BlogForever the road ahead

BlogForever: the Road Ahead

Karen Stepanyan
K.Stepanyan@warwick.ac.uk

Outline
 BlogForever: Brief Project Overview
 Weblogs in Retrospect
 Rationale for the BlogForever Project
 Partners
 Anticipated Outcomes
 Warwick as a Lead Beneficiary
 Feedback/Suggestions/Questions

Intelligent and Adaptive Systems (IAS) Seminar: 24 May 2011
www.blogforever.eu

BlogForever: a Brief Overview
BlogForever is a collaborative research project
funded by the European Union.
-The main goal of the project is to develop facilities
for robust digital preservation, management and
dissemination of weblogs.

Intelligent and Adaptive Systems (IAS) Seminar: 24 May 2011 www.blogforever.eu

Let’s step back
to take a birds eye view


What are Blogs?
 A blog (weblog) is a website with regular entries
of commentary, descriptions of events, or other
material such as graphics or video.
 Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-
chronological order.


Weblogs in Retrospect
 1997: Coined the term 'weblog' (Jorn Barger)
 1999: Shortened 'weblog' (wee-blog) to 'blog' and
'blogger' (Peter Merholz).
 1999: handful of weblogs known to be in existence.
 1999: Launched blogger.com – one of the first free
blogging tools (Pyra Labs/Google).
- Blogs become easy to setup and maintain
- Turning point – the transition from passive audience
into active public.


Weblogs in Retrospect (Cont.)
 1999: LiveJournal
 2002: Technorati Blog Search
 2003: Open Source Blogging platforms
 2005: Blog Search (Google)
 2006: Widespread use of RSS
 2007: 100 million blogs (Technorati)
 2006: Microblogging (Twitter)
 May 19, 2011: Social Search (Google)


Weblogs Today
Blogosphere: interweaved networks of blogs
 175,000 new weblogs created every day
 2 million daily posts
 77% of Web users are blog readers
 Continuous growth
107 million blogs in 2009
126 million blogs in 2010


Websites Powered by WordPress*

* 23 May 2011


BlogPulse

* 23 May 2011


Impact of Blogs

 Coverage in breaking, shaping, and spinning
news stories (Gizmodo)
 Political debates, opinions and campaigns
 Blurring of mass media and journalism (Global
Voices)
 Social and political movements


* Published in The New Yorker 9/12/2005 by Alex Gregory


Rationale Behind Preservation

Preserving blogs can provide a:
View into an essential part of our heritage
Solution to ephemeral nature of digital information
View into the dynamics of digital media
Foundation for understanding group dynamics,
community development and social networks
Foundation for understanding development of new ideas


Current Approaches to Archiving Blogs

Current web archive scope is limited – i.e.

Preservation of monolithic regions, subjects or events.
Bypass social networks
Non-standard backup solutions
Loss of information on editing and versioning
Poor manageability and usability when snapshots are taken
(e.g. PDF - Internet Archive)


Addressing the Gap of Preservation and Archiving


BlogForever: Objectives

 Key Objectives:
 BlogForever will develop robust digital preservation,
management and dissemination facilities for weblogs.

 These facilities will be able to capture the dynamic
and continuously evolving nature of weblogs, their
network and social structure, and the exchange of
concepts and ideas that they foster; pieces of
information omitted by current Web Archiving
methods and solutions.


BlogForever: Objectives

 Scientific Objectives
 Study weblog structure and semantics
 Define a robust digital preservation policy for
weblogs
 Implement a weblog digital repository
 Implement specific case studies

Advances to the State of the Art

 Definition of a generic data model for weblog
metadata and semantics
 Weblog digital preservation strategies
 Weblog spider
 Weblog digital repository web application


Partners
1. Altec Research S.A.
2. Aristotle University of Thesaloniki (AUTH)
3. CyberWatcher
4. European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
5. Phaistos Networks
6. Mokono
7. Software Research and Development and Consultancy Ltd. (SRDC)
8. Technische Universitat Berlin
9. Tero Ltd
10. University of Glasgow
11. University of London Computer Centre (ULCC)
12. University of Warwick


Work Packages

 WP1 Project Management (AUTH)
 WP2 Weblog Structure and Semantics (UW)
 WP3 The BlogForever Policies (UG)
 WP4 The BlogForever Software Infrastructure
(CERN)
 WP5 Case studies and validation (UL)
 WP6 Dissemination & exploitation (Tero)


Work Packages


Primary Role of Warwick

People involved
Principle Investigator: Dr. Alexandra I. Cristea
Co-Principle Investigator: Dr. Mike Joy
Postdocs: Dr. Karen Stepanyan
(One More Expected)


Primary Role of Warwick
Weblogs Survey Report
D2.1
Report on weblog Data Model
D2.2
Weblog Ontologies
D2.3
Weblog spider prototype & associated methodology
report (using weblog APIs & HTML-aware Crawling)
D2.4
Weblog spam filtering report
D2.5 & associated methodology
Definition of weblog data extraction methodology
D2.6


Main roles & tasks

 Lead of WP2 Weblog structure and semantics M1-15 (28PM)
 Involvement in all other WPs:
 WP1 Project management M1-30 (1PM)
 WP3 The BlogForever policies M7-30 (3PM)
 WP4 The BlogForever Software Infrastructure M1-30 (8PM)
 WP5 Case studies and validation M9-27 (8PM)
 WP6 Dissemination & exploitation M1-30 (3PM)


Summary: Major Milestones
 1st Milestone (Month 10) Weblog survey and user requirements:
Researching the Blogosphere on a variety of issues and assessment
of user requirements will lead to the crystallization of our view and
perspectives on the problem, and drive the articulation of our
preservation strategy.
 2nd Milestone (Month 21) – Initial software infrastructure and
case studies setup: A first version of the BlogForever weblog spider
tool component and the digital repository component will be fully
operational, ready to be tested and validated in case studies.
 3rd Milestone (Month 30) – Digital repository component, weblog
aggregator and business plan: The complete infrastructure for
BlogForever will be ready to be further exploited by offering
services to the bloggers‟ community and other parties, as defined in
the business plan.


Summary: Impact
 The final output of BlogForever will be a simple weblog
digital archiving solution that any user, user group or
institution could use to preserve their weblog(s) and
ensure their authenticity, integrity, completeness,
usability, and long term accessibility as a valuable cultural,
social, and intellectual resource.
 A multitude of parties will benefit from the project
 Bloggers
 Universities, Libraries & Information Centers
 Museums
 Education
 Research
 Business


Summary: Potential Future Benefits

 New collaboration and funding opportunities
 Professional development and record of:
 Publishing in journals/conferences
 organising and participating in
workshops/seminars
 contributing to designing and developing new
tools


BlogForever: the Road Ahead

Questions
Direction
Caution Advise
Thank You!
K.Stepanyan@warwick.ac.uk


BlogForever the road ahead

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