OLDaily
By Stephen Downes
August 11, 2004

Olympian Struggle
"I don't see why, after all the money that Greek taxpayers will end up paying to host the games, McDonald's should dictate what I can eat in my own city." ... "Staff will also be on the lookout for T-shirts, hats and bags displaying the unwelcome logos of non-sponsors. Stewards have been trained to detect people who may be wearing merchandise from the sponsors' rivals in the hope of catching the eyes of television audiences. Those arousing suspicion will be required to wear their T-shirts inside out." By Mark Franchetti, Halifax Herald, August 9, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Open-Media.org
Marc Canter opens the doors a bit on an initiative intened to foster the development of an open content network, an idea dear to my own heart. The centerpiece is a large diagram. Many nuts and bolts are still required. By Marc canter, Marc's Voice, August 9, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Mind: In Search of Pattern Recognition
Interesting item about pattern recognition with an overt attempt to apply the practice with respect to lifestyle choice. "Information overload," wrote McLuhan, "is an opportunity for pattern recognition." This is what I do in this work or elsewhere - I immerse myself in the medium and swim where I find currents. People have in the past criticized me for over generalizing - what they miss is that I am not generalizing at all, I don't believe in generalizations, I am simply sketching a pattern in the flow. Read this too. By Brian Alger, Experience Design Network, August 4, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Virtual Worlds are Real Worlds
Raction to an article in the Guardian about online worlds titled Get a Life. The author's point is simple, and one with which I am in agreement: virtual world are real. They are just as real, in fact, as the 'real world'. Like the author, I am more than a digital immigrant - I can't say I am a digital native, since the online world didn't exist when I was a child, but I grew up with the digital age, playing Pong when it came out, playing Adventure online, and more. I can say the virtual world is real because, like the author, I live in it. "The cool thing is that in the virtual world, I have lots of new friends from all over the world, offering me all sorts of perspectives that I wouldn’t otherwise have access to, and vice versa. Who can say that’s a bad thing?" By Lisa Galarneau, Relevancy, August 10, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Tighter Integration of Wiki and Weblog
This is something I'd like to work toward: the integration of a wiki with OLDaily. By Randy Brown, Open Artifact, August 6, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Expertise Finders: Pollard Goes Looking for Answers
George Siemens points to this item by Dave Pollard in which he asks, "How can we ever hope to produce effective Expertise Finders when we can't even get people in our own organizations to keep their personal information up to date?" It's what I try to convince people of in my own projects, that input is critical, and everything else is gravy. Right now the most effective input system is the blog, and Pollard writes, "I envisioned an Expertise Finder that would work by crawling people's blog content, penetrating corporate firewalls to find the best people in the world who had the desired expertise and creating a 'map' showing the most direct network path to those people and how much their expertise costs." By Dave Pollard, How to Save the World, Augut 6, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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Copyright © 2003 Stephen Downes
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