For some time now Education.au has been investigating the importance of the relationships between people and content when searching for useful, relevant content. One of the outcomes of this investigation has been a product called FusED. FusED is the software that drives the http://www.me.edu.au website. 'Me' as it is known to its users, is a social networking application that was initially designed to support personal and professional development.

It began with the concept of 'watching me as I embark on my learning journey'. We use the notion of 'Life-streaming' to support this. 'Me' enables learners to aggregate content from many parts of the Web that they have created and create an aggregated news/activity feed of the things that they have been doing (eg posting photos to Flickr, blogging, tagging with Diigo, etc).

'Me' also enables users to express what interests they have in a very easy manner. This is as simple as creating a tag. As soon as you have created the 'tag' a community of interest is created. What we have found is that this is a great way to not just find others with the same interests, but others who are very knowledgeable in those interests. It enables quick and easy connections to experts in those interests which is a very powerful way of discovering valuable content.

We are in the process of 'productising' the FusED software to make it more broadly available - particularly for Education. The software is built using the latest Web 2.0 and open specifications making it very extensible and easy to integrate with other Web 2.0 services.