This is an example of the sort of data integration that is going to sit behind the next generation of e-learning (and now I'm talking about what comes after all the MOOC hype here). This article describes a website using CSS and JSON to set up a header than changes based on the weather where you're located. It reads your location, connects with a weather service to get the current weather, then sets up the display with apprpriate images. The article could be a bit clearer - it points the reader to Yahoo's RSS API from 2006, but the code actually uses the REST-JSON api documented in this other article. Of course, weather information is just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine, for example, an online course on economics that changes as the economic data changes! [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Yahoo!, Traditional and Online Courses, RSS, Online Learning]

"I don't know anything about web design, where should I start?" Does this sound like you? If you have no idea how a web page is created, this video is for you. Web pages are, in the end, simple text files. This video shows how to create these text files so they will look like proper web sites when you view them in your browser. It's a screencast, so you can watch and listen to see how it's done. For everyone else - note how easily someone has been able to create an entire program of studies (58 videos as of this writing) and post it online very simply and cheaply. [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: Video]

This is a great little first lesson in PHP that does stuff people will actually want to do. I'm subscribing to the site to follow this series (I assume it's a series). If you want to teach yourself PHP (and, assuming it's a series) then get one of those cheap ISP accounts with MySQL included (feel free to recommend a provider in the comments). [Comment] [Direct Link] [Tags: none]