I think this move strengthens the fact that there is a growing market in Turkey. Earlier we had heard that Myspace was getting ready into the Turkish social networking scene. Looks like there is going to be a nice competition of global players in Turkey pretty soon. On the other hand, it is also obvious that Turkish users are valued way cheaper at 15 euros/member.

What makes this tour an experiment is that in addition to this traditional reporting, Hammersley will also be posting news to his blog, pictures to Flickr, videos to YouTube and he will be microblogging on Twitter. Moreover, he will be sharing his bookmarks on del.icio.us and networking on Facebook.

I find this news very interesting and noteworthy not only because this is going to take place in Turkey during the general elections but also because this is a great demonstration of how traditional media can embrace the external tools of the web.

Richard Sambrook, director of BBC Global News, says:

This is an experiment to look at how a series of international reports can be spread through social media sites and hopefully reach new audiences.
…
The interesting thing that we?re doing is that the majority of the content that we?re going to be producing online is going to be hosted externally on different external sites. We?re using services which are already very popular. ?By using external tools we?re able to do very interesting things very quickly without resorting to any enormously long development time. It?s about being part of the web, rather than on the web.

I think the above quote coming from a traditional media director is very insightful and very true. This shows that BBC is understanding the value of external tools and really embracing their 15 web principles. As the Press Gazette article points at, this experiment is very much guided by the 5th principle: ?Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don?t restrict your creativity to your own site.?

I will definitely follow Hammersley in his journey and will be following his reports and look forward to socialize with him on Facebook. If you are interested here is how you can follow this social media experiment:

Ben Hammersley’s blog
Ben Hammersley’s Twitter
Ben Hammersley’s Flickr Photo Stream
Ben Hammersley’s del.ico.us bookmarks
Ben Hammersley’s YouTube videos

bbc, social media, ben hammersley, turkey elections

I have just noticed that Vanderbilt has a website for the student community: InsideVandy. The tagline says it is Vanderbilt University’s online student community. It is a site with content created by the students for the students. I think this is a great initiative by Vandy. About page reveals that this is a project of the Student Media at Vanderbilt University.

The website is built on Drupal as it is evident from the site icon and the install directory. The design looks neat. But most importantly it is a platform for Vandy students to voice their opinions and interact with other students. Registered users can have a blog, post pictures, and submit stories. I have no idea if this is precedented. If so, I would like to see what other university has this kind of a website that lets students create content and blog.

Among the interesting content that I noticed after spending very little time on the site is the daily Vanderbilt TV (VTV) vidcast. Unfortunately, there is no way that I was able to find to see all the video clips on that vidcast page. However, looks like they use YouTube to post and store the videos so the VandyTV channel more useful to subscribe to for getting all the video clips.

Also on the Multimedia page, there are so called Student Films which showcase short films produced by Vandy students. This is also a great idea. However, as in the case of the VTV vidcast, it would be very good if there were a seperate feed for those video posts.

I will be watching this space for a while and see how it evolves. It is great to see signs of user-centric web projects here at Vandy. I had written about the Vanderbilt news podcasts (vucast) before, and now InsideVandy. It just feels good to see how Vanderbilt adapts to the changing trends on the web.

[tags]vanderbilt, insidevandy, web 2.0 [/tags]

However, what is more interesting here is what the Blogoscoped points at: Google’s strength at locking in the users. It is obvious when you think about it. You are already using Gmail, and once you are inside that application it is way more convenient to use Google’s spreadsheet program to download and open the attachment in any such software. Google already has an mp3 player to play mp3 attachments inside Gmail. One day, they may convert any video format to Google Video format on the fly and offer opening any video attachments in Google Video. I would hardly oppose because it would be convenient.

This got me thinking about lock-ins and monopoly. Microsoft was burned big time and blamed for monopoly and anti-trust when they bundled their browser and media player inside the Windows OS. Competitiors complained this was competitive advantage and users would not bother using any other program. Is Google doing the same thing? I think, in a way, they are. It is not easy to notice at first glance since the platform is different. Google is building a web OS slowly as they offer email, office, calendar, media player, maps etc. They are integrating all their services together as one would expect. How is this different than what MS did? How long will it take before competitors start complaining about Google’s practices?

There are not too many people complaining about Google’s such actions. I am not complaining about this at the moment as well. Because, I use the products, enjoy using them and they are usually the better ones in the market, if not the best. I think many people are not complaining mainly because the applications that Google is locking us in are not inferior. They are user friendly, and their actions just feel convenient instead of anti-trust.

Technorati tags: google, gmail, google docs, spreadsheets, microsft, Gmail Offers to Open XLS in Spreadsheets, antitrust, monopoly

[tags] technology, google, microsoft, gmail, monopoly[/tags]

Tim Berners-Lee says:

It?s people and, yes, they are connected by computers. But computer science, as the study of what happens in a computer, doesn?t tell you about what happens on the Web.

Probably using this perspective, researchers point out that Web science has both social and engineering dimensions. The social dimension includes the social networks aspect of today’s web. Researchers also point out that the web science shifts the focus of computer science from how a single computer works to how a decentralized web system works.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is positive about Web science as he says:

This kind of research is likely to have a lot of influence on the next generation of researchers, scientists and, most importantly, the next generation of entrepreneurs who will build new companies from this.

The NY Times article also points out the intersection of Web science with the so-called “services science”. Services science is described as a study to figure out how computing can be used in other fields like economy. This type of research is backed up by I.B.M., Accenture and Hewlett-Packard, and by the National Science Foundation.

One possible research area of Web science is highlighted as privacy in the article. I think it is a good example because in today’s web it is not enough to deal with privacy in the technical sense of restricting access to databases with sensitive information. The emergence and increasing popularity of social networks encourage users to share personal information which may not seem sensitive at the time. It is definitely important to understand the social aspect of the web as it stands today and to put some social aspect to the mere algorithmic side of computer science.

[tags]technology, web, web science, computer science [/tags]

As YouTube is trying to convert gazillion visitors into some cold cash, Microsoft announced today that they are launching their MSN Video service Soapbox as an invitation-only beta service.

The announcement says that powerful Web 2.0 technologies are used to provide a great experience for the users. We will probably have more idea as more people start using it and those beta testers start reviewing the new service. It will be interesting to see how far this Microsoft catch-up action will fly and whether it will be able to compete with Google Video and YouTube.

One interesting feature of Soapbox is that the Flash and Windows media formats will be stored in the backend and will be delivered to the user according to their OS platform-browser combination.

More comments about Soapbox can be found here, here and here.

Techorati Tags: microsoft, msn video, soapbox, youtube

[tags] technology, microsoft, video, soapbox, youtube[/tags]

More on that later.

Update: Actually, trying to add the public iCal address created a problem. So, I just imported the CVS file that I exported from 30Boxes.

Technorati Tags: google, google calendar, calendar, ajax calendar

[tags]google, tech, calendar[/tags]

I will let you know about my thoughts after I use it for a while.

google, google-rss-aggregator, bloglines

Here are some links on that new announcement:

Search Engine Watch: Google Launches Industrial Strength Blog Search
Anil Dash: Google Launches Blog Search
Scoble: Google’s new blog search makes a great first impression
Dave Winer: Google adds blog search