Just another dent in the damage…

When I began thinking about dissertation topics over two years ago I was met by one particular unenthusiastic criticism due to my lack of knowledge regarding the Persian language. I don’t think she ever really understood my subject or why it was important. it was either that or she was too busy playing around in Second Life to give it more than a second thought (maybe that’s another reason why I hate Second Life so much). But rather than let it drop I developed my ideas and took them elsewhere.

It was during the run up to dissertation proposals that I was becoming increasingly aware of Internet censorship in Iran and the growth of the Iranian blogosphere and decided that I’d like to explore this academically with the hope of encouraging further research or laying the foundations for a PhD later in life. I don’t necessarily think I ever achieved that or ever will, purely because I ran out of steam. It was my own doing. You know when you wrap yourself up in something so intensely for a long period of time that once it’s done you never want to look at it again? It was like that. I got my distinction and that was enough. But I’m beginning to realise that it wasn’t the end, it was only the beginning. The story continues and maybe I should be trying to tell it, in my own words?

I started with the concept of Internet censorship – how it was being censored, who was censoring it and why – and wanted to explore strategies being developed to smash down the system, to stick it to the man, to carry on regardless. But this was before Google Translate (although limited it seems to be serving a basic purpose right now) and with no Persian translator I was forced to restrict my exploration to a minority of weblogs written by Iranians in English. I specifically looked at weblogs because they were accessible and easy to document and analyse. All the data collection would be my own doing and analysed with my own criteria. But what exactly was I trying to find out? How would I use weblogs as an example of anti-censorship or more over a strategy to bypass censorship?

Having an idea about what you want your outcome to be always seems to cloud what you need to do to get there, to prove it let’s say. I wanted to look at the writing styles across a sample of Iranian weblogs to assess how people were saying things without really saying them – to look at the poetic metaphors Iranians so often use to describe all manners of life, love, feelings and even politics. To see whether the deep-rooted cultural norm of separating the private and public spheres applied to anonymous weblogs. But what would I compare these writing styles to? I decided that in order to assess how Internet filtering effects Iranian weblogs written inside Iran I’d need to sample Iranian weblogs written in the diaspora. Those written by the displaced, the deposed or even the die-hards who might be more likely to evade self-censorship given the lack of Internet filtering in the more moderate west.

And so I did and if you’re interested in actually reading the thing it’s available online. It’s called Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere (and it’s also available in Google Scholar with a couple of spelling errors – doh). I also kept a wiki going whilst doing my research but I’m afraid my updates have lapsed a little. Some of the work I did here has come spilling back to me this week and become ever more relevant. given how Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, proxy services and weblogs are currently being used in the aftermath of Iran’s distuted election.

Read Write Web has a really interesting post about a Twitter experiment in which a University of Texas History Professor, Monica Rankin, uses Twitter in a classroom environment to discuss the class topics.

Rankin uses a weekly hashtag to organize comments, questions and feedback posted by students to Twitter during class. Some of the students have downloaded Tweetdeck to their computers, others post by SMS or by writing questions on a piece of paper. Rankin then projects a giant image of live Tweets in the front of the class for discussion and suggests that students refer back to the messages later when studying. The Professor’s results so far have been mixed but it is clear that more students are participating in classroom discussions than they used to.

I think this is a fantastic way of generating bigger discussions and it gives students the opportunity to refer back to what was said and continue to contribute after the session. This then builds up a really useful study aid for when students need to compile coursework or prepare for exams. As a rather quiet student I think I’d have been much more vocal on something like Twitter as I find it much easy to get my written point across than my vocal one.

At my organisation we have introduced an Echo 360 system in which lectures get recorded and published within a student’s virtual learning environment alongside all the teaching materials used in class to ‘rewind, relive and reconnect with the classroom experience’. Twitter could in fact be another great way for us to do this and something I would definitely encourage academics to get involved with.

The other day I was quietly working away when I overheard:

But I don’t want to use Twitter, I’m not interested in what people are having for their lunch.

Firstly, how can you not be interested in what people are having for lunch? I actually find this fascinating and often recommend good places for people to get their chips and falafel from. But I understand that there are people out there not as nosey as I am or generally interested in what people do.

So, instead of arguing about why I think Twitter is the best thing ever I thought I’d put my energy into thinking about things you can do with Twitter (other than telling people how good your falafel wrap was). I know there is already a wealth of information for the Twitter user out there but you know, I wanted to throw my two cents in as well.

Who do you follow?

Well, generally I follow people who match one of this criteria:

• people from real life – friends, family (although my Dad hasn’t discovered Twitter yet – shame it’s the perfect way to spy on me) and work colleagues;
• librarians or information specialists posting interesting links to current issues or discussing new technologies etc;
• news services – including The Guardian Tech, New Scientist, Hollyoaks and Heatworld (obviously);
• whale defenders and marine conservationists – because we’ve got to save the whale to save ourselves;
• vegans – I like stealing recipes and looking at pictures of cake;
• and crafters – it’s a good way of finding free patterns etc.

The problem I have then is keeping the personal and the professional separate, particularly as I worry about being too personal in the professional. For example I’m majorly opposed to whaling (as you probably know) but as this has no relevance to my work do colleagues really need to know it? And should I be telling people about long line fishing in the Galapagos whilst having a break from my book orders? Plus there are those examples of how not to use Twitter. Yet given I actually love my job, my boss is really cool (seriously) and I don’t moan about being bored (usually because when times are quiet I get on the look out for new blog material or ways to improve services for students) then I don’t really see this being an issue for me. I did bad mouth Bloglines once though after a frustrating morning and got caught out by their auto searching, but they were actually more helpful than anything else.

One way of overcoming these problems are to make your updates private, but seen as Googling ‘lex rigby’ fills out the first however many pages of my stuff (although I was never a Communist Student and have nothing to apologise for) then it seems odd to try and make my tweets private. I’m quite an easy person to find out information about. I’m a science and engineering librarian particularly interested in new technologies, I’m insanely fond of whales and cats, I craft, I read stuff about Iran (mainly involving women and human rights) and I’m vegan. Simple eh. And I guess that if people didn’t want to know what Bella’s up to they wouldn’t follow me anyway.

What do you use it for?

The most useful thing I have found to do with Twitter is to do with #tags or hashtags. Hashtags are assigned to subjects/people/categories/conferences/companies/hobbies/films or whatever and are a great way to find out what people are saying about them. In putting a hash sign in front of a word you’re essentially creating a link to a stream involving everyone talking about that particular subject. And the great thing is is that it’s all in real time! A real-time search engine, now that is amazing.

OK, so say I attended the 2009 Lilac conference (I didn’t but some of my colleagues did) and I wanted to say something about what I was hearing alls I need to do is say it (or rather type it) and put a #lilac09 tag in. Voi la. But then say I wanted to know what other people were saying alls I’d have to do is go to Twitter Search (or one of the other many search sites) and put in #lilac09 and start eavesdropping. It truly is a fantastic way of searching – built for the people, by the people.

I discovered this during the Mumbai attacks last year. I wanted to know what was happening before the news stories told me and stumbled upon Mumbai attacks coverage powered by a service called Monitter. Brilliant, now I was getting real time updates from the people there on location, as well as others reporting on events as the news unfolded.

But what could I use it for?

Well, other than using #tags to keep on top of your interests there are a vast number of other things to use Twitter for:

• Use Twitpic to share your photos;
• use Tiny URL to shorten links into your 140 character limit;
• use @ signs to reply to tweets and engage in conversation e.g. ‘@lexrigby that was really funny’ (or direct messages to make your responses private);
• use Tweetworks to start discussions or join groups;
• use Twittangle to filter your timeline by rating users and tagging favourites (very useful if you follow people like Stephen Fry and get sick of his updates);
• use Twtpoll to create a survey;
• use Trackthis to track a package from UPS, Fedex, USPS, DHL etc;
• use direct messages to update your LibraryThing book shelf;
• use Twittercal to update your Google calendar;
• use Tweetbeep for a bit of vanity searching;
• use Fuelfrog to track your gas mileage;
• use Botanicalls to get your plants to tweet you when it’s hungry;
• use a Greasemonkey user script (a Firefox add-on) to get Twitter updates in your Google results page;
• or use RFID chips, computers and cameras to keep track of your cats.

See, it’s not just good for finding out what people had for lunch! It’s so much more than that.

In the space of a day I’ve gone from being super skeptical of quick response (QR) codes to super enthusiastic – which is a weird predicament for me anyhow. I’m usually pretty quick on embracing new technologies but I just didn’t get what the fuss was about with these things. Now that I’ve had a bit of a play about with them I’m kinda getting them and beginning to see their usefulness in the library setting/educational sector. It obviously helps having a good piece of reader software but I’ll get to that bit later.

So what are QR codes?

Hailing from Japan, these two-dimensional barcodes are a device used to store information that can be downloaded at high speed (hence the name ‘quick response) via mobile phones. Originally they were being used as a tracking device but these days you can pretty much use them for just about anything. They can store text, URLs, telephone numbers,  and even entire poems (The Walrus and the Carpenter).  Put simply they’re like the next generation barcode. Traditional barcodes (those that you see on your baked beans) are only able to hold about 20 digits whereas QR codes have the potential to contain 7000 digits and 4300 alpha-numeric characters. Now that’s cool!

What do they look like?

Generally, they look a little something like this:

These small squares are usually 2cm x 2cm and feature a pattern of black and white pixels, which encode its contents. This example above contains the URL for my weblog and should you want to test how it works you’ll find that you’ll be re-directed right back here – pretty clever huh?

How do they work?

To retrieve the information contained within a QR code you’ll need a) a mobile camera phone and b) some QR reader software to decode the information held within the image. I lacked this second part for a bit and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t read the darn thing, looking back it’s pretty obvious something was missing. Doh. Anyway, what you need to do is use your camera to first of all snap a picture and then as if by magic the software converts the information into something more familiar. I have an iPhone so decided to play around with some of the free apps available in the app store and come to the conclusion that I really like BeeTagg. Looking at their website you’ll see they support quite a range of phones but failing that try a few of these:

• Kaywa;
• Nokia Mobile;
• Upcode;
• Quickmark.

How do I make my own QR code?

To make the image above I used the Kaywa QR Generator but there are loads of others to choose from. I just found the simple layout easy to use and easy to copy. Just select what type of message you want to encode, enter the information you want in your image into the box and voila, your very own QR code.

But what’s so great about them?

Had I been asked this question yesterday I probably would of said “nothing, they’re just another useless fad that people who think they’re ahead of the times buzz about on”. Now however I’d probably said something like “they’re a really useful tool for retrieving and storing information on the go, which help to connect you to the information you need much quicker”.

In libraries there are (upon reflection) a number of ways to get using QR codes, especially if you can’t afford those amazing RFID systems (but even then I don’t think these are particularly useful for library users in terms of retriving information about the item in your hand). Barcodes are used within libraries mainly to link items to a catalogue record. Using the traditional barcode the information contained is very limited and only by scanning the barcode (at the library counter) are you able to find further information contained within the catalogue record.

Now stop and think for one moment. If instead we started to use QR codes to label books, journals, audio/visual, offprints etc and a user wanted to see further information about that resource all they’d need to do is scan the QR code. They’d be able to find descriptive information, images, useful URLs etc all at the touch of a button on their phone. And what if at that moment in time they have too many books out? Well, by saving the QR code as an image they’d have a record of the resource stored on their phone so they’d be able to easily find it when they’re ready to loan it. Brilliant.

As a student I lost many a good book by scribbling down the shelfmark on numerous scraps of paper, leaving off other vital information such as its title/author, which I later misplaced. I’ve even lost count of the amount of times I strawn something on my hand to remind me to go and pick up that book at 575.0162 (D), only to find I’ve gone and washed my hands and half of the flaming thing’s missing. I’ve also had a great deal of experience helping users to find books from laboriously typed out messages on their mobile phones. What if there was someway to get this information onto your phone directly from the computer screen? Well, there is and it also saves on paper! Bath University are working on their catalogue adding text as QR codes to the bibliographic record summerising the key information, the resource title, the author, and the shelf location. For example see Bath’s library catalogue result for Sloman. By scanning the code from the screen I’ll have my own record of  ‘Economics for business / Sloman, John, 1947- Level 5 330 SLO’ on my phone to take to the shelf with me. Perfect.

What else?

How about using QR codes on your promotional/marketing materials to link users directly to where information can be found on the Internet? Do you have a library weblog? Are you producing leaflets to inform readers where they can find it? Why not stick a QR code on there so that they’re able to link directly to you? Got some particularly good skills tutorials you want your users to know about? Stick a QR code on your promotional material and they’ll find it straight away! Got an extensive reading list you want your students to read? Why not put a QR code on there to link students directly to the library catalogue record or even the article itself!! Fantastic eh? Why didn’t I think of any of this earlier.

Other sources:

• Tech Tips: High Capacity Bar Codes;
• iPhone in Education: Using QR Code in the Classroom;
• Educational QR Codes;
• Phones are close to cracking the barcode;
• What you need to know about QR codes.

Last week I attended my second Teaching Commons 2.0 entitled ‘Social Bookmarking: What is it and how can it be used in Higher Education?’ The commons is quite an informal discussion for both staff and students to come together and talk about their experiences of using web 2.0 technologies and how they can be applied to learning and teaching. This time Jamie Wood from the Inquiry Based Learning department opened the session, describing an activity in which he asked a group of students to use the social bookmarking tool Delicious to ‘tag‘ reading related to the course material.

At a grass roots level, for those not in the know, Delicious is a web 2.0 application used to bookmark webpages so that you can record and store your journey around the web. The good thing about using Delicious in this sense, as opposed to the bookmarking feature in any web browser, is that your bookmarks are held centrally – available from anywhere at anytime (providing you’ve an Internet connection) – and not restricted to the machine on which you made the bookmark. And by applying descriptive tags (keywords) to your bookmarks they become much easier to manage and organise.

So in this particular exercise Jamie encouraged his students to add two to three bookmarks a week that included one primary (deep links to subscription databases are supported – provided users are signed into their accounts), one secondary and one ‘other’ source such as a podcast or non-academic paper that related to the week’s topic. To this bookmark his students were also asked to add a short summary and descriptive keyword ‘tags’ to essentially categorise the resources. But, what Jamie seemed to be missing in his discussion was the reasons why we should bother to tag at all – This came later.

There are many reasons why people tag but generally I think these fall into four categories:

• To organise information into meaningful terms;
• To enable quick search mechanisms;
• To discover other resources with similar descriptive keywords;
• To create a network of folksonomies (as opposed to hierarchical taxonomies).

This last point seemed to form a great debate during the session as it was argued out as to whether it was more useful to create tags from predetermined categories or to opt for unstructured descriptions that even allow for spelling mistakes. Personally I’m in favour of the folksonomy arguments in that I prefer to write my own tags to create a more meaningful picture of links that I’m in control of. After all, creating a hierarchical taxonomy in tagging behaviour does seem to be the exact opposite of the general agreement of web 2.0 applications being collaborative networks.

Rather than asking students to sign up for individual accounts (which can be problematic due to the acceptance of third party terms and conditions) they were given access to a designated account set up by Jamie and all encouraged to tag items with their names (to distinguish between participation in the exercise). Generally I’d agree that this was a good work around the terms and conditions thing but in real life it meant that the social aspect was somewhat redundant with no opportunity to use the network features in Delicious to monitor peers etc and with students more technically keen or able than others the free riders were likely to become alienated from the group.

In conclusion Jamie indicated that the exercise had been well received with positive feedback communicated to the group. During exam time in particular students were appreciative of a designated resource bringing useful information together in one place with a searchable topic index. He’s intending to run the exercise again next year but using Diigo instead of Delicious and so it’ll be useful to see how they compare and whether one is more suited to the user’s needs than the other.

Teachingcommons: Teaching 2.0 Circle & Blogging

Twitter and Microblogging:

The general theme of last week’s teaching commons was the discussion of blogging – what it is and how it can be used. It intended to offer ideas to both those new to blogging about how to start up and get writing and to those wanting to get more out of it, if they’ve been blogging for a while, by introducing widgets and RSS. One area of particular interest for me, after reading Boutin’s article in Wired Magazine, was the discussion surrounding microblogging and how services like Twitter can be used in higher education.

Twitter is one of the more well known examples of microblogging, along with Jaiku, which limit posts to 140 characters. It’s basically a ’status update’ application like that found on Facebook but without all the other stuff. Instead of friends you get ‘followers’ and in turn you’re able to ‘follow’ others and their activities quite easily by searching names or locations. The good thing about Twitter is that once you’re signed up you may never need to visit http://www.twitter.com again. Twitter clients such as Twhirl or Twitterific are downloadable for free and automatically alert you to updates in real time as well as providing a user-friendly interface to search and add feeds to your profile. Updating your own status has also never been easier as there’s an abundance of medium to choose from – SMS messaging, email, desktop clients, IM clients and the web, and there’s an option to receive text messages of updates from those you choose to follow (limited to O2). This makes it fast and super user-friendly when it comes to posting quick updates about what you’re doing, whose keynote your listening to, what amazing new product has just been released or even what you’re having for tea.

I have mini obsessions with it. Some weeks I’ll be posting my life story, in others I can’t quite get why anybody would be interested in what I’m doing, in others I think ‘I’m not sure I’m really making the most of this’, in others I think ‘I wish I actually knew more people using Twitter’ maybe I’d feel like less of a stalker and in others I give up completely. This week however has been a week of ’so how can we make use of Twitter in higher education?’ Well after a little thinking, a little discussion and a little searching I’ve come up with a short list to outline a few suggestions.

Twitter in Higher Education:

• Classroom communities - Students using Twitter as a way to collaborate about class work beyond the classroom may lead to more productive discussions in class.
• Class communication – Teachers/lecturers could be encouraged to use Twitter as a way to communicate with students about homework, room changes, time changes, class preparation, further reading etc.
• Conference news – Conference tags (#tags) can be added in posts to identify updates as conference news. In following a conference you’re able to receive live news from an event and gain ‘insider knowledge’ that only the insiders are getting.
• Q and A sessions – Stuck on your homework? Not sure what the next class is about? Was there any reading to do? What room is it being held in? Who’s the guest speaker? If in doubt ask your class mates, surely one of them will know the answer.
• Feedback - Rather than waiting until the end of the module to fill in a feedback form Twitter can be used as a means to generate immediate feedback about a class or event. It can be used to encourage particular teaching methods and offer advice about how to do things differently.
• Distance learners – Using Twitter to communicate with distance learners has the potential to offer students greater learning support and encouragement throughout their courses.
• Networking – As a social networking application Twitter also provides the perfect space to monitor new developments in your subject area on an international scale.

For more see:

• An interview with David Parry;
• Twitter at Penn State World Campus;
• Can we use Twitter for educational activities?

Twitter in Libraries:

There’s also a lot of talk circulating about the benefits of libraries introducing a Twitter service to communicate with its patrons. Librarians could be using Twitter as a platform to discuss conferences and events and keep up-to-date with developments in the field of information as well as to promote library services or alert library users to service downtimes etc. There are examples of libraries using Twitter as a reference service or to inform its ‘followers’ about new releases, library events and even when reservations come into stock but I’m just not sure how well it has all been received.

For more see:

• The Ultimate Guide for Librarians;
• Casa Grande Public Library;
• Missouri River Regional Library;
• Nebraska Library Commission.

So it’s all a great idea, right? Well yes, I think so but in practice you might encounter a few problems.

Potential Cons:

• Encouraging students to sign up to external services may not be such a good idea as there are terms and conditions which apply to these services that are outside agreements students have already signed to make use of university services;
• Information platform overload – There are already a variety of platforms students are encouraged to use such as virtual learning portals, which already have forum facilities etc and as Facebook is already deeply ingrained in student activities some may be reluctant to convert;
• Service management – Like instant messaging (’Ask the Librarian’ services) if Twitter was introduced as a library service there would need to be someone who can manage that service and provide frequent updates. That could mean more staff and more money and could in fact stop the service dead in its tracks even before it hits the mark.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a SINTO training event called, Ills and Document Delivery in the Web 2.0 Environment. The purpose of this day long course presented by Stephanie Taylor of Critical Eye Communications was for document supply librarians to learn more about new methods of inter-lending and the benefits of social-computing. During the event we were introduced to electronic copyright and publishing contracts, in relation to the Internet, to discuss the importance of end-users and what this means for the document supply unit of library services.

In part 1 Stephanie gave an overview of how developing technologies have effected the traditional publishing model in terms of copyright, and the role of the library as a centre of information. Inter-lending and document supply, she says, ‘do not exist in isolation, and in the environment of the new internet technologies, this is more true than ever before’.

Over the years we have seen the ILL model alter from a simple triangle of requester, library and scholar to include the printing press (publishers), aggregators, authors, and later the Internet. Today everyone (with a computer and Internet connection) has the means to publish (online) and distribution has never been so easy. Within a matter of seconds information can be sent not just nationally but internationally and has the potential to generate millions upon millions of reader. So what does this mean for copyright and who has control?

The new model of information processing has moved the practice of publication into the electronic world and consequently made it more difficult to define the roles of traditional information providers such as publishers and aggregators. Therefore it also becomes increasingly difficult to control copyright. As a result publishers have begun to offer licensing agreements to standardise the sharing of resources and have introduced ‘chest agreements’ to cover content shared between academic libraries. For items supplied via the ILL department copyright declarations are usually required for legal purposes. Likewise for aggregators information and services are packaged up into ‘bundles’ for reselling.

For the author a ‘Creative Commons‘ license was introduced to create an opportunity for them to limit how their work is used. These licenses, depending on the one chosen, restrict certain rights of the work instead of traditional copyright licenses, which tend to be more restrictive. For example photos published on Flickr uploaded under a creative commons licence give authors the right to state under what conditions their photos are permissible to use i.e. ‘you are free to share, remix and reuse material for non-commerical purposes’.

In the second half of the course Stephanie provided an introduction to Web 2.0 technology by comparing its capabilities with ‘Web 1.0′. Based on a Tim O’Reilly (of O’Reilly Media, accredited with coining the term Web 2.0) brainstorming session Web 2.0 is generally agreed to mean ’social computing’ and it refers to web-based applications which allow users to tag, comment and collaborate on content.

During the afternoon we were set a task to discuss the experience of end-users, how web 2.0 technologies are leading to the development of personalised environments and how these may effect the role of the ILL service. A lot of the examples she used suggested that shes been listening to Dave Pattern, but I think that might just be coincidence. We discussed LibraryThing, Facebook, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Blogs, Wikis, Flickr, Youtube and Amazon to highlight the added value of saved searches, social tags/bookmarking, recommendations, open access and RSS feeds. Like Dave, Stephanie emphasised the importance of the end-user and finished the event with a few ‘tips and tricks’ for integrating the ILL department into the library’s web presence and a list of resources/useful organisations for further information.

After a long day at the Library and Information Show courtesy of Birmingham’s NEC I feel ready to count my free pens and stress balls… All day I’ve been wondering why so many exhibitors offer free stress balls! It seems to suggest that us librarians are easily stressed?? Yet if we were really that stressed I can’t help but think a little squigy ball isn’t going to help all that much, maybe a large glass of vodka would, but as a non-boozer and all I’ll stick to pulling my cat’s tail for stress relief (that was a joke by the way, as if I’d be that mean to the little slime-ball).

I think the highlight of my day was sitting in on Dave Pattern’s talk about the continuing impact of Web 2.0 on library catalogues. I’m really into this whole Amazonisation of library OPACs but really, can such a thing take off? In my opinion, yes I think it could given the right setting. Knowing your library user and how they use the library’s OPAC seemed to be one of the key factors in helping the University of Huddersfield to really add-value to library services. In monitoring the keywords used to generate searches the University of Huddersfield were able to build up a bank of about three million words to create a ’suggestive’ service (and a really awesome tag cloud) to recommend titles and keyword combinations to generate more specific results. Now if that had been implemented at Sheffield University during my time it would have really helped me out! I’m not so sure I would have used the further features of Huddersfield’s OPAC 2.0 like comments and ratings but I’d like to think I’d have caught on to the RSS alerts early and personalised ratings without my own library account to keep track of books I’d already borrowed. There’s nothing more frustrating than forgetting the title of that awesome book that was really helpful when you’re standing outside the doors of a building that houses 1.4 million titles! ARGH.

I think I’ll probably have more to write about this but Heroes is back on our screens soon and I can’t be late! Check out these links to some of the libraries Dave talked about though.

Use his advice: ‘Have a play’:

• Ann Arbor District Library;
• Hennepin County Library;
• Library Thing;
• North Carolina State University;
• Plymouth State University;
• Topeka and Shawnee County;
• University of Warwick.

I worry that I leave it too long between posts here. It’s just that you know when you really want to be creative and write something really interesting but because you’ve been really busy having a real life and not one of these ‘virtual lives’ it gets harder and harder to come back and write something worth reading.

Maybe it has something to do with not spending days locked away in my little ’study’ writing in order to justify the stupid amount of money I spent on tuition fees last year. Maybe it has something to do with my new found ignorance of current affairs in favour of Heat World. Maybe it has something to do with the lack of excitement that erupts in me when another moron finds out all that lies beyond the veil?

It’s funny because although there is nothing more I love than reading about ‘Iran’s young women’ finding ‘private paths to freedom’ I seem to get really irritated by the way people write about the ’separation between public and private spaces’ as though it’s a news flash. Reality check Peter: We all make a degree of separation between our public and private spaces. It is an ‘important issue’ for all of us called ‘getting on with life’. It’s that judgement we all make about what is appropriate in our different circumstances and surroundings, whether restricted by law, culture, tradition, habit or whatever. But credit where credits due and all that – it makes for a good read and I’m glad that such topics are being written about and as a result I hope that people can get a better understanding not just about Iranian youth culture but about the expression of youth culture more generally.

Which brings me on to the ubiquity of social networking in young lives. I got talking today about the benefits of social networking in business and it’s really got me thinking more about how people use social networking and for what purpose. If I’m completely honest I’d say that 95% of the time I use both Facebook and Myspace to lurk and the other 5% making my profile look interesting, adding photos or messaging old friends. As a rule I much prefer email but you know when you’ve completely lost touch with someone and then they pop up for a chat and you’re not too keen about giving them too many contact details? It’s like the perfect compromise!

So how can businesses benefit from using social network sites? Well in my opinion I’m not really sure they can. Most businesses have some form of software to set up collaborative forums, bulletin boards or news feeds and I don’t think it’s necessarily important for businesses to have a photo tagging option or ‘never-ending quiz’ feature. Portals on the other hand along with blogs and wikis – well that’s another story altogether.