The goal of our research lab SL Squared is primarily to focus on online social learning technologies.

Just yesterday, my father, a 72 year old man, signed up for Microsoft's live space and invited me as a friend. Although i try and shy away from anything microsoft, i figured i would keep this as a close knit family community now that the familia de thoms is scattered across the united states.

For those of you unfamiliar with live space, it is one of the most popular social communities on the web, trumping myspace in number of users. The site offers the ability to share photos, create blogs, profiles and so forth.

However, i am becoming more and more flustered with the site as it doesn't offer many of the basic functions offered by most online community software. For example, although i can post a comment on a particular photo (or album) i cannot post a general comment to the user to read at a later time.

Talk about frustration.

To me, it seems as if Microsoft rushed to market live spaces in 2005 in order to compete with the growing market of online social networks such as Orkut, MySpace, Friendster, etc. Maybe a few more iterations and they will finally get it right.