Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
April 17, 2007

Webby Awards Nominees
The 2007 Webby Award nominees have been announced (it's only April! what are they thinking?) and once again I've been overlooked. Well, OK, I guess I'm neither surprised nor disappointed. But something is still amiss when the nominees for 'best political blog' are the Guardian, Mother Jones, Salon and the New York Times. There is no award for 'best educational blog' but given the influence marketing departments have the nominees would probably be Blackboard, Thomson, SAP and Education Week. I am tempted to have my own awards show. I can't give awards to the highest bidder, sorry, so I would have to be random and capricious in my selections. Just like real life.

Anyhow, I'm in the Toronto airport waiting for my flight to Bogota (Colombia - yes, I'm going back for a few days) to board. Not sure what connectivity I'll have, so if you don't hear from me, don't worry, it's only temporary. Various Authors, Website April 17, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Web Logs, Blackboard Inc., Marketing, Thomson Corporation] [Comment]

Complacency and Web 2.0
Blogger ditched the Atom API and started with their own system. I still can't connect Edu_RSS to Blogger - the Google tech acknowledges it's their issue, but nothing changes. Should we depend on the tech companies to usher the world of Web 2.0? No. Just the opposite. Here is Google's ideal world - no other company necessary. "A lot of good things happened, innovation blossomed, but now we are entering a more pragmatic phase, where the large players like Google and Amazon who distributed the API elixir are taking control back." And people thought my article on why the Semantic Web will fail was unduly pessimistic. John Hagel, edge Perspectives April 17, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Edu_RSS, RSS, Content Syndication, Google, Web 2.0, Blogger] [Comment]

In a World of iPods, Will the CD Go the Way of Vinyl?
The same story about CDs is the one we used to hear about books all the time. You know, the need for an archive, the need for the physical feel of a book, that sort of thing. The other side is that the market for CDs is falling through the basement, and while there remains a market, it is increasingly one for nostalgia buffs only. A lot like the old vinyl record albums. Jason Silverstein, E-Commerce Times April 17, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Apple Inc.] [Comment]

myOpenID Launches Secure Authentication, Helps Prevent Phishing
"myOpenID.com now allows its users the ability to use client-side certificates, based on the secure sockets layer (SSL) technology.... Your OpenID is your passport to all websites requiring a username and password. Once you create your own personal OpenID account, you'll never need to go through the registration process again with sites that support OpenID." I intend to support OpenID on this site just as soon as I can write the code... Scott Kveton, JanRain April 17, 2007 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Celebrate NeuroDiversity!
I have a lot in common with Nobel Prize winner Vernon Smith, so I appreciate this video celebrating neurodiversity. oh, and the little song at the end. Mechelle de Craene, Weblog April 17, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Video] [Comment]

OneDayBlogSilence
Some people have started a campaign to have one day of blog silence April 30 to mark the Virginia Tech shootings. I don't intend to take part. The editorial in today's Globe and Mail explains my reasoning quite nicely: "How common are school-based shootings in the United States? Between 1994 and 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta documented 220 separate incidents, accounting for 253 deaths. Leaving aside summer and holidays, that's nearly one homicidal incident a week over six years at schools. Yet the CDC called the incidents rare." Various Authors, Website April 17, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Web Logs, Online Learning, Schools, United States] [Comment]

Quickie Screencast - Distributed Content Publishing Via Blogs, RSS, Whatever...

I'm on the Mac so I'm watching more multimedia. Anyhow, this little screencast from Brian Lamb demonstrates so very clearly how Web 2.0 style content reuse works (in a word: very simply) and calls for authors of content management systems to enable this sort of easy reuse. The soundtrack behind the screencast is very very disturbed, though. ;) Brian Lamb, Abject Learning April 17, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Web Logs, Flickr, RSS, Content Management Systems, Web 2.0, Online Learning] [Comment]

Mojiti: Collaborative Annotation of Video Content
Catherine Howell picks up on this via the discussion of a TED talk (I feel less and less excited about linking to talks from a conference deliberately designed to be too expensive to attend). Mojiti allows you to access online videos from any number of sources, annotate them with scribbling or cartoon voice bubbles, and then post the resulting mash-up to a video site. Catherine Howell, EDUCAUSE Blogs April 17, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Linking and Deep Linking, Video] [Comment]

 

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