MyEurope Chats A good example of using the internet to develop a wider learning community, myEurope Chats connect students in Europe to talk about such topical issues as racism, unemployment, school uniforms and religion. Archives of previous chats are available and an email contact is provided for registration. By , , .[Refer]

Harvard Business School Publishing Chooses XanEdu To Distribute Education Content Worldwide The Harvard School of Business has decided to distribute its case studies library online through Bell & Howell's XanEdu service. The deal also includes the distribution of articles from the Harvard Business Review. The agreement is effective in January, 2001. By Press Release, XanEdu, December 17, 2001.[Refer]

Researchers Test Small-Dish Satellite Links for Distance Education Satellites are a good way to provide internet connectivity to less populated regions of the world. They may also provide access where a telecommunications infastructure is not available. Researchers with the Internet 2 project in Ohio are looking at their use to provide distance learning to these regions. The challenge will be to "develop both an affordable satellite dish, for which colleges would pay about $5,000 or less, and 24-hour Internet satellite service, priced at about $1,200 or less a month." By Florence Olsen, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 17, 2001.[Refer]

The Case for Online Communities Commentators have in recent months become increasingly sceptical of online communities, citing the number of dot com collapses as evidence for their conclusions. But the evidence belies their scepticism, as this article illustrates. Supported with some telling research, the authors show that community features increase sales and increase customer loyalty in an e-commerce site. So why did these other sites fail? They didn't follow the best practices listed by the author. Good article; you'll need to register to read it, though. By Shona L. Brown, Andrew Tilton and Dennis M. Woodside, McKinsey Quarterly, January, 2002.[Refer]

Selecting IA Components This post was written with information architects in mind, but it results in an excellent set of guidelines for designers generally. The focus is essentially on the set of attributes to consider when selecting components for an online website or service. Print this one, draw little boxes besidxe each attribute, and use it as a checklist for your technology decisions. By Louis Rosenfeld, LouisRosenfeld.Com, December 16, 2001.[Refer]

It's Official: E-Mail Supplants the Printed Letter at the U. of Colorado at Boulder It was bound to happen. Email has officially replaced printed documents at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Students are required to have a university email account (but they can autoforward their mail to HotMail or whatever, so access isn't really a problem). But this email posted on UWebEd by Pat Jenson, Web Communications person at UC Boulder: "Unfortunately, the substitution [in the article] of 'the official means of communication' instead of 'an official means of communication' in this article creates implications that are not the intent of the policy." By Scott Carlson, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 17, 2001.[Refer]

Linotype Gets Heavy Over Free ATM Font Downloads Do you use the letters of the alphabet on your website or in your online course? If so, you may be in violation of copyright. This absurdity comes courtesy of a company called LinoType. They company has started asserting its ownership over a number of popular fonts, including Cascade, Flora, Frutiger, Helvetica, Isadora, Linotext, Linoscript, Optima, Palatino, Peignot, Present, Shelley and Univers. Distributing these fonts, which have been shared freely on the internet for years, may land you a DM 30,000 penalty. By John Lettice, The Register, December 12, 2001.[Refer]

The MS DRM Patent and Freedom to Speak and Think A strongly worded statement tracing the implications of the recently awarded patent to Microsoft for a Digital Rights Management Operating System. I am in agreement with the main points of this argument. By Seth Johnson, Cryptome, December 14, 2001.[Refer]

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