By Stephen Downes
August 23, 2004
Urchin
From the announcement
(thanks for the heads up, John): "Urchin is a Web based,
customisable, RSS aggregator and filter. Its primary
purpose is to allow the generation of new RSS feeds by
running queries
against the collection of items in the Urchin database.
However, other
arbitrary output formats can be defined and generated using
XSL
transformations or HTML::Template templates. In other
words, the collection
of Urchin Perl modules form a foundation for building an
RSS aggregation or
portal service." I took a look at the code - the install
will be a bit daunting, and it requires Mod Perl 2, which
is not ready for prime time (as I discovered the hard way).
But this product - which is basically the steriod version
of Edu-RSS - is the real deal. I recommend giving it its
own machine, though. Kudos to Nature Publishing Group
(NPG), which released version 0.92 today, and to JISC, for
getting the project off the ground. By Various Authors,
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) , August 23, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Get HBS Working Knowledge on your
PDA!
The Harvard Business School has (finally)
created an RSS feed for its 'Working Knowledge'
publication. By Unknown, August 23, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Universities Beef Up Anti-Downloading
Tactics
NewsScan is citing a Wall Street Journal
article (which I won't link to, since a subscription is
required) describing the increasing use of anti-downloading
tactics on university campuses. What's interesting is the
take: "We're not content police. We're bandwidth police,"
says UNLV associate provost Lori Temple. "We make it so
downloading music is a horrible idea." Using software that
detects the use of peer-to-peer software by scanning
network traffic, administrators respond by cutting off
internet access for a period of time. Guess they'll have to
go back to using IRC to locate and download content... or
(as is inevitable) breaking the music files into chunks
disguised as web pages. By Unknown, NewsScan, August 23,
2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Are Trainers The Right e-Learning
Designers?
Elliott Masie has hit on a winning
formula and nobody should be surprised that it involves
reader-generated content. In this item, Masies readers are
invited to respond to the question, "Are Trainers The Right
e-Learning Designers?" And what a surprise to see an old
colleague from Assiniboine as the first person to answer!
By Elliott Masie, Masie Center, August 22, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The
Semantic Web: 1-2-3
So I Googled someone who
spammed the educational lists with a book review today (a
book misleadingly called an e-book, since it's not even
online) to see if she was related to trhe author or
publisher and got sidetracked. Just as well; revenge
surfing doesn't really suit me. But I didn't run into this
item by the creator of Amphetadesk (and some of the
cleanest Perl code you'll ever want to see - his work is
beautiful). It's a good intuitive introduction to what it
is that the Semantic Web (and RDF in particular) is trying
to accomplish, and a bit on how it does this. His real name
is Kevin Hemenway but he is (much) better known as Morbus
Iff. Also read this, then go back to the portal for a a lot of quality work (because it's a
little old, note that many links are no longer
functioning). By Morbus Iff, Disobey.com, August, 2008
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Understanding Online
Interaction
With the first part of a course he
is teaching in the fall, David Wiley wonders "why we don't
peer review each others course materials all the time" and
then observes "Oh, right, most people are trapped in
proprietary, closed LMSs." There's a certain risk to
posting your course on the open net like this - especially
when you know I will be one of the first to read it and
comment (and you can see my comments in the discussion
thread). But the course stands up quite well, and leaves us
waiting for more. By David Wiley, autounfocus, August 23,
2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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