Edu_RSS ~ April 20, 2003

Norman (Pudds) Downes This is a verydifficult week-end for me as my obviously sick 17 year oldcat has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. With somepalliative medicine we have been able to restore her tosomething like normal health, but this will last only for afew days. As I write, in about 72 hours the vet will arriveand my beautiful cat will breathe her last. Pudds has beenmy friend and my companion since she was a little ball offluff. A kind and gentle soul. We shared years ofadventures and ex From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Will The "Real" Community PleaseStand Up? David Wiley expressed surprise yesterday whenhe read my comment in OLDaily welcoming him to the learningobject community. Of course, he always felt himself to be amember of that community. It's a different community,though, one that includes the leading lights in thecommunity that brought us such things as IEEE-LOM. Ofcourse I am not a member of thatcommunity and have, in fact, been openly critical of a lotof what they have been doing. All of this is new to Wiley,and my response (scroll down to the bottom to see it) lefthim "stunned" and " From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Open-Education.Org After much agony with the domain name - whichwas lost there for a while - open-education.org is now upand running. Watch this space or George Siemens's weblogfor news of upcoming events. By Various Authors,Open-Education, April 17, 2003[Refer][Research][Reflect] From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. How To Get a News Feed Into Your WebCTCourse OK, keep this a secret from the company, sincethis basically undercuts the nice market for WebCT coursepacks they built up over the years. In this item, DavidCarter-Tod demonstrates how to retrieve syndicated RSScontent - like this newsletter - and place it into WebCT.Heh. Now, if you read the follow-up discussionyou'll see it took less than a day to reach the nextlogical step: syndicating learning objects themselves intoWebCT. Well, hey, I wonder what all those people whoinvested in course packs think n From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Reinventing the Training Business Some good comments mirrored at Internet Timesummarizing where the training industry has gone off therails in recent years, and where to look for salvation. Abig part of it is the business model: "The prevailingbusiness model for technology-based training companies hasbeen a multi-year license for a large courseware library.This decades old approach worked because it met the needsof the buyer, not the learner, and it made the vendors alot of money." As the author comments, "If thismodel ever worked, it no longer does." Adter a fewwords of searing criticism about the quality of currentofferings, From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Blurbs: Writing Previews of WebPages Via elearningpost comes this interesting linkdescribing how to write 'blurbs' - like the thing you'rerealing right now - for weblogs and web pages. Comments notjust on authorship (blurbs should inform, not tease) butalso on presentation. Many examples of both good and badpractice. By Dennis G. Jerz, D.G.Jerz, February 5, 2001[Refer][Research][ From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Dot LRN Just released.LRN is an "A fully opensource eLearning platform." The creators note,"the core infrastructure and application suite foreLearning should be part of the "intellectualcommons" and freely available to all. .LRN is beingmade available as open source software under the GNUGeneral Public License." Woo hoo! By VariousAuthors, MIT Sloan, April 12, 2003[Refer][Research][ From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Current Edu-Bloggers As George Siemens comments, "This has beenthe busiest week I've seen in the field of edu-techbloggers." Or as Jay Cross says,"It feels like this train is finally leaving thestation. Bravo!" I second that; I cannot even keeptrack of the dizzying pace. If you want to try to keeptrack for yourself, check out this page of some of themajor writers in the field. As Siemens comments, it'sprobably an incomplete list. But as Chuck Berry might say,"there's a whole lot of movin' and a-shakin' goin' onou From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Why do Colleges Build Dormitories? AndTeach Half-time? Philip Greenspun asks this reasonable questionand notes, "A university will spend hundreds of$millions on dormitories, i.e., places for students todrink beer and sleep together. Why is there is no budgetfor cubicle farms where students in the same major could dotheir homework together?" His answer, likely to raiseire for its honesty, is that the elite schools are lessinterested in pedagogy - "If Biff doesn't learncalculus his daddy can still buy him a seat inCongress" - and more interested in making sure richkids can go to Europe in the summer and to make sure thatmembers of the "ruling c From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Weblog Trackbacks to Provide Context forLearning Objects Interesting discussion and development oftrackbacks - a mechanism to follow the paths of other users- to give context to learning objects. Trackbacks are basedon the same concept I used to develop my referrer system, andthey provide the functionality of what I have called 'thirdparty metadata,' that is, a means for third parties tocomment on learning objects. Be sure to read the discussionfollowing this item. By D'Arcy Norman, D'Arcy Norman'sLearning Commons Weblog, April 18, 2003 4:51 p.m.[ From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Defense Agency Pulls OpenBSDFunding Hard to explain this one as DARPA pulls theremaining funding from the OpenBSD project. Much of themoney went to improve the system's security, but aweek-long 'Hackathon' scheduled to be held in Canada nextweek may be in jeopardy. "The project's leader, Theode Raadt... said he believes the cancellation was promptedby concerns about the money going to too many foreigndevelopers and to antiwar statements that de Raadt made toreporters." Yeah, that would do it, I guess, in thenew world order. By Robert Lemos, CNet, April 17, 2003[ From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. eNRICH. New Software for KnowledgeManagement UNESCO accounces the launch of eNRICH, a"customisable knowledge management software forcommunities." According to the release, "eNRICHis designed to enable communities quickly and easily tobuild their own gateway to the web and other multimediaresources – tailored to meet specific local needs, enrichedwith local content and available in local languages."eNRICH was built by National Information Centre of Indiaand is available for download. By Press Release, UNESCO, April 15, 2003[Refer][ From OLDaily on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. AERA EduBloggers Dinner Calling all EduBloggers… AERA is the biggest meeting of Ed Researchers on the planet (like 15,000 or something). Many of you will be in Chicago next week. Let’s get together and have dinner or drinks or something! If you’ll be... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Ending the Stephen/David Saga So I believe it is safe to say that (1) Stephen and I have agreed that we don’t really know each other, and (2) that our interests are similar. Below is hopefully the last (this is taking up waay too... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. More on Joining the Inst Tech Blogging Community My blogging mentor Brian has put up a follow-on to my humble attempt at getting people up and running with blogs in the instructional technology community. Check out Electric Boogaloo, which includes a link to George’s list of ‘eduBloggers’. I’ve... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Boggled in the Blogosphere I don’t know if I’ve ever been more stunned than I was this morning reading Stephen’s recent comment to my Community piece… As the famous Monty Python skit goes, “some were bitter; others, confused.” Thoughts below.... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. A Beginner's Guide to Joining the Instructional Technology Blog Scene So I’m trying to draw some colleagues into the instructional technology blogosphere and had to write up a primer for folks who are new to the area… like I was a month or two ago. So, as long as I... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. More OSS Community Research In the recent posts that have been going around about research on open source software communities, I haven’t seen anyone point to the motherlode yet.. MIT’s Free / Open Source Research Community It’s filled with good papers (including some graduate... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The Use is the Context So D’Arcy, Brian, and Alan have been talking about using Trackback to contextualize learning objects. This is truly excellent! One of the goals of the Instructional Architect was to facilitate automated recommendations (aka collaborative filtering) of learning objects, i.e., “people... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Will the "real" community please stand up? Something Stephen said in a recent post has had me thinking quite a bit lately (and I’m too lazy to go find the post again now, doubtless someone will point it out in the comments). Stephen commented that he was... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. .LRN Up I’ve gotten .LRN (MIT’s open source LMS) up and running, and I must say that I’m impressed. Out of the box, it supports “a lot” of what a normal thinking person would want to do. Being open source (based on... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. New Educommons Prototype We’ve had a functional prototype of the first Educommons “educational content viewer” (strategy object) for a few months; now I’ve improved the prototype interface based on a logo and other design ideas by Corrine Ellsworth. The current prototype (designed to... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Open Source Communities An Introduction to Open Source Communities describes: What are the demographics of those who participate in these communities? Why do they join, and how long do they stay? How do they interact with each other? How do open source communities... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Et tu Media Lab? Could it happen? Could the Media Lab really be in trouble? Lots of interesting information here, especially for a certain Instructional Technology department who just finished getting administrative permissions to run a Board of Regents approved learning technologies research lab…... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Syndicated Publishing For some reason it seemed like a good idea to syndicate the publications section of my vita using RSS. It only updates every two weeks or so, but still I like the idea of being able to subscribe to a... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. NSDL Funding Deadline Only a few weeks left to get applications put together for the NSF’s National STEM [Science Technology Engineering & Mathematics] Digital Library or NSDL Program. This is a great program which funds a variety of learning objects-related programs, like our... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. A SourceForge for Open Educational Content Development So today I can finally be more specific. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Center for the Public Domain have given me the green light to hold an initial meeting to discuss the establishment of some infrastructure that... From autounfocus on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Andy Grove on the confident leader Intel's chairman discusses decision making, intuition and corporate governance in a conversation at Harvard Business School. From CNET News.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Week ahead: Server sound-off The tech focus is on servers this week, as Microsoft finally releases its oft-delayed and renamed Windows Server 2003. Also, earnings action continues. From CNET News.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Options repricing: Do investors benefit? Tech companies are repricing options to retain employees with stock options whose exercise price has fallen below market value. Should investors oppose this strategy? A Wharton paper examines the benefits of repricing "underwater" stock options. From CNET News.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Week in review: Seeking security Security, one the few bright spots in the otherwise moribund tech sector, was the focus of a weeklong conference, and companies went out of their way to tout their wares. From CNET News.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Week ahead: Server sound-off The tech focus is on servers this week, as Microsoft finally releases its oft-delayed and renamed Windows Server 2003. Also, earnings action continues. From CNET News.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. From the islands to the classroom and back The Creole language of Cape Verde found support in a recently repealed bilingual-education law in Massachusetts. From Christian Science Monitor | Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Potato chips, cola, and sweets, oh my! Health officials say a serious discussion of school food is long overdue. From Christian Science Monitor | Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Park the cause in Harvard Yard Students adore him, conservatives loathe him, and his guest speakers are always controversial. From Christian Science Monitor | Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Fifty years after admitting women, law school hires woman dean The federal court's loss is Harvard Law School's gain. From Christian Science Monitor | Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The nuances of language Translations open up a wealth of world literature, but choose translators carefully. From Christian Science Monitor | Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Are you ready for the Tiki? I'm going, Mr Coates is going, so is Mr Webb. If you're in San Francisco, so should you. Where? The... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Caffe Roma An outbreak of clue here in North Beach. Caffe Roma, (that's Columbus and Union, San Franciscans) has free Wifi... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. sync Sync, as someone once advertised, is everything. These past few days, I've been most definitely not synced. The past two... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. blerrrgh In no fit state to talk with, email, or IM anyone. Jet travel is evil. Tomorrow will be better.... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The Cold of the Hold San Francisco - the city of rain. Dammit, am I being punished? It's nearly 80 degrees in London, and it's... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Port 25 Gaaah. This Wifi ISP is blocking port 25, so I can't send any email from my locally running sendmail. Hence... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. and lo, he arriveth So, I arrived. In the great tradition, while my body is here, my soul, which as you all know travels... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Turbulence Ok, so it's not quite real time blogging, but suffice to say that as I type this, we're shaking about... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Five hours to go Five hours to go, apparently. We're over Baffin Bay. What is a Baffin? It sounds like something onto which one... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. By the power of KungLog By the power of KungLog, I'm blogging this at 34,000 feet, somewhere over Reykjavik. Apart from being that far above... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Blogads So, I finally did it. Faced with an increase in the price of mustache wax, a run on the last... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Chiasmus Chiasmus, the reversal of the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases, is one of the great mainstays of... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. First grate your truffle Burke and Wells make scrambled eggs: Now you will go insane. You will stand at the stove, slowly stirring these... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. SARS is a WMD? Ahhh, I knew it would only be a matter of time, and here we have it according the Australian ABC:... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. RSS Blog changes Some people might be arriving here, thinking they are going to find my rss.benhammersley.com RSS specific blog. I've taken that... From Ben Hammersley.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. What independent music slump? The Christian Science Monitor recently published an article focusing on independent labels and musicians. While recording industry album sales were down 11% overall in 2002, some independent outfits saw sales increases of 50 to 100 percent, all while eschewing mainstream radio play. From Creative Commons: weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Creative Commons RSS in Manila While there have been a couple generic (1, 2) RSS implementations of Creative Commons licensing in the past, Dave Winer today added support in the Manila software package. From Creative Commons: weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Downward Facing Blog Bikram Choudhury, "creator" of a popular type of yoga, is now claiming a copyright in the style and demanding royalties. No word yet whether the estates of the authors of the Upanishads -- or for that matter, the entire subcontinent -- will counter-sue. See a lively and amusing discussion on Metafilter. From Creative Commons: weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. New Featured Commoner: Opsound Sal Randolph of Opsound recently sat down for an interview with us. She talks about her new project, Opsound, and how Creative Commons licenses will be worked into it. From Creative Commons: weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Lots of music We have made several recent musical additions to the Creative Commons Featured Works registry, and noticed more musicians online using the licenses. Here's a random sampling of licensed music that has caught our eyes (and ears): Christine McCarthy, Horton's Choice, Joshua Ellis, The Phoenix Trap, From Creative Commons: weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Creative Commons article in Syllabus Magazine Our very own Executive Director, Glenn Otis Brown, penned an article introducing the Creative Commons to the readers of Syllabus Magazine, which covers technology issues in higher education. From Creative Commons: weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. CSS Examples and Commentary Tantek Celik has recently released some useful CSS examples (with accompanying commentary) under a Creative Commons attribution license. Check out Tantek's reasoning for the move. From Creative Commons: weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Harvard Blogs and Creative Commons Dave Winer, author of popular blogging software systems and various technical specifications, is currently a Berkman fellow at the Harvard Law School. He has spearheaded a project to bring weblogs to everyone on campus, and has chosen to include Creative Commons licenses in the default templates. From Creative Commons: weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. New Global Vision New Global Vision is an interesting video project out of Italy. They are aiming to archive videos from around the world to ease the burden of bandwidth on any single download source. They've assembled a database of 130 videos so far -- all under the Attribution, Noncommerical, Share Alike Creative Commons licenses. New Global Vision is also powered by free software technology. From Creative Commons: weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Franz Liszt, Mixmaster, and J.S. Bach, Klepto "Time was when the art of arrangement" -- the creative reinterpretation of songs -- "occupied an honored place in musical composition." "Bach, Mozart, Liszt and Ravel," writes Liszt biographer Alan Walker in the New York Times, "were among the many composers who lavished their talents on this important activity, fitting out their own works or those of others for different forces, usually larger or smaller." Walker's article is an elegant reminder that rip-mix-burn art From Creative Commons: weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Many Merchants Lack Measurement As e-commerce has moved into the mainstream, e-tailers are faced with the challenge of updating and maintaining expensive IT investments — sometimes sacrificing measurement or marketing applications in the process. From CyberAtlas on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Wireless Adult Services to Ring Up $1B by 2008 Despite this high estimate, it only would only represent about 5 percent of mobile entertainment service revenues since there is so much free content readily available. From CyberAtlas on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. March 2003 Internet Usage Stats The average Internet activity — both at work and at home — in March 2003 for surfers in the U.S., UK, and Australia, as reported by Nielsen//NetRatings Inc. From CyberAtlas on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Traffic Patterns of March 2003 Nielsen//NetRatings analyzes who is going where on the Web, and for how long. From CyberAtlas on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Internet Not For Everyone While 42 percent of Americans say they don't use the Internet, many have had direct or indirect contact with the medium. From CyberAtlas on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Early Filing Taxpayers Lead Charge More than half of the 80 million returns already received by the IRS were filed electronically, marking a season of heavy tax site traffic and prep software sales. From CyberAtlas on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Spring Travelers Postponing Trips A slight decline in travel is expected during Spring 2003, with war emerging as the primary reason Americans are staying close to home. From CyberAtlas on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Jupitermedia Weds Nua.com with CyberAtlas Jupitermedia picks up demographic and trends tracking site Nua.com and plans to merge it with its competitive offering, CyberAtlas. From CyberAtlas on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Drug Buyers Motivated by Ads, Access The proliferation of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads has inspired an increase in recall, and might be motivating U.S. consumers to shop at foreign online pharmacies with looser standards. From CyberAtlas on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Users Still Resistant to Paid Content Internet users in the U.S., Australia, and Europe wonder why they should buy the cow when they are still getting the milk for free? From CyberAtlas on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. RSS Feeds in BlackBoard? Rumour has it that BlackBoard6 speaks (or at least understands) RSS natively. I'll be damned if I can find any documentation on it, though... Anyone stumbled across the "official" way to use RSS in BlackBoard? I've got the javascript widget filling the gap, but would rather harness the power of a native tool if it's available...... From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. RSS Syndication of search results in CAREO Just added a widget that will let you subscribe to any Simple Search query in CAREO. On the Search Results page, there is a link to the RSS feed for that query. Copy. Paste. There is no step 3. This will make it much easier to syndicate any search query for use elsewhere. Just run the search, and grab the link from the results page.... From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Tracking Back Learning Objects in CAREO Just took some time to play around with the standalone trackback tool from Ben Trott. Works like a charm (once I upgraded my Perl installation). Now, objects in CAREO have an associated URL for receiving trackback pings, as well as one for retrieving all trackbacks (if any) for that object. Log into CAREO, and hit the button for any learning object. At the bottom of that screen will be a trackback URL, as well as a link to the existing trackback items. This has the potential to be an extremely useful feature. I'd like to make it a little more... From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Earth at Night NASA took a bunch of photographs from space and stitched them together to make a really cool and powerful global image, without borders or clouds. Check it out here, in CAREO. PS. This blog entry is the first one to actually ping an object in CAREO...... From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. More XML Databases... Surfing the blog world with Feedster, and have come across a few more XML database links: Berkely XML DB by Sleepycat sounds interesting. Has no mention of XQuery, though, which is a big drawback for our needs... (here's a development weblog for their xml database) NeoCore XMS sounds great, but rather pricey (advanced XQuery, integrated XSLT, etc...) Here's a thread on Slashdot about Open Source XML Databases... The thread includes this link to a weblog about xml databases, but it seems rather dated (last post was Aug 2002).... From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. David Wiley Conference Call Notes from the conference call today. I published my thoughts on the paper here. This guy really gets it. Extremely refreshing to hear from someone else who sees through the hype, but stills sees the promise, in learning objects. Online learning is different than traditional, conventional classroom-based learning. Not necessarily better or worse, but different, and we need to recognize that in order to do it properly. "You can't just put a course online." - Exactly. You can move teaching or instruction online, but it's a different thing than just save-as-online-course. One From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Cool educational content viewer David Wiley just posted a link to his "Educational Content Viewer" prototype. Some scary synchronicity here - I've been thinking about building a learning object playback utility that could be embedded in CAREO. Wonder how this prototype gets its data? If it's already reading from CGI somewhere, it should be pretty straightforward to get that working.... From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. HiTSOFTWARE: jAllora HitSOFTWARE claims their jAllora product to be a relational-to-xml mapper (and vice versa). Geert Clememsen from Frontbase just sent a message saying it works with the FrontBase database server. Sounds interesting. Didn't see any claims of XQuery support though (the closest they come to mentioning support is in this white paper, which doesn't come right out and say they support it, only that they should). Will have to dig deeper. It's also a little pricey. It's good that it's java, and has lots of tools, but it's bad that it requires a separate webservice provider From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. SciQ Live Broadcast It appears as though the SciQ live broadcast event went off successfully. That's cool. This is the first live, streaming event hosted through CAREO. Just running stats on it now, but it looks like we had 190 simultaneous users, with about 1800 page views. Hopefully we'll get some stats from Apple or Akamai about the number of video streams served. I'm crunching the apache log from www.sciq.ca now to see who/what/where people were going. I'll post more info later... UPDATE: Here's a link to the analog output run after the live event finished. UPDATE 2: Here's a scr From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Thoughts on "Learning Objects: Difficulties and Opportunities" Finally taking the time to go through this paper (described here) by David Wiley. Here's a couple stream-of-consciousness thoughts while reading it: 2.1: Decontextualized Learning: David discusses the paradox of context vs. reusability. This is a huge issue, but he doesn't mention that a learning object can have multiple, simultaneous contexts, of different granularities and sources. An object can simultaneously be contextualized as a biochemical reaction, as a nutritional process, a socioeconomic driver, etc... These contexts don't even have to be embedded in the LO's meta From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. CAREO Metadata Server Installation I decided I should to a test installation of the ALOHA Server application, which CAREO uses as its metadata repository (CAREO is technically a client application of this server). Grabbed the documentation, PHP files etc... and had it running in less than an hour on my TiBook. If you have more experience with MySQL, you could probably get it done in less than 30 minutes. Pointed ALOHA at it, and added the first learning object within about 5 minutes of turning the lights on. Cool. If you really want to play with a schema-agnostic xml database, in the context of... From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. "Mr. Learning Objects" Just got an email invite to a conference call on Friday, with "Mr. Learning Objects" - David Wiley. Should be an interesting session. How on earth would anyone live with a reputation like that? From the invitation: Featuring David Wiley, "Mr. Learning Objects" himself. To get ready for the discussion, take a look at the reading entitled "Learning objects: Difficulties and Opportunities" that is posted on David's blog at http://www.reusability.org/blogs/david/.... From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. One More XML Database: Bluestream XStreamDB Mike just got back from Vancouver, and was talking about an XML database he saw there: Bluestream XStreamDB They claim to support XQuery via JDBC somehow. It's a java-based solution (i.e., portable - that's a Good Thing). I'm downloading it now to see what it does. Looks VERY promising. Details available here. UPDATE: Wow! It worked right off the bat! First XML DB to do THAT for me... And it comes with a whiz-bang management app, too! So far, much more impressed with XStreamDB than anything else I've tried... Oh, and it's not just portable, it's EMBEDDABLE. We cou From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Subscribing to RSS from inside MovableType Just came across this handy MovableType plugin: MT-RSSFEED. It can take any RSS feed (static file, or URL), and parse it for display within a MovableType weblog. I've changed over the RSS subscriptions to CAREO on the right sidebar to use this plugin, and it works pretty well. There are lots more great MT plugins at the MT-Plugins Directory. UPDATE: I've also put the "other" way of subscribing to RSS feeds in a page here, since it's valuable in contexts outside of MovableType (like, say, Blackboard, or WebCT, or whatever...)... From D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Is Distance Learning For Me? From Distance-Educator.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act From Distance-Educator.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Online M. A. Program in Educational Technology Debuts at San Diego State Univers From Distance-Educator.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Guidelines For Creating Accessible Online Learning Technologies From Distance-Educator.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. No Significant Difference And Distance Education From Distance-Educator.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. KM is Dead, Long Live KM From Distance-Educator.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Interview with Jonathan Levy: "Context is the holy grail for e-Learning" From Distance-Educator.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Online Learning Identities: Who are we on-line? From Distance-Educator.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Research in Distance Education: A Status Report From Distance-Educator.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Distance Education as a Means for Graduate Education From Distance-Educator.com on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Recent comments page (and feed) It's like automated meta-navel-gazing, squared. (118 words) From dive into mark on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Enough already Do not try and get out of the trunk. That's impossible. (170 words) From dive into mark on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. I'm not even supposed to BE here today My new XML.com article is out. Plus, I have a new mantra. (144 words) From dive into mark on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Project Officer - Global Education education.au is seeking a Project Officer - Global Education for a school education project ... From EdNA Online on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. New Features Coming Soon to EdNA Online: launching May MyEdNA, Search Centre and Developer's Kit, all new from EdNA Online ... From EdNA Online on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Developer's Kit Get the documentation on how to implement EdNA XML APIs and HTML services into your own website or portal ... From EdNA Online on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The EdNA Developer Subscribe to a new EdNA Online newsletter for developers, webmasters and others interested in EdNA Online XML API and HTML web services ... From EdNA Online on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The Communicator All the latest news and events in education ... From EdNA Online on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Customize this feed Add more items, descriptions, time stamps, select your version of RSS, aggregate several feeds... Check out NewsIsFree's premium syndication services! (16) From elearningpost on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Get Real From elearningpost on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Consumers in the Mist From elearningpost on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Blurbs: Writing Previews of Web Pages From elearningpost on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Tips For Developing Effective Simulations From elearningpost on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Knowledge Preservation From elearningpost on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Amazon to Power Online Sales for NBA The e-commerce giant signed a multi-year deal with the professional basketball organization to power the popular NBA.com and WNBA.com sites. From E-Commerce Guide on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Orbitz Under the Microscope With Orbitz enjoying growth in a challenging market, a lobby group opposes taxpayer funds. From E-Commerce Guide on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Many Merchants Lack Measurement As e-commerce has moved into the mainstream, e-tailers are faced with the challenge of updating and maintaining expensive IT investments — sometimes sacrificing measurement or marketing applications in the process. From E-Commerce Guide on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Moving the Merchandise Six techniques for getting rid of those items that are languishing in your warehouse, getting older but not better. From E-Commerce Guide on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The Lease-Versus-Buy Equation What is more cost effective for small businesses -- buying or leasing new hardware? Learn what experts have to say about how small businesses should manage the equation. From E-Commerce Guide on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Wal-Mart Targets Re-Coding in Bar Scan Scam UPDATE: The retailing giant sends a cease and desist letter to Re-code.com to stop the practice of so-called 'pre-shopping' recoding of goods in Wal-Mart's stores; site operators say it was all a joke and doesn't really advocate 'relabeling.' From E-Commerce Guide on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Profits Start to Flow at Digital River The e-commerce solutions company avoided the rocks during the IT downturn, and now seems poised for success; analysts see profitability and maintain a buy rating. From E-Commerce Guide on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Ready for It's Future? Yahoo! Re-Search: Step-by-step prep for Yahoo!'s retooled search engine. From E-Commerce Guide on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Case Study: CassetteHouse.com As a small online entrepreneur and early pioneer in e-commerce, Art Munson has had years of success. In this study, he shares the tools and techniques that he's used along the way. From E-Commerce Guide on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Hilton Battles Hotel Discounters The hotel company signs a new 'direct-connect' deal with Expedia and rolls out a new online reservation pricing strategy aimed at providing rate consistency. From E-Commerce Guide on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Appreciative Inquiry Last week I asked my friend Marcia Conner what I should be reading in my quest to deepen my knowledge... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Etiquette Imagine my surprise when a friend told me they'd seen a book that quoted me extensively. Huh? I'd never seen... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Open Source Ed How much of eLearning should be in the public domain? What should be proprietary? Training has a history of taking... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Bull From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Six Degrees I just finished reading Six Degrees, and if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't. Networks are the... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Disruptive Technology in the News Cruise Line to Restore Relic Ship Today's New York Times reports today that Norwegian Cruise Lines has purchased the largest,... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Object Objections Three Objections to Learning Objects Norm Friesen (normf@athabascau.ca) Athabasca University April 13, 2003 Norm Friesen has three philosophical problems with... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Schooling The Underground History of American Education, John Taylor Gatto's screed about what's really wrong with "public" schools brings tears... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Bay Area eLearning Companies Last month I put together a list of major eLearning companies in and around San Francisco as part of a... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Go With The Flow The Dawn of Workflow eLearning Disclosure: Internet Time Group publishes Sam Adkins' research reports. If analyst Sam Adkins is right,... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The Positive Learning Movement Training, like psychology, has a legacy of inherent pessimism. Both were built on the core belief that people are deficient... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Internet Time in the Times The New York Times Technology Is There Life After Silicon Valley's Fast Lane? By JOHN MARKOFF Others, like Mr. Bratcher... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Who's buying whom? 22 August 2000 KnowledgePool acquires Maxim Training"KnowledgePool, the e-Learning, IT and business skills training company, today announced its acquisition of... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Simulation in the Enterprise #2 Sam Adkins' latest report, The Gravity of the Situation: The Assimilation of eLearning by Enterprise Applications, is now available for... From Internet Time Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Breastfeeding Now Considered Pornographic America - land of the free. And to guarantee that freedom, everyone has to be constantly watchful. Like the photo store clerk from Eckerd who dutifully reported a Peruvian-born couple's lewd shots of their infants to the Richardson (Dallas/Texas suburbs) police. The photos showed the parents' two infants bathing naked, lying together in bed with their mother (again naked) and the 1-year-old Rodrigo suckling his mother's (naked) breast. So the couple was arrested -- the maximum prison sentence for the crime in question being 20 years -- and the children taken away. Thomas Korose From kuro5hin.org on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Quotes This is a list of "less known" quotes I enjoyed ("less known" is obviously a personal opinion--less known to my knowledge). Feel free to add yours in comments. And yes, I know, we on K5 are all too smart to rely on other people's quotes because we have our own Linux fortunes--so all I'm asking is just take a stroll through the ones I'm proposing and judge for yourselves. From kuro5hin.org on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Google's Page Rank - Great for Searching the Internet but not Single Sites One of the main reasons that Google is the most popular search engine on the Internet is it's page ranking system. The algorithm it uses has become so famous that it is now known simply as "PageRank". PageRank has been so widely hailed that it seems that any search system without it is deemed to be immature, behind the times or just plain useless. Brilliant as Google is, the funny thing about PageRank is that unless you are writing an Internet search engine (come on, are you really going to be doing that?), it is probably the worst possible way to sort search results. In fact you shoul From kuro5hin.org on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (Part III) This is the conclusion of a three-part series on the mental illness that I suffer from. Part I explained the symptoms than schizoaffective disorder shares with manic depression. Part II covered the experiences I have had that are in common with schizophrenia. In Part III I explain what to do if you think you're mentally ill: the importance of accurate diagnosis, my experience with psychotherapy, and how you can build a livable new world for yourself. Finally I explain why I'm so bold as to write about my illness in such a public way, and recommend some books and web From kuro5hin.org on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The complexities of Iraqi oil Protesters around the world carry banners proclaiming "No blood for oil". The reality is far more complex, here is an interesting analysis of the situation: "No war for whose oil?" From kuro5hin.org on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Everyday Steganography I have a question for the Kuro5hin audience. It looks like steganography is being demonized again. The new law in Michigan seems to make it illegal to conceal your communications, although the powers that be might limit this prohibition to those who intend to defraud. I think this is going to affect a number of unsuspecting people including Hollywood itself. From kuro5hin.org on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Sourdough Success! I have been working for nearly two months now on a top-secret1 bread project. Previously known only as "Frisco," the few details that did leak out were sketchy at best. Stories of mutating biological agents, smelly goop, and some reports of initial failure left bread analysts stymied, puzzled, and frankly, worried. But at last the truth can be revealed. I have been making sourdough. And at last, I have succeeded! [Insert evil laughter here.] From kuro5hin.org on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The Movement to Lower the Voting Age has Begun The movement to lower the voting age has begun. On March 25th, a bill to lower the voting age in the state of Maine passed committee with an overwhelming vote of 11-2. This follows the introduction of a city referendum to lower the voting age to 16 in Anchorage, Alaska. After much work on this, the measure missed the ballot by one vote. Last year the city council in Cambridge, Massachusetts passed an ordnance lowering the voting age to 17 for local elections. Local youth groups in Florida, North Dakota and Washington, DC. are busy working on the issue in their areas as well. From kuro5hin.org on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Only 35% object oriented One reason why I'm leery of the buzzword of the day. A project gone bad. From kuro5hin.org on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Story ad improvements, and free trial membership New stuff! I'll keep this short. Basically, you can choose the location of story ads now. If you're a subscriber, you can choose to show all ads, only index ads or story ads, or no ads. Both of these preferences are on your display prefs page. And I finally got around to enabling free trial subscriptions. You can try out a full premium membership for a month, for nothing. See inside for details. From kuro5hin.org on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. on the difference between marks and locks JD Lasica has a nice pointer to a story about progress in the digital watermarking debate. She wonders about this progress because of work (in part by Ed Felten) suggesting "that all such encryption systems can be defeated." But there is an important distinction that this debate needs. I'm a strong supporter of flawed (in the sense of defeatable) watermarking. Here's why: From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Les Vadasz Today, Les Vadasz will announce his retirement from Intel, effective June 1. We owe this extraordinary man a great deal. Vadasz was a founding member of Intel in 1968. He has been a founding member of the small but growing (and exceptionally important) group of IT executives who understand the threat to innovation that this current "war" (the copyright war) presents. Vadasz became famous to the public when he had the temerity to standup to Senator Hollings' abuse. From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. a respectful quibble with the Doc Doc has a great post pushing public domain dedications of content. But on the way to his valuable recommendation, Doc writes, "I believe what Userland and the Creative Commons people have made here is, literally, a DRM — digital rights management — system, in the best possible sense of the acronym." I think it is useful and important to distinguish between DRM and DRE -- digital rights management vs. digital rights expression. DRE is a technology simply (1) to express rights. The "management" in DRM im From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Weblogs and the Public Domain Doc has an interesting post about CC licenses and the public domain. As he rightly notes, we have no direct license that you can link to so as to place your material in the public domain. This is not because we wouldn't like to offer such a license. It is instead because the law does not make such simplicity possible. While for most of our history, there were a thousand ways to move creative material into the public domain, most lawyers today are puzzled about whether there is any way to move work into the public do From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. great cc news Dave has posted instructions for placing a Creative Commons license in the RSS feed generated from a Manila weblog. This is great news. We have launched a campaign to build a layer of reasonable copyright law in a world increasingly defined by the extremes. CC tags -- marks expressing freedom beyond fair use -- is an important first step. Web logs have been the most important early adopters. With Movabletype, and now Userland, the most active and vibrant community on the web is beginning to show the rest something between the ex From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. and fiat is a policy An interesting mix of Senators has written a strongly worded letter to Chairman Powell about his apparent decision to revise media ownership rules without public hearings. This does seem a curious way to launch profound changes of media policy -- in a democracy at least. From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. the lessons we teach Two articles from The Hindu suggest the interesting world we've entered. In the first, India's Union Minister for Civil Aviation says that the doctrine of "pre-emptive war" (relied upon by the United States to justify its war in Iraq) should be used to justify a war against Pakistan to counter its allegged support for "terrorism." In the second article, Pakistan says that there is "ample proof that India possesses biological, chem From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. a day with the "fretters" I was one of the "fretters" (as Declan called us) at CFP in New York last week. By "fretters," Declan means people who "lose perspective" on issues like media concentration, and threats to privacy. "Perspective," in turn, means recognizing the "tremendous difference" between actions taken by the government and those taken by private corporations. Who exactly doesn't understand that difference isn't clear from the article; nor is it clear for how long this "tremendous" difference will remain "tremendous," as increasingly corpora From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Secret blacklists in Pennsylvania So this story continues to amaze me. Pennsylvania has a law that gives the Pennsylvania Attorney General the power to order an ISP serving Pennsylvania citizens (read: any ISP anywhere) to block a site which the Pennsylvania Attorney General says serves child porn. There is no judicial review of the order, and as no ISP is likely to resist the order, the law results in unreviewed censorship of internet content. According to this report, the AG is now refusing to even reveal the list of sites his secret or From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. yes, some regulation After my talk at CFP on Friday, some smart soul asked me a question that I answered quite stupidly. He asked whether part of the problem we face cames from a "naive" opposition to regulation. This was an argument I had made before in Code, and I was not eager to engage it again. But the right answer is yes: there is still a need balanced and useful regulation. The one (but only) sense in which Declan is right is that none of the regulation we've seen so far is either balanced or useful.But that does not m From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. on what we need courts for They say I'm a pessimist about the future of freedom on the net, and they've got two books of mine to prove it. But the report that the RIAA has now filed suit against four students for sharing content over a university network is a moment of hope. If we work hard to report the details and reality of this suit, then the extremism of the RIAA's tactics will finally get through. Let this extremism finally force recognition of the best response to this From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. GREENspan points to the place in the middle Thanks to Scott Lazerwith and Murry Chapman for sending along this bit of good news: Alan Greenspan has signaled what other smart economists have been saying for a long time: That this race to protectionism in the field of intellectual property is not without cost. As Greenspan said,"If our objective is to maximize economic growth, are we striking the right balance in our protection of intellectual property rights? Are the protections sufficiently broad to encourage innovation but not so broad as From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. key deadlines Today is a key deadline in this absurd system for raising money to run for president. There are a lot of great Democrats out there (so far, only one Republican so we don't need adjectives). If you're eager to see this become an interesting race, contribute something by today. Here are some useful links: EdwardsDeanOthersUPDATE: Apparently, this plug put Edwards over the top. Wow. From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. the first copyright wars Thanks to Sean McGrath for sending me this wonderful story about the first copyright wars. The story is told in Ingenious Ireland by Mary Mulvihill, about the 3000 men who died in the "Battle of the Book at Cooldrumman" after copyists refused to return the copies after a court ruled against them. Perspective perhaps, but precedent too? From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. felten wisdom Ed Felten has a wonderful piece about the idiocy in the mini-DMCA's being considered by a number of state "governments." What is so frustrating about this business is not the people (like these governments) who disagree with you. But that their disagreement reveals that they have not done anything to understand the issue. We are over 5 years into this battle, yet these laws look like they have been drafted by people who have lived on another planet these past 5 years. From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Education/Technology bloggers Lately, education/technology bloggers have increased (in both numbers and intensity of dialogue)...so, I've posted an extensive list of Edu-tech bloggers... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Library for e-learning practitioners For those of us who are interested in e-learning theory as well as practice, the Association for the Advancement of... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The LMS roulette wheel spins again In Learning Circuits last month, Click2Learn's Kevin Oakes answered an analyst who asked, "Kevin, how do you assess the competitive... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. How are elearning choices made? Quick comments/question: I was recently interviewed by an HR magazine. When asked how elearning decisions were made in organizations, I... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Blogiquette Blogging calls for short posts. Little flashes of stuff, not essays. Let's give it a try. Last week I finished... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Workflow Displacing Courseware-based eLearning I continue to be blown away by new learning technology hitting the market. These innovations are now displacing courseware-based eLearning... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Death to Multiple Choice? There are lots of ways we can be clever at moving beyond fact recognition with our assessments, but we're not. And we must. We can't have engaging learning, we can't take our effectiveness to the next level, if we aren't moving to align our assessment with higher objectives (as we should our learning). From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. LMS Vendors are NOT an Endangered Species The news of the death of LMS vendors has been greatly exaggerated. They are adapting to the new market conditions... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. LMS Roulette Anyone? Publicly-traded e-learning companies are setting new price lows with Docent trading below cash and Saba fast on it's way there.... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Dr. Allen's Prescription Dr. Michael Allen, author of Authorware (among other notable achievements), spoke at the e-learning forum today. Distilling his premise down... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. New Words and Old Tricks: Captology and MindTools A new word: Captology. It is defined as the science of using technology to modify human behavior. It appears to... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Different Learners, Same Learning one of those 'slap upside the head' type of revelations: the disconnect between our increasingly standardized learning, and our growing recognition that individuals learn differently From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Let's Help Jay -- Again In mid-March, I'm giving the opening keynote at elearning exhibition & conference in Manchester. My topic is Learning as a... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Interview: Maish - elearningpost I had an opportunity recently to interview Maish - Chief Editor of elearningpost. His comments and insights may be of... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Media and Learning If you spend any time reading blogs, you've no doubt heard the news that Google has purchased Blogger...further legitimizing the... From Learning Circuits Blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Accessify.com - accessibility favelets/bookmarklets to help you assess how accessible you web pages are Accessify.com - accessibility favelets/bookmarklets to help you assess how accessible you web pages are A collection of bookmarklets that give you easy access to page elements liek metadata and alt text. 3/19/2003 From Library Techlog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Farewell to Metaphors Farewell to Metaphors Like Carol, I too have always liked metaphors. I've never been sure how much they helped, but I think in information seeking as in problem solving it helps to be able to approach a problem from as many different angles as possible. So I think there's a place for metaphors in search but I think they have to help us visualize the information rather than provide cute pictures of the physical spaces where the information is located. Why recreate physical space when we can do something more expressive with the distance between two points. Look at some of the neat thi From Library Techlog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The Secret Guide to Computers - Toc The Secret Guide to Computers - Toc A lot of detail about computers explained in very simple, direct language. 3/11/2003 From Library Techlog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Gallery of Data Visualization Gallery of Data Visualization If you're a fan of Edward Tufte's work, you ought to enjoy this gallery which includes many of the same examples from Tufte's books as well as examp0les demonstrating similar principles. 3/10/2003 From Library Techlog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Getting Started With XML Getting Started With XML Eric rolls on with more guidance on working with XML. Eric knows his stuff, so this is bound to be good. 3/10/2003 From Library Techlog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. ColorBrewer - Selecting Good Color Schemes for Maps ColorBrewer - Selecting Good Color Schemes for Maps I confess I'm not sure quite how to work the ColorBrewer or EasyRGB- but they're both neat tools for playing with, thinking about, and(if you know what you're doing) using color. 3/10/2003 From Library Techlog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Roogle :: RSS Search Engine Roogle :: RSS Search Engine Cool- another RSS search engine- type in "library" for a mix of library folks, programmers talking about libraries, and other folks talking about their library fines. 3/10/2003 From Library Techlog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Welcome to DLIST Welcome to DLIST Paul Bracke from dLIST has written back to my query to say that they'd welcome the kind of material Library_Geek says we should be collecting( collection developmentpolicies, instruction handouts, mission statements, etc.) in dLIST, so, upload 'em if you've got 'em! 3/6/2003 From Library Techlog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. "Rember the Gin and Tonic!" : Using Alcohol to Teach Boolean Searching "Rember the Gin and Tonic!" : Using Alcohol to Teach Boolean Searching This is just one example from Michael Lorenzen's LibraryInstruction.com which looks like it has a lot of BI links, as well as being offered as a repository of lesson plans. So maybe Michael is interested in the libraryland knowledgebase idea. 3/6/2003 From Library Techlog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Help me OCLC, you're my only hope Help me OCLC, you're my only hope Christina links and thinks on the state of help interfaces in web pages. I'd always thought that if the user is reaching for the Help link too much it means the interface needs help, not the user. Anyway, some thoughts that should be applicable to library's online pages as well. 2/28/2003 From Library Techlog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Mt. Lassen Volcanic Park It's getting on summer time and you know what that means -- time to plan some vacations! One of my favorite places in the whole wide world is Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California. It's got boiling mud pits, sulfery pools, and an active volcano, all less than five hours from San Francisco! It makes a great weekend hiking getaway, and you can rent a house up there that'll sleep many (like 13!) for $300/weekend. I tell you this because I got a brochure today in the mail from the people I've rented from twice before, From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Get the MUG I subscribe to all sorts of daily and weekly emails but none please me as consistently as the Manhattan User's Guide. It's always the perfect length. It arrives in a timely fashion. It covers topics of interest to me (food & restaurants, shopping & services, neat things to do, etc.) and it does so with humor and insight. As a new New Yorker, it provides me with a wonderful blend of practical and special, giving me insider-like knowledge of all things Manhattan even though I've lived here less than six months. Best of all From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The kindness of New Yorkers Last night as I exited the subway, I stopped at the booth to have more money put on my MetroCard. As my transaction was being processed, a train pulled in. Several people began exiting through the turnstiles, while at the same time a woman came rushing into the station, mumbled about being in a hurry and missing the train, and got on line behind me. Just then, a woman exiting called out, "Hey lady! Lady!" We both turned. "I just swiped my card so you could go through. Hurry! Don't miss your train!" And with that, one woman dashed From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Inferno reading in NYC Tomorrow (Thursday) night at New York City's The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine (the largest cathedral in the world) from 9 PM to midnight there will be a reading of Dante's The Inferno. From the website: "New York poets and writers will read 'Inferno' by Dante Alighieri during the vigil on Maundy Thursday, the very hours Dante intended the events in this masterpiece to take place. Free admission." From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Christian Seder As part of Passover, I knew Jews celebrated Seder but I wasn't aware of a Christian Seder movement. Reading the details, some of it makes sense. Some of it, "Seder is Christian and we can be confident that it will be a worthwhile experience because Jesus told us to do it," does not. For those that are celebrating, whether Christian or Jewish, Happy Passover! For those sweet-tooths that are celebrating, here are some recipes for From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Female advice I am probably the last person in the world to learn this, but in the off chance that I'm not, I wanted to share this fabulous discovery: ladies, if you wear a beige bra beneath white t-shirts or lightweight cotton blouses that are rather sheer, you get no bra outline! Stupid me, I usually wear white bras, and I could never figure out how to hide that horrid "bra outline" that appears. But now I know, it's all in the wearing of the beige bras. Of course, if your skin isn't a shade of beige, it probably won't work for you. So in that case I'd recommend a brown or black b From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Great thoughts from all Thanks to everyone who's sent in thoughts about the cutting edge of blogging. The stuff I've gotten is really great. I think I'll post some of it to the site because a lot of it won't fit into my presentation but it's good stuff worth sharing. I thought "I want to be your naked personal assistant" from Candi had a lot of potential, but when I opened it, it turned out to address a different subject matter. Naked assistants and blogging, what more natural fit could there be? From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Cutting edge blogging I'm into the final push for my presentation, From the Margins of the Writable Web, for the Emerging Technology conference next week. I've been working on this for weeks now, but now I need you - the general public - to make sure I haven't missed any bleeding edge weblogging stuff (i.e. not warblogs or anything you'd read about in the paper). What's happening on the far-frontiers that I might have missed? If you've any ideas, please let me know via email. From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. An Open mind ATTN: L'Oréal Marketing Dept. RE: Round Two Mesdames: After my inablity to achieve experte hair color last night (and as you now know, achieving instead garish results), I found myself Open to different hair colors. I sought something that would perhaps even out the cheetah-colored blend, while helping me, "see sparkling color alive with highlights." Alas, it turns out I am more than open about hair color, I am a foolish risk-taker who cannot learn a lesson. From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Où est l'experte? ATTN: L'Oréal Marketing Dept. RE: Product names Mesdames: You recently launched a new hair coloring product with the name Couleur Experte. My understanding, based on your marketing campaign, was that I would couleur like a pro and achieve experte results from my home bathroom. I write today to suggest an alternative marketing campaign. While your intentions with the name experte may have been good, my results speak for themselves, and highlight (no pun intended) the need for an immediate rebranding of Couleur From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Words of wisdom "Every woman needs the following: her 'fuck me' shoes and her 'don't fuck with me' shoes." - Heather Champ From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Wider release for 'Beckham' Bend it Like Beckham, the wonderful movie I mentioned recently, is getting a wider release across this US this weekend. So if it wasn't playing in your neighborhood, check again, it might be now. From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Rather than 1000 words From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Additional Office X updates Apparently there are further updates to Office X for Mac than I was aware of when I posted about it the other day: 10.1.2 and 10.1.3. [thanks Gabe!] From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Flow crazy I've been using OmniGraffle for the past few days to create flows of the lafayette system. It's become the only way I can think through any process, so I now present you with the American War with Iraq Justification Process Flow [32 KB]. From megnut on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. This Town vs. Gown Fight Is All About Taxes The griping about how much or how little Princeton University pays in fees and taxes has started early and politely. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Pros, Cons and Don't Cares at the University of Michigan At the focal point of the nation's fight over affirmative action, students display a curious mixture of passion and apathy, of immersion and disengagement. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Testing Fad Achieves New Levels With the Disabled The federal and state governments have instituted standardized tests for students who, because of their limitations, are unable to even use pencils. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Benefactor Wants Colleges to Deliver a Stronger Civics Lesson Millionaire Eugene Lang wants to build political and civic engagement among young people in America, and he is convinced that the solution lies in higher education. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. When the Learning Is the Hands-On Kind Although some students do better in vocational schools, state and local governments are cutting support for them. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. A Single Alphabet Bridges Children's Two Cultures Ten students from Queens, N.Y., participated in an art exhibit, "The Arabic Alphabet," which presents 28 Arabic words that are not terror-related. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Better Schools Through Better Teaching? How Novel Anna Switzer is the excessively caffeinated and preternaturally motivated principal of City Hall Academy, the much-critiqued multimillion-dollar educational innovation. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. University Purchases Reporters' Notes on Watergate The Washington Post reporters who first uncovered the Watergate scandal have sold their Watergate notes and other papers to the University of Texas for $5 million. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Attack on Colleges' Aid to Minorities Widens A new offensive is well under way against scholarships and summer programs intended to ease minority students into college life. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Study Finds Charter Schools Lack Experienced Teachers A new study has found that charter schools, an alternative to low-performing public schools, rely heavily on young, uncredentialed teachers. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Arrest of a Popular Athletic Director Leaves Students Stunned Students at Leonia High School reacted with a mix of shock and dismay at the arrest of the school's athletic director on charges he had sexually molested a student several times. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. With an Eye on Expansion, N.Y.U. Seeks Local Opinions New York University is in negotiations to rent or buy the Tower Video site on the corner of Lafayette and East Fourth Streets, according to the school's president. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The N.C.A.A. Trophy Is Gold. All Else Is Orange. For the first time ever, the Orangemen returned home as N.C.A.A. basketball champions. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Budget Ax Looms Over 3,200 Jobs in Schools The New York City Department of Education said on Tuesday that it planned to lay off 3,200 school employees, most of them part-time school aides. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. War and Illness Cloud Prospects for Study Abroad With terror alerts, the war in Iraq, and now the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, study abroad has become a far more jittery proposition. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Albany Senator Seeks to Block Bloomberg's School District Plan State Senator Frank Padavan said that he would introduce legislation to block Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan to eliminate New York City's local school districts. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Church-State Furor Engulfs Education Chief After raising a storm of criticism with remarks praising the values of Christian schools, Education Secretary Rod Paige said that he was only expressing a personal opinion. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Harvard Adopts New Rules for Early-Admission Applicants The university will no longer allow applicants who file for early admission to apply early at other colleges as well. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Miniscule Dip in Dropout Rate, but Many Graduate Late The percentage of students who dropped out of New York City high schools declined minutely last year, but only half of those scheduled to graduate last June did so. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Federal Agency Issues Guidelines on Handling Infected Students The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the first guidelines for school officials in determining what to do if a student has SARS. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Schools Across Nation Redrawing Crisis Plans In the last two months, schools in New York City, and elsewhere, have been redrawing crisis plans, ordering more drills and briefing their staffs on new emergency procedures. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Case for a Tougher Bar Exam Prompts a Forceful Rebuttal A proposal to raise the minimum passing score for the bar exam is drawing opposition from legal experts, bar associations and all 15 of New York's law school deans. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Behind the A B C's, a Buzz Saw Diana Lam, the new deputy chancellor with the onerous job of overhauling New York City's school system, has earned a few critics with her fast-paced, brusque work style. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Tuition Plans: Pay Now, Pay Later Most of the 19 states that offer prepaid tuition plans are sharply increasing their prices. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. How Public High School Students Fared in Five Subjects New York City students are making slow progress toward the state's tough new graduation standards, Regents exam scores released last week show. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Islamic World Less Welcoming to American Scholars The war in Iraq, and the angry reactions it has aroused across the Islamic world, have disrupted work by American scholars from Tunisia to Pakistan. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. A Small School District Rises Up Against Albany The Fairport Board of Education is taking a stand against a state government that has not passed a timely budget in 19 years. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Philadelphia Schools Look Within to Improve A change in leadership has turned attention away from privatization and towards other remedies for poorly-performing schools, such as after-school programs. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Baseball and Books The Puerto Rico Baseball Academy and High School is perhaps the first school to offer a concentration in the sport. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Despite Victory Won by Mayor, School Control Is Not Assured Last year, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg won control of the New York City school system. But lawmakers are now furious over his plans to eliminate local school districts. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. One Killed and 3 Are Wounded at New Orleans School A gunman carried an AK-47 assault rifle into a high school protected by four security guards and a police officer Monday, killing a 15-year-old boy. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Squeezed Colleges See Credit Ratings Drop A record number of downgrades reflect pressures on private colleges to spend money, to keep classrooms filled and to raise tuition. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. A Warning Against Mixing Commerce and Academics In his new book, a former president of Harvard University looks at the pressure universities face to blur the boundaries between academia and the corporate world. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Newark Mayor Fails to Oust City Schools Superintendent Supporters of the state-appointed Newark schools superintendent, Marion Bolden, swept all three seats at stake in elections for the Newark, N.J., school advisory board. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Columbia Names New Dean for Its Journalism School Nicholas Lemann, the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, has agreed to become dean of the Graduate School of Journalism. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. New Online Genre Supplies Lessons on the War in Iraq A new hybrid online genre part daily journalism, part education has taken shape during the war. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. When a Snow Day Is More Than Just Play An essay question on snow days on a Massachusetts writing exam raises accusations of cultural bias. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. 9-Year-Old Is Charged in Sex Assault at a School The principal of Roxbury Elementary School sat in her office in tears after one of her students, a 9-year-old boy, was charged with assaulting a 7-year-old girl. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. State Education Chief Will Urge Keeping Head of Newark Schools New Jersey's education commissioner, William L. Librera, will recommend that the superintendent, Marion Bolden, lead the troubled district for three more years. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. L.I. Principal Is Charged With Possession of Crack The principal of a Long Island high school was arrested Wednesday night after police officers found half a gram of crack cocaine inside his car, the authorities said. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Philadelphia Drops a Manager of Five Elementary Schools For 4,500 pupils at five Philadelphia elementary schools, the privatization experiment that began last fall has ended. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Fight Over California Schools Raises New Issue of Priorities California has spent $13 million in the last three years defending itself in a suit seeking to improve conditions in its public schools. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. West Pointers Prepare to Face Changed World West Point cadets are full of new questions about America's role and their own in a world that has changed greatly since many of them enrolled. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. After Years of Crises, an Atlanta College Is on Death Watch Financial problems and loss of accreditation may mean that a historically black college will itself become history. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Schools Fail to Gain Time for Budgets Gov. George E. Pataki vetoed a bill that would have given school districts an extra two weeks to present their budgets to voters. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Teacher Says Punching Is a Birthday Ritual A New York City teacher charged with endangering the welfare of a child for punching a student in the arm 13 times for his birthday said that she meant the boy no harm. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Civics 101, Taught by Saddam Hussein Samples from fifth- and sixth-grade textbooks in "national education" Saddam Hussein's version of civics. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. A Mathematician's World of Doughnuts and Spheres Dr. Grigori Perelman of St. Petersburg says he has found a proof of the Poincaré Conjecture, one of the seven most important math problems of the millennium. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Helping Graduates Outwit Hard Times Trudy Steinfeld tells thousands of N.Y.U. graduates each year that it is not hard to land a job so long as they take a shrewd approach to their search. From New York Times: Education on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. BOOK CAFE - For the Book Lover In You! 1/2 OFF Original Price! Hundreds of new books! [PRWEB Apr 20, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Bursaries for Workshop Papers in 'Conflict and Faith' Centre for Reconciliation and Peace announces bursary awards for post graduate students studying conflict transformation and faith values. London UK - opend to UK based students only. [PRWEB Apr 20, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Tampa Bay Reads and Dr. Ferdie Pacheco Kick Off the Trolley Kat Book Tour - Beginning April 25th Tampa Bay Reads, a local non-profit literacy program, will introduce Bay area children to YborÂ’s very own childrenÂ’s book character, Trolley Kat by way of the “Trolley Kat Book Tour”. A Kick-Off celebration will be held from 10-1 at the Columbia Restaurant attended by children from Metropolitan Ministries. Author, Ferdie Pacheco, M.D. will be there to do a reading of one of the Trolley Kat books with lunch and a ride on TampaÂ’s Trolley provided by Tampa Bay Reads and other local sponsors, 9Second Technologies, Columbia Restaurant. The first official stop on the bo From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. New Product: Computer Tips Archive Here is a collection of 1-2 page reports that any computer user will find to be useful and informative. They were written by college instructor Rick Sheridan who has taught 100Â’s of people how to use a computer. [PRWEB Apr 19, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Pink Mango presents “ Sacred Walls: A Collection of Mithili Paintings from India." The Collection is on view at Shivaani Gallery, 855 Folsom Street, Suite 108, San Francisco from April 26 to May 4, 2003. The opening of the exhibition is on April 26,2003 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm. [PRWEB Apr 19, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. English-To-Go Ltd. launches the new english-to-go.com English-To-Go.com, the principal website for e-learning resources has launched its new website. The new look and feel reflects the updated products and services that are now offered. The new English-to-go.com site acts as a portal providing links to our other resources at SelfAccess.com and Instant Workbook.com. [PRWEB Apr 18, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. LANGUAGES Internationale Opens New Department: Computer Studies Languages Internationale Chairman, Atty. Nordy P. Diploma, announced today the launching of the Computer Studies Department at Languages Internationale. Under the helm of its newly appointed director, Mr. Rafael Pefianco, Languages Internationale – Computer Studies combines professional instructors with real world practioners to deliver world-class instruction at Languages Internationale. [PRWEB Apr 17, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Faux painting school of Denver, Colorado, now featured at the Faux Design Center. Learn to Faux Finish. Faux school instructing: Venetian plaster, color washing,sky painting, metallics, stencils, trompe l'oeil, marble, woodgraining, muraling, distressed finishes,furniture finishes. For beginners and professionals. [PRWEB Apr 16, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Coach a Child: Empower an Adult. Our task, Financial Literacy How a 10 year old boy can be helped by reading a book. (Joint photo available) [PRWEB Apr 16, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. 2003 MILKEN CONFERENCE CULTIVATES FIRST-RATE NATIONAL TEACHING CORPS Awarding of $2.5 million to 100 of AmericaÂ’s finest K-12 educators highlights 14th annual Milken National Education Conference [PRWEB Apr 16, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. English-To-Go Ltd partners with Digital Brain plc to provide world class English language learning resources to teachers, students and institutions throughout London. English-To-Go Ltd. the principal website for e-learning resources has become a leading content provider to the greater London area via the Digitalbrain education portal. Digitalbrain plc sub hosts English-To-Go English language learning resources and delivers these world class resources to teachers, students and institutions. [PRWEB Apr 16, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Online-Learning Announces New Information Design Program Online-Learning.com announces a new online Information Design Program. The program teaches students how to create online and traditional information documents. Students completing the program can pursue careers in technical writing, human factors or information design. [PRWEB Apr 15, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Mosaics - Spreading the Art! This special one-day workshop is about what makes designing in mosaics differentfrom other art forms and what tools are available to achievethose results. You will explore the various tile laying systemssuch as mesh backing, adhesive paper and waxed board method. Youwill learn to design and work with vitreous glass, unglazed andglazed ceramic tile, smalti and marble and the different affectsthat these materials have on mosaic design. [PRWEB Apr 15, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. ITM catching up with IIM's! The Indian Institutes of Management set up by Government of India have been traditionally the topmost B-Schools. Institute for Technology and Management is a private B-School which has achieved Placement in Campus Recruitment on par with IIM's this season. ITM is pushing into Top Ten rank in Campus Placement by getting offers of Rs 14 lacs p.a. on par with best Indian offers recieved in IIM-A, IIM-Kolkata and IIM-Kozhikode [PRWEB Apr 14, 2003] From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Wizdom Education Releases White Paper on Managing the IEP Process Wizdom details why the Hybrid approach (combination of PC-based and web-based) is best for implementation of systems to support the Individual Education Plan (IEP) Process. Naperville, IL April 1, 2003 –Wizdom Education, a premier provider of Special Education IEP and Transition Planning software, has released a white paper on Managing the IEP Process. Based on extensive research and practical application of each area, the paper details the pluses and minuses of PC-based and web-based IEP applications. The case is then made for why a combination of both PC-based and Web-based applications, referred to as the "Hybrid" approach, is best for managing the IEP Process. "A hybrid approach truly captures the best of both worlds," says Dennis E. Wisnosky, Wizdom Educati From PR Web on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Judaism as a Medium - practicing what we preach So I think I'm finally learning how to speak about Judaism. That is, I'm learning how to speak about religion as a process, rather than as a thing. And this tends to make the whole discussion a heck of a lot less contentious. In media theorist's terms, I guess what I'm trying to do is show how Judaism is less about content than contact. From rushkoff.blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Speaking to People About Religion So, the tour for Nothing Sacred is underway. I've got a few dates in NYC and DC before heading out West. Very intense, so far. So intense, that I'm thinking of softening my approach. I've only spoken at a couple of synagogues and seminaries so far, but I'm fast learning that people are less willing to consider new ways of looking at their relationship to religion than, say, the Internet. From rushkoff.blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Shucks and Awe Okay, so they went through with it. I do think they were hoping to kill or frighten Saddam into submission without wasting all of this ordinance, but here's what happens when you go to war. Interestingly, they're making their bet on the presumption that Iraq is a truly top-down society. From rushkoff.blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Scared? No. Morose, yes. I keep getting emails from people who live outside the US, asking if we New Yorkers are really as afraid of terrorism as everyone says we are. I'd have to say, no.We are not jumping at every loud sound, worrying about every large package on the subway, or tossing and turning in bed at night as we ponder escape scenarios for a dirty bomb attack. From rushkoff.blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Nothing Sacred Tour Okay, I'm posting this for two reasons. First, a lot of people have been emailing for information on when and where I'll be speaking when my new book, Nothing Sacred, is released (April 8). Second, pasting this info into my blog window is the easiest way to get it into simple HTML for my tour page. From rushkoff.blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Net Penance I just received this email:Dear Douglas, I am wondering if you are the Douglas Rushkoff who was in my second grade class with Miss Brownell in 1968-1969 (Chatworth Elementary, Larchmont, NY)??If so, I owe you an apology. I stole the 1802 penny that you brought to class for Show and Tell. From rushkoff.blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Old School I just wrote a foreward for a book that's coming out next year about Rave and Religion. Took me back. I thought I'd post it here, because it reveals something about my early work and thinking that might be of interest, or even surprising, to those of you who came to this particular party more recently. From rushkoff.blog on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Manila improvement: In 1999, when Manila was first released, spam had not yet become the huge annoyance it is today. Now, in 2003, there are all kinds of harvesters that scan the Web looking for email addresses, there are even harvesters written specifically for Manila sites. They know where to look. And they slow down ou From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Ev, if you're in Mountain View, try the sushi at the Japanese place on Dana just off Castro. From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Matt Grayson has an OPML Directory Browser for .NET. From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Damn I hate California this time of year. ";->" From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Caleb Crain: "It's a little unreal to think that someone I've known for years took these photographs in Iraq this morning, and I'm looking at them after lunch in the safe haven of Brooklyn." From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled BBC: US airline pilots get guns. From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled UserTalk source for site-list OPML script, below. From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Chris Lydon: "If Saddam ruled perchance Rome, we might just possibly have decided to go get him; but somebody would have said: oh, by the way, we have to save the Sistine Chapel!" From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Phillip Pearson has an OPML Directory Browser in C#. From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Interesting timing, I'm did an OPML project this morning. Here's the problem. Before our server was up and running I started a directory for Harvard weblogs, we got 35 submissions, all from sites running off the Harvard network. Then the server went live, and we are starting new sites at an increasing rate, over 100 so far. Of couse those people wanted to know why they aren't in the directory. Oy. Last night I figured out how to put both directories together, without having to manually add each site as it comes online. I wrote a script that generates an From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Jake Savin: "A whole bunch of new stuff is in progress for Manila. I've got a list longer than my arm, and I'm working as fast as I can to get features, enhancements and bug-fixes into the software." From Scripting News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Dave Winer wants to get Harvard blogging In fact, Winer is a software developer; as founder and CEO of UserLand Software, he created software that facilitates Weblogs. Not coincidentally, it's the wonder of Weblogs - simple personal Web sites that authors frequently update - that Winer is preaching as a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School (HLS). Not only are Weblogs ("blogs" to those in the know) getting a buzz as the Internet's next big thing, but Winer and the Berkman Center think bloggi From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The driving force I had in mind was communication When I proposed the Web in 1989, the driving force I had in mind was communication through shared knowledge, and the driving "market" for it was collaboration among people at work and at home. By building a hypertext Web, a group of people of whatever size could easily express themselves, quickly acquire and convey knowledge, overcome misunderstandings, and reduce duplication of effort. This would give people in a group a new power to build something together. [Tim Ber From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Explanation of RSS, How You Can Use it and Finding RSS Feeds Before you go any further, realize this: RSS is really simple. Just because it is an acronym doesnÂ’t mean that itÂ’s complicated. DonÂ’t get scared away, thereÂ’s really nothing to it. I said it was an acronym, but depending on who you ask and what version of RSS you are speaking about, it may stand for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or a variation of those. None of that matters to you anyhow. Another thing that you donÂ’t need to care about is the versions... [ From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content Even if the major search engines fail to make blog searching a reality, there are already a variety of ways you can do it now. Indeed, last month at least two new blog searching services were launched, Feedster and RSS Search. To be accurate, both are actually RSS search engines. They accept content not by crawling the web but instead by receiving RSS feeds, a mechanism for site own From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Tapping into the French speaking world of educational Blogs Cybercarnet: an effective management tool for the director Here contents of the workshop that I animate with the next congress of the AQUOPS , this Tuesday April 15 in the Center o From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Knowledge management and weblogs Knowledge management has been premised on the notion that the knowledge to be managed already exists and simply needs to be collected and organized to obtain the promised benefits. One reason that so many of us find weblogs exciting in the realm of knowledge management is that weblogs reveal that the most important knowledge needs to be created before it can be collected and organized. This is similar to the argument about the important split between tacit and explicit knowledge but much simpler. There is a categ From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Creative Commons, RSS and Manila This document shows you how to use a Creative Commons license in the RSS feed generated from a Manila weblog. [Dave Winer] Nice move. Unfortunately, the link to the licence information at the Creative Commons Website does not work right now. I hope it gets fixed soon... [Sebastian Fiedler] From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Hire Sebastien Paquet I will be available for work starting this summer. I have a strong preference for jobs that involve interacting with people outside the organization - partners or users, for instance. I wish to use a personal voice, rather than official, dry, or overly corporate lingo. Online community building, online learning facilitation, evangelism, bridge-building, and product documentation are among the things I would consider doing. I'd also be very happy to help out From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Mapping weblog entries to student evaluations A little more on mapping weblog entries to student evaluations... let's see if this makes any sense: a school's evaluations = a Python/Radio Community Server one teacher's evaluations = an individual weblog the evaluation of one unit = a post (with additional metadata) a student = a category summary of one student's units for one class in a year = a category archive page That seems reasonable, doesn't it? ["Tom Hoffman"] Tom From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. We should be able to create with others We ought to be able not only to find any kind of document on the Web, but also to create any kind of document, easily. We should be able not only to follow links, but to create them - between all sorts of media. We should be able not only to interact with other people, but to create with other people. Interactivity is the process of making things or solving problems together. If interactivity is not just sitting ther passively in front of a display screen, then interactivity is not just sit From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. RSS Feed Reader / News Aggregators Directory I posted a similar, but much smaller list earlier - this new one is much more comprehensive, and I hope it will keep on growing. It is suprising to see how many different, yet similar looking Windows feed readers exist - has become writing a .NET feed reader the modern hello world application? For your convience and for further reference, this entry has also been added to the sidebar. [Haiko Hebig] [via From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. A wiki site on RSS readers RSS readers are part of RssSyndication; you use them to read RssFeeds, either just the headlines, or the headlines and a short description (or even the whole text) of each item. You can click on any item to see it in it's regular web page context. Some readers use a web interface, some are a desktop program, separate from your web browser. Some readers let you easily post what you're reading to your own weblog ( From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. BlogPulse - Automated Trend Discovery for Weblogs Just found: BlogPulse - Automated Trend Discovery for Weblogs BlogPulse Key Phrases are mined daily from over 30,000 weblogs using machine learning algorithms and natural language processing techniques. BlogPulse Top Links are the most popular links appearing in weblogs today. [Lilia Efimo From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Kind remarks from Canada Learning Webs. This is right, isn't it? "Aspects of Illich's vision start to surface in various recent projects and initiatives. Take a look , for example, at David Wiley's work on (digital) learning objects, Sebastien Paquet's match-making service and Philip Pearson's Topic Exchange." I think we are in the process of defining a new system of education, and that Seb Fieder has tapped into some of its most important comp From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Finding Your Own Truths: Ideas for Weblog Processing After 20 or more entries and several months - building upon ones thoughts becomes difficult. Why? Because full understanding of inventory is lost; an exact memory of all expressed thoughts is out of reach. Some helpful hints to myself: -List entry titles and dates. Save as outline and Use activeRenderer (for Radio users)to publish the list as a web page. Further refinements: -Sort them by topics and categories that have become meaningful within your blog. -Make each listing a link to that From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Will is thinking on using RSS effectively Using RSS Effectively. Understanding RSS is one thing, a very cool thing no doubt. But using it well is a more interesting issue. Tim is experimenting with feeds on his Buckman Elementary pages in a pretty creative way (pointer via Joe.) The mt-rssfeed I think parallels the Manila viewRssBox From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. I want more control I've found myself, of late, bumping my head against the limitations of two weblog-related technologies: RSS and TrackBack. The frustration with both is similar--there is a limited pathway for creating and updating them. They have both evolved as subsidiary technologies (as I understand it). I'm ready, however, to see them kicked out of the nest. Specifically, I want a tool to create RSS feeds. I want a tool to create TrackBack pings. I'd love it if it could be integrated tightly with the tools I use From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. KM, blogs, dialogue, identity building Good summary of an interesting discussion between Jim McGee, Sebastian Fiedler, Lilia Efimova, Denham Grey on Blogs, dialogue and identity building. I'm attracted to concepts expressed of how we share who we are From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative Content Tool In The Wiki Way (2001), the one and only book devoted solely to wiki, Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham define wiki as "a freely expandable collection of interlinked Web 'pages,' a hypertext system for storing and modifying information - a database, where each page is easily editable by any user with a forms-capable Web browser client" (page 14). Wiki pages are controlled - created, linked, edited, deleted, moved, renamed, and so on - by a programming or scripting language, and stored either as plain ASCII text fi From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Mixed bags pretty much like the people who create them Raymond Yee - aspirationsQuote: "I keep thinking that it might be time to split off my blog into various categories -- or at least, move the "personal stuff" to another blog. I am blown away by the quality of some "edu-bloggs" out there -- I aspire to be a good edu-blogger myself and I think I have something to offer, but my blog is so diffuse at times, mixing personal reflections, chatting with my own community of bloggers, really From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Blogging adoption questionnaires Finally. Two questionnaires for BlogTalk paper are ready (paper proposal - Blogs: the stickiness factor). The goal of this study is to understand factors that support or inhibit adoption of blogging by comparing bloggers and "would be bloggers". I would appreciate if you can spend some of your time answering my questions. I estimate that it should take betw From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Blazing trails with RSS Few would doubt that RSS has an important role in content syndication. Some might even say, myself included, that we have yet to see the full potential of RSS, especially given the opportunity of RSS extension by namespaces and modularisation. It's probably a fact that at present the most popular way of creating an RSS file is as a result of writing for a weblog. I should mention at this stage that I'll use RSS file and RSS feed interchangeably throughout this piece. Most weblogg From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Blogging as jazz This day brings "Conversations" with Dina Mehta weblog. Dina writes on her Ryze page: Chaotic rambles and butterfly wings and rainbows .... and am looking forward to many such interactions here. I see this space on Ryze as a piece of Jazz ... it reminds me of Doug Little, a jazz musician and a member of The Motion Poets, an improvisational jazz band. Doug described improvisational jazz: "What I play will inspire the drummer to pl From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Weblogs are just one technique that has to be combined ... Peter Merholz about weblogs / Peter Merholz is back after some month of abstinence. He needed a timeout from blogging: I was also growing increasingly frustrated with the echo chamber effect of weblogs. A meme drifts out there, and then 38 different people post their take on that meme, and they all link to each other, and, as a reader, you bounce from post to post, the semantic feedback growing until it's deafening. Well pointed. I don't r From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Interview: Brent Simmons I'm not sure when I began thinking about a personal aggregator. The idea came up several times and disappeared several times. I was working at UserLand, and we had a server-based aggregator (My.UserLand.Com) — and then we developed Radio UserLandÂ’s news aggregator, one of the first personal aggregators. But even before we started working on RadioÂ’s aggregator I had seen Chuck Shotton's Gossip, which was a sort of personal aggregator. I don't recall if it used RSS or not: it may have done s From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Getting started requires ignoring those already started? Over two years ago (see July 25 entry). I started talking to Peter Ford at schoolBlogs about ISP hosting issues, about the availability of digital paper. I argued even then that a .com should not be necessary, that the tax-supported infrastructure of the educational and library tech commons should be enough to From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Killer application for school weblogs? RSS Syndication I may, inadvertantly, found a good way to sell weblogs to faculty.  I did a workshop on Thursday and Friday on my Blackboard Tips and Tricks, and at the end I had about 15 minutes, so I showed how to syndicate an RSS file across several courses, in this case using my news service.  Because our LCMS (From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Blogs, dialogue and identity building Denham comments to Knowledge management with a small k: 'Thinking in public' is a powerful metaphor - true to form, I prefer 'thinking together' as the way to go. This brings us back to 'identity' again. As I slowly work my way into knowledge practices I'm becoming convinced that identity is as important as 'context' for appreciatin From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Other factors contribute to weblog scalability as well As for weblogs replacing discussion forums... I think that in some ways the weblogs scale better...(snip snip)...If an entry has attracted 250 comments, 99% of them uninteresting, you don't have to even look at them if you are only interested in what the primary author of the blog has to say. Other factors contribute to weblog scalability as well. Weblog discussions are by nature distributed and amorphous. Though the better weblog tools h From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. What Is a Manila Weblog? John Gruber has an interesting interview with Brent Simmons in Daring Fireball in which Simmons talks about his software (netnewswire) his software company (ranchero) and his musings on rss.  This statement set off generic bells in my head: One of my philosophies is that any piece of software should be describable in a sentence. Photoshop is a graphics editor. From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Learning Webs In his book Deschooling Society (1971) Ivan Illich talks about learning webs and proposes four networks while warning us that "technology is available to develop either independence and learning or bureaucracy and teaching". Illich also suggests: The planning of new educational institutions ought not to begin with the administrative goals of a principal or president, From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Topic Rolls near reality Some while ago I talked about the facility for users to share topics with each other.  I was just beginning to experiment with topics and blogging and, at the time, was thinking of an ad hoc P2P mechanism by which users could ensure they were talking about the same thing by using the same topics.  I called this concept a topicroll playing on the theme of the blogroll. More recently Paolo and I have been working on making use of topics to create a superior Action Journalling environmen From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Planning an overhaul of all the themes To Manila developers, I'm planning an overhaul of all the themes we're using at Berkman, so I put together a checklist. I wonder if I'm missing anything. We've never done a complete review of all the themes, and it may be years before it's done again. So if you know of any theme-based upgrades that should be done across the board, now's a good time to speak up. Of course I'm going to share all the work From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. What vs Whom? Knowledge Kitchen Having invested yet another couple of hours today in “Attention Economics” and “Live Directories” and the implications for business models the concept discussion returned to the enterprise and KM. Knowledge management has taken the rap for creating information repositories of what is. In Foodie terms; the Freezer model reflects cold and stale prepackaged meals often frozen in time. The proliferation of e-mail and electronic documents has simply added size to the freezer. With disk space vs legal threats, the From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing Weblogs destroy this extrinsic value as well. Print publishing acts as a filter, weblogs do not. Whatever you want to offer the world -- a draft of your novel, your thoughts on the war, your shopping list -- you get to do it, and any filtering happens after the fact, through mechanisms like blogdex and Google. Publishing your writing in a weblog creates none of the imprimatur of having it published in print. This destruction of value is what makes weblogs so important. We want a world where global publishing is effo From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Changed approach I changed my strategy for advocating weblogs in my local educational setting: Each member of the group is supposed to run his own weblog and the group weblogs aggregate and form intersections. The immediate response from one student: »I don't see a need for that.«. Why is it that some people see the immediate appeal of it while others think it is pure overhead? There seems to be conflicting mental models about the whole weblogging hype. [Oliver Wrede] I don't think t From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. 1372 Sites I am currently receiving between 5 and 10 emails every week from educators wanting to know about weblogs. At last count we have 1372 weblogs on the SchoolBlogs server. Many are examples of unused 'digital paper' but a good number really have made great use of SchoolBlogs, some even going on to set up their own weblog servers. This is satisfying :-) The last weeks alone have seen several hundred SchoolBlogs created. The 'tipping point' for the adoption of weblogs in education is evident on the SchoolBlogs From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Powerful listening THE LISTENING LEADER "Lifting Listening Leadership Awareness and Action Worldwide" 03/31/03 ----------- LISTENING-BASED INNOVATION Continuing success comes from value-creating innovation stimulated by disciplined listening. Occasional surveys are insufficient. Organizations need to build listening systems that capture, summarize, and disseminate the unmet dreams and unfulfilled wants of multiple customer groups, including existing, prospective, and internal customers (em From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. BlogTalk conference goal The mission of BlogTalk - the conference - is to survey the status quo of Weblogs or Blogs as tools for professional and private use. It is likewise an issue to think about blogging from different devices particularily from mobile devices such as cellphones or PDAs. I addition we will talk about future applicatons and uses within a business or educational context. Talking about usage for private use will lead to considerations about Blog services and business models on the one side and on more phenomenological and social issues on From Seblogging News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Getting Rid of the Disks Kneht writes "Dan's Data has an interesting article on what it would cost to get rid of your HDDs and replace them with SSDs because hard drives suck. Several ... From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. James Cameron's Live Action Battle Angel Alita Dean Siren writes "Moviehole.net reports that James Cameron wants to direct a live action Battle Angel Alita movie. Cameron says, "The issue is will it be the ... From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Debian GNU/Linux to Declare GNU GFDL non-Free? Syntaxis writes "There's some considerable argy-bargy in progress over whether or not GNU's own GFDL is a Free documentation license at all. At issue are ... From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Latest Crop of MP3 Players Anonymous Coward writes "A couple of interesting new MP3 portables were announced this week. The first one is Bantam's BA1000 that has near-identical size and ... From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. GTA3 Multiplayer Kent767 writes "I'm on the development team for a GTA3 mod, called multi-theft auto. This mod makes GTA3 multiplayer over LAN or internet. Very shortly version ... From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Interview with Voting Machine Company Reps laupsavid writes "Here's an interesting interview with government and industry reps on the Black_Box_Voting site. I think it's funny (yet terrifying), almost ... From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Nuke-Lobbing SlideGuitar writes "The following is a fascinating article about how the Navy in the 1950s, wanting to assure that it had a carrier based nuclear force, used ... From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. T-Shirt Cannon SnakeStu writes "If you thought the T-shirts at ThinkGeek were cool, imagine them flying 160 feet through the air (courtesy of Crawford International ... From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Building a Bigger Search Engine skreuzer writes "Wired is running a story about a distributed web crawler called Grub. People who choose to download and run the client will assist in building ... From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Open Source Experiment Management Software? Alea asks: "I do a lot of empirical computer science, running new algorithms on hundreds of datasets, trying many combinations of parameters, and with several ... From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. It sure is a good thing the terror alert level was cut... From The Art of Peace on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Richard of The Peking Duck is an expatriate living in... From The Art of Peace on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. DoJ supports RIAA in Verizon P2P privacy scuffle More civil rights activism from the Lord Protector's office From The Register on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. CNN kills Castro early Human error, technological disgrace From The Register on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Dell thumps HP PC king in Q1 From The Register on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Bored and confused by the PC Internet - world turns to phones Techno-utopians reported anxious, fearful From The Register on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. US military shuns BSD for hopping landmines Your tax dollars at work From The Register on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Getting realistic in the war on hackers Do the math From The Register on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Namco woos Sega Choose us From The Register on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. IT services head offshore Passage to India From The Register on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. .NOT now, please: vacuuming MS renames products Systems company From The Register on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. HP cements the Bastille Simple security for HP-UX From The Register on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Sewage Puts a New Spin on SARS After a faulty sewage system spreads SARS throughout the Amoy Gardens complex in Hong Kong, some speculate that the disease might be more deadly when contracted through fecal matter. Others suggest the virus itself has changed. By Kristin Philipkoski. From Wired News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Oh, Nooo! What If GPS Fails? John Petersen, the director of the Arlington Institute, helps the government think about the unthinkable. His latest inquiry: What if the U.S. Global Positioning System stopped working? By Andrew Zolli from Wired magazine. From Wired News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Web Helps ID John and Jane Does From coast to coast, volunteers and coroners are posting details on the Net about unidentified bodies. While they aren't getting a deluge of tips from the public, officials say the Web databases are streamlining their jobs. By Randy Dotinga. From Wired News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Peace Talk Halts Defense OS Job A grant for developing a secure, free operating system was cancelled by DARPA, the U.S. military's research agency, when a programmer working on the project expressed anti-war sentiments. He wonders if his freedom of speech is in jeopardy. From Wired News on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Educational software review Software for Handhelds - Michelle Thatcher, techLearning. Though affordability and portability have always made handheld computers an appealing option for schools, the relative dearth of educational applications for these devices has been a significant obstacle to classroom integration. In the past few years, however, software publishers have developed a multitude of education-specific handheld applications. [Educational Technology] Though aff From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Palm RAM Breakthrough Palm Expands Internal RAM Capabilities [Palminfocenter] Palm Solutions Group has announced it has overcome the 16MB internal memory limit. Palm Solutions and PalmSource engineers collaborated to develop memory technology that extends the amount of RAM possible on a Palm OS handheld from the current 16MB to 128MB. The memory breakthrough has been incorporated into Palm OS by PalmSource, in OS version 5.2.1 and will make the development available to other licensees. As of today From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. SEGA! Sega and Palm, Inc. have ported five classic Sega games to the Palm OS. This includes Sonic the Hedgehog, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, Shinobi, Super Columns, and From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. New treo coming out... New Treo by September. Updated version of Handspring's Treo PDA/phone due out this fall. It's about time, too. The Treo has been due for an overhaul for months now, and has been looking a bit musty compared to all the other PDA/phones and smartphones that are coming out these days. Read [Via BargainPDA] [Giz From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Blogpluck software Palm "Aggregator". BlogPluck (New). BlogPluck converts web logs in RSS/RDF format to Plucker documents for offline reading. BlogPluck is a Java Web Start application. It can be downloaded, installed and run with a single click. [PalmOpenSource.com] [Ian McKenzie: A Believer's PDA] From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. PDA Security measures iPassConnect PDA: Secure Dial-Up Internet Access For Global PDA Mobility. PDAs are attractive ultra-portable alternatives to bulky laptop computers. Just as laptops once faced close scrutiny by security-wary IT managers, PDAs are successfully passing stringent security and reliability evaluations. This is especially important when large numbers of remote users are issued pocket-sized devices to connect over the Internet into the corporate network. Many network and IT managers have been concerned about giving PDA From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Palmsource PalmSource Developer Seminars Updated. PalmSource has posted more information on their upcoming developer seminars. The first of which will be held in San Franscisco Bay Area on May 6 & 7th. In addition, the date for the major annual PalmSource conference has been pushed back to February 2004. [PalmInfocenter] From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Palm cases Palm cases for the Tungsten T. Guest Reviewer, Steve Gingras brings us an entertaining review on his journey for a suitible case for the Palm Tungsten T. Steve tries out the three cases offered by Palm Inc in retail and online at the PalmStore and gives us his impressions on each. [PalmInfocenter] From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. ENT Released Announcing: ENT v1.0 Easy News Topics for RSS2.0. Paolo and I are pleased to announce the release of the first public draft of the Easy News Topics (ENT) specification.  ENT1.0 is an RSS2.0 module designed to make it really easy to incorporate topics into RSS feeds.  Why would you From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Other Pallm OS Phone GSL's other Palm PDA/phone. Turns out that GSL doesn't have just one new Palm PDA/phone coming out. PalmInfocenter reports that a second is expected as well. The Onyx, as its called, looks even better than the Zircon, and has a clamshell design reminiscent of Samsung's Palm-powered PDA/phone, the i500. From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Palm OS phones GroupSense Shows Two New Smartphones. UpdatedGroup Sense Limited has revealed more information and specs on two new upcoming Palm OS Smartphones. Both run Palm OS 4.1 and feature very small and lightweight designs. The phones will be targeted at the Asian and European markets. [PalmInfocenter] From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. More new Palm info Palm to show pair of handhelds. The industry leaders will launch the latest editions in its Tungsten and Zire product lines this month, and they'll pack features never seen before in a Palm, say sources. [CNET News.com] Excerpt: "The Tungsten C will have the same casing as the $549 Tungsten W with a small keyboard, say sources, but instead of a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) radio it will come with a wireless networking radio. It is ex From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Specs and info on the Tungsten C from Quill.com The Palm™ Tungsten™ C handheld organizer is engineered for high-performance demands, featuring built-in Wi-Fi (802.11b) wireless technology including VPN for fast and secure wireless access. It offers Palm's sharpest screen color to date (320 x 320) and a built-in keyboard. The Zire 71 also makes installing applications and media files simple with its dual expansion capabilities: SDIO/SD/MultiMedia card and Palm Universal Connector. Plus you get all the classic PIM features you expect from Palm, and a comprehensive software package including the upgraded OS 5.2.1. New 1- From Handheld Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Weblogg-ed: Sharing RSS Subscriptions via OPML files Quote: "Too easy. I now have an .opml file for all my student Web logs which I can read through Sharpreader AND click through to respond. AND, I realized that Sharpreader will export the .opml file of my list of feeds, so when I update it, I just upload it for import on my other machines. I am now officially overwhelmed." Comment: But in a good way, right? From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. XPLANA: LCMS vs. the Web Quote: "It seems to me that WebCT is not building the web, but preying upon it. It feeds on the web, but gives nothing back. WebCT makes it possible for instructors to link and link and link to other people's websites, while contributing nothing back to the web for others to link to, for others to use." Comment: The language is a little loaded, but I understand the sentiment.  In my experience, enterprise LCMS are designed for creating protected spaces for content and course activities, not for creating new content.  I think it's wrong-headed too. From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. manila-dev: Jake Savin in Boston Quote: "After getting back from dinner tonight, I've been working on some improvements to the flow of the user interface when working with news items oriented Manila sites." Comment: My understanding is that Jake is in Boston right now working with Dave Winer on Manila, so now's a good time to join the Manila-Dev list and ask for education-related improvements to Manila.  I've been using it so long, it's hard for me to recognize roadblocks. From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Object Learning: Yet more webloggia and WebCT... Quote: "A couple of webloggers here in the UBC community had interesting responses to yesterday's post on displaying RSS feeds within WebCT" Comment:Nice lengthy thinking throughs of how to apply this to an instructional context. From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. D'Arcy Norman: CAREO and Trackback Quote: "Now, objects in CAREO have an associated URL for receiving trackback pings, as well as one for retrieving all trackbacks (if any) for that object." Comment: Manila has got to get trackback, but I suspect that's it's slightly back-burnered right now. From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. autounfocus: A Beginner's Guide to Joining the Instructional Technology Blog Scene Quote: "So I'm trying to draw some colleagues into the instructional technology blogosphere and had to write up a primer for folks who are new to the areaÂ… like I was a month or two ago. So, as long as I had to write it, I figured I'd throw it up on autounfocus." From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. mamamusings: social software alliance Quote: "The idea is to start bringing together the people who are interested in and knowledgable about social software, to start developing standards and tools in a collaborative way. There's a lot of working at cross-purposes and duplication of effort right now, I think, and this may be one answer to how to create a community of developers and researchers." From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Personal - Exercise Unlike Seth (see link), I'm not cycling, but I've started jogging again.  I've really let exercise slide over the past few years, relying on my natural propensity to thinness.  I was pretty active as a kid, but those habits haven't continued into adulthood (partly because most activities in school were competitive sports and that doesn't really carry over to adult life). Anyway, it's nothing special at all, just a two mile run every other day at the moment, but I've started tracking my times in the hope that it will encourage me to kee From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Scripting News: RSS in the Ivy League Quote: "Stop the presses. The Dartmouth Review has an RSS feed. This is great! Who's next?" Comment: It's good to see the Ivy League getting on board.  It probably helps that the UPortal project supports RSS.  Of course, the many educational customers of "Userland" have been providing RSS feeds for a while, and that includes our student newspapers< From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Most important post of the day Just read it. From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. John Palfrey : Details on H20 Quote: "We've long been wondering how to improve the limitations of traditional online discussions. We've decided to answer with H2O's rotisserie. It breaks things up into semi-synchronous rounds. We're trying to get the best of both asynchronous and synchronous discussion modes" Comment:Maybe I need to have another look at this. From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Jon's Radio - CSS as bridge technology Quote: "I'd like to see more opinions on this, but to me, CSS looks like an excellent bridge technology. It is declarative in nature. If I write <P class=codeFragment>I am merely attaching a label to that element. I can then, optionally, associate a style with that declaration. But I can use that same declaration for other purposes as well. In particular, I can use it to precisely search code fragments. I've long advocated this dual-purposing of CSS declarations because I think it fits well with how people actually write. I find that people who'll say they have no time From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Mathemagenic: learning and KM insights Quote: "For me George contributes to answering not an easy question from practice "how can we support a community of practice in moving from problem-solving to innovation". The question is not correct: this is not about a community, this is about an ecosystem of communities." Comment: I think that's right.  It relates to the various kinds of groups with work within but also the relationships between them.  Often an organization might have healthy groups, but no significant learning going on between groups. From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Object Learning: Displaying RSS Feeds in WebCT Quote: "Above is a screenshot of three live RSS feeds displayed within a WebCT course in Geology -- one of LOs, one of industry white papers, and a third of general science news from New Scientist." Comment: Blackboard 6 also supports RSS, not just using a javascript include like Adam Curry's or mine, but also natively as a format in the portal.  When I get my hands on a development system (and some time), I'd like to add the metaweblog api and rss to Blackboard. I'm also pitching Brian&apo From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Integrating Learning Objects, RSS and Trackback Quote: "Anyhow, Alan has started up a demo weblog running RSS feeds of LOs, and he's apparently got the trackback feature going. I wasn't sure if he wanted it public at this early stage, but seeing how D'Arcy has already plugged it, I might as well do so tooÂ…" Comment:Beautiful.  I think this is an epiphanal moment for me. Look at this page: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=278 It's a learning object that I can find out about via RSS because From Serious Instructional Technology on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Putting the learning back into learning objects I read Norm Friesen's 'Three objections to learning objects' but something in the arguments raised didn't match with how I view reusable learning objects. So in the spirit of Norm's article, here's another perspective on the debate about the positive and negative aspects of the vision of sharing educational resources.1. The old 'what is a learning object' debate. In the context of e-learning, "any digital, reproducible and addressable resource used to perform learning activities o From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled We're all off to Sebastian Fiedler's place to talk about custom-built RSS feeds. Hope to meet you there, there's an interesting discussion forming. From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Reusable learning objects and RSS autodiscovery I had an idea that if RSS is such an obvious format to use for reusable learning object (RLO) syndication then why not use RSS autodiscovery? Put simply, if a web page that contains RLOs has an RSS autodiscovery header item then all of the objects on that page become discoverable by automated systems such as RSS news readers, From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Sebastian Fiedler joins the trail blazers Now that Sebastian is on board I think we can expect some interesting dialogue. Here's Sebastian's first trail, the EduBlogger Gallery alpha. From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Learning Objects in Motion This short piece in the latest Syllabus magazine contains a useful introduction to syndicating learning objects using RSS. Typically though it misses some of the crucial prior art in this area. Given that this working example I put together to not only syndicate multiple choice questions using RSS 0.91 but also to perform cross-institutional search for RLOs was 2 years ago I guess they can be excused for missing it? From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Learning Object Contextualization This piece on learning object contextualization was in part triggered by reading David Wiley's recent paper "Learning objects: difficulties and opportunities" but also because I wanted to get down some of the work we've been doing in this area in our curriculum. The piece is illustrated by examples from our medical undergraduate programme and in particular our VLE. From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. CETIS report on the release of the RELOAD metadata editor "One issue that keeps popping up in debates about learning objects is the metadata question; how are educators supposed to make an interoperable description of a learning object that will allow it to be found by others? The Reload elarning tool development project decided to attack that problem before any others, with the first results already appearing."Check out the RELOAD web site:http://www.reload.ac.uk/There's even a Mac OS X installer. Yay! From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. New book - Reusing Online Resources OK, so anyone else seen this book yet? I picked up a copy at my local bookstore at the weekend. Nothing particulalry new in the book though it's a useful collection of articles so as such it makes a handy reference. The collected articles have a strong UK bias which makes a change. There are 19 chapters under the broad headings: Vision and theoretical perspectives Design perspectives Resource perspectives Strategic perspectives The book is suported by a website.From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Learning Object Community Meeting David Wiley over at reusability.org is making up a guest list for a meeting to discuss the intersection between reusable learning objects and community. He's asked for nominations for the meeting. The rules are to list 5 people who should attend other then yourself. Hmm, only 5 people, eh? Who would be the 5 people I'd most like to meet? In no particular order...Stephen Downes David Carter-Tod From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The content conundrum A short piece on using reusable learning objects (RLOs). Not so much a dialectic on the use of RLOs but more a late night discussion between friends. From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. ADL Releases the Technical Repository Investigation Report ADL have released a report on the various technologies currently being employed to create repositories of learning objects (or data elements depending upon your terminology). The report is detailed and technical and naturally takes a SCORM-centred view but gives a fair introduction the current state of the art. Cutting to the chase, the risk assessment at the end suggest that lack of standards, vendor uncertainty over which technology to use, the lack o From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. BlogTalk Conference I'm going to the BlogTalk conference in May in Austria. Maybe I'll see you there. My paper will probably be on using desktop weblogging and aggregator software for reusable learning object (RLO) content syndication. This is a topic I've written on at some length and will have some interesting demonstrations to show at the conference. Our virtual learning environment is based around "manila" and the desktop software is therefore not surprisingly "ru". These two tools work together in interesting ways. One of the projects I'l From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled I'll be speaking at a CETIS interoperability meeting on Monday if anyone's free. Sorry for the short notice. From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Searchable RSS portalI'm building a list of medicine and educational RSS news feeds. Medical education is one of my fields of interest. I have a modest list at present and I'm looking for more. If you know of any more would you let me know? The feeds that I have are searchable so a potentially large amount of RSS data can be filtered.Click here to visit my searchable RSS feeds service.If anyone is interested in this as a web service you can embed a list of news items filtered according to your own interests From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled As many people know, I'm interested in sharing ideas for the use of Frontier, Manila and Radio in educational settings. Along with others I've got a number of tools that I use to extend Manila for teaching and learning purposes. I'd like to invite anyone who's interested to join the following web site and have a look at my question/test plugin for Manila.http://medweb5.bham.ac.uk/collaboration/The plugin can be used to generate and administer multiple choice questions (MCQs). The system is also IMS QTI compliant, though From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled If you're in Oxford tomorrow (1st May) then pop along to the CETIS Assessment Roadshow at Oxford Brookes University. I'm giving a presentation on IMS interoperability using our favourite web tool, Manila. From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Ain't life strange. No sooner had I incorporated the Google API into my medical quiz search engine, I spotted this suggestion from Raymond. There's clearly a meme that's rapidly passing though the consciousness of many people these last 24 hours. From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Starting to explore some educational collaborations with Raymond Yee and David Carter-Tod. We have several things in common but one of the strongest right now is our use of Userland technology such as "manila" and "Radio". Will you join us? We're looking for individuals working in further or higher education who are using these tools who'd like to join a team that will develop "manila" in particular but also "radio" into an engaging su From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Big push this weekend to get IMS QTI compliance to my Manila-based self assessment system. I think I've cracked QTI Lite.Have a go with the following and let me know how you get on...http://medweb5.bham.ac.uk/databases/qti/questionsIs anyone interested in IMS compliance for Manila?For those interested in web-based self assessment and quizzes, here's my e From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Here's another survey on RLOs. From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled Here's a survey for you (originally posted to Yahoo's eLearningleaders group:What is the key to expanding e-learning content ?Here are the results so far.What did you say? For me it's increased levels of interactivity every time From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled There is a major new e-learning consortium project that is exploring the potential to set up a global virtual medical school. It's presently in the feasibility stage and I've just come back from a steering group meeting. There are around 40 international medical schools signed up already. There will hopefully be a public web site soon so for now I won't go into any details about the partners or how this consortium will operate. What I can talk about are some of the issues we discussed as they're pertinent to most e-learning projects.One of the approaches the consortium will From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Untitled I'm interested in being able to share my learning resources with you and if you're willing to do the same then maybe our institutions might be able to spread the risk and burden of developing web-based teaching and learning materials.The components of my teaching and learning materials, images, video clips, text, questions, are called reusable learning objects (RLOs). These RLOs are stored in databases and each RLO has its own metadata, data that helps you find it when searching for particular RLOs. My database systems can send you an XML file that describes each RLO and links to it From David Davies: Edtech on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Alpha, Beta and OmyGod - affordable hosting? Behold - Son of eBN! Community-minded Tom Clifton of ES Designs has provided a trial site for what may turn out to be very reasonably priced and reliable temporary hosting for eBN members. Feels right to end the vacation with hopeful disregard for well-funded universities and school districts that can't find the wherewithall to provide their communities with no-strings-attached weblog hosting. From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Pedagogy or technology? Sebastian Fiedler "To my knowledge none of the educational and pedagogical pioneers in 'Blogland' can be found at Harvard... and if there are some, they are really trying hard not to connect with the folks that George Siemens recently indentified as Current Edu-bloggers From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Full ahead back After this many visits, I should just create an Amsterdam department. Do it in gratitude to the Northern weather gods who once again offered a surprisingly pleasant spread of sun and temperature. It's less fun without an adventurously Dutch-speaking partner, but hosts Nico and Mark treated me like family. Anyone in need of a santeria blessing or some traditional Netherlands unflappibility, the new non-Manila website for laBotanica may soon be offering eBay or payPal functionality. We're looking for digitial spiritual beta-testers. Lots of pointing at Jake From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. La Botanica gets a new look With the help of Amsterdam's rising Web design star, Mervyn van Uden, the la Botanica Manila site has been successfully transfered via Dreamweaver MX to its temporary home on the Rietveld Academie server. Soon Nico will FTP it to its permanent home on euroNet.nl. From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. When shall we this Twain's twin meet again? "Each of the world's strongest nations, he wrote, was proceeding 'with its banner of the Prince of Peace in one hand and its loot-basket and its butcher-knife in the other..'." From Norman Solomon's  Mark Twain Speaks to Us via Cursor. From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. When the cats are away, ... well, they play Fun to be in Amsterdam and read my tech partner Karen Claxton's reports from a jaunt to Italy, with photo illustrations. She's got me beat on the food issue. From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Trans-Atlantic interactive Dutch "dutchClassIMG"' Two cheap cameras, two DSL connections, and two speakers of a relatively alternative language. Gary gets tutored by Nico and both burghers are thrilled at the cost - 0 dollars, 0 Euros, 0 guilders. Now when educators have the necessary chat tools built right into the blog platform (Blackboard's big edu version already has it, no?), language instruction will never be the same. From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Yes indeedy, the price is right So I wrote: "This is sounding too good to be true, so I assume I am misunderstanding. For example, if I used my registered domain name as my root site-www.eduBloggerNet.org - it would include a Manila "Create A Site"story and I could create another 99 manila sites  - as an example, www.eduBlognet.org/mlkLibrary - and run them all as the domain manager? If that is the case, then an educational organization like the Bay Area Writing Project (http://www.bayareawritingproject.org) could run 100 BAWP d From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Amsterdam start onderzoek naarhotelramen This news flash from the give-away Metro. Now this is genuine national defense: Amsterdam is undertaking a thorough investigation of window design influence on the self-defenestration of inebriated and substance-abusing tourists. Seems seven were lost to the air-and-cement cocktail in the last few years. Something has to be done, so they'll study it. Meanwhile, careful near that casement! From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Hey, give the guy a break ... and the credit that he deserves. So, a quick note in defense of the design half of the best Manila ISP team in the country (Bryan Bell and Erin Clerico). Will Richardson notes some frustration at Harvard regarding Manila themes. "So does anyone have a clue which themes are worth preserving and which should be From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. The shape of World War IV, by number $850 billion: Estimated military spending in the world in 2002. 50: Percentage spent by U.S. 0.0015: Percentage spent by Iraq. From Vinay Menon in the Toronto Star. From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. For the 'Word'-weary among us A simple web-based tool for cleaning up Bill's uglies when you copy and paste Word docs into your blog. via Brayn Bell. From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. sharpReader RSS aggregator for Win XP Looks pretty cool. Ref-ed by Bryan Bell. Whoops - doesn't like 98, 98SE or ME. But then again, who does? "updatedTHM" David reports there's a 98 version coming soon. From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. For the 'non-achieving' but critical among us Note the bolded text below and tell me again why this is so popular? I know it can't be just the money. Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 10:51:27 -0700 To: nationalboard@lists.Stanford.EDU Subject: Becoming a scorer for the National Board assessment in 2003  Folks who are NOT National Board candidates this year, can consider scoring assessment center exercises or portfolios with the National Board.  If you know teachers who are inte From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Now all we need is money to go {pictureRef ("edMediaAcceptanceIMG", align:left, hspace:10, vspace:0, border:1) } June 23 to 28. Nice time for a Honolulu beach party. Karen Claxton and I submitted a MLK-staffed full day hands-on workshop, but we lost out to big edu's. They accepted this abstract and summary for an NWP roundtable proposal.  From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Poly-blogged Yet another well written (and hilariously snide) comment on CNN's contractual silencing of journalist Kevin Sites' war blog. Published in the SLO shredder and pointed to by Oceano co-housing resident and eBN member, Amy Leach. From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. CAT Manila to CAT 5 Jake's latest Manila evolution - newsDepartments aggregated separately. Seb Fiedler did something like this with metadata last year, if I remember right. If every author (student) on a grade level multi-author blog was designated as a "department," then every author's (student's) released newsItems could be aggregated to a single page.Maybe we'll experiment with this on a couple of mlk multi-author blogs, but only with Kern giving us the go ahead since Jake notes From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Now is this an April fool or what? {pictureRef ("georgeWportraitIMG", align:left, hspace:10, vspace:0, border:1)} Found two of the links below in my referer stats. Cute trick, eh?http://homeland.fbi.gov/ Watchlists/suspect/view.jsp?record=697332  One uninvited look over the shoulder deserves another. To the right, a telling portrait of the "commandeer in chief" by an unnamed kindergarten artist, on display at the Kern County Office of E From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Fun with Legos? Nooo - fun with Macros! Bryan offers further thoughts on Manila's new viewNewsDept feature: "Most people don't know this, but..." From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Ohio's future speaks via Pam Pritchard: "This morning as one of my 6 year olds was struggling with the task of sitting long enough to finish the last of the tests she looked up at me and said, 'How come they won't let us learn again today?'" From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. More Manila muscle Noted by Bryan Bell: "The new departmentLink macro for news item oriented Manila sites generates a link to a page which displays recent news items from a given department." From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Inflorescence March rain. Wisteria and war. "wisteria2IMG" From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. IU is dabbling in the Manila hosting biz again Nice "A little about Manila" page at this Interactive U. collaborative site. From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. 'I'm tired of thinking about it ... Manila is a very good solution. I'm satisfied." Will settles in with one weblog package. He points out common sense reasons and, more significantly with this comment, teacher sense reasons: "I need only look as far as my students to see that it's not really that hard once you get it set up."  After just three class periods of use, Chrissy Flores' 6th. graders' aplomb in posting startled me. Using any one CMS From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Back at the writing gym Terry Frazier on reasons for blogging: "So now I see weblogging as something of a mental workout -- a treadmill without all the boredom." From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Anticipating disaster NYC Writing Project, led by Joe Luft, is doing a blog training as I write this and ... I have a suspicion that things will not go as smoothly as one would hope. A typo had Joe locked out of ME status on half of the blogs apportioned for the work and I didn't get the help request until just a little while ago. Some of the nav bar links on the home site don't seem to be working and I haven't been logged in as an ME so I can't help with that. Hmmm. In anticipation of disaste From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Digital paper redux Long silent and happily returned Peter Ford points at this autounfocus piece: "It is high time for instructional technologists to get serious about extending free, high quality educational opportunities to everyone. Literally. This modest manifesto lays out a context, rationale, and initial roadmap from here to there." Shades of this August 2002 piece: "...Web workspaces have to be as easily a From homoLudens III on April 20, 2003 at 3:38 p.m.. Jake is smokin! 22 new or changed parts on Manila! Man Jake is smokin!0 new parts added to Frontier.root.5 new parts added to mainResponder.root.17 new parts added to manila.root.0 new parts added to prefs.root. From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled Scott Rosenberg: Digital Storytelling Festival returns. [lawrence's notebook]The next Frontier From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled Dave Winer wants to get Harvard blogging. In fact, Winer is a software developer; as founder and CEO of UserLand Software, he created software that facilitates Weblogs. Not coincidentally, it's the wonder of Weblogs - simple personal Web sites that authors frequently update - that Winer is preaching as a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School (HLS). Not only are Weblogs ("blo From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Expand the Profile Member options in Multi-Author Manila Sites. I asked the following question on the Manila-Dev Group Website. Can one expand the profile member options in multi-author manila sites? That would be cool if we had an answer to that question placed in an update. If you have questions related to Manila join the Manila Dev group From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled Radioactive Hiring. I have a little theory about how this works:  You can't really buy passion-driven people.  You have to pay for them, of course, but they have to choose you.  Passion-driven people are attracted by many things, but one of the biggest attractions is the desire to work with other passion-driven people who can challenge and appreciate them.  As an organization grows, the challenge is to keep the bar high enough that critical mass can be maintained an From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled liveTopics 1.1.3 beta test. I've created a page for people interested in beta testing liveTopics 1.1.3, please go add yourself if you want to get involved. [Curiouser and curiouser!] Anybody want to Beta test Matt's Live Topics.. sign up at his wiki. On checking out the new Live Topics... I want to go back and check for accuracy my entries ande the categories I gave them.. Spring cleaning... From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled Found on-line. Already forgot how I found this - 31 Flavors of Blog - it was open at my desktop for the whole day. Notes on the Background of Back-Links with a bit of history of Internet and differences between referer and Trackback. [Mathemagenic] Good collection of different kind of blogs that are out there.. Cool! From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Cool Radio bookmarklet! Exploiting RSS auto-discovery in Radio Userland. I finally got to understand what RSS auto-discovery was good for by perusing this example page  [found thanks to David], which points to Mark Pilgrim's Radio auto-subscribe bookmarklet. Once you have this bookmarklet in your link toolbar, From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled The Blue Oxen Vision. Blue Oxen Associates - that is, Eugene Eric Kim and Chris Dent - had a launch party in San Francisco last week with their first official piece of output: a 20-page research report on how open source communities function.  The report features case studies of the communities that have formed around the From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled KnowledgeSpaces. from Denham Grey's KMWiki, a large collection of links to various knlowedge tools, including ThinkingTools OpenSpace SharedSpaces InformationEcology KnowledgeCommun From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled PUTTING THINGS IN CONTEXT: WHY I BLOG. cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" border="0" width="80%"> One of the great challenges in knowledge sharing, and in asynchronous communication, is to provide your audience with enough context to understand where your message 'comes from' -- what mental models, preconceptions, hidden agendas, historical bagg From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Cato Institute Raises Serious Questions Regarding Patriot Act Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute gave a live speech on CSPAN regarding the Patriot Act and the new draft of the Patriot Act II. I give credit to the CATO institute for raising serious questions regarding giving the government more power and more money. The Patriot Act was brought up as a perfect case on how not to pass a law. It was a law that was rammed downed the throats of Congress to pass. The bill should have been submitted in chunks. In addition, there were no sunset provisions so that parts of the law could be evaluated after a couple of years. Kudos to the Cato Institute for standing From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Praxis Knowledge management and weblogs. Knowledge management has been premised on the notion that the knowledge to be managed already exists and simply needs to be collected and organized to obtain the promised benefits. One reason that so many of us find weblogs exciting in the realm of knowledge management is that weblogs reveal that the most important knowledge needs to be created before it can be collected and organized. This is similar to the argument about the important split between tacit and explicit knowledge but much From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Creatvie Commons and Manila New feature: Creative Commons, RSS and Manila. [Scripting News]Manila admins... another update .. another feature. From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled Results of Seb's "weblogs and knowledge sharing" survey. Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I have been conducting a survey of weblog use for knowledge sharing. 176 people have heeded my call and answered the survey that was graciously hosted by Blogstreet. As promised, here's the data and the first pie charts to come out of the oven: Seb's "weblogs and knowledge sharing" surve From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Salon Radio Blog User Survey SALON BLOGGERS SPEAK OUT: USER SURVEY RESULTS. cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" border="0" width="80%"> A couple of weeks ago, I posted, ande-mailed to about fifty Salon bloggers, a six-question survey asking Salon/Radiousers for their opinions on the product, and on the business of bloggingin general. I received a dozen responses. That's probably not enou From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Looks like a DEALL on Manila hosting!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Pat Delaney, asked about Manila hosting from ES-Designs http://es-designs.com/.....and dammmmmmmmmmmmmm dirt cheap hosting!!!!! 100 manila sites for 150 greenbacks a year! From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. An ounce of Prevention... Protecting Your Identity. Here are some good tips for protecting your privacy in both the virtual and physical worlds. I'm pretty cautious about these things but there are a couple of ideas here I hadn't considered, so I figured this list was worth mentioning. I've reposted it in its entirety from Phil's weblog. Tips for Protecting Your Identity. From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled Announcing: ENT v1.0 Easy News Topics for RSS2.0. Paolo and I are pleased to announce the release of the first public draft of the Easy News Topics (ENT) specification.  ENT1.0 is an RSS2.0 module designed to make it really easy to incorporate topics into RSS feeds.  Why would you From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Support Lillia's Blogging Project Blogging adoption questionnaires. Finally. Two questionnaires for BlogTalk paper are ready (paper proposal - Blogs: the stickiness factor). The goal of this study is to understand factors that support or inhibit adoption of blogging by comparing bloggers and "would be bloggers". I would appreci From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. New Frontier/Manila site admin tools... Tom Clifton of ES-Designs shares a success story with Manila.  He built some very cool new admin tools for Manila too. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] Good to hear that new frontier site admin tools are beginning to show up. Now if we educators can get some for free or inexpensively. Leave a comment at Tom Clifton's site that you are inter From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled CMS Review. CMS Review Quote: "The mission of CMS REVIEW is to give you the resources you need to choose the best... [elearnspace blog'One form or another, it would seem a cms would be the way to go for a school. A good place to start looking... From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled Me, too!. Blogging and Trust. Steve Ivy follows up on my hope that Jim Fawcette would start weblogging. Good point! I know that I trust people who weblog more than I trust non webloggers. Why? Because I get to know their philosophy. Their point of view. Day after day after day. Look a From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Untitled Best war reporters: The Russians?. kuro5hin.org: "Best war reporters: The Russians?" [Jake's Radio 'Blog] hmmmmm. The Russian Iraq News site has a pretty sharp looking news homepage. Looks like a local cms engine. Another perspective of what is happening. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News didn't mention the American casualty list in the latest fighting. This site says there are 30 dead in the latest fighting From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Do you have a metadata repository with a SOAP layer? Or know of one? If so, please email me: brian.lamb@ubc.ca We’d like to do some testing.... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. "A Beginners Guide to Joining the Instructional Technology Blog Scene" -- Part II (Electric Boogaloo) David Wiley has posted an excellent primer for anyone in this field who has been watching the EduBloggers and who would like to get in on the action. David’s piece covers most of the necessary bases, and he even provides... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. How-to for RSS in WebCT A few people have added comments to the post below, asking for a clearer set of instructions on how it’s done. Thankfully, my colleague Cyprien Lomas has just built one… And of course, as David Carter-Tod notes, this application is... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. An Open Source Reading List Books and Articles Via open education content, via Dave Beckett... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. A History of Interaction Design A real fine presentation (PDF 3.2 MB) from Marc Rettig… and you can actually pull some sense from the slides. Via David Crow, via Anne Galloway, via peterme…... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Three Objections to Learning Objects Lots of bloggers have linked to Norm Friesen’s latest paper, with justification. I would think that the toughest part of writing a paper like this is limiting the objections to three. Objection 1: What’s a learning object, anyway? The term... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. You take a deep breath and... I try to step back from the computer and re-enter the physical world periodically -- take a breath, read a book, play with my baby boy... In theory, it's good for mental health, and I certainly didn't regret taking last... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. David Carter-Tod on "Learning Objects in Motion (RLO and RSS)" …it’s not often that a) I post items from home and b) rush downstairs to post about things I’ve read in a paper-based magazine, but this Syllabus article merits it I think.  I don’t recall seeing this elsewhere yet anyway... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Movable Type Template Tutorials Assembled and supplemented by Mark Pilgrim.... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Resources: Weblogs, Journals, and RSS By far the most comprehensive collection of metawebloggia that I've seen, from Fagan Finder. Via EdTechPost... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. David Wiley, "Learning objects: difficulties and opportunities" David Wiley posts his take on the current state of the LO universe, "Learning objects: difficulties and opportunities." A nice summary of where things are at right now, and be sure to check out what he says on page 7... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Knowledge Management and Trojan Mice Stephen Downes addresses a question I keep asking myself: So What is Knowledge Management Anyway? Regular readers of Downes won’t find too many surprises here, but the piece serves up a concise, non-technical and pointed overview. A number of his... From Object Learning on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. New interesting sounding aggregator - NewsMonster "Even sites that don't support RSS can work with NewsMonster... NewsMonster incorporates an advanced reputation system to prevent spam and discover and inform you of important news... Rate your favorite and least-favorite websites and share ratings with the online community - automatically! " I haven't tried this so it is in no way an endorsement, but I started thinking more about reputation management and the blogosphere after reading the interview posted below (and after reading the blow by blow of that 'dialogue' between Messrs Wiley and Downes) and so From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Trust Unlimited - Affero Helps Open Source Developers Take Online Reputations With Them Interview with Henri Poole, former CEO of Linux distributor MandrakeSoftware who is now involved with Affero, an attempt to build a standard system of reputation measurement for the Internet. - SWL From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. 30 days to a more accessible weblog [dive into mark] I wasn't yet regularly using an aggregator when these pieces were first posted in June 2002, so this was new to me (question - does the blogosphere suffer from collective attention-deficit disorder?) I really like the presentation of these accessibility instructions into 30 bite size chunks, and also how he starts off describing 5 different people with accessibility issues and so frames the whole issue is a more immediately personal context. Well worth the read and good advice, which I will endeavor to follow in a blog re-design sometime in the future. - SWL From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. hiatus It must be late as I've tried to compose responses to 2 or 3 pieces over the last hour and just can't get any of them to go. In any case, I'm in uPortal training all next week, then trying to finish off an RFP for a web-services-based inter-institutional registration facilitation system (try saying that 3 times fast!) and then on holiday until May 19. At the speed things are going, I kind of frightened what I might find when I get back - multi-directional typed hyperlinks? CANCORE metadata showing up in my Radip aggregator? free learning objects and a spiffy new open s From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. another elearning 'blog' - September 15 This site has some decent resources categorized into: Applied eLearning Standards Theories of Online Education Web Technologies eLearning Standards but NO RSS FEED! Which i From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Cisco Virtuoso 2.0 released I typically pay more attention to apps focused on higher ed, but Cisco's authoring tool, Virtuoso, came to my attention via it's partnership with Unicon Academus, a CMS based on the JA-SIG uPortal framework. I guess the other reason to pay attention is that Cisco does have some history in the RLO world. Still not clear to me what one would have to do to get this product, though. - SWL From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Notes on the Background of Back-Links Nice synchronicity - D'Arcy and Brian are talking with Alan Levine from Maricopa about using Trackback (which I've never totally got as a Radio user that doesn't have it built in) with learning objects, and then along comes this piece from Seth Gordon which is exactly what I've been missing to help me understand the uses and usefullness of trackback-like functions. (Do you think Ted Nelson will finally embrace the web now that it's got trackback From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. How (and why) to include an xhtml:body in a Radio UserLand RSS feed "Sam Ruby and Don Box have both demonstrated valid RSS 2.0 feeds (Sam, Don) that include a <body> element, properly namespaced as XHTML. Quietly, last week, I joined the party. My primary feed now includes: ..." I'm pretty sure that this is relevant - it seems to me that if D'Arcy Norman had a From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Initial thoughts on RSS feeds from LORs So I finally got a chance to actually look a little more closely at the feeds from the existing repositories that I posted last week and am slowly starting to get my thoughts together. Here are some reflections. Not all <links> are the same A seemingly small thing that jumped out for me is the different interpretation of what the <link> element should point to in D'Arcy's CAREO feed - his is the only one that uses the object& From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. An Ideal Courseware/Content Management Model An interesting paper by Rob Reynolds on the new Xplana site.  He mentions OKI at the start but doesn't pick up on it - this modular architecture that he describes was, in my mind, what OKI has the potential to bring about. In my understanding, once the framework existed, any component that had been written to operate within that framework could in theory 'plug-in' to any 'OKI-compliant' application (I have never found out what the correct language is for that). - SWL From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. KnowledgeSpaces from Denham Grey's KMWiki, a large collection of links to various knowledge tools, including ThinkingTools OpenSpace SharedSpaces InformationEcology KnowledgeCommunity Knowle From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Web Page Change Detection Tools - WatchThatPage (Below is the first of hopefully a few posts on tools I use to do research online that I thought might be of general interest.) WatchThatPage belongs to a general class of software sometimes called "Web Page Change Detection Tools" or services (cf. http://staff.philau.edu/bells/keepup/detectit.htm - although WatchThatPage is, ironically, not on that list). The tools offer a way to be notified when content from a spe From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Three Objections to Learning Objects - Norm Friesen "Learning objects and e-learning standardization bear the imprint of the ideology and culture of the American military-industrial complex--of ways of thinking that are related either marginally or antithetically to the interests and values of education generally and public education in particular." Wow, I'm glad somebody said it! But then in reading this informative paper by Norm Friesen, it looks like somebody already had in a major way - he cites a reference to a work that sounds really interesting in this regard, From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. RSS feeds from Learning Object Repositories - Known Examples This links to a page I've built which aggregates RSS feeds from all of the LORs that I know of that produce them. There's been a lot flying around recently concerning the use of RSS to syndicate RLOs. I've been trying to wrap my head around the implications but haven't fully managed to. This list, rather than being an attempt to create some sort of authoritative resource on the subject, is instead a way for me to see with my own eyes, all in one place, the results of current efforts to match RSS technology with LORs/RLOs. I need to do this because when t From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. An Introduction to Open Source Communities "Open source software communities are one of the most successful -and least understood- examples of high-performance collaboration and community-building on the Internet today. Other types of communities could benefit enormously ..." Interesting report with some data on the nature of open source software development communities, including both demographics and the results of a survey that asked the "Reasons to Join an Open Source Community" (top answer: "Learn and develop new skills") and the "Most Important Benefits of Participation" (top answer: "Increased personal knowledg From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Quest Software Funnel Web Profiler This web analysis and mapping software is interesting to me for 2 reasons: - it's one of the best values for money (when combined with its companion product FunnelWeb Analyzer) in the web log analysis and site management tools field that I have seen. IMHO it blows products like WebTrends out of the water (note it needs to be used in conjunction with its companion product Analyzer to really be a true comparison). The part of the application that I particularly like is the Webmap - it produces a webmap of your site by crawling it (like many do) but then allows you to overlay your t From EdTechPost on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Veg Blog: Less Salmonella! Or not... Veg Blog: Less Salmonella! Or not... "If you look at this Reuters report, you might be encouraged to see that incidents of salmonella are down a bit from last year. Of course, if you've read any of the modern literature on factory farms, you'll realize that the statistics are nearly worthless since the meat and poultry industries pretty much self-regulate. The USDA inspectors are generally regarded as just figureheads that have very little power or authority to create any sort of From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. elearnspace : myRSS elearnspace : myRSS "Not sure if I've posted this before (it's a great resource if you come across sites that don't have an RSS feed): myRSS: "myRSS enables anyone to build custom RSS channels for virtually any news site they desire. myRSS requires no programming experience, is completely automated and all channels are available for free."" From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Connecting to people, not information I read a comment recently, and I apologize for remembering where, remarking that the Internet should be about connecting people to people, not people to information. It just occurred to me, that even though I have used the Internet (and BBS's before) to do research and find answers to questions, it really has always been about connecting to the person that did the research or was able to help answer a question. The information has always been secondary to the personal connections. The weblog, the wiki, the Semantic Web, RSS, are all just pathways connecting people. From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Added RSS Autodiscovery to my NucleusCMS feeds I have added the RSS Autodiscovery mods to the tag in my RSS feeds. Below is the changes I made to the templates associated with the feeds in NucleusCMS: ?itemid=<%itemid%> There is nothing specific to my weblog in this, so others using NucleusCMS should be able to add this From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Should I Creative Commons license my weblog? I'm starting to see more weblogs displaying a Creative Commons license, so this morning I started the process of deciding which one I might apply to this blog. Of the licenses available, the Share Alike version seems most fitting for what I do here. I was almost ready to begin the process of completing application when I noticed another page on the baseline rights of all licenses. While reading through this, I ca From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. WebCT and the Web xplana has an entry about a recent visit from WebCT to the UO campus to demo WebCT v.4. There's more to this article, including discussion about the arrogance of WebCT: In fact, one of the major themes of the WebCT presentation was that "you don't need a website anymore - not like you used to!". WebCT, as well as other LMCS systems want to hide away the courses and learning, locked inside its password protected environemnts. Comment: And higher ed From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Internet-Draft of RSS 2.0 Internet-Draft of RSS 2.0. As it says, this is RSS 2.0, as Dave has specified it, just in spec-ese. It is derived from Dave [Winer's] spec, but I DON'T intend to fork it with this effort; the idea here is to document the format in a way that can be normatively referenced by the media type registration, as well as other specs down the line. From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. An Introduction to RSS An Introduction to RSS for Educational Designers is an article which provides ed designers (and others) an intro to RSS "Rich Site Summary" (or "Really Simple Syndication"). It also covers the structure of the metadata and discusses current problems with RSS. Because it is one of the simplest uses of XML, RSS has become widely distributed. Content developers use RSS to create an XML description of their web site. The RSS file can inclu From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Reasons to blog Following are articles/entries I've collected for reasons people have chosen to maintain a weblog: Dave Pollard - "Why I blog" explodedlibrary.info - "4 motivations for blogging, with 2 digressions" Steven Cohen - "Why do you blog?" From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. Oh! OPML... I just spent about an hour importing the OPML file from Shifted Librarian into SharpReader. Argh! The OPML file had a "text" field in it that SharpReader's parser didn't like, so I needed to delete that out of all 200+ items. SharpReader also didn't like the fact that some of the "description" field entries had HTML tags, and the length of some of those gave it fits. Comment: Don&a From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 3:39 p.m.. self-answering questions Matt's got a wonderful brace of posts (have we determined what the collective noun for web log posts is yet?) Thursday that reports a question and then a story to answer it. From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 4:19 p.m.. Your Headline Reader Has Been Banned Your RSS reader is abusing the Slashdot server. You are requesting pages more often than our terms of service allow. Please see the FAQ link for more information, and if you email us, include your IPID MD5: 3a3f8a672e3307d340a789aaac74d80f. From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. Save a few bucks with RSS? I happened to come across this feed in the approval queue. I just got myself some stuff because of the... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. OML is it OPML 2.0? There's a new community effort to create an open outline markup format: OML: Outline Markup Language. It aims to solve... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. RSS, headlines or text? RSS makes for a lightweight way to keep updated on a feed without getting sucked into the larger website experience. Much like newspaper headlines, if they're not compelling the article won't get read right away. It'll get read later, when the user has free time. From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. Appropriate use? Some folks are worried when someone uses their RSS feed on another website. My advice? Get over it. From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. RDF Ticker For all you Windows users there's a new RSS headline program available. RDF Ticker, from Ansgar Becker, is designed to... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. FM Radio Station There's a new windows application available that interfaces to Radio. FM RadioStation from Stephen Dulaney and Social Dynamx has been... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. Twisting, always twisting the truth What a hoot. A prime offender of badly formed RSS and an on-going divisive force speaks!... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. Handling excessive use? What are some ways web server operators can affect abusive use of RSS feed URLs? That is, reader programs or... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. Encoding woes There's a few threads covering CDATA wrapping and RSS feeds. There are some readers that don't properly handle them. Let... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. Smart quotes suck This is a fine example of why smart quotes suck: RSS Validator Results. This feed does not validate as RSS.... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. Tehran-Washington Tehran<->Washington letters from 1970 to 1973. An interesting look back on letters between two friends; one in Washington the other... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. GUIDs in feeds The GUID, as understood by Winer and implemented in Radio and pseudo-2.0, is a mess. It's just not right. The... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. WildGrape RSS reader for Windows The Windows RSS reader market has exploded in popularity lately. The most recent entrant is WildGrape by David Peckham.... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. More Variety coming to RSS? From a message on the Syndic8 mailing list it looks like Variety is going to start producing a number of... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. Audrey RSS reader Johan Svensson's working in Audrey, a new web-based RSS aggregator. He's basing it on the Magpie RSS library.... From Syndication News from Bill Kearney on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. Untitled Reality-check!. I know from my parents who are both doctors, that things have been getting pretty sketchy in the medical profession here in the US for the last few years, but at least they're not this bad: "...Four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralysed and on an intravenous drip, were bound and handcuffed as American soldiers rampaged through the wards, searching for departed members of the Saddam regime. "An ambulance driver wh From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 4:20 p.m.. the fight for semantics Jon Udell's got a nice piece about the emergingly Semantic Blog. One part he missed was the emergence of CC licenses as part of the semantic blog space. Movabletype and Userland now both incorporate CC license options. The technique we've used with html has been questioned, but we are pushing hard to get RDF out there. What's needed is a killer app, and here's where From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 6:01 p.m.. Valenti the radical A while ago I reported the wonderfully radical testimony of Jack Valenti against the removal of the FIN-SYN rules. I have not been able to find the testimony online. Here's a large pdf of a scan of the relevant section from the GPO's reports. From Lessig Blog on April 20, 2003 at 6:01 p.m.. Montana Forum : Hold threats to freedom in check No Sunset for Patriot Act. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, wants to remove the sunset provisions from the USA Patriot Act, according to this article at Montana forum.com. (Thanks to Ed Cone for the pointer.) The Patriot Act already has fairly weak sunset provisions, as significant portions of the law are not open to review -- in particular, provisions regarding new electronic surveillance measures From Blogging from the Barrio on April 20, 2003 at 7:05 p.m.. Icons and Iconoclasm Okay, enough about Judaism as Judaism for today. Here's a little piece I wrote for an upcoming issue of Rolling Stone about "The Power of Icons." I suppose its Jewish-themed, after all, since I see the starting point of Judaism as iconoclasm. From rushkoff.blog on April 20, 2003 at 8:35 p.m.. Your Headline Reader Has Been Banned Your RSS reader is abusing the Slashdot server. You are requesting pages more often than our terms of service allow. Please see the FAQ link for more information, and if you email us, include your IPID MD5: fac428ac3d70b4ecc7351a602fff6677. From Slashdot on April 20, 2003 at 11:47 p.m.. RSS from a non-technical pov Fagan Finder has a nice, inclusive article about RSS and how to use it. Topics: What is RSS? What Can I do with RSS? Finding RSS Feeds From carvingCode on April 20, 2003 at 11:47 p.m.. [List Feeds][Add Another Feed][Back to Edu_RSS]