Hopefully some of you tuned in to our webinar yesterday and have had a chance to read the companion whitepaper. My radio theme - or podcast if you are so inclined - for the title of this blog is intentional. In fact, I also toyed with "Mixing Content and Web 2.0" to illustrate "the remix factor" -- an intrinsic part of the Web 2.0 "engaging the user" vision and one of the reasons why professors call O'Reilly Media's SafariU "revolutionary."
Remixing. Familiar to your teenagers and made famous by iTunes, but not a word well known in corporate circles. Using Web services and MarkLogic Server, O'Reilly delivers a user interface that allows higher education professors to reassemble - or remix - sections and chapters from a vast library of O'Reilly and partner books to, in CJ's words, suit their needs. Suit their needs. Since when do software applications suit the user needs without the word "customization" being part of the equation?
In terms of content applications and Web 2.0, since now. Is this analogous to the radio industry's evolution? Absolutely. Can it provide new revenue for publishers through a compelling product? Definitely. Ian Krantz over at the Really Strategies blog continues the conversation. And CJ Rayhill , O'Reilly's Chief Information Officer and General Manager of O'Reilly's Education Division, is obviously the source.
Yesterday, the webinar audience asked me what parts of the SafariU story are universally applicable. Read on to see what I said. Also, feel free to submit questions and comments here about what you read and hopefully listened to about the SafariU case study. (I will let you know when the archive is available). Let's continue the conversation!
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