Lesley Anderson

Aggregation, syndication and the social engine

Explain how the Elgg social engine works on a Web site where it is installed?
Is this the type of application you want on your Web server in the workplace?

Elgg is built on LAMP[i] it is open source software, released under the GPL[ii].  Elgg has its own system of plug-ins and also supports RSS, OpenID, FOAF and XML-RPC for integration with most blogging sites.

Elgg provides each user with their own blog, file repository, online profile and RSS reader and their content can be tagged with keywords - connecting them to users with similar interests and giving the ability to create their own PLN(Personal Learning Network).  It is different to other blog facilities or commercial Social Networking sites such as Facebook in the amount of control users are given over who can access the content they publish. Each individual profile item, blog post or uploaded file can be assigned its own access restriction, ranging from being fully public to only readable by a selected user or group of users.

New Elgg users begin by creating an identity which says who they are and what they are interested in. Published items can be tagged and the software uses these tags to connect other users with similar interests. Read the rest of this entry »

Aggregation, syndication and the social engine

How do you see services such as those provided at the GoToWeb20.net 
site as changing the way that YOU and your future workgroups operate?

Accessing GoToWeb20.net - I found an interesting experience. I was really unsure of the purpose of the site as there is not much explanation about it.

This is the page that I was taken to when I used the link.

From this page - clicking on a link such as Mindmap, took me to a page that listed mindmapping websites, sites that offered mindmapping tools - either for free or cmmercially available. 
Searching did much the same thing - I searched for an interest of mine - scrapbooking -  and was presented with a page of sites about scrapbooking. Read the rest of this entry »

Aggregation, syndication and the social engine

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website.
What does this mean and what are the advantages for workgroups?
Discuss how del.icio.us uses the term ‘tag’ in a different context to what Web publishers would be familiar.

With billions of web-pages, it makes sense that we are able to pull out the best or most useful pages we require, with relative ease. We could bookmark into the browser of our computer but then the links are tied only to one computer - when we switch computers we don’t have access to our bookmarked sites. 

Social bookmarking sites - such as delicious have changed this. 

Delicious doesn’t use a browser but uses a website instead. A user signs up for a free account and adds a couple of buttons to the browser - a delicious symbol and a tag symbol.

The delicious symbol - is a link to www.delicious.com which takes the user to the main page of the site showing a list of the newest bookmarks available from users.

The tag symbol - is the button a user presses if they want to add a new bookmark to the website. Read the rest of this entry »

Aggregation, syndication and the social engine

What is RSS and explain what aggregation and syndication are  and how they have changed the nature of the Web. How do you subscribe to an RSS feed?

RSS - Really Simple Syndication has changed the way people gather and use information on the Web. For the subscriber it is a tool useful for saving or retaining updated information on websites frequently visited or which are their favourite. For the web publisher or website owner it is an easy and efficient way to distribute website headlines, update notices, and content to a wide number of people.

In order to set up these connections or feeds a user requires an RSS reader or aggregator.  These may be either web based (Google Reader) or desk-top based (MS Outlook 2007) and it is these readers that place all the information in one place for easy retrieval and interaction by the user - aggregation.

The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed’s URL or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser to begin the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to easily monitor, manage and read the feeds Read the rest of this entry »