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Something that slipped under my radar and as I have been flogging the NLA today I thought I would mention that the NLA is working with Flickr to get us general public people to share our photos with them.

Now you can contribute your images to PictureAustralia by loading them into our two groups available on FlickR, PictureAustralia: Australia Day and PictureAustralia: People, places and events.

Via LibrarianInBlack.

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Sydney Life has had an intake of 'fresh meat': 5 students about to start First Year. They started posting on the weekend. Welcome to Simon, Alex, Asako-Sophia, Jack and Sarah. They join a group of 'Old Hands' who will continue to post during the year.

In terms of the blog iteself, the blog team have added more detail for each blogger with the addition of profiles and avatars.

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Today the National Library launches Libraries Australia - an online catalogue that enables the general public to access the catalogues used by librarians for years. It provides access to the catalogues of over 800 libraries from across Australia. Basically this has meant putting a public front-end on Kinetica.

First impression: I like the 'Google-style' interface. Just one search box. (You can also limit the search to particular types of media).

Google have expanded their empire yet again with Google Page Creator. Their marketing guff says:

We're testing a new product that makes creating your own web pages as easy as creating a document in a word processor. Google Page Creator is a free tool that lets you create web pages right in your browser and publish them to the web with one click. There's no software to download and no web designer to hire. The pages you create are hosted on Google servers and are available at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com for the world to see.

Don't bother trying to get an account today, they're overloaded and just taking email addresses.

To be honest, I don't know how well this one will go. It just seems to be replicating a number of services already available. Then again, everyone had webmail before gmail came along and now it's de rigeur to have a gmail address...

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Earlier in the week I sent some email pointing to exclusive screen shots of Firefox 2.0 (ahem) but if you want to keep an eye on the real thing check out the Firefox 2.0 wiki.

Oh please Mozilla, move the tab close button onto the actual tab...

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A few months ago I got one of those swang-do mobiles, the 3G ones. I was only upgrading because my bills were blowing out, not because I needed my phone to do more. Anyway, the guy at the phone dealership was trying to sell me all these content packages that included anything from live cricket to music videos. I said to no to all but gave in to the email package which meant I could send email from my mobile phone.

Now I've had the phone a while I use the email only to send the photos I take to myself. It's such a hassle to download any email I am sent and reading it on a tiny screen is just not enticing. I am realising that I am never going to sign up to any of these 'content' packages. It got me thinking if anyone is using this 'content' or if they hype is, well, hype.

In the old days of the web there was a lot of noise about 'getting content', 'selling content','syndicating content' and the like. Often content was spoken about in a vague way that indicated the speaker or writer thought it of secondary importance, that it was something that was needed but that the particulars of it were unimportant. In other words, who cares if it's useful, if it's easy to digest from a screen or if people actually want it.

Obviously you can create a market for something if your product is good enough, but if you sense there is a hole in the market but don't actually look at what is creating it or what would succesfully fill it you're not going to get very far. And that's exactly what a lot of people did in the early days of the web. They knew people would like to read and use 'stuff' on the web but they didn't really know what.

This is where I think 'mobile content' is at the moment. As a heavy user of the web I can admit that I like access to information at all times. I carry my Mac everywhere. I get toey if I am without access for several days. That's just the way I am. I don't get mobile content though. I think there are a number of reasons for this:

The web provides me with everything that I can get on my mobile and more and it does a very good job of it.
The standard and usefulness of content available through my mobile is not a patch on what I get on the web.

Mobile phone screens are just too small and the content isn't suited.
I admit that mobile content companies are designing for them now, even hiring IAs to work on mobile content only, but from what I have seen the experience isn't seamless enough for me to become a heavy or even periodic user.

Coverage is limited.
I can get the net almost anywhere, even if it does slow over dial-up. When I went to Port Stephens on holiday I couldn't even get voice coverage for my phone most of the time. When I can't make a phone call I'm not going to have much confidence in browsing mobile content.

Television and radio.
I can see cricket on the tv and listen to it on the radio. I don't really need to see it on my mobile when I'm out and about. It's just not that important. Even if they were showing Liverpool games live I probably wouldn't watch them on a mobile. My tiny television makes sports viewing difficult enough, let alone a screen a small as a matchbox.

No one really uses it.
When I look at my friends and colleagues I see they use their mobiles for phone calls, SMS, as cameras, for sending photos and at a pinch, scheduling. And most the people I know use the web a LOT. No one talks about the great stuff they get on their phone. There is no word-of-mouth stuff enticing me to try it.

So, I haven't really offered any recommendations for making mobile content attractive. That's because I don't really know what would work. The only thing that may kick it along is a breakthrough application that has the same effect as Google, Flickr or web mail (in the early days) on the web. Something that is easy to use, useful and quickly becomes indispensable. Maybe the phone as we know it has reached its limits. It's a communication tool. You can come up with new ways for people to communicate through it but they will get their information somewhere else.

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Karine at collegewebeditor has been posting some great interviews with people involved in higher ed podcasting. And not just the technical stuff. Go read them.

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For those interested in such things, AICTEC is counducting a review of policy in regard to the administration of .edu.au domain names.

The policy for the .edu.au domain was endorsed by AICTEC in April 2003. Since that time a number of policy anomalies and difficulties have arisen as a result of the changing business environments experienced by Australian education and training organisations and jurisdictions. These need to be resolved in order to provide a firm base for the future operation of the .edu.au domain.
A discussion paper on these issues has been prepared and is available for download.
Submissions and comments on the policy issues raised in the discussion paper are invited, with a view to providing recommendations on the future operation, application, and administration of the .edu.au domain.

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You know those spreadsheets we use to do IAs? This Boxes and Arrows article explains how you can take your spreadsheet, shove it into Visio and have it spit out a useful little sitemap. Nice.

This guy reckons Google's search interface could do with some tweaking so he's had a go at redesigning it. Considering it's the top search engine, emulated everywhere, his arguments are interesting.

So how did Google get to the top with such a bad page interface? Well, Google succeed for a few reasons. First and foremost, the search page is very simple. As I observed in another recent article, simple things done poorly are much easier to swallow than complex things done poorly. For instance, eBay's design sin is far more substantial and consequential than Google's. Also, Google did it right; they have built a strong reputation on delivering an excellent product. Their brand commands respect, so a small and simple page that otherwise works can be forgiven for what it lacks in usability and aesthetics. Up to a point.

If you don't want to read the article, just take a look at his redesigned Google.

Via Martin Hardee.

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A multinational soft-drink maker seems to have come up with a 'novel' idea at marketing: set up a blog that perpetuates the 'philosophy' of one of their products, then target popular blogs on which to post comments. Trouble is though, the strategy is so transparent and, well, lame, that it sets back the brand rather than enhancing it. Other bloggers smell it a mile off and before you can double-click your brand is associated with poorly executed blog-spamming.

Ok, I'll stop alluding and start spelling it out. Guess which brand this blog is trying to promote?

More here.

UPDATE: Ok, so apparently it was a sham.