Hi, it's been a long time since I did an update about data.ac.uk. We've 
some big news, but we've been sitting on it until it was official.

The equipment.data.ac.uk site, and control of the DNS entries are to be 
transferred to Jisc to provide a long term home for them. We're very 
proud to be handing the service over as a virtually self-sustaining system.

Initially, there will be no changes except an update in where it's 
hosted, but if things go to plan, Jisc have ideas on new ways to augment 
the service and get more value out of it. Jisc also will be taking 
control of the DNS for data.ac.uk, which seems sensible. They are better 
placed than I am to give out domain to relevant projects -- don't be 
afraid to ask if you've a use for one. I'll be keeping looking after the 
other unfunded data.ac.uk subsites, notably opd.data.ac.uk -- we've not 
yet scratched the surface of the possibilities for that.

I plan to hand moderation of this list over to Jisc, and will be 
encouraging them to maintain the policy of not allowing event 
invitations to the list unless highly relevant. I think more than 50% of 
attempted messages to this list are workshop spam for workshops with the 
word "data" in the title.

Daniela Duca will be the new primary point of contact for data.ac.uk & 
equipment.data.ac.uk (but I'll still be around!)


-- 
Christopher Gutteridge -- http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cjg

University of Southampton Open Data Service: http://data.southampton.ac.uk/
You should read our Web & Data Innovation blog: http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/webteam/