this one has been rattling around in my head for a bit now so thought i'd write it down and maybe revisit it after the launch of the website when i have some more space in my head...i'm wondering if what we really need is a dot ac (.ac.uk) only blog service (and wiki service) like typepad/blogger/wordpress/pbwiki/jotspot et al...www.blogs.ac.uk www.wikis.ac.uk - confirmation of an account would have to be from a .ac.uk email account so from that side it would be relatively easy to arrange (ja.net IP range as well)...rather than do a load of development there are plenty of appropriate products that could be licensed pretty cheaply (www.movabletype.com http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/.)- it would be the hosting that could cost i think - but even that is probably something that can be sorted..from a dev and liscence side its probably less than 20k
potential for a 'premium' service as well - i.e. charge if institutions want the blogs branded as them (instead of www.blogs.ac.uk/matts_blog www.uwe.ac.uk/blogs/matts_blog)
offer a full range of services - updates via email, mobiles etc - tie into flickr etc - maybe also license something like blip.tv for video etc as well (set-up to easily to share with blogs etc)
anyway will give this some more structure thinking later..
