New Adblock Plus Doesn’t Need No Stinking Google Play Store
Scott Gilbertson, WebMonkey, March 22, 2013

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What bothers me is that I was enjoying my new Android phone and gushing over its features, and then Google has to go all anti-competitive what with shutting down Reader, opposing RSS, and of course kicking the very useful Ad Blocker off the play store. Well, now we don't need the Play Store to load Ad Blocker (that's one good thing I suppose) but it's all so complicated now.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Google, RSS]

The Mirroring Mind: An Espresso-Fueled Interpretation of Douglas Hofstadter’s Groundbreaking Ideas
Dan Colman, Open Culture, March 22, 2013

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This is quite a nice two minute video (that yes, may require watching twice) that explains the concept of the self in the patterns we form in the mind on perceiving the world. " The film offers Silva’s 'interpretation of Strange Loops of Self Reference, recursion, and the emergence of consciousness and self-awareness'" and is based in large part on Douglas Hofstadter’s influential book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Video]

What I wish Tim Berners-Lee understood about DRM
Cory Doctorow, The Guardian, March 22, 2013

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Cory Doctorow takes Tim Berners-Lee to the woodshed on DRM in web standards. "The W3C has a duty to send the DRM-peddlers packing, just as the US courts did in the case of digital TV. There is no market for DRM, no public purpose served by granting a veto to unaccountable, shortsighted media giants who dream of a world where your mouse rings a cash-register with every click."

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Video, Digital Rights Management (DRM)]

The Coursera composition course
Laura Gibbs, Google+, March 22, 2013

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I have said in the past that the xMOOCs like those offered by Coursera will need to become more like connectivist courses over time. This post explains why. While Laura Gibbs is enchanted with all the great people she met in a recent Coursera coyrse, she writes, "I could NEVER have connected with this people at Coursera's discussion boards, which are useless, worse than useless in fact because they are squandering all this potential interaction in the worst way possible." The core of the course interaction was moved to Google+ by one of the students, where it stayed.

[Link] [Comment][Tags: Traditional and Online Courses, Interaction, Google]

Coursera's Contractual Elitism
Ry Rivard, Inside Higher Ed, March 22, 2013

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Hm. Coursera is contractually obligated to be elitist. It says in a contract that "it will 'only' offer classes from elite institutions – the members of the Association of American Universities or “top five” universities in countries outside of North America – unless Coursera’s advisory board agrees to waive the requirement. The little-known contractual language appears in agreements Coursera signs with the 62 universities it partners with."

[Link] [Comment][Tags: United States]