Interesting BBC article on the philosophy behind Craig's List:

"Initially it was mostly coming in via email which we would reply to, but we've grown so much that now the more common thing is you set up a series of discussion forums in which users bring up various things that they think are important to change or modify in some way.

Users talk amongst themselves about things we're doing poorly or could be doing better, and then we're able to observe that interaction. It proves to be a very kind of efficient and interesting and useful way, nowadays, of digesting that feedback.

The other important aspect that you might not imagine initially is that all of the feedback is coming in as 'voting with their feet'. We just watch how people are using particular categories.

If we see that, 'oh users want to do this and we're not currently enabling this', then we try to code up some changes to better enable them to do whatever that is."

Blogger just made me switch to the Google version – ugh. On the other hand, I discovered that I had unapproved comments, so my apologies for the delay, I've approved them now. And my thanks for leaving the comments in the first place!

The BBC on Push for open access to research: "Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy that would require all government-funded research to be made available to the public shortly after publication."

I like the idea of a Friday post looking at how people are interacting with and inhabiting museums. Here's a lovely photo of Melbourne Museum on Flickr. I have a personal interest in this photo because it reminds me of leaving the office late at night when I was working all hours to get the website finished before the launch of the museum.

I love the way this overhead photo has been marked up with notes to link to other historical photos and add layers of personal meaning: Whitechapel – a local history in pictures.