OLDaily

Starting Your Own Podcast on WordPress.com
Artur Piszek, WordPress.com, 2020/09/09

I didn't know you could make podcasts on Wordpress.com so this article comes as a bit of welcome news. It has tools to upload your audio and to share them via various podcast networks (thus helping them be less obscure). It also comes with complete instructions on how to do it, so it's easy to get started. Of course, you'll have to supply the topics and the voice to record the podcast and record your own audio (you can do it in Zoom). What's most important here is that you'd be contributing to the world of RSS podcasts, and helping support an ecosystem free of the lock-down mentality of companies like Spotify.

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Google’s “Licensable Images” feature is now live
IPTC, 2020/09/09

In theory this should improve the discoverability of sharable photos, though the technical hurdle might be too much. "When photo owners include a photograph’s Web Statement of Rights (also known as Copyright Info URL)  in an image’s embedded metadata, Google will display a 'Licensable' badge on the image in Google Images search results." More information here and an example here. Most photo editing software supports some means of embedding International Press Telecommunications Council  (IPTC) metadata within an image file, but what would really be useful for people like me would be an option in (say) Flickr to embed the information in my entire photo library of 34,000 openly licensed photos with one command. See also Google's Keyword blog and Webmaster blog.

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Why Computing Belongs Within the Social Sciences
Randy Connolly, Communications of the ACM, 2020/09/09

Computing was labeled a 'science' and placed almost immediately within the domain of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), but perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps, as we are learning recently, there's much more to computing than the technical aspect - things like law, ethics, and power relations. Minimally, argues Randy Connolly, it needs to embrace other disciplines' insights, include some social sciences courses in the computing science curriculum, and hire faculty from multiple disciplines (hiring a few philosophers couldn't hurt either, ahem). "Computing also needs as an academic discipline... to move to the edge and to participate in the rich academic biodiversity that happens where computing interacts with other disciplines."

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How philanthropy benefits the super-rich
Paul Vallely, The Guardian, 2020/09/09

Over the years I've seen a lot of influence from foundations in the areas of pedagogy, policy, and open educational resources. Most of it, including especially money for international development, seems to flow toward the expert fundraisers at institutions like Harvard, Stanford and MIT. And instead of promoting access and inclusion, it supports models where free and open public resources, like MOOCs and OERs, become 'sustainable' private commercial goods. As this Guardian article states, "The common assumption that philanthropy automatically results in a redistribution of money is wrong. A lot of elite philanthropy is about elite causes. Rather than making the world a better place, it largely reinforces the world as it is. Philanthropy very often favours the rich – and no one holds philanthropists to account for it." The same money, governed democratically, would do much more good. But that, of course, would cede power - the one thing philanthropy is designed not to do. Via Doug Belshaw.

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