The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) is a project to create a common vocabulary for describing educational content. It was formed after the big three search vendors (Google, Bing and Yahoo) announced in June that they were working on a metadata framework that would be common across all search platforms and aid search engine indexing. The idea behind the LRMI is to establish a “a lightweight vocabulary that sits on top of existing tagging schema” [...]

Wednesday November 23rd 2011 was a very interesting online news day. Not so much for the actual news story – but rather what followed. The Twittersphere was abuzz earlier in the day after a helicopter crashed at Auckland’s Viaduct Basin while installing a fake Christmas Tree. Video coverage of the installation work was at the time being webstreamed live by the tvnz.co.nz team. It’s an event you can never imagine free-to-air television affording live coverage [...]

A short plug for my employers new exhibition launched today at the Dunedin Public Libraries Reed Gallery. The exhibition entitled Signs & Symbols: Decoding Mediaeval & Renaissance Iconography explores the meanings behind the symbols and visual cues found in mediaeval and Renaissance manuscripts. More than twenty manuscripts from the thirteenth to sixteenth century are on display, drawn from the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection; the second largest collection of such manuscripts held by a New [...]

If you missed the news the Apple iPhone 4S Siri personal assistant was offline for a couple of days late last week (Friday / Saturday New Zealand time) due to hosted server problems ‘in the cloud’. It’s apparently highly network dependant and polls the Internet when you ask questions such as when your next xyz appointment is due etc. I found the reported outcry from United States residents that enjoyed access to the beta product [...]