Birmingham City University - online marketing

Wordle

2010-05-28T23:14:00.000+01:00

For a bit of fun i ran the BCU web site's news RSS feed through Wordle which is a java app to create a word cloud from an RSS feed or text source. And here was the result...

The RICE strategy

2010-04-28T13:24:00.001+01:00

Recently i have been writing a social media strategy for the university which is currently still in draft. I decided to create a condensed version of the strategy with a snappy acronym. Slightly contrived i admit but easy to remember. So here i present the RICE strategy for social media:

Research - before you do a thing examine why you are planning to use social media, see if anyone else is doing something similar, what sort of platforms there are and how applicable they are to your plans, also check what is used in the age-group, sector or geographical areas you wish to engage with.
Invest - there is no point making a token gesture in social media, a proper presence requires a proper investment. Social media is an ongoing dialogue with your users so needs investment in time and patience as results may not be immediate or even that easy to quantify.
Commit - your organisation needs to buy into social media and integrate it into it's existing marketing and communication functions. Social media is a dialogue not a broadcast like traditional media so you need to be in for the long run to get the best of it.
Engage - as social media is a dialogue you need to engage in discussion with your customers. Build a community of your users and customers and this can help drive the development of your social media.

Social Media Policy

2009-12-04T14:37:00.004Z

I am trying to write a policy for the University for the usage of social media. The strategy we should have for monitoring, policing and maintaining our social media presence both on sites we can control (such as the official Youtube channel) but also on sites that may be out of our control. I am going to be putting some useful resources i have found here in this post, for reference and also to play around with. Any feedback gratefully received.

So what is Twitter?

2009-02-18T13:04:00.005Z

Twitter has suddenly exploded onto the mainstream, why this very morning on a BBC News report from a BBC road show we were told we could follow what was happening on Twitter and Facebook. But what actually is Twitter? Well its micro-blogging et cetera but what does that really mean to the average idiot user? Like me.

To me Twitter, and micro-blogging in general, is what blogging itself started out as. A personal diary, a fast moving record of what was happening. Blogging has evolved though and has become a serious player in citizen journalism. The old lazy stereotype about a blog being a self-obsessed diary of boring details of someone else's life has gone (though some still persist with this accusation, though i doubt they have actually ever read anything like New Wars or John Hawks - two recent finds).

So as blogging has become "serious" then micro-blogging has stepped in and become the place for a fast moving stream of consciousness and things-to-check-out. If i look at my Twitter friends for example (using TwitBin of course, highly recommended for Firefox users) i can read Paul Bradshaw's comments on his Radio WM interview about... er... Twitter, find out the Prime Minister is holding a press conference after meeting the IMF (and wonder if any cheques were handed over), read a link about Starbucks instant coffee and find out one of my friends is finally watching Donnie Darko.

All short and to the point messages. Micro-blogging like blogging itself is evolving of course and the rate of evolution will increase now its hit the big time and it will be very interesting to monitor this. Especially the tension between old-skool tweets about what colour underpants people are wearing and more serious matters. So this is what Twitter means to me, finally. It took some time for me to work it out. But what does Twitter mean to you? Why not leave a comment below?

Using a wiki for a job progress system

2008-12-09T12:48:00.003Z

Because of the increasing complexity to the on-line presence of the university and the multiple projects that are on-going we have been looking at how best to keep track of jobs and have useful information in a centralised location easily accessible to everyone. We already had a wiki running, powered by Mediawiki, kindly set up for us by ICT but as yet little real use for it. So we are trailing running our Job Progress System on the wiki.

Every job will be assigned a job number and relevant and update information kept on the job as it "travels" through the system. Once the job is completed it will then be archived allowing us to build up a database of completed work for accountability, statistical and historical purposes.

The Sports Centre takes shape

2008-12-08T10:44:00.004Z

The new Sports Centre, a £7 million complex now being built on the former Ansells Sports Club site next to City North Campus, takes shape. I took this picture at the weekend on a lovely bright and crisp morning. The rabbits running around in between the various piles of construction equipment and materials. Almost poetic.

Full size version here.

View Ancient Rome in Google Earth

2008-11-14T15:53:00.005Z

You can now view Ancient Rome using Google Earth, or rather a virtual representation. 320CE was a little early for photography, satellites and banks of servers. This, however, makes me think that it would be rather cool to be able to view an area as it changed over time. Of course the amount of imagery you would require would be vast.

Maybe one could have another slider to adjust the area's appearance over time. One could see how a site (such as the university) had changed over time. Such as from this...

To this...

...and to this.

Virtual affair leads to real divorce

2008-11-14T15:18:00.001Z

A British couple are divorcing after the wife discovered her husband with another woman. Nothing that unusual there of course but the discovery of this illicit liaison was in Second Life. The wife found her husband's online virtual alter-ego "a goatee-bearded, medallion-wearing hombre called Dave Barmy" with a similarly virtual woman. The wife said her husband's affair might be in a virtual world but it was a real affair.

The blurring of the line between the virtual and real-life world is always something that has interested me and i can appreciate her point of view. It might be a situation generated by zeroes and ones but are the thoughts and intentions still the same.

As more of us spend more of our lives in virtual worlds then we need to start considering what laws apply and how. For example (and this is just something that interests me not a query about a possible career change, credit crunch or no credit crunch) if i was to become a prostitute in a virtual world like Second Life and sell sex to other users would that be illegal? Especially in virtual worlds where the virtual currency can be exchanged for real loot. Would it stand up in court? (Sorry couldn't resist!)

A new toy : Twitbin

2008-11-11T10:17:00.003Z

I have been scathing about Twitter before, wondering exactly what it was for. It's continued popularity however has led me to give it another try, however this time i am coming armed with... a Firefox plug-in. I wondered if there was a plug-in to allow me to write to my Twitter account directly from FF without having to go to the site, login and all that jazz. Of course there are several. The one i am giving a go to is Twitbin.

It works quite nicely, adding a collapsible sidebar to Firefox and easily allowing you to post to your Twitter feed and see what else is happening on your feed. It actually makes updating your Twitter account quite painless and fast so maybe i will finally use it...

Philosophical debate

2008-09-03T13:22:00.002+01:00

I found a flaw with Google Chrome rather early, it supports scrolling down a page with the mouse scroll wheel but not back up!

Anyway time for a philosophical question. If you are viewing a webpage with an animated gif does the gif continue to animate after you have scrolled away from that part of the page? We could consider whether a browser renders an entire page and keep it in memory or just the part being viewed and thus if it is rendered in memory are changes to that page maintained in memory or actioned only when viewed? Or we could consider the question from a philosophical point of view, perhaps a kind of Zen web design. Does a gif animate if no one is around to see it? Does the gif animate or is everything else animating and the gif is constant.

Google Chrome

2008-09-03T10:04:00.003+01:00

Well i am using Google Chrome to write this post, first impressions are reasonable. The new interface takes some getting used to and of course everything renders correctly as its using the same rendering engine as Safari. Lets get it a longer term test...

Safari on the PC

2008-09-02T09:01:00.003+01:00

When i launched (i hate that term) iTunes a few days it nagged me as usual about installing an update, finally i clicked Yes and then it also told me i could update Safari. Safari is the Apple browser which is also available for Windows. I had forgotten i had that installed because of the shortcomings with it but maybe my problems would now be addressed. So i let it update and gave Safari another go...

I used Safari for a couple of days but then went back to Firefox. Although Safari worked very well in general, and seemed faster than Firefox at times, and the pages look gorgeous with it's font smoothing which gives the web a plush or lush look there were a few things holding me back and are annoying enough to be "show stoppers".

Using Blogger is where one of the problems occur, if i upload an image into a new post i then can't copy and paste the image to the part of the post i want it to appear, there is a work round by going to HTML mode and copying and pasting the HTML but thats a bit annoying.
Main showstopper was that Safari doesn't seem to want to allow me to copy Thai text and then paste that elsewhere. Not a problem for most readers of this blog maybe but this made updating my Thai music blog problematic.
Of course it doesn't work with Foxmarks so i can't keep my home and work bookmarks synchronized though that is an issue with Safari not supporting Firefox extensions which is fair enough!

I'll give it another go after the next update anyway... its looking very promising.

Web presence activity (11/08/08)

2008-08-11T08:14:00.003+01:00

The big project last week was getting the Clearing site up and running ready for A Level results day (i remember it well, Midlands Today came to my college though i never made it to the TV). An interesting job as it involves an ASP database as well as the usual stuff.

As well as that i also refreshed the Green website, most of the photographs used for graphics are taken by me on the Ansells Field. The windmill was located on the old IMI site, it did push the zoom function on my camera to the max but didn't turn out too badly.

Web presence activity (04/08/08)

2008-08-04T07:56:00.002+01:00

As blogged separately i created the university's Knol article, Knol being the new Google "expert" written competitor (in a way) to Wikipedia. I couldn't find any other UK universities on Knol so we probably are the first to do this.
We haven't forgotten Wikipedia though, i added the Geohack co-ordinates to the BCU article. If you click these co-ordinates then you are presented with a large selection of links to various mapping sites and also Flickr too.
For every Web 2.0 site you "buy in to" there are probably a dozen of other similar sites which you simply have not the time to also update. Flickr is our chosen photo hosting site but i think its also worth keeping Picasa, Google's equivalent, also up to date because... well its Google.
Videos for the New Generation Arts and Design City festivals earlier in the year have been converted to the web and put on YouTube.
Finally i have continued my investigation into calendar softwares, although there is an Events officer going to join the department at some stage there is no harm in exploring various online calendars.

Knol article

2008-07-31T14:51:00.004+01:00

Knol is the new Google thing du jour, intended as a non-anonymous version of Wikipedia where "experts" write about what they know. Well i know about this fine university (having been here man and boy for about 13 years) and have written about it.

Criticisms? Go ahead and suggest improvements, thats the point i am sure.

Edit: I think that we may in fact be the first University in the UK to have a Knol!

Web presence activity (28/07/08)

2008-07-28T08:28:00.002+01:00

What was i doing last week apart from drinking tea?

More work was done on the Wikipedia article to include a list of the various campuses of the university, the article has been a bit too Perry Barr... sorry City North focussed. Some new photography was also added of Seacole, Hamstead and Vittoria Street as part of that.
More Flickr imagery has also been added.
A DVD video of the Vice-Chancellor's talk at City North a few weeks ago was converted to a web friendly format (though not used online yet).
The Radiography mini-site was updated.
Some new courses and lots of course amends, well clearing is approaching fast!

Web presence activity (21/07/08)

2008-07-21T07:48:00.003+01:00

In the absence of any new toys to write about i thought i would start a regular report on what i have been doing, with regards to the University's web presence, over the last week. A chance to promote new features (and tell us if anything is broken) and also to give lie to the belief that all i do all day is drink tea. So last week i...

Added the Spring Season 08 productions to the BSA's Galleries page.
An eagle-eyed viewer informed me the custom 404 page still had the old search on it, now fixed so its got the same Google search as used elsewhere.
An International Student Offer Registration Pack was put on the Accommodation site, useful information & forms for international students.
The open days booking form response e-mail has been set for the Clearing and October open days.
Extra photos of the Seacole building were put on the Flickr account, more campus photos will be added this week. The Flickr has also been re-organised into collections.
A new section was added to the University Wikipedia article on future developments, this may need some work but i thought the new developments like City Centre campus needed to be on the page. I will also be looking to improving the photos on the page and making them less City North focussed.

The latest toy : Tumblr

2008-07-09T11:33:00.004+01:00

Tumblr is the latest little web 2.0 toy for me to play with, it seems to be pitched half-way between Twitter and full-blogs and the best way i could describe it is as an internet scrapbook. I have created one for myself to play with anyway. You can add photos, videos, text and its all done quite easily. I'm not sure it has any use for the the University marketing but it seems less useless than Twitter.

Alas goodbye Google Browser Sync

2008-06-26T15:02:00.004+01:00

Firefox 3.0 is reasonable, as yet i see few advantages over 2.0, but one big disadvantage is that Google Browser Sync will not work with it. GBS was a wonderful and elegant tool that allowed you to keep your bookmarks synchronised between different computers, unfortunately Google are ending development of it and will not support it in FF 3.0. They suggest some alternatives which i have been trying, Mozilla Weave for example. Unfortunately i couldn't even log in with the account i created (difficult stuff i know) so i don't know how good it is for anything else. Similarly Foxmarks didn't seem to want me to log in once i had created an account. So farewell GBS then, its been made open source by Google so perhaps some enterprising soul will update it to work with FF 3.0 one day... Though if anyone knows of a bookmark synchroniser that does work please let me know! I am looking here though...

Though to be honest i am thinking about downgrading so i can still use GBS. Another thing i don't like about 3.0 is when you drag and drop an image from a webpage to the desktop. Now a transparent copy of the image is shown when you drag it. Pointless eyecandy that makes it much harder to see where you are putting the image. Its progress you see.

Update : trying Foxmarks again, seems to let me login this time so here is hoping.

Firefox 3.0

2008-06-17T10:20:00.002+01:00

Firefox 3.0 will be out anytime soon but i couldn't be bothered waiting (waiting is so Web 1.0) so i downloaded release candidate 3. Its pretty nice though doesn't work with Google Browser Sync, yet anyway. I'm not sure i like the revamped location bar history display but it seems to work OK, no crashes yet anyway though its still using monstrous amounts of RAM.

Ah i spoke too soon, browsing Flickr messed up the Firefox window and i had to close it. Oh well, maybe i should have waited!

Using web 2.0 as much as we can, or can we do more?

2008-06-03T12:01:00.004+01:00

This year we have tried our best to extend the web presence of the university through the use of tools like Flickr and Youtube. In lieu of a CMS (which is looking to be some way off still) these are the best ways i can think of of adding interactivity and excitement to static pages. A recent example is the microsite for the university's new campus.

The site uses Flickr badges, Flickr image hosting (which links back and geo-tagging of course!), video, a Google map and bookmarking links. I am just wondering what else we could try. I have experimented with Twitter's embedded HTML feed but it didn't look very nice on the page i tried it on before (and anyway there is no twitter feed that would be relevant). But what else? An embedded calendar maybe?

Some kind of visitor feedback would be great, even as a forum though that might open a whole can of worms. Of course people can use Flickr for that.

Toy of the day : Goosh

2008-06-03T11:33:00.002+01:00

Goosh is an "unofficial" Google (and Wikipedia) shell which basically allows you to do a web search using a Unix command line in an ...er.. web browser. I don't really see the point of it but it is quite cleverly done and is probably a good way to search the web if you are using a 2400 baud modem perhaps.

What is killing Twitter?

2008-05-27T14:27:00.002+01:00

I like Twitter, though i'm still not sure what it's for. It does seem to be a good way of sharing links though like this one i received earlier today on, erm, "What's killing Twitter". The service does seem to be down a fair bit but i'm not sure we should be writing obituaries yet.

New technology update

2008-05-07T09:16:00.003+01:00

Occasionally i write about a new web technology i have discovered and am trying out. So how are we doing with some of these?

Gnosis- semantic web processing
Back in October i tried this Firefox plugin to explore the semantic meanings of the terms and words on the web page you are looking at. To be honest i no longer use this, it seems to just state the [censored] obvious "Boeing" is an organization, "Steve Jobs" is a person et cetera and it broke the cardinal rule of any add-on to the web experience, it got in the way of what i wanted to actually do.
PicLens
This funky new way of exploring a group of images looks gorgeous and genuinely is a good way of finding your way through a large amount of images such as a large Flickr set, it does require decent connection speed however. Its worth keeping even if not used that much.
Twitter
I like Twitter though i'm still not that sure what it is really for. It seems a good way of signposting new events or web pages, Paul Bradshaw uses it extensively to good effect. The News/PR department have not used our account very much yet but then again there isn't a great deal of news going around. I have suggested setting fire to one of the campus buildings but that idea has been put on hold for now.

The home of the web team

2008-04-23T14:41:00.003+01:00

We are based at Leyland House next to the Oscott Gardens halls of residence, and in case you wonder what it looks like (from above anyway) its the long building with the light roof at the bottom of this Google Earth image. This picture appears to have been taken early in the day as there are few cars in the carpark, mine is there of course!

Twitter

2008-04-23T14:18:00.004+01:00

We have created a Twitter account for the University! OK so what? Personally i am not sure how useful Twitter is but of course the key to anything is content. We have set up the PR office to update the Twitter as they should be the people in the know, more than the people in the web team dungeon anyway. An example of an organisation's Twitter is the Guardian's Comment Is Free one, which has links to new topics on their website, a similar thing could be done on the BCU Twitter linking to the latest news stories... perhaps. Another example is this idiot's Twitter.

I have added a Twitter feed to this blog which you should be able to see on the right hand side.

PicLens

2008-03-11T09:59:00.003Z

Something new to look at. PicLens can create an "immersive slideshow" from your web images. The interface that PicLens uses is very Mac OSX like and certainly high on the eye candy. It allows you to view your images as a wall of pictures and navigate through them easily using the mouse. Actually i think it probably is a good way to browse a large number of images without the distraction of window furniture.

Installing it for Firefox is very easy, though installing the creation tool is a bit more problematical as it needs .NET. I think i'll hold off for now as i don't want to risk my computer being destroyed. It already works for Flickr though so you can browse the university's Flickr account as God... or PicLens anyway intended.

Its hard to really explain what this thing does, its much easier to see for yourself! James and I have both been impressed with the speed and smoothness of the interface (though we do have a fast connection here). Something to keep our eyes on. I don't think there is much need to develop in it yet as we don't exactly have a huge array of images on our website.... yet.

Can Flickr be the centre of your web presence

2008-02-26T11:47:00.005Z

Something we started using last year, as part of the Birmingham City University web presence, was Flickr, the highly popular photo uploading and storage site owned by Yahoo! We have used it for photos of the campus buildings, photos of current promotions and of course news worthy photos such as the award ceremonies. I really like Flickr, so much so that i started using it myself and very quickly it became the centre of my own web presence. I run a couple of news blogs and i use Flickr to create badges of relevant images, scans, illustrations et cetera.

So can Flickr become the centre of the Birmingham City University web presence too? It is probably more difficult for a university site as university information tends to be mostly text based. However rich use of imagery can be of great assistance to add real value to the existing text. But that can be done anyway, what makes Flickr special? Because if you have your images on Flickr then they are on what must be one of the world's busiest websites (if not for direct visits to the homepage), part of one of the biggest internet companies, and searchable by all. You can also add links to your own site in the photo description and also geotag the photograph to put it on a Yahoo! map. Thus you are adding so much extra valuable information and options for people to come to your website to what was just a photograph.

A photo i took of Margaret Street, click on it to go to the Flickr site and see an example of how you can add extra value to the photograph.

We're not the only ones using Flickr, this US Coast Guard news site uses it and also this Taiwanese clothes auction site uses it for photos of their wares (don't ask). However its interesting that in the latter case no effort has been made to add the extra value to the photograph which is key to getting the best out of Flickr. To find the site this photo belonged to for example i had to go to the Flickr account owner's profile. The Coast Guard Flickr doesn't even include a link!

It would be interesting to use Flickr for all image hosting on a future BCU website, all images could have extra meta information added and be geotagged. I have already used Flickr hosted images to illustrate some news stories but you could, for example, host an image illustrating a Radiography course on Flickr, including some basic course information a geotag and a link back to the BCU site in the image details. Someone on the Flickr site does a search for "radiography" and maybe you might have just found a new potential student...

Linking into the bloggers

2008-01-10T11:09:00.000Z

We have begun the process of linking to lecturer's blogs from the courses they teach or have involvement on. One example is here. My only caveat about the standard icon i created for these links is that i wonder if it is apparent enough that the lecturer is involved with the course and not just not a handy link to hang on the page. I suppose it might be obvious but...

Wikimapia

2007-12-31T18:24:00.000Z

Something new just as the year ends, Wikimapia is an open collaboration tool that mixes Google Earth imagery with Wikipedia editability. Users can mark on the map areas and places of interest and put some information about these places. Potentially very interesting, though place entries seem quite prone to vandalism (such as the Villa Park entry).

Calendars

2007-12-29T21:49:00.000Z

A calendar of events at the University is something we wish to add to the site ASAP so i have been exploring Google Calendar and playing around with creating an online calendar for the University. Here it is below, take a look. You probably need to advance to later in the year to see anything...

Xmas greetings

2007-12-06T13:39:00.000Z

Today i created an e-card for the University in order to save a rainforest. Its actually very simple to do, much simpler than the last time i had to do this for the International Office some years ago where i had to create a cgi script to send the card (cgi development was always difficult on the old server as i didn't have a shell account so couldn't see any error messages unless i downloaded the 700MB+ error file.. anyway enough happy memories!) The lovely cgiemail script allows you to send HTML mail as long as you put the correct content header in.

So it works great and won't leave the server open to spammers, excellent.

Returning RSS

2007-12-03T15:18:00.000Z

Older readers may remember the old UCE website had an RSS feed, actually this was generated by a Perl script i wrote to read the news headlines page and then create an RSS feed from it. Finally i have had the time to update the script to work with the new site. It is playschool level RSS of course. Hopefully the future CMS generated website will be able to offer much more extensive and automatic generation of RSS feeds.

Of course that begs the question, what is RSSable (that is a word i made up earlier, its not just James who is destroying the English language)? News is obvious of course, and blog posts (the RSS feed link for which is below) but what else on a University website? The latest courses added perhaps. What do people suggest?

Staying on the RSS vein, the likes of Yahoo! are working on Media RSS which will do for images and videos and the like what normal RSS did for text. This is an interesting development i am watching with interest.

Putting us on the map

2007-11-29T14:47:00.000Z

I have added embedded Google maps to each campus information page (Bournville for example), these maps are a very useful resource and do nothing but add value to a website. And if you want to find us...

View Larger Map

I also tried to add better campus imagery to aid the visitor. I have always found that if you know what you are looking for it makes finding it a lot easier. Unfortunately some of the campus imagery is not that useful so we may have to take some more, perhaps photography of each campus' entrance. Of course if we also put these on Flickr we can attach geo-data to them.

Flickr

2007-11-28T16:55:00.000Z

As part of the continual embracing of cool web products I have created an official Flickr account for Birmingham City University. At the moment it just has a few interesting shots i took of Baker and Kenrick the other day but will be an online repository for great photography with a University vibe. I have also created a slideshow using the Blogger slideshow applet to display on this blog (which you hopefully can now see!)

Musings on web development

2007-11-26T08:34:00.000Z

On Friday James and I attended a seminar in London on University Websites. I found the seminar most interesting and gave me plenty of food for thought. It made me consider how web development has changed over the years and also what a website itself is has changed.

When I started in web development way back in 1995 it was very different out there, Netscape had just gone beta with v2.0 and frames were set to revolutionise the embryonic industry. Very few people were developing commercial websites back then and tools were scarce. Everything had to be created from scratch. Websites tended to be isolated entities which did not interact with each other, and very little with the user.

But now its very different, websites can be created with very little original code, content management systems can handle the site structure and HTML and third-party applications can add functionality. Websites are more than just pages of text and graphics now, they have video, interaction, client and server side functionality. Information and functionality can now be taken from other sites and used to enhance our own site (an example being RSS feeds - something we had on the old site but didn't implement on the "new" one).

A quote from the seminar I found most illuminating, "your website isn't your web presence", and indeed it isn't anymore. That web presence has spread outside of your control too, to sites like Wikipedia and Facebook. Its an online experience perhaps we are now building, so perhaps the term "web developer" is dead and we should now be called "online experience facilitators".

Video at Birmingham City University

2007-11-20T14:20:00.000Z

Today i have been acquainting myself with Adobe Premiere (not the easiest program to get straight into to be honest) and have put some BIAD Fashion Show videos online as part of the new YouTube channel for the university. Video is a key part of the internet these days, Brighton University have integrated video very well with their website and i hope we can do the same with ours.

It would be great to have students talking about life at the university for example, giving study tips and advice for example as on Brighton's site. What do people think?

U.S. State department tries blog diplomacy

2007-11-20T10:29:00.000Z

This is an interesting news article i came across yesterday, the Americans are looking to posting on Arabic blogs as part of their "hearts and minds" offensive in the Middle East. This quote I found most interesting :

"Because blogging tends to be a very informal, chatty way of working," MacInnes said, "it is actually very dangerous to blog."

Indeed so beware.

Social networking part 2 - Facebook

2007-10-31T17:36:00.000Z

Well i went and took the plunge and created a Facebook account, no doubt it will soon become as unused and unloved as my Myspace, Friendster, 6degrees and whatever accounts. But what i found interesting was how the Open University are embracing Facebook.

They have created a Facebook application that you can put on your profile page that shows your current OU course (i am an OU History undergraduate as well as working for BCU) and also linked it in with their systems so that you can only join the OU Network on Facebook if you have a current OU e-mail address. The BCU Network, by contrast, is available for everyone to join (as long as they say they are from here). Their Network is thus semi-official yet at the same time doesn't feel it.

In theory it would be possible to link in the Facebook network with the University e-mail system (an interesting task to give to ICT) but maybe this sort of pseudo-official link works more with an institution like the OU and wouldn't with a "traditional" type of University like us?

Anyway our students are embracing the site and have formed numerous groups on Facebook, including "TIC is the only good part of UCE - and it's still shit!" I wish i had had Facebook when i was a student here.

Gnosis - semantic web processing

2007-10-31T12:04:00.000Z

On my earlier entry about the semantic web i said that ClearForest SWS' Firefox plugin didn't install. Well now it seems to be working. Gnosis is the name and if you set it to process the webpage you are on you get this (click for full size) :

A side bar opens up with key information and concepts flagged up, though amusingly it thinks Perry Barr is a person. I am sceptical about how useful this actually is but i shall give it an extended road test and report back at a later date.

Social networking

2007-10-29T22:14:00.000Z

Social networking sites are one of the current big things, and every few months or so a new site becomes the must-use site. That is a problem i have found with these sites. I experimented with Myspace but then everyone seemed to move to Facebook, i didn't really feel like creating another account on there just for everyone to move to somewhere else by the time i had done it.

A few years ago i created an account on Friendster, which is very popular in Asia but not it seems that well known elsewhere. Which is another problem with these sites, the non-interoperability of them. If you have friends on Friendster and on Myspace you have to log into and maintain accounts on both to keep track. It would be nice to have an uber social networking portal that could manage your accounts across the various sites for you and integrate all the current activity. (Sounds like a great DotCom Bubble 2.0 project, give me 50 million... non returnable... in VC and i'll have a stab...)

So relevance of this? Well if we want to market the University on one of these sites which one? And is having an official presence on these sites a good idea? Personally i think no as it makes us look like Dads trying to dance to emo at their children's birthday party. The Union have a presence on places like Myspace and i think it is best left up to them. What do others think?

Semantic web

2007-10-29T19:30:00.000Z

The semantic web is supposed to be the next big thing, a web where computers understand the information on it so can help us find what we want much better than now. Twine is a forthcoming DotCom Bubble 2.0 project to help us organise our information for us. Apparently it automatically analyses and sorts our information into categories to assist us later when we want to retrieve it.

So buzz word fu, a solution for a problem we don't really have or really the next big thing? Sir Tim Berners-Lee of course is very keen on the semantic web and if it's cool with the Timster its cool with us. Maybe these things are worth trying out as it may help enhance the site or give us some ideas. Meta data is already with us of course.

An alternative is Clearforest SWS which includes a Firefox plugin... though it won't currently install. The online tool is interesting though, trying pasting in some text say from the BCU website (computer courses seem to yield more results). It records and lists technical and industry terms, creating meta data from the text.

Birmingham School of Acting

2007-10-25T15:38:00.001+01:00

This week I have been implementing some emergency changes to the BSA's website to bypass broken vital parts of the site such as the application forms. Because a replacement site is on the short-to-medium term horizon the changes are a bit of a kludge it is to be admitted and mix flat file HTML with existing CMS code.

It is a bit of a challenge mixing 2 technologies like this, especially without access to the source code, admin or design characteristics of the CMS. (It is a bit like being a forensic scientist, trying to find out whats happening from disparate and incomplete pieces of information. I am Web C.S.I. then!) Ideally you do not want people to notice that parts of the site have been replaced, though it will be unavoidable with the BSA site for example the flat file HTML parts use a Google Search as it was not feasible to use the CMS search engine.

Welcome to the Marketing & Communication Department's Web blog

2007-10-25T15:33:00.000+01:00

This is the blog of the web team at the Marketing & Communications Department at Birmingham City University. All opinions are those of the individual poster and not necessarily by the University, Department or even other members of the web team.