OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
April 1, 2005

Three Great MindManager Blogs
I've never found mindmaps particularly useful, but many people have. Those who use MindManager will want to look at these three blogs recommended by James McGee - Mike Jetter, Hobie Swan and Nick Duffill. James also has a new column out in Enterprise Systems, The Invisibility of Knowledge Work. By James McGee, McGee's Musings, March 31, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

enCore Consortium
I've been sitting on this, hoping to install the software before commenting with a link, but being on vacatyion lends itself more to playing Civ III than to installing software. But it appears to my roots as a MUD designer and I have never let go of the idea that a multi-user environment like a MUD has a lot of potential in e-learning. Anyhow, the newly formed enCore Consortium is devoted to supporting the development of the enCore learning environment. "The enCore Program represents the enCore MOO core and the enCore Xpress Graphical User Interface... Its mission is to provide grassroots support to the enCore Open Source MOO Project." By Lennie Irvin, Lirvin's Blog / KairosNews, March 23, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Metadating Game
The idea here is that the data about one's life posted on blogs, sites like Flickr and Yahoo 360, and in personal XML like FOAFD can be used via an information aggregator to support a distributed match service. The author still thinks of this as being supported via a dating website, but the real advance will be when this sort of product integrates with the desktop (I am still uncertain whether this desktop will be a comprehensive information service like Yahoo or a set of locally installed applications). By Rik Abel, 1+1=3, March 31, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

The Futures Project to Close
The Futures Project, described as "a higher education policy think tank that has spent the last five years investigating the influences market-oriented, competitive pressures on higher education," has shut down as of yesterday. In their final email they write, "In the pursuit of rankings and prestige, the 'public purposes' of higher education are becoming blurred and the unwritten compact governing the reciprocal, supportive relationship between states and their institutions is becoming undone." Links and website will be available until August. By Matt Pasiewicz, EDUCAUSE Blogs, March 30, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Saba to Acquire Enterprise Learning Vendor THINQ
The Learning Management System (LMS) marketplace has one fewer contender today as Saba signs an agreement to acquire Thinq in the third quarter of this year. A Gartner report observes, "This acquisition will give Saba a solid installed base of THINQ customers, but little else. THINQ was out of money and out of developers, having outsourced all of its development (but not its engineering design) to third-party engineering houses in India." More, More, More. By Press Release, Training Press Releases, March 30, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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