e! Science News is a revolutionary website where absolutely everything is fully automated by harvesting content from other websites RSS feeds, article tags, reciprocal links, and no doubt many other techniques: http://esciencenews.com/

At the fully automated extreme it’s a fairly niche idea (as most organisations will want at least some control over their content), however it could certainly be a powerful framework to use for a single section of a website.

Here’s a little more information on how it works: http://esciencenews.com/about

Something that keeps cropping up whenever I meet with museum and gallery professionals is the tricky issue of Authorial Voice (caps added to make it sound more… er… authoritative).

The traditional model has of course always been: we tell you what we believe… and you (the public) believe us. The explosion of online content sources such as Wikipedia has put a rather large dent in this model; users have access to so much information (and not all of it good) that they are perhaps less likely to accept what institutions tell them at face value. Or, to put it another way, a dialogue is beginning to happen between institutions and users. And that’s a good thing.

My naughty link to the questionable content at the Creationist Museum leads to an important point. Some institutions in America are now adding ‘we believe’ to long-held absolute positions, like evolution. There is an opposing belief - and if cultural institutions scoff and ignore they will only help to legitimise it. We need to engage with the argument and prove our point.

Users have access to unparalleled amounts of content; this is a new thing, it’s a good thing but it’s never happened on anything like this scale before. The more viewpoints we can access, the more complicated the cultural landscape becomes - and therefore it is all the more important that museums and galleries are seen to take a firm but well-reasoned - and appropriately open - position.

But what happens when the content leaves the institution and Joe Public gets their hands on it? I’ll look at that in my next post, You’re wrong and I’ll write (clever, eh?)

I must have read dozens of books about programming and related disciplines. Some are dull as ditchwater, but a lot of these are admirably clear in explaining and presenting the information they need to get across. Very, very few are actually what I’d consider a good read, however.

So, for the record, here are three notable exceptions - techy books that made me laugh out loud:

• Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing (online or hard copy)
  This book from MIT lecturer, photographer and all-round brilliant person Philip Greenspun is a great introduction to database-backed websites. Although the system he describes (ArsDigita Community Server - a mix of AOLServer, Tcl and Oracle) is esoteric and pretty much defunct, the quality of writing is excellent, and all of the underlying concepts hold true. Philip speaks with humour, passion, and has a healthy skepticism of Internet Entrepreneurs (”the world’s grubbiest club”).
• Dive into Python (online or hard copy)
  This is a super-fast-paced introduction to Python for experienced programmers, written by Mark Pilgrim. In it, he provides an extremely comprehensive introduction to Python and some real-world programming examples. However, more than this, he lets you see the kind of mindset you need to get the most out of it, as well as pre-empting a lot of potential pitfalls and nagging questions that you would have about the language and his example code. Most importantly of all, he does so with accessible prose and understated wit.
• why’s (poignant) guide to Ruby (online and hard copy)
  Written by somebody known only as why the lucky stiff, this is quite the most bonkers computer programming book I’ve ever come across. A huge, meandering journey across the Ruby landscape, copiously illustrated with cartoons and peppered with surreal asides. If you looking for ‘just the facts’, you’ve come to the wrong place, but if you want to be hugely entertained while picking up a fair bit of Ruby, then this is the book for you. Hilarious and utterly, utterly brilliant.

So… those are my picks. Leave a comment with your own suggestions for other techy books that should be considered as cracking good reads.