Cameron Neylon

I'm willing to keep an open mind but so far FF surpasses these in terms of networking and ease of use. But if you want to experiment I have accounts in many of these and I would be willing to try. - Jean-Claude Bradley

I'm really just looking to make sure that things haven't moved on and improved significantly, particularly in the light of the NIH projects. - Cameron Neylon

I tend to migrate to social networking sites based on "pull" - virtually the only time I go on LinkedIn or Facebook is when I get an email alert to something relevant to my interests. I would assume that if there was anything really cool going on in these new sites I would get these alerts generated by actions by you and my other friends. - Jean-Claude Bradley

BTW Cameron - that is one of the issues I'm finding with Wave - I tend not to check it because I don't get alerts that there are updates - is there a way to get an email alert for Wave updates? - Jean-Claude Bradley

Yes, there is an email alerter. I'll add you and it to Wave... - Cameron Neylon

Agreed to the general point though - if there isn't a pull, I'm not going there really. And I think that is a big issue with Wave - people just aren't checking in. - Cameron Neylon

@Jean-Claude I don't think there's currently a way of doing this with the current interface without adding a robot but I saw there's a robot on the Haskell public wave which has similar support http://wave-xmpp.appspot.com/public... - Dan Hagon

I'd be interested in testing (I recently started looking over Epernicus for an article on NGS). Where is the email alerter for Google Wave? Currently, I'm using Waveboard (Mac), which alerts you when there's activity. However, it needs to be running in order to do so. - Walter Jessen

Just added you to a Wave with the email notifier Walter... - Cameron Neylon

New SNS from American Institute of Physics, got email invite today: http://www.aipuniphy.org/ - Andrew Lang

Terrific. Are we still maintaining that list of "outputs resulting from FriendFeed"? - Neil Saunders

I was planning on doing a demo of annotation at PLoS before the end of the year - perhaps this article would be a good candidate. As always, anyone willing to join is welcome. - Daniel Mietchen

@ Neil: It's at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc... , and I have added the article as #25 (details missing). - Daniel Mietchen

i added a note once, but now it won't let me add any other notes :( I don't see a rule about one note per person. I should have held off for a good one. - Christina Pikas

I also just noticed that my "annotation" - provided the link to StackOverflow - shows up in the general discussion, where the title "Link" certainly is not helpful, and there is no way I can edit it. - Daniel Mietchen

maybe something is broken, my note appears in general comments but also in that portion of the text as a comment. maybe that's why I couldn't add other notes? - Christina Pikas

Not sure why you can't add more notes. Certainly been able to in the past. I see both notes where they are supposed to be I think. But they will also appear in the general comments as well I think. - Cameron Neylon

Great article! I really need to add some comments or notes, just to prove the authors' point :-) - Björn Brembs

BTW, when does PLoS finally get karma? I've been asking for proper 'show off' userprofiles for like ever :-) - Björn Brembs

As in PLoS Overflow? - Cameron Neylon

Cameron, et al. - What's the most useful thing I could do to nurture and support this renewed interest in article level metrics? (not from a competing data product point of view, but a let's get some good technologies out there with good visibility) - Mr. Gunn

@Cameron: Exactly! I even think having a profile where you can post a pic and see how many papers and comments were published, papers edited, etc.was the very first thing I asked for when I signed up :-) - Björn Brembs

But it needs to be federated across publishers... :-) - Cameron Neylon

if authors put in their 'customer' weight, this will go faster, so why not go syndicate :-) - Claudia Koltzenburg

I think I'll use this paper in my spring thesis class -- this is the main one where I discuss publishing models -- and maybe I'll demo Diigo with this as a class project next to an article that discusses IF. - Mickey Schafer

While we're on the subject of functionality wish lists, I would also like an embed functionality for PLoS papers. Collecting my publications together but don't want to duplicate copies and reduce googlejuice for the journal - at least not for the OA papers anyway... - Cameron Neylon

Whilst not a darts-player http://www.flickr.com/photos... , I think Cameron has hit the "triple-twenty" there :) - Graham Steel

BTW, why isn't there a way to register this thread with the article? Why are we posting here and not on the article? There's got to be a lesson to be learned from this :-) - Björn Brembs from iPhone

http://bullseyevaluation.com/yahoo_s... - Graham Steel

Done. See comment #4. - Graham Steel

Search results: http://topsy.com/s... from Topsy http://labs.topsy.com/about/ - Jim Till

I've included a link to this thread in a blog post: Article-level metrics getting attention http://ff.im/bGuNY - Jim Till

+1 Bjoern :-) another question along these lines would be: why does Cameron's intial FF message link to CiteULike and not to http://www.plosbiology.org/article..., or plainly doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000242 ? - Claudia Koltzenburg

Because that was the way I brought the link in. I think that that pointer is appropriate. It is a pointer to the fact that I bookmarked it. Other people linked to the paper directly. Perhaps the issue is that we accidentally aggregated around the "wrong" item to talk about the paper. I'm not sure this is a problem as long as the referral works - its a UI irritation not a problem with... more... - Cameron Neylon

well, not directly, maybe in this ff-thread we're just providing some material for what you say in your paragraph "Technical Solutions to Social Problems", namely: "approaches that gather information from processes that are already part of the typical research workflow are also much more likely to succeed." - even though ff may not be part of 'the typical research workflow' (yet?) - and... more... - Claudia Koltzenburg

See the http://friendfeed.com/swat4ls... for much more coverage... - Egon Willighagen

Lots more on twitter too http://twitter.com/#search... - Duncan Hull

I am particularly interesting in the 'publish-in-database-x' features... someone mumbling ChemPedia? - Egon Willighagen

My thinking at the moment is limited to some sort of centralised data store just so that we can keep things simple in terms of building an exemplar. So objects get pushed via REST to the store and then the store generates RSS feeds. Theory being that in the longer term one can build "plugins" for any service that has a REST deposition system and generates a suitable RSS/Atom feed. - Cameron Neylon

Very interesting. - Jill O'Neill

Not for the existing universities but does anyone really care about them anymore? - Cameron Neylon

Yup, the parents who pay the bills care about them. Ask the Ivy league and Oxbridge. The staff who work in them care about them. Employers are also keen on them. And students. - AJCann

But will parents continue to care if they can get the same cheaper elsewhere? Will employers if they can get a better idea of a prospect's interests and skills from a detailed and diverse portfolio? Students want to make connections I grant and that remains the one major strength of a single site, branded education, that I can't see going away. Looking at the parallels between newspapers and universities is instructive IMO and not comforting. - Cameron Neylon

Can people get the same elsewhere? Ask an 18 year old looking forward to leaving home and campus social life for three years. The decision to enter HE is not purely academic. - AJCann

No, they can't. Not at the moment. I'm wondering what happens when someone starts to offer it though. I can see the whole edifice coming crashing down around our ears. - Cameron Neylon

I see distance education as a different market from traditional campus-based universities. In some cases, the two may cross over, but they are distinct. Take a look at any university brochure and see what they're selling, it's very different from an online course. I'm not arguing that distance education will continue to grow, or that campus-based universities will serve increasingly... more... - AJCann

How about a model that satisfies a multitude of needs: developing world education - tutors on site in volunteer projects - students arrive, get their education by remote, but at the same time do volunteer work (hands on). (also allows local provision improvements) - then students are happily away from home. Although I suspect many of them won't want to be _that_ far from home ... - Anna Croft

There was a heroic attempt to create a campus on a ship that sailed the world: http://www.thescholarship.com/ . It sailed for only one year, due to problems with the bottom line. I would love to see further attempts in this direction! - Daniel Mietchen

@cameron The open university has offered the option of taking a degree at a ditance for years. Their 18-25 demographic is increasing, but very slowly. The traditional reasons for going t university for the experience of leaving home still persist, even when it is cheaper to take an OU degree than a campus based one in terms of fees alone.One of the big problems with openlearn was lack... more... - Jo Badge

But we're still thinking about degrees. Is a degree a useful measure of education or training any more? What is more valuable to a job applicant: a degree from [insert name of rubbish university here] or an independent verifiable certificate that someone has done a course on biological science from MIT? Not saying that the answers are clear, just that I fear we're in danger of being blinded by the assumption that education can, will, or should continue in the way it is at the moment. - Cameron Neylon

I agree accreditation is the key problem - but its already the key problem as soon as you step outside your comfort zone. There are Chinese universities with entry standards higher than Oxford but I have no clue which ones they are or what to look for a student transcript. - Cameron Neylon

agree that accrediation and international standards are a major issue. Our own VC has plans on the accessiblity of a transcript for degrees ;-) (http://www.guardian.co.uk/educati...) - Jo Badge

Of course, if we go the independent verifiable certificate from MIT, we loose the diversity of the current system (well, the government wants that anyway, but still). Knowledge automatons. I guess though that your CV will then have to have MIT certificate + specialist course from xxx to differentiate you from the crowd. - Anna Croft

We might lose diversity of courses - not necessarily a bad thing, do we really need 50 slightly different chemistry degrees in the UK? - but doesn't that enable an increased diversity of outcomes? 1,2,5,10 year courses based on what suits the person, picking and choosing from what will give them what they need? - Cameron Neylon

Wow, that sounds heavy! - Ricardo Vidal

Actually its only around 9M I think but I'm losing the last twelve months of posts. Too late now, I'll email Bill tomorrow and see if he can raise the quota. - Cameron Neylon

Text only? That's a lot of spam... - Björn Brembs from iPhone

well, "like" may not be the right word... :) - Allyson Lister

No, but it is a bit much... - Cameron Neylon