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Karine Joly has a great post on her blog collegewebeditor that gives a good round-up of podcasting in educational institutions. Go read How to educate your director, VP or president about Podcasting

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Fron our very own University news site: Meeting the demands of the Net Gen.

A succession of international speakers will tell a University of Sydney symposium in November that the traditional university campus, with its heavy emphasis on classrooms and lecture theatres, is rapidly becoming outdated...

Meeting the expectations of Net Gen students is one of the biggest challenges facing universities. What needs to change? And what might the University of Sydney campus of the near future look like?

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Regular readers will know how much I love the BBC. (Ok, I admit, I'm a little sycophantic about it at times, but we can all dream can't we?) SO you can imagine my excitement when I found that someone is blogging about his work on BBC websites.

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Stanford university has made their audio material available through iTunes.

Stanford on iTunes provides university-related audio content via the iTunes Music Store, Apple’s popular music jukebox and online music store. Stanford on iTunes gives alumni and the general public free access to a wide range of Stanford-specific digital audio content. The project includes two sites:

• a public site, targeted primarily at alumni, which will include Stanford faculty lectures, learning materials, music, sports, and more.
• an access-restricted site for students delivering course-based materials and advising content.

More at the Stanford Report. Now, if only there was an Australian version of iTunes...

25/10/05 UPDATE: There IS an Australian iTunes. Apple has quietly launched it, media announcement yet to come. Just load up your iTunes and choose your country. Thanks to Mr Andrew Jessup for alerting me to this fact.

Flock is a new browser that is now available in a warts 'n' all developer preview and I am very excited about it. (Well, I'm blogging this on a Saturday so that gives you an indication of how excited). It's based on Mozilla code and integrates del.icio.us, blogging and flickr. Could this be the first Web 2.0 browser?

More at ZDnet and Boing Boing

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• Jakob Nielsen on the top 10 usability mistakes of weblogs.
• McAfee taker a user-focussed approach to designing their UI and cut support calls by 90 per cent.
• Should we stop using CSS hacks now?

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Chicago Law School academics have started a blog to communicate with students and the law community in general.

(Via if:book)

Also on academics blogging: The blogosphere as a carnival of ideas from the Chronicle.

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If you're interested in how academic journals on the web can be improved, go read Collin Brooke. He discusses the real need for online versions of academic journals to not just be a mirror of their print counterparts but to offer a new dimension to the journal. This is true of all web content, it should not just be a reproduction of the print version. The web offers different ways in which to convey and interact with information, you'd be crazy not to take advantage of it...

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At the Uni we are yet to convince everyone of that old chestnut, that 'content is king'. Content is still the last thing to be considered in many web projects. Now the word on the ground is that content is no longer king, it's all about INTERACTION. I have discussed this before, that services like Flickr and Del.icio.us are putting interaction at the centre of things and content, at least in terms of pure information, is taking a backseat. A good example of traditional (and interesting) content meeting interaction is the BBC. (Have I ever told you how much I love the BBC's web presence? No? I love it. Really.) The BBC has a lot of really good content. They also know what to do with it. They use blogs, podcasting, RSS and open up their development to others through Backstage ("Use our stuff to build your stuff") If you're interested, check out:

• Grokking BBC Online and Web 2.0 media business models
• Content is king no more: Web 2.0 is about interaction

Examples of sheer interaction with very little content supplied by the website include the usual suspects: Del.icio.us, Flickr, Citeulike and productivity tools like Backpack.

So where can this be useful for the Uni?

• Models for systems like Citeulike could be adapted for researchers and academics in general


• Writely offers a model online collaboration on just about anything that involves writing and is low-cost and immediate.


• Blogs are obvious, as is podcasting.

The trick as with all things is to match a real need with the right technology. There is no point in implementing some 'hot', 'cool' technology just because it is there. It has to balanced with a need and the right content. There has to be a need to interact and it has to be easy to use. Sometimes the system can be technically brilliant but the need just not there, whether it was an expressed need or not. This is what the BBC does so well, their strategists identify needs or potential needs and tailor their offerings to suit. They don't invest in technology for the sake of it.

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The non-developer in me (and let's face it, that's all of me) is very excited about this in a kind of geeky way. Ning is

a free online service for building and using social applications.

UPDATE: I now have a developer account. Wahay.

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This came up in a meeting today, an oldie but still a goodie, the Yale Web Style Guide. It covers writing for the web and also page, site and interface design and how to deal with graphics. A must for the beginner and expert alike.

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Via iaslash, Expero Inc is offering free usability advice via a blog. Although I don't think there are quick fixes for a lot of usability problems, it may help to set people on the right track.

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