Edu_Rss

The Knowledge Coach
Here's the story that captures the essence of Deep Smarts, Dorothy Leonard's book on knowledge coaches. "When e-business burst on the scene, GE's CEO Jack Welch was impressed by the strategy adopted by the CEO of GE's Global Consumer Finance (GCF) division, who realized he was not up to speed in e-business. The CEO identified the brightest person under thirty in GCF and asked him to be his mentor. When Welch returned to the United States, within forty-eight hours he spre From elearningpost on January 10, 2005 at 10:45 p.m..

“The ‘Canon’ Enabled ‘The Masses’ To Become Thinking Individuals”
In "The Classics in the Slums," Jonathan Rose writes a fascinating essay about the power great books have to transform lives. He argues that Matthew Arnold was right: the best that has been said and thought can make lives better. That's an argument contrary to most of the last thirty ... From Gardner Writes on January 10, 2005 at 9:01 p.m..

Gilbane Report: now free!
The Gilbane Report has just taken the great step of making all their reports publicly available, free of charge. There's a lot of great stuff here! There is also a new blog, covering news and commentary in the field of... From Column Two on January 10, 2005 at 8:47 p.m..

Podcasting Grab Bag
Here are some more items about podcasting that caught my attention over the last couple of months. TOP OF THIS LIST: "Scripting News, Trade Secrets and Ego," by Mark VandeWettering, "Brainwagon Radio," Dec. 9, 2004. Excerpt: "Podcasting appeals to me because nearly anyone can do it. On any budget. For any reason. To communicate with family. Or their community. Or their church. Or people with similar interests. Or people who don From Contentious Weblog on January 10, 2005 at 7:55 p.m..

Tags on delicious flickring Steroids: Taggregator
Last week is was Tags on Speed. That was then, this is now... Richard S writes "More on Social tags" pointing to "taggregator" an experiment with allows you to provide one "tag" and it generates a side by side view of del.icoi.us and flickr results: Someone built a thing I wanted to but didn’t — the cogdogblog on January 10, 2005 at 7:48 p.m..

Mapping the culture of an online community
For those in the knowledge management community, the Act-KM list has been a central point for discussion (and dispute). While it's been great to have an active list, it has had a dynamic that has scared away many people, and... From Column Two on January 10, 2005 at 7:47 p.m..

MPEG LA Issues First Collective DRM Patent License
A coalition of digital rights management (DRM) patent holders called MPEG-LA (Licensing Austority), including ContentGuard and Digitrust, has announced the first round of licenses for DRM technology. "The license, which is still tentative as the individual IP holders involved finalize their agreement, is intended to cover implementations of OMA [Open Mobile Alliance] DRM 1.0 for mobile devices and content services. Royalty terms have been made public and set at US $1.00 per mobile device and one percent of any revenue that a service provider makes from a content-related transaction." I fail to From OLDaily on January 10, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..

E-Learning in the UK
A survey of e-learning in the U.K. shows that while it has become an essential part of the learning landsape, the CD-ROM remains the dominant delivery vehicle and that student attitudes remain a major obstacle. I applaud the honesty of the author, who reports "Just over 100 responses were received and these will be biased towards those with an interest in e-learning." Of course I say while in the same breath wondering about the reliability of the results. By Martyn Sloman, Learning Circuits, December, 2004 [OLDaily on January 10, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..

Rapid E-Learning: A Growing Trend
"In a study of Fortune 500 companies conducted by Larstan Business Reports, 85 percent said they planned to expand the role of e-learning. More important, over 80 percent of respondents said that rapid e-learning strategies would make a significant contribution to the training initiatives in their companies... REL uses tools and processes that decrease development time dramatically. Traditional courseware development timelines are measured in terms of months whereas REL timelines are measured in terms of days and weeks." By Dianne Archibald, Learning Circuits, December, 2004 [OLDaily on January 10, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..

The Importance of Being Permanent
Article touting the importance of permanent locations for online content, a dictum not followed by many nespapers and magazines (the focus of the article) but also educational staff and students, who must forge from scratch a new web identity every time they switch instititions. Having faced this myself twice in two years, I obtained my now permanent downes.ca address - but even so, my present employer insists that I use its official URL for web pages and email addresses - an address that it changed a year ago, wiping itself off Google and making my (minimal supply of) business cards obsolete. From OLDaily on January 10, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..

Renaissance Prospects
Douglas Rushkoff "tries to picture connectedness and ecology as a base for a second Renaissance ("a rebirth of old ideas in a new context") as a deconstruction of the first Renaissance, the one that created (wo)man and economy" (Thomas N. Burg). I like Rushkoff a lot, and this 45 minute lecture doesn't disappoint. I miss his books - I can't buy them here (my local Chapters is well into a process of dumbing down its book collection, eliminating anything challnging or useful from its OLDaily on January 10, 2005 at 7:45 p.m..

Satellite-based mobile television goes live
TU Media” has started trials of a satellite television service to mobile phones, with 3 video and 6 radio channels. The service is available to customers of SK Telecom in Korea who own a Samsung SCH-B100 handset. It hopes to start commercial services by May 1, but “Our satellite-based mobile television services is a concept never tried before, so we have no existing model to glean knowledge from. This makes our trail services critical,” said TU Media spokesman Huh Jae-young. &#8 From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 6:57 p.m..

Upload files on Prodigem directly from the web
Eric Rice wrote me today with a great idea. Why not devise a way for Prodigem to pull content into your account directly from the web? Since most people provide both the hard copy of their content as well as a link to the torrent on their website, why force them to upload the hard copy to their website and then go through the arduous home-upload-speed task of then also uploading it to Prodigem. Done. You can now pull content into your account directly from the web. You simply tell Prodigem the URL, it goes off and does its thing and when the pr From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 6:57 p.m..

Corante EventLab: Challenges of Podcasting
Greg from Beercasting, Michael from ReelReviews, myself, and Alex Williams sat down for an hour and talked about the challenges of podcasting over on EventLab. I've sent this podcast down my personal channel, which I wouldn't normally do. I just find this conversation to be useful. From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 6:57 p.m..

How Democratic Party chairs are elected
You want to know? You really want to know? Go ask Matt Stoller...... From Joho the Blog on January 10, 2005 at 6:50 p.m..

Excerpt: Design for Knowledge Sharing
I just published an excerpt (German only) of an interesting paper on social capital and knowledge-sharing. The paper's title is "Design requirements for knowledge sharing tools. A need for social capital analysis" and it's part of the book Social Capital and Information Technology From thomas n. burg | randgänge on January 10, 2005 at 6:48 p.m..

Where art and science converge
The Rhode Island School of Design quietly turns out between seven and 10 science illustrators each year. From Christian Science Monitor | Learning on January 10, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..

How to teach tsunami to the young
Teachers find their students eager to learn about the tsunami. From Christian Science Monitor | Learning on January 10, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..

Brief forays offer lasting lessons to US students
Short, tightly focused programs abroad allow US college students exposure to the world. From Christian Science Monitor | Learning on January 10, 2005 at 6:45 p.m..

New Voices Wanted in Citizen Journalism
New Voices, a "pioneering program to seed innovative citizen media ventures around the country," has some money available for promising new ventures. Details here. From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

Memsen Wireless File Sharing Flash Drives
Memsen was showing prototypes of their new 'Click 'n' Share' flash memory drives at CES. The concept is simple, but potentially powerful: each flash drive has (presumably) a 'shared' folder, and when two flash drives are within range, just a simple button press will wirelessly transfer the contents of those shared folders. It's only at the point of reference design for now, but Memsen is planning on licensing the idea to other ve From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

For Whom Does the Fourth Estate Speak?
Anthony Sampson looks over the last 40 years of UK power structure to find that while virtually all other institutions lost status or power -- one branch of public life stood out as having gained power hugely: the media. Sampson adds that this increase in power has inevitably been accompanied by questions about the media's own legitimacy. Journalists are not elected, and are, by and large, distrusted. More and more people are asking: for whom do they really speak? While he survey's media From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

Image annotation
Greg Elin is at it again. Fotonotes is now a Wiki environment: to discuss an open specification for image region annotation and managing photos as a plurality of objects. Greg is also alpha previewing his FNServer framework - which kind of finally exposes his business model strategy. You see Greg has been proselytizing and spreading the notion of hot spots on photos, standards for photos and what happens when you start interconnecting imagery with ideas and conversations. B From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

Review: deja view camwear
I finally posted my short review of the dejaview camwear 100 here: http://www.lisaharper.org/archives/2005/01/mydejaview-out-of-the-bx-experience/ http://www.lisaharper.org/archives/2005/01/deja-review/ Well, the first is a warmup post and the second contains a longer movie made up of bits of video. - Lisa From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

Peercasting Ready for Primetime?
"Have you ever wanted to run your own internet radio or TV station, but thought the bandwidth would cost too much? While Wired thinks Peer-to-peer broadcasting, or "peercasting", will be the future of the internet (previously posted); Peercast.org says it's already here today. Peercast's software is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac. You c From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

PSP is now a portable TV?
Apparently, Sony is developing software that will allow television broadcasts to be playable on the PSP (and laptops) via wireless internet connection.  The technique is called “place-shifting” and will allow users to access content stored on remote locations.  Interestingly enough, the software will be available in North America first.  No word on release date or price.  We’ll keep you posted. [See also, From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

"Taggregator" ... for Flickr & del.icio.us ... with a bit of help from 10x10
Richard S has mailed the del.icio.us discussion mailing list, drawing our attention to http://oddiophile.com/taggregator/index.php?tag= , a nifty way of displaying results from del.icio.us and flickr under the same tag (just complete the 'tag=' parameter in the querystring). He had wanted to From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

RFC 2838 (rfc2838) - Uniform Resource Identifiers for Television Broadcasts
There is a need to reference television broadcasts using URIs; this document describes a widely-implemented URI scheme to refer to such broadcasts. From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

Comcast buys interactive TV company
A joint venture led by Comcast has purchased the North American assets of Liberate, an interactive TV company. "This acquisition, along with our earlier investment in Guideworks and our innovative video on demand platform, will enable Comcast to move faster toward creating a more interactive television experience," said Steve Silva, Comcast EVP of new business development. From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

Toward the massless media era
Willian Powers has certainly written a brilliant article called "The Massless Media" in The Atlantic... but I have no means to read it. Sorry, I can just quote the summary of this piece: "With the mass media losing their audience to smaller, more targeted outlets, we may be headed for an era of noisy, contentious press reminiscent of the 1800s." Very promising start! And very accurate about segmented and polarized audiences. This phenomenon can be compared t From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 5:55 p.m..

Web of Ideas: Web as world
I'm leading another open discussion at the Harvard Berkman Center this Wednesday. The topic is: Is the Web a medium? The answer - and I will brook no disagreement! - is that, yes, it's a medium, but the Web matters because it's also a world. I'll kick off the session with about 20 minutes on what the hell I mean by that (still working on it!) and why it matters. Then it's an open forum. It's open to everyone. And we serve pizza. This Wednesdsay, 6-7:30pm, at the Baker House in Cambridge (map).... From Joho the Blog on January 10, 2005 at 5:49 p.m..

Zend Platform
Today's screencast features Zend Platform, a new management solution for PHP-based sites. The other voices you'll hear on the screencast (or the companion podcast) are those of Pamela Roussos, marketing VP for Zend, and Andi Gutmans, co-founder and technology VP. Gutmans and Zend's other co-founder, Zeev Suraski, are the authors of PHP's core engine, known as the Zend Engine. The new product, Jon's Radio on January 10, 2005 at 5:46 p.m..

Why Folksonomies Work - Robin Good
Read the whole thing! From Grassroots Cooperative Categorization Of Digital Content Assets: Folksonomies, What They Are, Why They Work - Robin Good' Sharewood Tidings.: QUOTEWhy Folksonomies Work It is difficult to define a metric by which one could argue folksonomies are a success or failure, but the degree that it does seem to be e From Roland Tanglao's Weblog on January 10, 2005 at 4:53 p.m..

Tonight's Daily Show this afternoon!
NPR's hourly news just played a snippet of Bush saying something about "an election in Iraq," but he stumbled ever so slightly: "An er-election in Iraq." We can only hope W was on his way to a full spoonerism: "An erection in I-lack." Sigh. Such are the petty joys to which I have been reduced.... From Joho the Blog on January 10, 2005 at 4:49 p.m..

MediaMax DRM s*cks and breaks CD playback
Yet another reason not to buy CDs except direct from the artist. Yes, unfortunately, the artist may be selling "DRM corrupted" :-) disks using bogus corruption schemes like MediaMax but at least you know where the money is going. From At The Mercy Of The Music Industry: Microsoft Secure WMA Files Make Music CDs Unusable - Robin Good's Latest News.: QUOTEThe CDs, which use a protection system called MediaMax break away quite a bit in what you would expect from you From Roland Tanglao's Weblog on January 10, 2005 at 3:49 p.m..

CELEBRATE Evaluation Report
I'm passing along this item that I noticed in Scott Leslie's EdTechPost. The download is in pdf. The preview link for the report reads "This report provides an evaluation of the extent to which new, more flexible forms of content development and distribution (based on reusable LOs) had an impact upon the learning process and supported new pedagogy for From EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on January 10, 2005 at 2:47 p.m..

To Pay or Not to Pay? That Is the Question
I've been a subscriber to the Web edition of the Wall Street Journal pretty much from the get-go -- one of about 700,000 paid subscribers now who shell out $79 annually. I consider it a sound investment, but I'm glad that other sites don't do the same.For instance, having spent 10 years in Lansing, Michigan, where I was sports editor of the Lansing State Journal, I look at the online edition of that paper almost daily (I like to know what's going on in town). I also look at the Detroi From Poynter E-Media Tidbits on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 p.m..

Increase Credibility With Visible Ethics Policies
At Steve Outing's suggestion, I surfed over to the San Jose Mercury News website to read Dan Gillmor's final technology column. Before I closed my browser tab, however, a listing in the left nav caught my eye. Under "Site Services," there was a link to the "Mercury News Ethics Policy." This single-page do From Poynter E-Media Tidbits on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 p.m..

Put Something at the Bottom of Web Articles
Last week I pointed out the unusual bottom-navigation scheme on article pages of the Danish newspaper site Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, which repeats extensive content from the homepage. I missed some other examples that are worth pondering.Sweden's Aftonbladet repeats the entire homepage at the end of articles on its website -- like this one. (Thanks to Morten Overbye for the pointer.)A more austere versi From Poynter E-Media Tidbits on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 p.m..

Open source documentation
On Christmas day, after the potlatch subsided, I headed out for a run. But when I flicked on my MP3 player, I heard...nothing. Glancing down at the display of the Creative Nomad MuVo TX I saw an unwelcome message: "File system error." Grrr. Back inside, I dug into the problem. The Creative support page was, naturally, of no use whatsoever. So I turned to Google and found a handful of postings, on various forums, in which users reported similar experiences. Some folks were able to reformat the file system. That was no help to me, though, since From Jon's Radio on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Content doesn't matter
Seblogging:: "The thing is... I don't think I have a content problem. And if I think about young adults in higher education in the so-called first world, I don't see much of a content problem, either." Seb makes a great point in his own words and follows with an eloquent quote from Oleg Liber. The key experience in learning is not in the "stuff". There's tons of quality stuff out there. The key is in the "rich conversational engagement between learners and teachers&quot From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Understanding Wikipedia
Phantom authority: "This paper employs team and club good theory as well as transaction cost economics to analyse the Wikipedia online community, which is devoted to the creation of a free encyclopaedia. An interpretative framework explains the outstanding success of Wikipedia thanks to a novel solution to the problem of graffiti attacks"Our wiki is here. As I try and persuade faculty and staff that wikis can enhance the way we work, it's sometimes an uph From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Learning Material Repositories - Rafts or Battleships?
A detailed post from Auricle about the practical deployment of shared learning materials: "Above all we need practical solutions which users will buy into because they perceive them as having a low barrier to entry and use, are efficient, provide benefits over current practices, and above all are flexible (note emphasis)." This is a really great post, detailed and full of provocative links. The main thrust From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Commonwealth Content Repository - Technical Background on Dynamic Style Switching
Commonwealth Content Repository - Technical Background on Dynamic Style Switching: "Technical background on how to change the visual appearance of pages on this site and more techniques for VCCS webmasters and other geeks" I've alluded to this technique in the past and I'm interested in what others make of it. By embedding a single line of javascript in a page, I have made it brandable by anyone who wishes to do so. From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

PDA cortex: The Journal of Mobile Informatics
It's always interesting to me the tidbits that get dropped in e-mails on other topics. I've been e-mailing one of my colleagues at one of colleges and they mentioned in passing that they were training their nursing faculty on using PDAs. We've seen more and more of this in our system. It looks like it is one of those technologies that will stay the course. A quick google found this good-looking site: PDA cortex: The Journal of Mobile Informatics, which included a couple of listservs for nurses. Sure, it looks like there&apos From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

BbSEUG 2004 Registration
Just received notice that BbSEUG 2004 Registration is open until September 15th. BbSEUG is the Blackboard Southeast Users Group and I attended the conference last year in Orlando. It was one of those superbly organized, well-targeted conferences that you really remember. The presentations are typically by Blackboard administrators and extremely useful. The program is online here. If you are a Blackboard administrat From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Accessibility and Blogging
This abstract from the Technology and Persons with Disabilities conference has some good references. The conference page doesn't display well in Firefox though..hmmm... This general topic is something we're always trying to get better at although it is sometimes hard to get people's attention. From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Gmail Invites
I have six Gmail invitations to give away. I've been giving them to colleagues and family and have pretty much exhausted that well...at least to the point that I'd need to send out a blanket notice and I don't really want to do that. So...if you're interested, let me know. This invitation is closed - you can get and give gmail invites away at isnoop.net's gmailomatic From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Turck MMCache for PHP - Accelerator
"Turck MMCache is a free open source PHP accelerator, optimizer, encoder and dynamic content cache for PHP." If you haven't tried it, you should. It's a great accelerator for PHP (version 4.x). From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Phd, Project Management, Weblogs
It's all here. I'm not sure where to start, so I'll let my personal weblog do the talking. The weblog as a personal class journal dimension is really provocative, especially since it's on my own initiative and not mandated. From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Direct Links to specific pages in the VCCS Policy Manual
Jon Udell points out that you can directly link to a specific page in a PDF file by adding #page=number after the url of the PDF file. This makes specific pages in the VCCS Policy Manual addressable, which is a good thing since they don't implement bookmarks. For example: http://www.vccs.edu/Polcypdf/section/Sct3.PDF#page=49 links to page 49 of the manual, which contains information about Educa From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

PODCasting
Phil Windley | PODCasting: "On the Internet, listeners are just a click away. Simply place your MP3 file on any HTTP server and link to it. This works great for one-off content, but what about regular shows? Getting the MP3 from the Web site to your iPod is the last mile problem of PODCasting. I'm addicted to the Gillmor Gang on IT Conversations, but I'll never remember to download the program every week. I want the program to simply show up on my iPod so I can listen to it at my leisure. Enter RSS." From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Weblog-specific assignments for learning
blogsperiment: The WHAT of blogging: "These problems: not knowing the form; lack of specific objective; perceived centrality of the process; vague assessment criteria and the length of time necessary to develop synergy, certainly express themselves in specific ways in course blogging but they are also issues that I have found in my attempts to get quality work happening in Blackboard threaded discussions." Like any technology, it's not the technology per se, but the assignments cre From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Search Every VCCS College
Occasionally, I will have a need to search for a faculty member or someone I've met at an internal conference and I'm not even sure which college they are at. Sometimes, it's just not very easy to search an individual college's web site. My solution is to write a search form that uses the Google API, so now you can Search Every VCCS College. From Serious Instructional Technology on January 10, 2005 at 1:46 p.m..

Bright Outlook for Educational Technology
This was definitely an evolutionary year for the CES, as opposed to a revolutionary one. Many of the products seen here were telegraphed long ago via PR releases or had already been shown at other electronics shows like CeBIT. If... From Teaching and Developing Online. on January 10, 2005 at 12:54 p.m..

Scaling Wikipedia (Ross Mayfield)
Our very own Clay and danah in a Wired News piece on Wikipedia Growing Pains. “One of the mysteries of scale is that there’s no such thing as scaling well,” said Clay Shirky, who writes about culture, media and technology.... From Corante: Social Software on January 10, 2005 at 12:49 p.m..

Are you Nerdier?
I might be the one who knows the cyber glasses but my score was not as high as I thought it was going to be...I am not the biggest nerd in the world...Yahooo. Where do you rate?... From Teaching and Developing Online. on January 10, 2005 at 11:55 a.m..

Year of the Blog QandA
Sue Wuetcher, from the campus Reporter asked me to participate in a Q&A about blogging and such. I suspect (hope) that she will end up cutting this down so that it is more concise and makes more sense, but here... From Teaching and Developing Online. on January 10, 2005 at 11:55 a.m..

Pew on Blogs
The blogosphere is alight with new numbers from the latest Pew Survey Report, which sought out information on how blogs are being used. Many are noting that they find the numbers depressingly low, but I am shocked (shocked!) that a... From Teaching and Developing Online. on January 10, 2005 at 11:55 a.m..

Future of the Internet.
Elon University and the Pew Internet & American Life Project have released a study of the future of the Internet, including opinions and forecasts from nearly 1,300 technology experts and scholars. Chasing the Dragon's Tale: Future of the Internet -... From Teaching and Developing Online. on January 10, 2005 at 11:55 a.m..

Technology Gap for Churches
"Church size was the primary factor in technology reliance, according to the latest study from Ellison Research": Study finds big technology gap between large and small churches Chasing the Dragon's Tale: Technology gap for churches widens based upon membership size... From Teaching and Developing Online. on January 10, 2005 at 11:55 a.m..

Cost, Reach, and Richness in Distance Education
Is the money allocated to institutional distance education getting the results on the back end in terms of student achievement? A literature review of cost analysis studies on distance education is presented with three themes factored out from those studies:... From Teaching and Developing Online. on January 10, 2005 at 11:55 a.m..

E-learning gets top marks
Electronic learning is set for take off as learners graduate from learning basic IT skills to using information technology to round off their education, say companies offering such courseware. Ronel Bornman, general manager at online degree institution eDegree, says she... From Teaching and Developing Online. on January 10, 2005 at 11:55 a.m..

Just-In-Time Podcasting
No, not a teaching strategy, just another of those strange coincidences I'm seeing more and more frequently these days. Last night marked the shaky ascent of my first podcast. Today Technology Review blogs on podcasting. Maybe coincidence favors the obsessive mind? (Apologies to Pasteur.) Or maybe this is my destiny.:) ... From Gardner Writes on January 10, 2005 at 11:00 a.m..

U.S. Schools Behind
Overall, more schools are using technology to offer tutoring, track student performance and increase communication between parents and teachers. At least 15 states provide some form of "virtual schooling," in which young students gain access to individual instruction online. Yet... From Teaching and Developing Online. on January 10, 2005 at 10:54 a.m..

The Secret of IKEA
We have discovered the secret to IKEA - visit the store on Christmas Eve. It's completely deserted. It's ironic, on the day every other store is filled to their vents with shoppers with poor time management skills, the Swedish Sensation is silent and wonderful. Another secret we discovered is that IKEA is good eatin'. The Manager's Special gives you soup, a refillable drink, and swedish meatballs and potatoes topped with cream and ligonberry sauce. And have you ever tried their ligonberry juice? It tastes like cranberries but without the tartness, and it goes down smoooth. From silentblue | Quantified on January 10, 2005 at 10:54 a.m..

Distributed history
Britt has a terrific piece — with the terrific title "The Commons of the Tragedy" — about blogging and journalism. He says that not only are we — all of us — writing the first draft of history, but we're engaged in what he calls recursive journalism: "the amazing detail and clarity possible when the blogosphere gets on a story and combine our individually flawed viewpoints into a coherent and relevant representation." He quotes Arianna Huffington: When bloggers decide that something matters, they chomp down hard and refuse to let go. They're the true pit bulls From Joho the Blog on January 10, 2005 at 10:48 a.m..

Spread That Love (and take 5 photos of it)
Yup, flickr is the land of maybe more than the land of 10,000 memes, maybe it is the long tail for photographic odd-topics. Today, I got an invite to join the "spread that love" flickr group (which explains why I had to fish it out of the junk mail folder!). So here is the meme for this group: Take your favourite sandwich or toast spread on an excursion outdoors for a d From cogdogblog on January 10, 2005 at 10:48 a.m..

W and Nixon
"There's an interesting parallel between Bush and Richard Nixon. While Nixon was clearly a superor statesman and in many ways a more intelligent politician, what they share is a kind of boldness in how they emote their insecurities. What we're finding with George Bush — part of what's familiar to people and that adds to his likability for many — is that there's a commonality of deep insecurity and his handling it with a kind of bravado. What they both did is handle things with a similar certainty — certainty being the 'disease of kings.'" I like From Joho the Blog on January 10, 2005 at 9:48 a.m..

Reframing a small planet
Frances Moore Lapp&ampeacute;, author of Diet for a Small Planet — a book that influenced my wife and me waaaay back when — has published an important essay that out-Lakoffs Lakoff. Here's a summary-by-snippets: Lakoff's central idea is that conservatives see the world through a "strict father" frame emphasizing discipline, self-reliance, forceful defense, while progressives see the world through a "nurturant parent" frame--supportive, nourishing, emphasizing mutual responsibility. ...Certainly, much of Lakoff's advice about communicating progress From Joho the Blog on January 10, 2005 at 9:48 a.m..

k.soft partners with NotePage, Inc. to link RSS Technology Tools
k.soft has partnered with NotePage, Inc. to mutually promote and enhance RSS technology tools RSS Submit and FeedForAll. RSS Submit is a software utility for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP which automates the process of submitting feeds to RSS search engines, publishing content, and enhancing RSS traffic. FeedForAll is a software tool designed to create, edit, and publish RSS feeds. Webmasters have the ability to create new RSS feeds from scratch, or modify and enhance existing RSS feeds. A fully functional demo of RSS Submit is available to the public at RSS Blog on January 10, 2005 at 9:00 a.m..

Indian Ocean Disaster
This image best illustrates the impact this disaster. BEFORE AFTER This site has some very up to date information on it. AusAID: Indian Ocean Disaster... From Teaching and Developing Online. on January 10, 2005 at 8:55 a.m..

Tech Startup 2.0 - Robert D. Hof, Business Week
Rising from the post-bubble slump are new ventures that are forging a different, more productive path than their predecessors Everywhere you look, signs of life are emerging in startup land. Entrepreneurs are huddling in their garages and dens, tappi From Techno-News Blog on January 10, 2005 at 8:50 a.m..

VXers creating 150 zombie programs a week - John Leyden, the Register
Malicious programs capable of turning home PCs into zombies controlled by hackers are growing at between 150 to 200 per week. McAfee's Anti-virus and Vulnerability Emergency Response Team (AVERT) reports that bots (now numbering over 7,000) and mass m From Techno-News Blog on January 10, 2005 at 8:49 a.m..

Ton’s Interdependent Thoughts: Blogs as Personal Presence Portal Revisited
Ton's Interdependent Thoughts: Blogs as Personal Presence Portal Revisited: Interesting meditation on blogs and their discontents. See also Elmine Wijnia's "Understanding Weblogs: a communicative perspective", which concludes that "weblogs do offer a platform for the ideal speech situation." From Gardner Writes on January 10, 2005 at 8:00 a.m..

Enhancing Employee Loyalty
Employee training can actually enhance employee loyalty. Sarah Tinsley explains why.... From Adult/Continuing Education on January 10, 2005 at 7:49 a.m..

The Net's future? It depends on whom you ask - Tom Zeller Jr., CNET News
Few topics inspire trips to the crystal ball like technology, although hasty predictions have often only provided future generations with quotes for cocktail party chat. Ken Olson, founder of the Digital Equipment Corporation, remarked in 1977, for i From Techno-News Blog on January 10, 2005 at 7:49 a.m..

Preservation of local newspaper titles published in the United Kingdom and Ireland between 1700 and ...
Preservation of local newspaper titles published in the United Kingdom and Ireland between 1700 and 1950 through the Newsplan 2000 project is now complete. The titles have been preserved on microfilm and the delivery of microfilm reading equipment to libraries and archives has now begun From Peter Scott's Library Blog on January 10, 2005 at 6:49 a.m..

Following a remarkable year for the spread of open access ideas and the gathering of momentum for re ...
Following a remarkable year for the spread of open access ideas and the gathering of momentum for real change, the New Year begins with an announcement by JISC of the winners of funding under the second round of its Open Access programme. Following the success of the first year of the JISC programme, the decision has been made to award five publishers funds to support open access delivery for their journals From Peter Scott's Library Blog on January 10, 2005 at 6:49 a.m..

International Journal of Medical Sciences is a peer-reviewed open access journal publishing high qua ...
International Journal of Medical Sciences is a peer-reviewed open access journal publishing high quality scientific papers of excellence in all areas of medical sciences. Articles include original research and review, important case reports and analysis, short research communications presenting novel research ideas and timely research finding, and reports of new drug development and clinical trials From Peter Scott's Library Blog on January 10, 2005 at 6:49 a.m..

The list of Free Online Full-text Articles, published online with the assistance of HighWire Press, ...
The list of Free Online Full-text Articles, published online with the assistance of HighWire Press, has been updated. It now contains links to 820,911 free full-text articles and 2,075,515 total articles From Peter Scott's Library Blog on January 10, 2005 at 6:49 a.m..

The VRD 2004 Online Proceedings offers presentations, handouts, models, papers, and other materials ...
The VRD 2004 Online Proceedings offers presentations, handouts, models, papers, and other materials presented at the VRD 2004 Digital Reference Conference in Cincinnati, OH, on November 8-9, 2004. Other papers not appearing in this online proceedings will be published in a print publication entitled Creating a Reference Future to be published by Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. in 2005 From Peter Scott's Library Blog on January 10, 2005 at 6:49 a.m..

AllPages.com Yellow Pages - Online yellow pages and business directory for US States. You can search ...
AllPages.com Yellow Pages - Online yellow pages and business directory for US States. You can search for businesses or simply browse via the simple navigation by states, cities, or categories From Peter Scott's Library Blog on January 10, 2005 at 6:49 a.m..

xrefer has announced that four leading reference publishers will contribute key titles to its xrefer ...
xrefer has announced that four leading reference publishers will contribute key titles to its xreferplus Ready-Reference service. The company, which now has over 45 publishing partners, will incorporate reference works from Sage, H.W. Wilson, Continuum and Macquarie From Peter Scott's Library Blog on January 10, 2005 at 6:49 a.m..

Play to Get Fit -- New Concept?
Entrepreneurs are pushing what they call 'exergaming' -- the marriage of physical exercise and video gaming. They claim it could help reduce the obesity epidemic -- just like P.E. or sports, right? From Wired News on January 10, 2005 at 6:46 a.m..

Life, Reinvented
A group of MIT engineers wants to model the biological world. But, damn, some of nature's designs are complicated! So they start rebuilding from the ground up -- and give birth to synthetic biology. By Oliver Morton from Wired magazine. From Wired News on January 10, 2005 at 6:46 a.m..

Emulators Answer the Call
How powerful is your cell phone? It certainly blows the doors off the beloved old Commodore 64, so hackers are harnessing that horsepower to emulate old computer systems. By Jacob Ogles. From Wired News on January 10, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..

Wikipedia Faces Growing Pains
As the member-created free informational site continues to expand, more people treat it like a traditional encyclopedia. But academics caution that many of its entries receive little scrutiny. By Daniel Terdiman. From Wired News on January 10, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..

Apple Suit Raises Suspicions
The timing of Apple's suit against ThinkSecret over product leaks may be timed to generate pre-Macworld publicity, marketing experts say. But some caution Apple better beware of upsetting its loyal users. By Leander Kahney. From Wired News on January 10, 2005 at 6:45 a.m..

Good to hear
It was great to see Michelle - a student at UBC - mention the importance of social interaction to her undergrad experience. "As an undergrad, my peers have been and continue to be invaluable to me - we've bounced ideas... From ERADC Blog on January 10, 2005 at 5:54 a.m..

Pero, ¿a qué llamamos blended learning?
Como ya estaba ocurriendo con el e-learning, se dicen cosas dispares sobre el b-learning (blended learning); seguramente es así porque se trata de conceptos que admiten muy distintas interpretaciones.... (Sigue) From Titulares eLearning WORKSHOPS on January 10, 2005 at 5:51 a.m..

Formación poliédrica y eLearning
Sobre el encaje del Blended Learning y eLearning con otros métodos docentes.... (Sigue) From Titulares eLearning WORKSHOPS on January 10, 2005 at 5:51 a.m..

(re) Descubriendo blogs
1, 2, 3 por mí por Omar Mendoza Acci0n: acciones solidarias desde la Red. Bitácora de "navegación" del webmaster de www.mexicanosenespana.com: Este espacio está dedicado a los pensamientos, reflexiones y comentarios, asi como descripciones de hechos y acciones de Alfredo... From eCuaderno v.2.0 on January 10, 2005 at 4:52 a.m..

Fewer New York Schools Are Cited for Poor Performance
Fewer city schools are in danger of being shut down by the state for poor performance this year than in previous years, officials said. From New York Times: Education on January 10, 2005 at 4:45 a.m..

George F. Baughman, 89, First President of New College of Florida, Is Dead
George Baughman helped establish New College in Sarasota, Fla., as a privately financed school of liberal arts and sciences. From New York Times: Education on January 10, 2005 at 4:45 a.m..

Audit Faults Accountant in Roslyn School Scandal
A state audit concludes that the accounting firm chosen by the Roslyn school district as its fiscal watchdog failed to catch rampant multimillion-dollar corruption. From New York Times: Education on January 10, 2005 at 4:45 a.m..

SUNY Plan Limits Increases in Tuition
The chancellor of the State University of New York proposed that each class of entering students would not face tuition increases for four years. From New York Times: Education on January 10, 2005 at 4:45 a.m..

Hundreds May Lose Tuition Aid Under Ruling
Hundreds of special education students who attend private school at New York City's expense could lose city financing, at least temporarily, under a ruling this week. From New York Times: Education on January 10, 2005 at 4:45 a.m..

TV Host Says U.S. Paid Him to Back Policy
Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams said he was paid by the Department of Education to promote its initiatives in the news media. From New York Times: Education on January 10, 2005 at 4:45 a.m..

TKPal = TypeKey + PayPal for PHP, I want SxipPal
How about it Andy?From TKPal TypeKey + PayPal for PHP.: QUOTETK Pal is a snippet of PHP code you can place in a PHP enabled page to restrict access to content to TypeKey users who have specifically paid to see that content.UNQUOTE From Roland Tanglao's Weblog on January 10, 2005 at 3:51 a.m..

Blogs temáticos profesionales: nace Weblogs SL
Para impulsar el desarrollo de blogs temáticos profesionales, así como para contribuir a la implementación de los weblogs dentro de las empresas, se ha anunciado la iniciativa española Weblogs SL. Siguiendo la estela de Gawker Media y de Weblogs Inc.,... From eCuaderno v.2.0 on January 10, 2005 at 3:51 a.m..

Brad Hill's Napster to Go Criticism
See here. I do agree with Brad's concluding point that charging the higher price for portability might not be a good way to "compete with ubiquitous, free, portable music in the standard MP3 format."  At the same time, I don't think the higher pricing is just underwriting the DRM's cost.  First, Napster might be paying higher royalty rates to the labels for the portable subscription offering.  Second, either Napster and/or the labels may see this as an opportunity to ha From A Copyfighter's Musings on January 10, 2005 at 3:47 a.m..

Fresh XSPF
I have posted a bunch of updates to the XSPF specification, including a new feature to allow shuffle mode. See http://gonze.com/xspf/xspf-draft-8.html. From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 2:55 a.m..

Will Roman Empire Fate Be Mainstream Media's?
When the future of The New York Times is cast into doubt, perhaps the end for the Mainstream Media is, in fact, really coming. For one, I can't imagine what would replace The Times. But a Business Week story discusses that possibility. A year ago I ended a talk, which was updated into an article, with a Jay Rosen quote saying, The age of the mass media is just that an age. It doesn t have to last forever. < From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 2:55 a.m..

Tax bandwidth and connectivity,not apps!?!
I am OK with this as long as the tax revenue goes into worthwhile things like providing real barebones broadband (10 Mbps bidirectional and up) everywhere at an affordable price and not into general revenue. From IP Inferno: Tax-Free VoIP Forever! Forever?.: QUOTEOK, so what would be realistic and responsible? Kevin Werbach has laid out a pretty good outline for a prudent way to proceed. Specifically, he's From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 2:55 a.m..

mod_pubsub
Real-time data delivery to and from web browsers without refreshing; without installing client-side software; and without Applets, ActiveX, Flash, or Plug-ins. Lightweight web message bus, to relay events between DHTML and server-side scripting languages. From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 a.m..

[CES 2005] 3G Video Eyewear
I ve been waiting for something like this to come out. What is the problem with videophones? People aren t used to holding the handset in front of them while making a call, and what is worse is that the procedure actively annoys them. The answer is to have a screen appear in front of your eyes using a device you wear like glasses, just like in the sci-fi movies. Over at CES 2005 Icuiti Corporation has announced the Icuiti V920 Video Eyewear is available in North America for $499. While that s a huge From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 a.m..

Gates goes Digital Lifestyle
Once before in my life - Bill Gates and I were in sync on a rising fad. That one was called Multimedia and it went onto being something pretty big. I got several calls and letter this morning from Vegas telling me that Bill just pitched "Digital Lifestyle" at his annual CES keynote address. Welcome Bill. So here's an open letter to bill. First of all - how are you kids? Great! Glad to hear that. Now 'how yah gonna aggregate' all that stuff Bill? From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 a.m..

iPodderSP - SmartPhone Podcast Client
iPodderSP is a podcast client for Microsoft smart phones. From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 a.m..

Attention and authority
Ross Mayfield writes about “Attention as a Social Fact” as a follow-up to ”Wikipedia: The nature of authority, and a LazyWeb request…“: ”Wikis and blogspace have different approaches for determining what is important. In blogspace, links guide attention which can accrete authority. But controversy and error draws atte From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 a.m..

MGM v. Grokster
A friend asked me: If the Supreme Court does away with the Sony doctrine for copyright infringement this year, with what should it replace it? What would be the best way to balance the interests of copyright owners with these emerging technologies? I believe the best outcome would be for the Supreme Court to uphold the Sony doctrine. Any other outcome will postpone the eventual balancing of competing interests that I beli From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 a.m..

Blogs are the New Journalism
O'Reilly and Associates: Blogs are the new journalism and "this blogging thing" is starting to look interesting. (Via the Blog Herald) From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 a.m..

TiVo announces new developer tools
The TiVo news just won't stop, and frankly I'm starting to get a little giddy.  The latest bit of information to come out is that TiVo is going to be opening up more to developers.  The three new tools are TiVo Video Publisher, TiVo Multimedia Web Services API and TiVo Service Integration. TiVo Video Publisher will allow video  creators to provide downloadable content for TiVo.  They talk about how content providers will be able to package and protect their video, but I hope that From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 1:55 a.m..

Fiction Films as Substitute Texts
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 13:11:38 -0400 From: Farah Mendlesohn Subject: [IAFA-L] fact v. fiction To: iafa Here is an oddity. Last semester I showed students a documentary on Aileen Wournos. I am currently grading their essays. Without exception, those students who refer to Wournos cite the movie Monster... From PEDABLOGUE on January 10, 2005 at 1:51 a.m..

Hero's Journey Project Desperately Needs Web Programming/Design Update
Help! I am in search of someone, some benevolent group, maybe a web design/development class project, willing to do an overhaul of a writing site that very much needs an update. Is this a lot to ask for? I just lack the time and resources to do it myself, and despite some flakiness, some 20,000 people have managed to create content on this site, and more come every day. cogdogblog on January 10, 2005 at 1:48 a.m..

A lesson in contemporary slang from the Ninth Circuit
On January 4, a three-judge panel of the Ninth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco voted 2-1 to reject a defamation claim by Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel and his wife Krystal. Right, that Evel Knievel. Here's part of the Reuters report: From EDUCAUSE Blogs - on January 10, 2005 at 1:00 a.m..

Jeff Bezos on the Zen of Sales
The cool head of Amazon.com talks about the rise of the obscure, taking on Netflix and why he quit spending on TV advertising. By Chris Anderson from Wired magazine. From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:55 a.m..

Dropcash and the Street Performer Protocol
Want to MAKE MONEY FAST on open source software? I just realized that the tools to do so are out there and already being used. I'm just here to put names on the things and point you to them. Dropcash is one of those dead-simple sites that follows the unix philosophy to do one thing really well (although it doesn't read mail, yet). It allows people to create a donation campaign, where they pick how much money they want and then are able to publicize their campaign with tools from the website.< From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:55 a.m..

Verizon Wireless VCast
As we pointed out yesterday, it appears that Verizon Wireless will launch a new television-over-cellphone service as early as next month. The new service, named VCast, will offer unlimited access to about 300 daily video clips for $15-a-month. The video clips, running from two to five minutes, including many specifically produced for the limitations of a two-inch phone screen, will include NBC news clips, musi From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:55 a.m..

Who s Going To Determine the Next DVD Format?
Who do you think? Porn Business Driving DVD Technology [pdf] As goes pornography, so goes technology. The concept may seem odd, but history has proven the adult entertainment industry to be one of the key drivers of any new technology in home entertainment. Pornography customers have been some of the first to buy home video machines, DVD players and subscribe From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:55 a.m..

Downloads overtake single sales
Sales of song downloads overtook those for physical singles for the first time at the end of 2004. From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:55 a.m..

The "Pirate Pyramid"
This month's Wired runs a high-decibel piece by Jeff Howe, on topsites and their denizens: When Frank ... posted the Half-Life 2 code to Anathema, he tapped an international network of people dedicated to propagating stolen files as widely and quickly as possible. It's all a big game and, to hear Frank and others talk about "the scene," fantastic fun. Whoever transfers the most files to the most sites in the least amount of time wins. There are elaborate rules, with prizes in th From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:55 a.m..

Looking at things
Looking at things, a Quicktime videoblog by Jay Dedman, is beautiful. The libredb metadata database is now available in the new exciting XSPF format. Announcement: XSPF ve From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:55 a.m..

Blogging Behind China's 'Great Firewall'
Read this curious piece about blogging in China. While the Xinhua article deals specifically with Chinese bloggers response to the Tsunami, one can anticipate the profound implications for freedom of expression on the mainland should personal web journals take China's 90 million internet users by storm. Here's an instructive article by Xiao Qiang of the unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:55 a.m..

CNN's new strategy and on-demand news
For the TV industry, CES made it clear that on-demand content will soon dominate the living room. CNN President Jon Klein -- who understands the nuances of on-demand video news -- is positioning CNN's storytelling for the future. This past week, Klein eliminated the debate show Crossfire and committed to covering hard news with "roll-up-your-sleeves storytelling." "We report the news. Fox talks about the news," Klein to From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:54 a.m..

The Ethics of Blogging
As we get ready for the Blogging, Journalism and Credibility conference at Harvard in two weeks, the Poynter Institute's Bill Mitchell weighs in with some important questions. I'll be posting a comment, and encourage others to do so as well. From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:54 a.m..

Video Over IP brings immigrants closer to families
An enterprising bunch of immigrant entrepreneurs have set-up Internet based video conferencing systems that allow New York’s huddles masses to see and communicate with their families in realtime, reports The New York Times. …it did because of the wizardry of videoconferencing, a technology first devised for chief executives to communicate with their far-flung underlings. The format is slowly becoming popular with the city’s poor immigrants as the most vivid way to communicate with their fam From unmediated on January 10, 2005 at 12:54 a.m..

Podcast 1.1: The WP Hack Version
Once again, ladies and germs, John Milton's L'Allegro. I apologize for the duplicate feed. I'm testing the hacks I just applied to my base WP 1.2 installation. From Gardner Writes on January 10, 2005 at 12:00 a.m..