I think we are all quite accepting now of the fact that ‘the customer is always right’ has been replaced with ‘the computer is always right’. All around the world, companies are struggling to offer even basic customer services (I buy stuff, you send stuff) as confused ‘support’ staff battle to make computers do what … Read more
I couldn’t live blog Andrew Lyall’s session because it took me a long time to work out what the question was. Basically the ELIXIR project is shifting around huge amount of sensative clinical data and have issues with doing that. At the moment a lot of what they do is associated with anonymised data that … Read more
Several people on Twitter pointed to the new and shiny BBC Social Media Guidelines this week. It is something we have all seen grow up as social media sites have exploded in recent years and general the policies are well written and sensible, formulated around the key message – don’t do anything dumb. I agree … Read more
How proud are you? How interested in your online reputation? When was the last time you googled yourself? Probably more recently that you’d like to admit, but we all do it! I am regretfully a poorly known Nicole Harris. My light is often eclipsed by an American gymnast (she must retire soon!) and an American … Read more
I recently picked up this piece from Evan Williams of Blogger and Twitter fame. Williams takes a different approach to that of the traditionally perceived access management flow where authentication establishes who you are and authorisation establishes what you are allowed to access. In the blog, Williams assigns the ‘permission’ aspect directly to authentication and … Read more
I came across this interesting article about OpenID via @foolington from the JISC Logins for Life project. OpenID has naturally hit that point in its life where people are talking about it being dead and failing to achieve its goals – we see this dip with all products and we saw the same criticism of SAML, which I believe is now firmly embedded as a mainstream standard supporting a variety of technologies (including OpenID). Read more
I will be spending today at the tf-emc2 meeting in Copenhagen. For those of you not familiar with tf-emc2, safe to say it is the home of the uber-techies involved in middleware stuff in Europe (and indeed beyond, with Ken Klingenstein in the room). I’m in a mellow mood after being charmed with great food … Read more
After a lot of soul searching with regards to the current funding cuts, I have decided that it will be appropriate to go ahead with FAM10 this year with a real focus on practical benefits for librarians and developers. This decision was based on: The excellent feedback we received for FAM09; The fact that I … Read more
There is a scene in Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian” where Brian is on the run from the Romans and ends up meeting the shop keeper from hell who wants him to haggle (for a beard). For some reason, this popped in to my head whilst reading lis-e-resources this week, and a discussion on … Read more
This morning at #tnc2010 we kick off with a meeting on eduGain. In the past, I have always assumed that the UK would not be able to participate in eduGain due to its rather onerous entry level – mandatory attributes simply don’t fly in the UK. I still have some concerns, and think the lighterweight … Read more