Earlier today (see below) I wrote about my next research project. I'm also planning the next next. You see, I've got a three-year Postdoctoral grant from the KIM framework, provided I can come up with an acceptible project proposal.
The project is tentatively called "Live Web Archives: Bridging the Gap Between News and Background." It's based in two observations: One, the Web can both be live broadcasting and searchable database. News sites and blogs showcase this. The front page has the recent items, older ones are in the archives. Two: automatically generated theme pages are a bore. As they are not authored, but collected by a stupid algorithm, they are full of redundancy, undiscriminating, and I suspect few use them.
My project will be to build three test sites where the archive and the recent combine better, so you can move fluently into the archive (or background) and back. I really think this can be done, using insights from hypertext theory (hint: stretchtext). I will make news sites, but it should be very relevant to blogs too. Expect this page to be an experimental site soon!
(Aside to Norwegian researchers: no, this is not bending the rules. I applied as part of a group project to KIM, and the whole project was funded. As I was named in the proposal, the position does not have to be publicly announced. But to deserve the title of postdoktor, the faculty of Arts has to approve the project. I guess I still have the salary if they don't. The sign on the door would just read forsker instead.)
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