Edu_RSS
Liberate the Grapes
(This is also my
column today in the
San Jose Mercury News.) A longstanding tactic in corporate lobbying is moral piety: reciting the time-honored mantra of protecting children when the main goal is actually protecting business clients. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments from winemakers who want to ship their products to customers at home, selling via the Internet and other modern methods. But old-fashioned laws in several dozen states, written larg From
Dan Gillmor's eJournal on December 4, 2004 at 9:46 p.m..
Another Rule to Live By
When doing metal work get a little further away from what you're working on if you smell burning facial hair. From
Brain Frieze on December 4, 2004 at 8:52 p.m..
overhauling the look
I'm experimenting with new layouts and designs to Pedablogue, so if things look strange or don't work, consider this space under construction. I'll remove this message once I'm satisfied with the new design.... From
PEDABLOGUE on December 4, 2004 at 8:48 p.m..
Celluloid sacrilege
The cardinal rule to "licenses", i.e. movies based on videogame/book franchises must be this: the movie must be incredibly terrible while bearing only a remote resemblance to the plot elements of the best-selling product it is defiling. So we suffered from such celluloid sacrilege such as Wing Commander and two Tomb Raiders. Street Fighter: The Movie gets a special mention for a) introducing the stupendous invisible "Stealth Boat", which in the movie is immediately detected and b) paradoxially having a game based on it. Like a speaker and mic caught in feedback, Street Fighter: The Movie Game From
silentblue | Quantified on December 4, 2004 at 6:54 p.m..
Donna's On a Roll
Donna's made about a bazillion great posts over the last few days -
go, now. Sorry for my absence here - been tied up with a project that I will hopefully share with y'all within the next few weeks. From
A Copyfighter's Musings on December 4, 2004 at 6:47 p.m..
TiVo and the New Copynorms
What does television look like to someone for whom TiVo has always existed? Blogger Alan Taylor has a three-year-old daughter, and he's written up
a few observations that provide a glimse of the way media "consumption" is changing: First -- she doesn't watch much TV (an allotted hour per day), but when she does watch it, she gets a choice of a recent episode of any of her favorite pre-recorded shows (current favorites are Dora the Explorer and Caillou), and she can watch it at an From
unmediated on December 4, 2004 at 5:55 p.m..
[Eric Rice's] core dump for Blogcast 1.0
I have no experience in planning conferences. Thankfully, others do. And after a week of various phone calls and meetings (and an outpouring of support for the idea of an audio/video micro-content show), I've decided to map out my vision--the 'manifesto' (to be trendy)--of what *could be* the one or two day Blogcast 1.0 Conference.
(initial post) 1. Sessions (inspired by the unconfe From
unmediated on December 4, 2004 at 5:55 p.m..
Exeem
The future of many Bit Torrent sites isn't hard to predict, their centralized trackers soon to be targets of the entertainment industry. To head off this effort, p2p site
Slyck reports Suprnova is working on Exeem, a new service that aims to decentralize Bit Torrent to some degree. While the details are sketchy at best, Slyck says the program will "marry the best features of a decentralized network, the easy searchability of an indexing server" and Bit Torrent. From
unmediated on December 4, 2004 at 5:55 p.m..
PVR vs. Cable vs. Content - Who Owns What?
Here's a little thought experiment: You're watching your favorite show on your PVR equipped television set. You press the pause button and a series of commercials start playing ... who should get the money?OK, that's a hard one. Here's another scenario: You are watching the same show a week later and the original commercials are removed and new ones are put in their places. Of course, you wouldn't notice this except that the sale dates on the department store commercial are current and you know you are watching a pre-recorded sh From
unmediated on December 4, 2004 at 5:55 p.m..
Ethics and the blogosphere
According to
Cyberjournalist, a movement advocating the introduction of ethical guidelines for the blogosphere is under way. Gawker publisher Nick Denton said: "it's time someone stands up, calls people out, and keeps the blogosphere honest." Jason Calacanis and Jeff Jarvis are supposed to lead the effort, which started with the publication of a model Bloggers'
Code of Ethics on From
unmediated on December 4, 2004 at 5:55 p.m..
Matroska
The extensible, open standard audio/video container format. Matroska aims to become THE standard of multimedia container formats. It was derived from a project called MCF, but differentiates from it significantly because it is based on
EBML (Extensible Binary Meta Language), a binary derivative of XML. EBML enables t From
unmediated on December 4, 2004 at 5:55 p.m..
TV-to-TXT
America’s addiction to reality television reminds me often of the romans visiting the circus, watching the lions tear the gladiators apart. Our lives have become so numb, that we need to find joy in other people’s stupidity. Or its simply great TV. Whatever! One thing you cannot deny that almost everyone want us to text our responses. Picking a winner for American Idol or voting for the Last Comic standing, the new way to vote is via text messaging. JupiterResearch analyst Niki Scevak has found that despite the low adoption of SMS in the US and the limited number of TV shows enc From
unmediated on December 4, 2004 at 5:55 p.m..
Repurposing isn't good enough, web or VOD
A dead-on point from Josh Sapan, CEO of Rainbox Media, about the need to create original content tailored for video-on-demand -- not just repurposed chunks from TV. Sapan draws an analogy to the early days of the Internet when media properties just repurposed content and transfered their on-air look to the web. "They were all good, but the ones that we think really defined the web were the ones developed for its unique capabilities and unique logic," he says. "In our view what separates eBay, Amazon and MapQuest from everything else dot-com is that they were made for the web. What VOD shoul From
unmediated on December 4, 2004 at 5:55 p.m..
Steroids, Athletes, Hypocrisy
What I said a few months ago about the steroids-in-sports panic:The whole scandal reeks of hypocrisy, at every level. Sports is big money, and people will do just about anything to get some of it. The public doesn't really care about athletes who do outrageous things to build their bodies; if the public really cared then the average lineman in pro football wouldn't weigh more than 300 pounds. We want our entertainment. We will get it. The sports establishment -- the franchise owners and the leaders of national and international associations -- are worse. They'r From
Dan Gillmor's eJournal on December 4, 2004 at 5:46 p.m..
Follow the money... if you can find it
There's a mesmerizing exchange going on among lots of smart people looking for where the money will be in this explosion of citizens' media (which, in this case, I broadly define as media controlled by citizens). My quick answer: I don't know. Wish I did. But I don't. The problem in this world -- besides it being so young, which is when the really big bets are won and lost -- is that the new things coming along now often destroy money instead of merely shifting it.
CraigsList gives control to the people so From
unmediated on December 4, 2004 at 4:51 p.m..
AmphetaRate - Index
RSS feed of a weblog recommendation engine, it "learns" what you like and gives you more of it AmphetaRate is a centralized ratings/recommendation service that provides personalized news and blog recommendations through a news aggregator interface. Using compatible aggregators, you can rate articles found in your subscribed feeds to discover articles and feeds that suit your taste, thus filling your news addiction. This service is most useful for people new to RSS feeds and for news junkies who c From
unmediated on December 4, 2004 at 4:51 p.m..
Geld und Wissen: Welche Rendite bringt Bildung?
Eigentlich war geplant, Montag nach Lübeck zu reisen, um am Dienstag auf der Veranstaltung "Wie finanziert man Eliten? Humanvermögensrechnung für Bildungshungrige" zu sprechen. Und zwar über das Thema "Geld und Wissen: Welche Rendite bringt Bildung?" Leider haben weder das Lübecker... From
www.weiterbildungsblog.de on December 4, 2004 at 4:46 p.m..
Podcasting Grab Bag, Dec. 4
Another roundup of interesting podcasting tidbits that caught my attention over the last month. TOP OF THIS LIST: "Post details: pseudo podcasting, by DJ Chuang, Nov. 19. This frank, detailed article cuts through the hype of podcasting. As I'm discovering, this new medium is actually a fairly complex undertaking. Podcasting combines many technologies and skills, so just about any would-be podcaster should expect to navigate some kind of significant learning curve. Chuang offers advice for novices based on his experience, and also compares text blogging to podcasting. Well done! Thanks! From
Contentious Weblog on December 4, 2004 at 2:55 p.m..
Encouraging Interaction in Online Classes
Interaction is a powerful facilitator for learning, and this is especially true for online learning. A wide variety of teaching models are available, ranging from Bruce Joyce's Models of Teaching (Allyn & Bacon) for classroom learning, to Guy Bensusan's peer... From
Teaching and Developing Online. on December 4, 2004 at 1:54 p.m..
Goosing the Amazon Gander
Pop quiz: What is this describing? A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received From
EDUCAUSE Blogs - on December 4, 2004 at 1:01 p.m..
Elite Journal
The goals of Elite Journal are to be a simple to install and use personal online journal (aka "blog", but I dislike that word). Elite Journal is written in Ruby, using the Ruby on Rails framework. Another open source Weblog authoring software. Instead of PHP or Perl, Scott Barron built this thing with
Ruby. Interesting. [
Seblogging News on December 4, 2004 at 12:51 p.m..
In Defense of Clapton's Layla
Recently, GuitarWorld magazine published a list of top 100 of the worst guitar solos, riffs and licks of all time. I am a big sucker for this sort of thing, so I swallowed the $7.95 price to purchase it, with a good expectation of what would be included. Just as literary scholars have a canon of great literature, the guitarist community has a canon of really awful guitar solos - including, for instance, Neil Young's infamous one-note Cinnamon Girl solo, anything by Van Halen, and anything played by Kurt Cobain. When I turned to the list, I suffered a cruel, horrible shock. From
kuro5hin.org on December 4, 2004 at 12:45 p.m..
Make Love Not Spam Decentralized
Lycos Europe released a screen saver that would pepper spam sites with requests for pages, in an effort to burden their bandwidth. Now it's disabled, but in very fixable ways... From
kuro5hin.org on December 4, 2004 at 12:45 p.m..
Microsoft In RTC Stone Age
Nonetheless the leadership role it has and the abundant technology solutions it markets and proudly promotes, Microsoft is still in a stone age culture when it comes to real-time communications. Photo credit:Per Hardestam, Sweden As you may know I am... From
Kolabora.com on December 4, 2004 at 11:49 a.m..
Middle East eLearning Forum
Erste Informationsplitter von der Online Educa in Berlin: Jay Cross hat einige Eindrücke vom Middle East-Panel im Hotel Intercontinental zusammengefasst. Jay Cross, Internet Time Blog, 1 Dezember 2004 [Kategorien: e-learning]... From
www.weiterbildungsblog.de on December 4, 2004 at 9:52 a.m..
Fool for five minutes
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. Chinese Proverb From
Open Artifact on December 4, 2004 at 8:58 a.m..
See-through Circuits Speed Up - Technology Review
See-through displays and electronic paper require semiconductor devices that are transparent and flexible. Today's transparent semiconductors are not nearly as fast and durable as traditional electronics, however. Researchers from the Tokyo Institute o From
Techno-News Blog on December 4, 2004 at 8:49 a.m..
Podcast #2
I could have spent this time working on my weblog layout, but I thought that what the world really needed was another podcast. Here are some show notes: Responses from last podcast: Alec Couros Brian Lamb, creator of the amazariffic WikiRadio D'Arcy Norman, maintainer of the educational podcast directory at ipodder.org James Farmer made note ... From
Just Another Ant on December 4, 2004 at 6:58 a.m..
IBM to Quit Making PCs
An era will come to an end when IBM sells off its computer manufacturing business, according to The New York Times. A Chinese company seems the likely buyer, and the deal should fetch upward of $2 billion. From
Wired News on December 4, 2004 at 6:45 a.m..
Final Round in Cable-ISP Fight
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear whether cable operators must give access to their lines to third-party ISPs. Michael Grebb reports from Washington. From
Wired News on December 4, 2004 at 6:45 a.m..
Napster Star Changes His Tune
Napster creator Shawn Fanning is trying to make peace with the music industry. His newest venture will help the record labels and peer-to-peer networks work together to create new digital music businesses. By Katie Dean. From
Wired News on December 4, 2004 at 6:45 a.m..
Weather Data for the Masses
The U.S. government's weather data is now available in a more friendly XML format, so everyone can make use of it. By Daniel Terdiman. From
Wired News on December 4, 2004 at 6:45 a.m..
Graeme Daniel
Interesting links we "come across" in our research on education matters that have informed or amused us and which we would like to share with you. From
wwwtools on December 4, 2004 at 5:47 a.m..
VeRO: eBay's version of the DMCA
My wife's friend Lisa (not her real name) just had her eBay account suspended for selling unopened Juice Plus+® vitamins on eBay. You know, like Flintstone's chewables, but more expensive and poorer tasting (snake oil). We're not talking about a prescription product of any kind. Vitamins and herbal supplements are considered food products in the USA. eBay, under their VeRO program, allowed Juice Plus to kill her auctions under the pretence of protecting their intellectual property rights and a few days later eBay suspended her account entirely. From
kuro5hin.org on December 4, 2004 at 4:45 a.m..
Ballmer Gets Blogging Religion (Liz Lawley)
Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer seems to have suddenly become blogging’s biggest cheerleader. Here’s a quote from yesterday’s Detroit Free press: “Blogging is huge,” [Ballmer] said. “It brings together the three biggest Internet trends: communicating, sharing and socializing. It started with e-mail... From
Corante: Social Software on December 4, 2004 at 12:45 a.m..