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OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
July 14, 2010

Google Charts Now Plot Functions
Another Tony Hirst post that costs me a half hour or so, this time exploring Google charts. Basically. what Google has ndeveloped is a chart-making topol that allows you to simple send them a URL to insert a chart into your page. Like this:

Too cool! Here's the Google chart API.
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, July 14, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Google, Cool] [Comment] [Tweet]

Paper puts up a paywall for comments
A new business model: charging readers who want to post comments. It strikes me that this would work well for high-traffic websites. And at 99 cents a comment, you couldn't really say it is inaccessible to the whole population. Would it be equitable, though? Probably not - but newspaper letters to the editor have never been equitable. And with real names posted as well, it would certainly reduce the anonorage that fills most online news comment sections today (Anonorage =df. "anonymous rage" or "anonymous garbage", meaning hate-filed vitriolic commentary from an extremely partisan point of view, as found in newspaper websites or the in the prattle of talk radio - this is the world's first use of the term). More: Sun Chronicle/The Wall/Editors' weblog/Electric Frontier Foundation.
Roy Greenslade, The Guardian, July 14, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Accessibility, Web Logs] [Comment] [Tweet]

The LIS Standard Moves Forward
With Blackboard supporting the IMS Learning Information Services (LIS), writes Michael Feldstein, things look good for the specification. "By the time Blackboard finishes their implementation, we'll have the first tier of LMS applications all standards-compliant and will be hopefully filling out the ecosystem with up-and-coming LMSs and some non-LMS systems that could benefit from the same type of integration." Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, July 14, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Information, IMS Project, Blackboard Inc.] [Comment] [Tweet]

The United States of Alabama
The accusations are getting stronger and there's a sense we're approaching an end-game for education: "the scary stuff is what Democrats and Republicans agree on. Obama's ed secretary Arne Duncan made Tennessee sole winner of the reviled Race to the Top competition because of the state's willingness to do to both K-12 and higher ed what he'd already done in Chicago: turn schools over to private and for-profit managers; silence teachers, students, and parents; strip down the curriculum; increase the direct voice of commercial interests in administration at every level." Marc Bousquet, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2010 [Link] [Tags: United States, Schools] [Comment] [Tweet]

Sunbelt Software unveils ClearCloud, an anti-malware DNS
I've been using Google's DNS for some time, replacing Rogers' badly flawed DNS that spams me by sending me to Rogers Yahoo search pages. New ClearCloud offers an intriguing alternative - a DNS service that won't resolve URLs for malicious websites, the sorts of sites that would harm your computer with viruses and malware. It's a good idea (if not abused) and looks like it will be free. Lee Mathews, Download Squad, July 14, 2010 [Link] [Tags: Google, Yahoo!, Spam] [Comment] [Tweet]

Open Education Resource Foundation Annual Report 2009
The Open Education Foundation (ie., WikiEducator) has released its first annual report. It's an interesting glimpse into the Open Community Governance Policy. "All meetings are conducted openly and transparently in the wiki using an an asynchronous implementation of parliamentary procedure. All voting is conducted by open ballot. This radical transparency provides an effective voice for minority opinions and respects diversity, while mitigating against the weakness associated with 'group think'." Various Authors, Open Education Foundation, July 14, 2010 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment] [Tweet]

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