ReDress is a project from the University of Lancaster here in England. It is within the field of E-Social Science (more on that later) and is focused upon building online collaborative tools for Social Science researchers through the application of the Open-Source software called Sakai. They are funded by JISC; an organisation that funds and promotes ICTs in education and has a diverse portfolio of projects in various academic fields in the UK.
ReDress have built a repository of academic presentations by Social Scientists (video) that can be searched via the matching textual transcripts and Power Point presentations (it is a mountain of work to do this).
They have also built a video conferencing system for Sakai and a couple of other tools that are useful for online collaborations by researchers. Online collaborative tools are generally referred to as Virtual Research Environments (or VREs) and JISC has funded a number of initiatives throughout the UK. It is hoped to include a VRE of some description on the project that I am working on (ICT Guides) so Digital Humanists can discuss and share ideas around some of the tools and resources on the guide. I will keep you informed.
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I was there, too