templatedata

One of the problems in web work is that when something useful is developed and it takes off, everyone wants one. Take tagging for example. Tagging has contributed to a shift in web design, in web usage and the way in which people conceive of information patterns. Tag clouds have been popping up everywhere and this is not always a good thing. Like all things to do with the web, there is a time and a place. What works in one context may be a dismal failure in another.

Tim at the LibraryThing blog has taken a good look at the difference in tag use between LibraryThing and Amazon. In short: tags have not been as successful on the latter as they have on the former. Tim makes a few interesting observations, including:

- people like to tag their own stuff but don't feel compelled to tag products people are trying to sell
- LibraryThingers are using the site to organise their own books, most of their tags are descriptive and are used for themselves and socially whereas Amazon users have a tendency to create 'opinion' tags which are are an extension of Amazon's review system.

Something is going on here—something with broad implications for tagging, classification and "Web 2.0" commerce. There are a couple of lessons, but the most important is this: Tagging works well when people tag "their" stuff, but it fails when they're asked to do it to "someone else's" stuff. You can't get your customers to organize your products, unless you give them a very good incentive. We all make our beds, but nobody volunteers to fluff pillows at the local Sheraton.

It's a fantastic post. Go read it.

Morville and Rosenfeld's seminal IA text, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web has gone into a 3rd edition. CMSWatch has published one of the new chapters so you can go over and read it for free. It tackles enterprise IA.

If you are involved in web development and design and have never looked into this book I suggest you do so. The Library here has made the full text of the second edition available online. So now you have no excuses.

Carnegie Mellon researchers have responded to user's disappointment with MySpace et al's inability to promote meaningful social connections by creating an online friendship network called Mindkin.

In former online versions of social networks, people simply added friends’ names when they wanted, as long as both parties consented. This process allowed for large, sprawling social networks, but many problems surfaced. In particular, many people barely knew anything about most people on their “friends list” besides what sparse details the friends chose to display...

...Mindkin, however, does away with these problems altogether. On Mindkin, people are matched, quite literally, by their thoughts and interests, and users can only network with people who have similar thoughts or find similar things interesting.

Via The Chronicle of Higher Ed.

And Karine has added a whole section dedicated to higher ed bloggers. My feed reader is now straining under the weight of all those new feeds. Burp.

A team at the University of Melbourne has released a report that looks at just what kind of technology First Year students are using and how they are using it.

The aim of First year students' experience with technology: are they really digital natives

was to empirically document incoming first-year University students' experiences with an array of established and emerging technologies and technology-based tools.

A study of 2000 students was carried out at The University of Melbourne in March 2006, and a preliminary report of findings was presented to the Melbourne Experience Committee in September 2006.

UPDATE: More analysis on this study over at University web marketing and usability.

Very clever.

Via Boing Boing.