kewego, just one of the bright (complete with lime green logo) Web 2.0 start ups present talked of the importance of the "content owners" and rattled off the names of respected information providers. The general feeling I left with is that if we are about to start partying again, but the difference is not that the new players think they have all the answers and will replace our libraries, publishing houses and research departments, instead they see themselves as a component and supplier.

Widgets is a term used widely in the blog world and already newspaper groups are adding widgets to their online portfolios. The next information wave appears to be about a wealth of new ("funded" and partying) companies offering to add their widget to your information. For information professionals this means understanding what a widget is, what it offers your users and negotiating a good deal for all parties involved.

IWR has been keeping an eye on the Free Our Data campaign which the Technology supplement of daily newspaper The Guardian has been running. We've been watching it and supporting it. Now Charles Arthur, editor of the Technology Guardian supplement, has asked IWR and its readers to join the campaign.

"The more people and organisations we have on board, the better our chances of success," he said. The campaign seeks to make data which the public has paid for freely available, which will then stimulate new information resources for information professionals and the public alike to use.

The campaign uses a blog as its central repository and communications point, so its easy for all of us to add more information to the cause. So if you know of examples of government information costing you or your organisation, despite having already paid for it once through your taxes, let the campaign know. "If everyone joins, it would be sort of hard for the government to ignore," Arthur adds.

The campaign, which has been running since 2006 ,has highlighted some interesting disparities in

Whitehall

's information policies. Ordnance Survey (OS), known for its maps has been revealed to charging British citizens repeatedly for geographic information that is already funded by the public purse. It has been revealed that local authorities pay the OS for map information during the planning application process, planning authorities also pay separately for the same map information. During the campaign it has been revealed that a total of eight separate payments arrive at the OS as part of a planning application.

There are bound to be many more cases like this and it would be great if Information World Review and its readers can be part of a campaign to make the information we already own more easily available.

Tim Spalding, of LibraryThing fame, has come up with an intriguing twist on his book-tagging operation. He's capturing combinations of tags and turning the results into web pages. 'Tagmash' takes anyone who looks for a tag combination to a URL for that combination.

Since I'm reading Charles Handy's autobiographical "MYSELF and other more  important matters", I threw in 'Handy, philosophy' to Tagmash. This is what came back:

In fact I lie, because the tags list their soundalikes, which are usually misspellings and punctuated words. 'handy' stood alone while 'philosophy' included 26 alternatives. Anyone searching for 'Handy, philosophy' in future will be taken straight to the URL. New combinations take up to 30 seconds to materialise.

You can apparently skip particular tags by preceding them with a '-'. I tried, 'Harry, Potter, -fiction' and got the same 16 results with or without the final argument. But, by using a double-minus, I got a single result. As Spalding explains, "A single minus (-fiction) 'discriminates' against items tagged 'fiction'. A double minus (--fiction) disqualifies all books with the fiction tag." Perhaps mine was a foolish choice of tags anyway.

According to Spalding, "Tagmashes work with different things, not a thing and its category." I tried "http://www.librarything.com/tag/florence,michelangelo" and, there on top of the list, was one of my all-time favourite books.

Alongside the results are a cloud of related tags, related tagmashes and a list of related subjects.

Like all Web 2.0 stuff, LibraryThing and its offshoots like Tagmash are work in progress. As people get involved and use the system and talk about it, ideas for refinements pop up and get incorporated. And, of course, the more people that use it, the more intelligently the underlying system behaves and the more any dross gets sidelined.

The BBC iPlayer download service for recent programmes started its public trials today. First, note that it is intended for home users only. Presumably this is because you download it with an integral peer-to-peer file sharing program supplied by Verisign. And companies are unlikely to swallow that.

By downloading and agreeing to the terms which, incidentally, do nothing to protect you and everything to protect the BBC, you agree to allow your computer to be used as a distribution point for any BBC files that you have downloaded. If your ISP imposes monthly upload limits then you may find yourself getting a surprise as the Beeb serves stuff from your machine rather than one of its own.

Then there's the Digital Rights Management angle. Sure, the Beeb wants to protect its own and others' rights in downloaded material. Perfectly understandable. But it means that it has chosen to restrict its service to users of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows XP. Commercial bias or what?

Ashley Highfield, Director of Future Media and Technology, said "Developing a version for Apple Macs and Microsoft Vista is absolutely on our critical path." A sizeable minority would also like to know what its plans are for the Firefox browser. And, for that matter, Linux.

He also said, "Our vision is for BBC iPlayer to become a universal service available not just over the internet, but also on cable and other TV platforms, and eventually on mobiles and smart handheld devices."

So maybe jumping into bed with Microsoft is more of an affair than a marriage. But, no doubt, they'll need to stay good friends.

Registering and downloading is fairly straightforward although you have to have two sign-ins, one for the beta software and the other for downloading programmes. The download is 4.28MB and it expands to 6.28MB inside your machine.

Grabbing a film is easy enough and the download is smooth (I tried at around 7:30am - later in the morning is not, apparently, the best time for doing this.) A 30-minute programme, World Business Report, was 108MB. I didn't time it (went off to do other things) but it seemed to be about a meg every two seconds.

On screen, it shows in a smallish window (about 400 x 200 pixels) but it can be expanded to full screen for distance viewing. As ever with this kind of thing, the quality doesn't improve with size.

Bottom line? The peer-to-peer angle is downplayed, yet it would seem to be a show-stopper for many. The Windows Internet Explorer/XP only, with no time-scale for Mac or other platforms, is troubling. It seems that 'getting a stake in the ground' was more important than worrying about where the stake was being planted. However, the quality of the stake, in the form of the iPlayer software and content access, is very slick and seems to work well.

Catherine Draycott, chair of British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA) and the Wellcome Trust discusses how difficult it can be for image libraries within an organisation, including museums because there is often a need to generate a profit. She wants the industry and BAPLA to consider new models where there is an exchange between the academic community and the image provider, whether it is partnership or digitisation benefits or other ways of sharing revenue.

Wellcome now makes its images available under Creative Commons and a large percentage of the royalties goes to the creators. They have gone to the attribution model, because it is in line with the Wellcome's OA policies and the policy applies to the images on the Wellcome trust. If the images are for teaching, academic research and non-commercial publication the fee is waived.

Intelligent Television a documentary company that looks to make educational material more widely available, chief exec Peter Kaufman begins talking about screen based visual material, which is what a TV producer considers and so do information professionals. Gartner believe that paid search is a $15bn industry. The JISC digitisation strategy doesn't talk about free  and open access and focuses on business models and public private partnership and Peter Kaufman thinks that is a practical approach.

In the Q&A Draycott describes an idea of using the same metric as PR companies use to quantify the value of media coverage compared to the cost of an advertisement, to the re-use of images from an image library and how that may be useful for archive holders, especially as they are subsidising commercial organisations by providing the images.

Chris Batt, chief exec of MLA has a hard hitting presentation.

Libraries contain the raw material of the future, Batt says, and describes knowledge as being about learning, cultural identity, social development, and it has to be available to everyone.

"Understanding builds empowerment and cohesion and Batt considers this his aspiration. Our mission is to help people to take learning journeys, whether it’s the time of the next bus out of

Cardiff

or genetics. Being motivated will encourage people to carry on learning.

The only successful technology are the ones that are invisible, no one worries about how the TV or telephone works. Batt points out that presentation is the most important thing to the user and he shows and criticises examples of an archive page and the 24 Hour Museum page, both of which he states do not demonstrate to the user what they can do there.

Museums, libraries and archives have collections and customers, there role is to be the connections between the two. Collections are cared for by cultural heritage, education and research and they are passionate about it. Batt believes users though "don't give a toss" about whether these things are cultural heritage, education or research, they just want stuff they need.

Public Catalogues Foundation, could be a fantastic digital resource, it’s a collection of images of the publicly owned oil paintings in Great Britiain, county by country in the

UK

.

Batt ends on the statement, compared with fighting a war, the costs are minute and the benefits infinite. He believes the strategic e-Content

Alliance

is very important. Content in a networked environment is more important than institutes. An image of a little girl at a library hit home as Batt reminds every one that what they do now is important for her future. He wants knowledge as a utility, as trusted and as accessible and invisible as pure running water.

IWR is in the Welsh capital Cardiff for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digitisation Conference, which has been opened by Carwyn Jones of the Welsh Assembly.

The event is the launch pad for the digitisation strategy from the education group; and will also show case the work that has already been carried out and to analyse the role of JISC as the conduit to academic digitisation and what lessons the organisation  and academia have learnt so far.

Based at the St David's Hotel on the regenerated Cardiff Bay area, this gleaming white tower is an example of the new Wales and the new Cardiff, a country at the forefront of technology and the cultural landscape, whether its the location for Dr Who or ground breaking broadband and content strategies.

The conference has launched a blog for the event and is asking attendees and members of the information community to contribute to the debate.

The event has attracted leading members of the information community from universities in Manchester and Oxford as well as the Open University.

According to Manpower Inc, we're going to run short of skills in the West. We'll have to find them where we can, which means further virtualisation of the workplace.

To plant its own stake in the ground, it opened Manpower Island in Second Life (SL) yesterday and got the ball rolling with a conference entitled "The World of Virtual Work".

We all turfed up expecting the usual presentations and discussions based on frantic typing. It came as an unwelcome shock to many that the conference would use audio and that audience participation could only be by typing messages to the PR company's gatekeeper.

In other words, it was not the sort of social event you'd expect (or fear) in SL. The audience was there largely to be spoonfed and it was up to the moderator, Daniel Terdiman from CNET, to try and stimulate the panellists into saying something interesting.

Of course, like all SL presences, Manpower's is partly experimental. It wants to be there - just like IBM and Cisco a while back - in part to get a gut feeling for what works and what doesn't. No doubt the conference was part of this experimentation.

A most interesting speaker, IBM's Colin Parris, had watched the internet move from a side-show to centre stage and he's sure the same will happen in virtual worlds. But more quickly. Where there's business value, it will happen. He pointed out that many companies prefer to work in private virtual worlds (or rooms) rather than the public SL. This parallels the internet/intranet divide.

He also drew attention to the diverse and mobile workforce (an issue in itself) and the location of the problems that need to be solved. If the people and issues can be gathered in a virtual world, then they can each be located anywhere yet still get together to understand the issues and collaborate quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively.

Metaversed recorded the proceedings if you're interested in the broader debate. Or you can get the  webcast from Manpower itself, after you've registered.

News service Reuters reports that Rupert Murdoch has a serious rival for to buy out US newspaper and information group Dow Jones. Ron Buckle is a US based supermarket magnate and is believed to have had meetings with Dow Jones "to explore options".

Neither Burkle nor Dow Jones made themselves available to Reuters for comment, but it claims that he has already looked into a structure which would include employee stock options. Despite strong interest from Australian born media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, Dow Jones is looking for other bidders to appease Leslie Hill, a director of Dow Jones and member of the Bancroft family, which controls 64 per cent of the company's votes.

There is concern that if Murdoch gains control of Dow Jones its titles like the Wall Street Journal will lose their reputation for independence, which in turn could result in lower readership and revenues.
Dow Jones completed a buyout of news aggregator Factiva from Reuters last year.

Daily newspaper The Guardian is still pursuing its worthy campaign Free our Data, which highlights how much information the government creates and then either never makes available to information professionals and consumers or does so at restrictively high prices.

Today's issue of the newspaper rather timely reveals how the Environment Agency forced an online information provider to remove flood information from its service which the company had gained from the Environment Agency. It did this as large parts of Yorkshire look more like Bangladesh as climate change wrought terrible rain and flooding on the region.

OnOneMap.com uses Google maps to offer a mash-up service that over lays information onto the maps such as properties for sale and let, the location of schools, supermarkets and mobile phones. To improve its service further, OnOneMap carried out a data scrape of the Environment Agency and collated together a layer of flood information, which, with no surprise created massive interest.

Just days before the heavens opened and flooded large parts of the UK, the Environment Agency demanded that the data be removed because of an infringement of "database copyright".

Guardian journalist Charles Arthur describes the need for this service and its use public information as an opportunity to save public money as there is a reduced need to use emergency services if houses in high flood risk areas are, effectively abandoned, especially when this information has been left out of the new Home Information Packs.

It’s a compelling story and The Guardian should be saluted for continuing this campaign, read the full story here:

This week, Library House ran another of its excellent conferences at the BFI IMAX cinema in Waterloo. This time the theme was 'Web Essentials'.

Since it was aimed at getting entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and related support companies together, a lot of the conference content was off to one side of IWR readers' interests. However, with around forty companies presenting their web products and services, some were bound to hit the mark.

Here are a few that might appeal to you at a personal or business level:

Garlik: how much of your personal information is spread around the web? And what can you do about it? That's the hook for this subscription service.

Quintura hopes it has a 'Google-beater' with its 'cloud' based approach to search. Slap in what you're looking for and a cloud of related terms appears to the left and the results to the right. Click on cloud items to refine the search. Companies can bid to attach their mini-logos to cloud words.

Click2Map lets you take a Google map and add stuff to it without programming. A kind of 'mashup for the rest of us'. It's a good idea but it's not ready for primetime. And it's French government backed. Hmmm.

ParkatmyHouse.com rewards you for selling your drive or parking spaces for short or long periods. Prospects tell the service where they're going (a football match, an underground station...) and it will find somewhere for them to park. Plans are afoot for SleepatmyHouse.com and others...

Ever recommended someone for a job? How about getting paid for it? Zubka will get you three or four thousand pounds for something you used to do for nothing.

Although there was general agreement that the mobile market is still difficult, a number of organisations are addressing the opportunities now. MakeMyShow LiveConductor connects people on the move with applications and RSS feeds.

Anywr keeps your contact and calendar information for you so you can access it from any WAP enabled phone. Apparently a phone is stolen in the UK every seven seconds. Makes you think...

Yuuguu is aimed at people on the road. Wherever you are, you can hook up to colleagues and share (and control, if you want) each other's computer screens. Uses national rate numbers to create conference connection in parallel.

Huddle looks to be a(nother) promising collaboration system. Getting praise in high places. Scales from small groups to enterprise.

A few quick mentions: Trexy and Trampoline have been covered in IWR before; AlertMe home security - dinky: take a look; and Wonga - great name, great punchline: "too much month at the end of your money". Instant loans, of course.

Given that this is only a tiny glimpse of the Library House event, you can imagine what an interesting and invigorating day it was.

Users of Apple Macintosh computers and open source operating systems may be prevented from using BBC information and content once the public broadcaster's iPlayer is launched later this year. The Open Source Consortium (OSC) is threatening to take its complaint to the European Commission.

OSC believes that by developing the iPlayer with computing giants Microsoft the BBC is forcing people to use Bill Gates' operating system. The iPlayer will allow searchers to download and watch BBC content on their own computers for up to 30 days after it was first broadcast. 

A statement from the BBC in response to the OSC complaint said, "The BBC aims to make its content as widely available as possible and has always taken a platform agnostic approach to its internet services". OSC though believes the iPlayer will only work on computers that use the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The BBC has opted to work with Microsoft because of the digital rights management (DRM) technology it has to offer which allows BBC information to be downloaded, but cannot be copied to a DVD and will automatically delete after 30 days.

OSC has taken its complaint to the BBC Trust, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Ofcom, the telecoms and broadcasting  regulator. It said its next step is to take the complaint to Europe.

Microsoft is also a key partner for the British Library.

Local newspaper the Eastern Daily Press has been told by the newly formed Ministry of Justice that it is seeking more time to respond to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request from the East Anglian newspaper.  If the amendments proposed to the FoI go through, it is likely this sort of obfuscation will become, once again, commonplace.

Newspaper the Eastern Daily Press has requested documents using the FoI to discover what improvements have been made to the management of offenders after an earlier investigation by the newspaper discovered that offenders were removing electronic tags. By removing the tags offenders cannot be monitored by the police.

In a response to the newspaper, the Ministry of Justice has asked for more time to decide whether it is in the public interest to release the papers and figures.  Janet Preston of the National Offender Management Scheme's open government unit at the Ministry of Justice said in a reply to the paper, "Although the Freedom of Information Act carries a presumption in favour of disclosure, it provides exemptions which may be used to withhold information in specified circumstances."

Central government departments have to respond to FoI requests within 20 days, but can make requests for an extension to 40 workings days.

In proposals made by the government back in November to reform FoI, including adding the time it takes to consider a request to the overall cost to an individual request. This in turn is likely to put requesters off, especially individuals and local newspapers. The government has been re-considering its proposed reforms and will announce in three months time what changes will be made to the Freedom of Information Act.

The government's Freedom of Information (FoI) Act amendments consultation period closes for submissions today. According to Martin Rosenbaum's BBC FoI blog they now have three months to review the arguments put to it and then announce its response. Gordon Brown will, of course be Prime Minister by this time.

Rosenbaum details that the BBC has argued against, no surprises there really, further restrictions, which would damage its ability to report affectively on the government. Its submission states:

Amending the regulations to restrict access to information has inevitable and important disadvantages – it would prevent valuable FOI disclosures which are in the public interest and it would risk undermining the principles of FOI. This course should only be pursued if there is an even more important need to reduce the administrative burden of FOI. We do not believe that exists. There will always be some inappropriate and burdensome FOI requests, but they do not reach the level which requires a change to the regulations.

Major news organisations like the BBC would be muzzled by the amendments if they came into force because FoI requests would be grouped together and limited, by which organisation they come from. Therefore if BBC Radio 4's Today programme had lodged a series of request and so had a BBC local news programme, they would be grouped together, with one possibly losing out. The upshot of this is that the local news programme may be investigating something of upmost importance to a local community could be kept under wraps because a national news room makes a high number of requests.

Broadsheet newspaper The Daily Telegraph has claimed in an article that Pearson, the corporation which owns the Financial Times, is involved in an "desperate attempt" to buy US business information group Dow Jones. If successful the bid will scupper the plans of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

According to the Telegraph, Pearson has been looking for a partner to counter the £2.5bn bid from the Aussie known as Dirty Digger. Unnamed analysts tell the Telegraph that a combined Pearson and Dow Jones group, which owns news aggregator service Factiva, would be a "formidable force in business journalism". One describes the Dow Jones newswires as another useful arm to the FT. Not only would a combination include two of the world's most famous business newspapers, the FT and Wall Street Journal, as well as Factiva, but would also include leading magazine and market analysis group The Economist.  Pearson owns 50% of The Economist group.

There are global benefits from a link up between Dow Jones and Pearson. The latter has a strong presence in the US with its education division, but the FT has not fared well there, no doubt because of the power of the Wall Street Journal. Equally the Wall Street Journal has not done well in Europe.

According to the Telegraph Pearson is in deep talks with General Electric to construct a joint bid. General Electric owns the CNBC business channel in the US, which competes with Murdoch's Fox business channel. CNBC is supplied by Dow Jones and has close relationships.

There is widespread concern about Murdoch buying the Dow Jones group, the Bancroft family – a majority stakeholder - is concerned about Murdoch's famed reputation for meddling with editorial independence to push his own right wing agenda. The information and media industry is also deeply concerned about Murdoch owning another major slice of the information real estate.

Murdoch has been preparing his bid by wooing the Bancroft family and got shot of his share of weak Australian news group Fairfax to release more funds.

If Pearson and a partner are to be successful, they will need to beat the $60 a share  offer that Murdoch's News Corporation has placed on the table.

Recently I was lucky enough to be part of a discussion panel organised by the City Information Group (CIG). The discussion centred on the future role of research and information professionals in the face of new networking technology, all dubbed Web 2.0, and how this technology will affect the working lives of information professionals.

My  hat  goes off to the information professionals at the event who put their hands in  the air and admitted they didn't fully understand the technology and the issues it presented to their working lives. It's a brave move in a busy room full of your peers. But it is OK to admit you don't understand the full complexity of the Web 2.0 plot. I left the conference feeling that almost everyone, apart from my colleagues Euan Semple and David Tebbutt, is a little shaky on some areas of Web 2.0. I too feel out of touch with RSS and FaceBook.

The problem with Web 2.0 is that there are so many different iterations of this technology, blogging, wiki encyclopaedia, virtual worlds created by users, social computing networks and image systems for sharing videos and photographs.  Is it any wonder that information professionals are, despite their deep natural understanding for information issues, lost in a virtual Sargosso Sea. 

At first I was worried that the attendees didn't fully understand this technology, but as the evening progressed I was re-invigorated to learn that on the whole, information professionals do want to learn and engage with this technology. And that is good news, because if the information community does not, it will lose out, because the next generation of information users will interact with information in a way so radically different from the way we do.

The first step along the rocky road to Web 2.0 is admitting what your level of understanding is, and I have nothing but admiration for those information professionals that admitted to a packed room that they were not part of this next generation, because by doing so, the information community can step back and take a look at what is required to fully embrace the technology and the all important information professionals.

There's something inevitable about libraries joining the Google Book Search library digitisation programme. Not so long ago the announcements were grasped with keen interest, now they excite as much interest as yet another series of Big Brother with, oh how shocking racism breaking out!

Of course, there is a colossal gulf of difference between the sad navel gazing of Big Brother and its assorted misfit viewers and contestants and the digitisation of 12 research libraries. Yesterday's announcement by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation is without doubt important to the organisations involved and the users.

But as each institution joins the Google project the tipping point between Google becoming the standard interface to the vast bulk of research information comes ever closer. And with each announcement we accept it as the norm. Recent deals have improved though, whether through a greater sympathy for the information community by Google, or, and more likely increased deal making savvy by the collection owners.  This recent deal, which will add 10 million copies of material to Google will include books in and out of copyright and the statements are very clear from the off, those titles still in copyright will be protected. The prickly issue of how publishers know whether their title is held by a library and will be digitised has still not been resolved though.

"This library digitisation agreement is one of the largest cooperative actions of its kind in higher education," said Lawrence Dumas, provost of

Northwestern

University

. I can't help feeling it’s a case of the major university libraries are part of this Google juggernaut, it cannot be beaten so institutions feel that they might as well join it.

In a wide ranging conversation Forum host Euan Semple asks the panellist what their assumptions and predictions are for the future of Web 2.0.

Simon Phipps, chief open source officer of Sun Microsystems begins with the idea that a something starts out as a wild idea and then becomes less contentious as it is discussed through comments, and wiki tools, you get the feeling that he sees this as the concrete that will ensure the foundations of Web 2.0 are strong.

Phipps describes Atom as the thinking man's RSS and he thinks forums, blogs and wikis will have Atom feeds. Semple adds how you have lots of little things that no one pays any attention to within an organisation, but then it builds up. Phipps responds that all of Sun's tools have tagging tools that do just this.

Nick Ward, media analyst with Panmure Gordon & Co, takes on the debate about where will Web 2.0 go as a business. Phipps finds it difficult to believe the profits of these companies will be difficult realise. So far for these companies to be floated on the stock market would be difficult and points to the fact that Last.fm and Friends Reunited were bought by large existing vendors, CBS and ITV respectively.

Thomson-Reuters deal is a sign of businesses having to restructure.  The city is sceptical are worried whether the ad supported model for the likes of Myspace really has legs to it. I simply think the whole issue of the business model for these and the loyalty towards general social media sites will struggle and it’s the more specialist ones that will triumph. There are a lot of B2B businesses that operate through jargon and barriers and they will have a great deal to lose through transparency from Web 2.0, law firms and broker firms are amongst those that could be threatened.

People want the name of a very big bank like UBS in on a deal so that if it goes wrong they can say, "well we had the best people in the world on this," but I would argue there are a few years while the barriers to remain up.

Semple says he would pay to be part of high quality networks, the ad revenue can go, Ward reminds him that subs revenue model is very slow to develop.

Marc Monseau, PR person for drug giants Johnson & Johnson thinks there has to be some guidance, Phipps adds that Sun bloggers all have to go through some training. "I see that as being one of the advantages, you then have a well informed workforce and that has benefits," Monseau said. Ward believes because it is public, it can make people more sensible, it is self regulating. Semple reminds everyone that it is easy to consider Web 2.0 as geeky for teenagers, yet there is an audit trail, which is a corporate thing.

People are using Facebook to create and manage their own identity and it means they cannot be treated as demographics anymore. Phipps agrees, all of the internet's evils is because it doesn't have strong identity mechanisms and is looking forward to strong identity, which he believes will damage spam and other areas.

Sun has a lot of tools being developed for identity management. Ward adds that mass culture is no longer needed to make a profit, discussing the long tail. Instead all of us watch and read block-busters and absorb all its marketing, we can all indulge our individual tastes and there will be greater cultural diversity. He thinks it is already happening. Phipps responds that the long tail is also about monopolising niches, but Ward doesn't believe that its all niche businesses pandering to Rupert Murdoch, because it will be easier to make and distribute products and make a profit from them.

Adriana Lukas believes it is all about focussing on the individual and the organisation will follow.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is closing in on a deal to buy the Dow Jones media and financial information group according to the weekend's news reports. News aggregation service Factiva is part of the Dow Jones group following last year's acquisition of the remaining half from Reuters.

At the centre of Murdoch's bid is the Wall Street Journal newspaper, which "Dirty Digger" as Murdoch is affectionately known, covets. The Financial Times believes Australian Murdoch will raise his bid for the group to the expected $5bn. A series of alternative bidders may also surface, including Thomson-Reuters rival Bloomberg, General Electric, Yahoo and even the FT's parent company Pearson.

A potential stumbling block for Murdoch has been his reputation for meddling in editorial matters. The Bancroft family, which holds 64% of the voting power at Dow Jones has now agreed to meet with Murdoch to discuss these issues and it is reported that Murdoch is minded to offer the family a seat on the News Corp board, his news empire.

The Wall Street Journal is revered for its editorial independence and there is great concern that ownership by Murdoch will erode this.

Unlike News Corp, the Dow Jones group has been very successful at the transition from print to online information delivery, with the Wall Street Journal charging online users, just as it does offline. Murdoch's online attempts have so far not been as successful and he could benefit from an infusion of Wall Street ideas.

Freedom of Information campaigner, author and journalist Heather Brooke is, understandably getting hot under the collar regarding the recently tabled changes to the Freedom of Information Act and its latest development, the Trade Secretary claiming the Act is placing "good government at risk".

Alistair Darling, the Labour Trade Secretary has, according to reports in Scottish newspapers written to the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs detailing his concerns. Brooke describes the story in the Scotsman as something she would expect to see in a Kenyan or Nigerian newspaper, but not here in the UK. "Politicians are fighting off demands for the introduction of a Freedom of Information Act," she says of Kenya and Nigeria, although the same can now be said of our own Mother of Parliaments.

The Scotsman quotes Darling's letter as stating, "“If we are to live under constant threat of publication, this will prevent MPs from expressing their views frankly when writing to a minister. We need urgent advice on what the position is.” Brooke responds, "Politicians as delicate creatures frightened to speak in public? As if!"

Juxtaposing the intensive scrutiny that scientific information receives compared to politics, Brooke very cleverly shows what risks society would be placed under if scientific research information was treated in the same way as policy forming is. "Some one could determine (in secret) that his snake oil was the best solution to a problem (treating polio, for example) based on findings that only he and his minions could access. No data would be published so no one could challenge legitimacy."

Brooke states that this is exactly how Parliament works and argues, "It is only by debating the relative facts and merits of an issue that a superior solution can be found."

Gordon Brown ally Ed Balls has indicated that the Prime Minister in waiting will ensure that MPs expenses are fully available through the Freedom of Information Act. Chancellor Brown may seek to have the private members bill amended to prevent expenses returning to secrecy.

Ed Balls, minister for the City and a Labour MP closely aligned to Gordon Brown said on his constituency website that there is a "proper" need for "public scrutiny of expenses and allowances". This follows the revelation by the Mail newspaper that the Conservative MP tabling the private members bill David Maclean MP spent over £3,000 on a quad bike just for visiting a few agricultural shows in his constituency.

A full list of MPs who voted to remove themselves from Freedom of Information Act compliance is available here.

David Maclean MP has demonstrated the contempt MP hold the public in with his shameful private members bill on Freedom of Information Act restrictions and personal expenses. The bill came closer to reality on Friday night. If the bill becomes an Act then the Hose of Commons and Lords will be exempt from an Act they have foisted on the public and information professionals across the land.

To make this seedy episode that little bit dirtier, the MP pushing the bill was discovered to have spent £3,300 on a quad bike to use at agricultural shows in his Penrith community.

I suggest information professionals let Mr Maclean know their thoughts:

David Maclean a Conservative MP, who tabled the bill suffers from multiple sclerosis and sought approval from the Commons to buy the vehicle on expenses, which they gave. It is just this example of expenditure that will be covered up by his bill.

Now I have a lot of experience of agricultural communities and shows, and I have some experience of MS; as a result I know how large and tiring these shows are and the need for suitable transport if you suffer from MS.

But under Maclean's new bill the public would never know that £3,300 of their money had been spent on Maclean and that when he steps down from Parliament how he'll have a nice asset in his garage thanks to us. Nor would we be able to engage in an educated debate with him on why he doesn't hire these vehicles for the small number of agricultural shows that take place each summer? Nor would we be able to question him about whether he could simply drive around the show in Land Rover, I'm sure show organisers would allow it. No, the public and information gatherers would be on the back foot, we wouldn't be able to challenge Mr Maclean because we would not have the facts to hand and there would be no way of getting to them.

There is no doubt that there are instances when an MP needs to be careful not to disclose details in an FoI response that may put constituent at harm. But the original Act provided methods to gauge when and what information should be released. A blanket restriction creates an environment open to corruption from MPs and prevents a case by case analysis.

Those who voted in favour of this restriction, and especially Maclean put agricultural communities, MS suffers, Parliament and

Great Britain

to shame. It has been a dark weekend for information.

With the ink barely dry on the sale of Thomson Learning, the Thomson Corporation has succeeded, barring regulatory problems, in taking over news provider Reuters. The deal worth £8.7 billion will create the world’s largest news and fin