By Stephen Downes
June 3, 2004
Gurus versus Bloggers Take
2
Another fun installment of Design by Fire's
'Gurus versus bloggers' design showdown. I'll spare you the
suspense: "Another shutout: Bloggers, 8. Gurus, Zilch." I'm
not even slightly surprised. The 'gurus' talk a good game,
but it's the bloggers that actually pay attention to
design. Which reminds me, it's time to redesign this
creating heap of a website. I've been playing around with
some interesting ideas using a great resource as a starting point.
Still. It's not there yet. By Andrei Herasimchuk, Design
by Fire, June 2, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Collaboration Supercharges
Performance
Really nice set of notes (and I love
his use of images) from Jay Cross on collaboration. Note
well the diagrams showing the evolution of computing models
and the evolution of learning models. If you're still doing
'expert-led' you're working with the wrong model. While
you're at his blog, be sure to read Jay's reflections on Henry Mintzberg. By Jay Cross, Internet
Time, June 2, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Take-Off DataPoint Workshop
Robin
Good explains this nicely in today's newsletter: "The
Take-off RSS news reader from DataPoint gathers RSS news
and sends them directly into a Microsoft Access database.
From there they can be easily pulled inside one or more
presentation slides. Thus, you could have fresh and updated
news feeds to show on your class opening presentation slide
or you could display the latest relevant stock, or future
prices for the very items that you have been covering in
your presentation." I haven't tried it, but it's a great
concept. Almost as good as sending your emails to an RSS feed (though you have to
install a script on your your email server to use it - and
almost nobody has access to their email server). By Various
Authors, Take-Off, June, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Fine-Tuning Your Filter for Online
Information
The New York Times take on RSS,
offering ti as a content filtering service. This isn't a
bad interpretation, since as many commentators have noted,
RSS feed readers are a lot more efficient that email or web
browsers. "R.S.S. avoids Pointcast's pitfalls because it
lets individuals request the information when they want
it." Aside from that, it's a pretty basic article; note how
the Times defies the convention of everyone on the planet
and punctuates the name RSS. It feels weird to see it that
way. By John R. Quain, New York Times, June 3, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Web Users to Gain Creative Commons Access to
the BBC
This came to me from a few sources: the
BBC is licensing all of its content under Creative Commons.
I like the author's observation that this "could help to
drive broadband and the take-up of new, faster PCs." By
Graeme Wearden, ZDNet UK, May 27, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
ODRL Workshop Report
The official
workshop report from the first Open Digital Rights Language
(ODRL) conference is out. Of most interest is the Future
Directions at the end of the report. "The key next steps
are to develop a work plan for the technical development of
the next version of ODRL and to establish the ODRL
International Advisory Board to manage the goverance
processes for the Initiative." By Renato Iannella and
Susanne Guth, June 3, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow
A
victim of its own success, writes this author, a former
employee, Microsoft depends on its Windows operating system
for revenue - a system that is full of usability, stability
and security flaws and won't be updated again for years.
Though cash rich, the company is right now innovation poor,
and shows no signs of the capacity to innovate that marked
its earlier years. Thanks, Todd, for the link. By Jeff
Reifman, Seattle Weekly, June 2, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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