Web science institute goes phut: “Low priority” says coalition

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From BBC News.

Funding for a new Institute for Web Science, set up with a £30m grant from the department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis) has been cut.

The collaboration between the Universities of Oxford and Southampton, announced in March 2010, was led by web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt.

Both are also leading the government’s open data project data.gov.uk.

BIS said it was a “low priority” as it announced its efficiency savings.

The cut is part of Chancellor George Osborne’s plans to make £6.2bn savings in order to reduce the budget deficit.

A spokesperson from Bis said that the government remained committed to investing in internet technology research elsewhere but that it “cannot support” the creation of the institute in the current economic climate.

Behind the Digger’s Paywall

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The FT has an interesting peek behind the impending Murdoch paywall.

“It looks a lot like a newspaper, which I don’t think we’re apologising for,” said Tom Whitwell, assistant editor of the Times. “The article pages we think are simple and clean, and easy to read.”

He talks of a “news hierarchy”, with fewer stories thrown at the reader than most newspaper websites. “We are not going to show you all the news,” he says, comparing that favourably with “Google News showing you 4,000 versions of the same thing. We are giving you our take on the news.”

The Times’ stories will not be among those 4,000, with not even a headline visible in the Google index (or indeed that of any other search engine). Peculiarly, the existing TimesOnline site will live on after the paywall goes up for an indeterminate time, although it won’t be updated – an admission, perhaps, of how baked into the web its links already are.

The funniest thing in the piece is the burbling of Danny Finkelstein, the engaging Times Comment Editor:

“We can project the Times with all its tradition and iconography, but on the web,” he enthused.

Few of the Times employees presenting their plans used the word ‘paywall’ unprompted. But Mr Finkelstein insisted this barrier would not prevent him from sharing links to his articles on Twitter or cut the newspaper out of a wider online conversation. Rivals without the protection of a paywall “won’t go viral, they will go out of business”, he said.

Although there were hints that extracts might occasionally be visible to non-subscribers in the future, the Times’ content will remain tightly locked up with not even a first paragraph to tease in new customers. This apparently aids the “clarity” of the offering, in contrast to the less binary model offered by the Wall Street Journal and the FT.

“We are unashamed about this,” said Mr Finkelstein. “We are trying to make people pay for the journalism…. I want my employer to be paid for the intellectual property they are paying me for.”

Aw, shucks. It was nice knowing these guys. But I guess they’ll find jobs outside the paywall.

I liked what Steve Hewlett said about it on the Today programme this morning. To paraphrase him, everyone in the newspaper business is cheering them on and hoping it will work — but thinking that it won’t.

tblair@khoslaventures.com – the new tech guy on the block

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Truly, you couldn’t make this up.

SAUSALITO, Calif. — Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, is turning his attention to Silicon Valley. Mr. Blair is becoming a senior adviser at Khosla Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, an investor and a proponent of green technology.

Khosla Ventures, which Mr. Khosla founded in 2004 after leaving the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, made the announcement here on Monday at a meeting of its investors. The firm is investing $1.1 billion in clean technology and information technology companies.

Mr. Blair will offer strategic advice on public policy to the firm’s green portfolio companies. They include Calera, a manufacturer that uses carbon dioxide to create cement products; Kior, which converts biomass like wood chips into biofuels; and Pax Streamline, which aims to make air-conditioning more environmentally friendly.

“The more I studied the whole climate change issue and linking it with energy security and development issues, I became absolutely convinced that the answer is in the technology,” Mr. Blair said in an interview.

You know what this appointment reminds me of? Mike Lynch’s decision to appoint Richard Perle (aka the US Prince of Darkness) to the Board of Autonomy.

So what is Google TV, exactly?

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Engadget’s answer.

Google TV isn't a single product — it's a platform that will eventually run on many products, from TVs to Blu-ray players to set-top boxes. The platform is based on Android, but instead of the Android browser it runs Google's Chrome browser as well as a full version of Flash Player 10.1. That means Google TV devices can browse to almost any site on the web and play video — Hulu included, provided it doesn't get blocked. It also means that Google TV devices can run almost all Android apps that don't require phone hardware. You'll still need to keep your existing cable or satellite box, however — most Google TV devices won't actually have any facility for tuning TV at launch, instead relying on your existing gear plugged in over HDMI to do the job. There's a lot of potential for clunkiness with that kind of setup, so we'll have to see how it works in person.

Yep. Judging from my experience with the (deeply flawed) T-mobile Pulse Android phone, we certainly will. Here’s my prediction: common platform, lots of different hardware, nobody taking responsibility for ensuring that the thing works as a whole, millions of pissed-off customers.

How (and why) Facebook is sharing people’s secrets with the world

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This morning’s Observer column.

If you think that privacy is an abstract concern of EU bureaucrats and libertarians with too much time on their hands, then might I suggest that you consult youropenbook.org. This is an ingenious site which allows you to type in a search phrase. It then ransacks the publicly available Facebook “status updates” and displays what it finds.

A search for “I cheated”, for example, brings up all kinds of intriguing stuff. A nice young woman from Baltimore posted “dam right i cheated i coulnt get it from u wen i needed it”. There’s also the odd potentially embarrassing reference to cheating in exams. A search for “I lied” brings up updates like “I’m sorry, I lied before when I said I used to make lots of bets. My therapist tells me I should try lying a lot to help get through my… gambling problem”. Another writes “im not gonna bother anymore…theres no point hiding the truth…..iv lost too much and all because i lied to the one i love…im such a fukin dick head, i fucked up the best girl i’ve ever had”.

I could go on but you will get the point. All of these people are instantly identifiable. Millions of Facebook users are posting embarrassing or damaging messages which can be read by the entire internet…

Linguistic pollution

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One of the (many) things that infuriated me during the election campaign was all the cant about politicians needing to have the “courage” to make “tough” choices and “painful” decisions. Er, excuse me, but who’s going to feel this much-heralded “pain”? Isn’t it the people who jobs will be terminated, students whose life-chances will be diminished, workers who will have to make do on lower pensions, teachers who will have to handle bigger classes, patients who will have to wait longer for operations, soldiers who will have to do without wearable body-armour? And besides, since when did it require courage to inflict pain on others?

And then there’s the alleged uniqueness of our new Con-Dem administration which is, we are told, the first non-wartime coalition for x hundred years. Er, are we not at “war” in Afghanistan at the moment? And what about the “war on terror”?

Yuck.