Jonathan's blog

I bumped into Steve Bailey of JISC infoNet for the first time recently. He has some very interesting things to say about the challenges that Records Managers face as the world continues at a pace through web 2.0 and beyond (check out the notes section on the slide download for the detail). He was also kind enough to quote from our lunchtime conversation on his new blogspot. I'm looking forward to meeting up with him again and other panelist at this year's Witness Seminar 22-23 October, hosted by Northumbria University. Maybe see you there too?

If you haven't seen a demonstration of Photosynth yet, you should take yourself to the website or even better be blown away by the Ted Talk. We are always in need of simple tagging mechanisms, particularly with photographs and images, this looks like revolution! The Seadragon software also carries a lot of potential for web and information navigation.

In my last entry I expressed surprise that there had been so little web based progress with mind mapping software (being a bit of a fan). What do you know 3 new tools bubbl.us, Mindmo and MindMeister have been launched. There is an excellent overview article which points out that only MindMeister makes us of Ajax. Although not the prettiest I have found MindMeister the easiest to use particularly as a regular Freemind user. I continue to look forward to a greater role of such tools in everyday web navigation.

I am a real fan of mind mapping. As well as a thinking aid and information management tool, I think they could be an excellent interface for navigating the mind blowingly large amount of material on the web. I got very excited a few years ago when I discovered Inxight's StarTree Viewer (there is a fairly unimpressive NASA demo), but nothing much seems to have happened with it. With the rise of Ajax and hugh leaps forward in web user interface, I don't really understand why there isn't more exploration in this area. So, two questions; [1] Is anyone developing a web tool for creating mind maps (equivalent to the open source Freemind software I use)? [2] Is anyone exploring this style of interface for presentation and navigation on the web? Bill Scott's Mind Mapping Design Patterns is the closest I've got so far, here he uses mind maps to describe design patterns, but doesn't bring the two together. Can anyone help?

What is Reverse Ajax? In this article I use love, a French lesson and a donkey to illustrate the 3 main techniques for facilitating server updates to the browser as used by Reverse Ajax. Enjoy! Full Article.