Tuesday, September 23, 2008

IBM Announces Center for Social Software

I'm grateful for people pointing me to IBM's September 17th announcement of its Center for Social Software. The research program looks very exciting. Read more here.

Their goals are to
  • Explore, innovate and commercialize best practices in social networking.
  • Work with forward-thinking businesses to pilot and customize enterprise social networks unique to their industry profile.
  • Create jointly funded research collaborations with government, academia, industry and venture capital participation.
  • Design the future of IBM's Web 2.0 collaboration portfolio, including social discovery, social search and new scalable architectures for social software including cloud computing.
  • Further social software governance: formal policies encouraging or constraining the uses of social networking in organizations.
  • Develop the science of social software: Quantifying social networking.
  • Explore cultural differences in the use of social software.

They will offer internships and corporate residencies as well. I did not hesitate to subscribe to their feed, and as they invited, "stay tuned."

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Sir Tim sees need for web trust rating system

Who do you trust on the web?

Warning sounded on web's future

By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News

Giant magnet at Cern, AFP/Getty
Some feared firing up the LHC would doom the Earth

The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web.

Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation.

Sir Tim spoke prior to the unveiling of a Foundation he has co-created that aims to make the web truly worldwide.

It will also look at ways to help people decide if sites are trustworthy and reliable sources of information.

Read the article.