OLDaily
By Stephen Downes
February 4, 2004

PubSub Offers a Neat Twist on Eating RSS Feeds
Discussion of and links to a new RSS service - "It's like searching the future." - that aggregates RSS feeds and provides topic-based feeds. By Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, February 4, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

New Practices in Flexible Learning: Framework for Rights Enabled Learning Object Exchange Trial
A significant set of resources looking at digital rights management (DRM) in the Australian context. "The rights-enabled Learning Object Exchange (LOX) has been specifically designed to demonstrate possible technical, legal and business issues concerning the exchange of learning objects within the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector." Worth noting especially is the Project Report, a detailed examination of DRM issues and proposed solutions. Significantly, "DRM systems must embrace technologies that are free of proprietary obligations" and "Any DRM system needs to be seamless, accessible, cost efÞ cient and transparent for the user groups." By Tim Hand, Australian Flexible Learning Framework, February 4, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Learning Technology
The January issue of this newsletter is out. Lots of good stuff on learning objects, learning portals, community, learning teams and games. But since it's only available (which appears to be a new policy) in that ridiculous PDF format I cannot link to individual articles. By various Authors, February, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Study: Broadband 'Killer App' Found
PwC has this one right - whomever can create an application that gives people an easy way to work with video will have the next 'killer app'. Well, one of them anyway. This is key: the killer application "will not be distribution of professionally produced content, such as today's TV and movies, but rather the addition of video to existing applications such as conferencing, messaging and gaming and the development of applications that rely on user- and community-provided video content." People often forget, the internet is a communications medium. Nice to see PwC getting it. By Unknown, Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal, February 3, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

ICSEP Latin American Workshop II
Subtitled 'Strengthening Scientists and Editors Capabilities in Electronic Publishing', the proceedings from this conference signify a growing awareness of - and support for - open source publishing in Latin America. Papers and presentations are available on the conference website, mostly in Spanish, but some - such as Erik Sandewall's presentation of the CDSI recommendations. Not available yet on the site is a significant outcome of the conference, the Valparaiso Declaration stressing ways to improve scientific communication in general and open access in particular. By Various Authors, February 4, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Is Ad-Supported RSS the Next Big Thing?
Some discussion of the concept and outline of a company, RSSAds, that is trying to bring commercial content into RSS feeds. It's a tricky model: viewership of RSS feeds is based on a subscription to the feed, and people are not so likely to subscribe to an RSS feed full of advertising. But insert an RSS ad with a feed - either as part of the description content or as a separate link - and now we have the beginnings of a model. By Janis Mara, Internet Advertising Report, February 3, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Summary of the 2004 SIIA Information Industry Summit
Nice summary of this conference which gives the reader a good glimpse into the thinking and sense of the software industry. One senses some movement on things like licensing, copyright and patents. And excerpt: "Information vendors need to come up with better ways to price products. There may be X million people who use the FLICC (Federal Library and Information Center Committee) intranet. But there may be only a few people who need to use a particular product from a particular vendor. Any pricing that tries to license the millions instead of the actual users is not going to fly." If the PilotEd site is new to you, you may want to see Their other items from previous months. By Mitchell Weisburgh, PilotEd, February 2, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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