Brains working towards machine consciousness

Platform

We (I) have pretty much decided to use Drupal as the platform for our Virtual Research Environment. The number of excellent plugins for it mean that making a feature rich social networking site should be relatively easy. I have some concerns about the differing rates of upgrades, and I am also aware that politically within the institution there is a tendency to prefer 'paid for' software – but the power and flexibility of the system is hard to argue with, in my opinion.

Social issues

It will be interesting, trying to engage the potential user-base with Web2.0 type tools. Hopefully, being able to show the benefits of public, private and semi-private blogging and other content creation will help. The idea is to allow people to be able to share with exactly who they choose to share with – so that sensitive information can be created within the same platform as material designed for 'the public'. Institutionally available 'presence indicators' are something I hope will be useful (if I can figure out a good way of doing them) – and I also hope to be linking in 3^rd party tools wherever possible. So, alongside the bibliography module, I hope to provide for people who also use sites such as http://www.citeulike.org and I want to chat to the guys at http://amplify.com about embedding their technology in the platform.

I also have to work through various issues with cross-blog compatibility, but there shouldn't be anything which is a deal breaker.