Tuesday, September 21, 2004

AOL to Sell Secure ID Tags to Fight Hackers. NEW YORK (Reuters) - America Online will begin offering to sell members a security device and service that has been used to safeguard business computer networks, the world's largest Internet service provider said on Tuesday. [Reuters: Technology] 8:26:19 PM      Google It!.

How's Your E-Learning. Interesting article, worth a quick read in its own right, but I must confess I was much more intrigued by the new advertising technique used by Syllabus here - the magazine has embedded 'sponsored links' in the text of the article, which when you hover over them, deliver annoying CSS pop-ups and (presumably) link to a sponsor page. The links have their own colour - a dark green on this screen - and can't really be confused with regular links (not that Syllabus ever bothers with regular links anyways). But I think that putting a sponsored link in the 'about the author' section at the bottom of the page is a bit much. Authors may question whether they want the advertising to take all the notice in the body of their articles. By Badrul H. Khan, Syllabus, September 21, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 8:22:08 PM      Google It!.

Google builds a browser. Strange stirrings at advertising broker [The Register] -- speculation on what they are doing with all of the new IPO cash -- BL 8:14:48 PM      Google It!.

AOL Moves Beyond Single Passwords for Log-Ons [Slashdot:] 8:10:53 PM      Google It!.

From access control to accountability. In the physical world we rely on eyewitnesses and increasingly, especially in Britain, on cameras. In the virtual world, according to Dan Geer, we're now approaching a critical fork in the road: "To the left, we surveil people. To the right, we surveil data. I'm arguing for data-level file-tracking because if I have to surveil either people or data, I think it's highly important that we choose to surveil the data, not the people. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] In this column I mention an audio interview with Dan Geer. It's full of unique insights. Listen, for example, to this clip (2 min, mp3), on the value of cross-disciplinary knowledge. Here's part of it: ... [Jon's Radio] 8:06:14 PM      Google It!.

Security Attacks Increasingly Motivated By Greed [Slashdot:] 8:04:09 PM      Google It!.

Ask Jeeves Looks to Outshine Google [Slashdot:] 8:03:01 PM      Google It!.

New German Mobile Phone to Detect Bad Breath. BERLIN (Reuters) - A German telecommunications company said on Tuesday it is developing the first mobile phone that will alert users when their breath is bad or if they are giving off offensive smells. [Reuters: Technology] 8:01:25 PM      Google It!.

Online Poker Bots Becoming Problematic? [Slashdot:] 7:59:18 PM      Google It!.

Large Scale Web Apps Built on Open Source [Slashdot:] 7:57:23 PM      Google It!.

More on Google payments to Elsevier. The inetbib list currently has a very interesting discussion thread (in German) on the trial run of the arrangement by which Google will make small payments to Elsevier for click-throughs on Elsevier articles. One question is whether Elsevier will try to get Google to stop indexing OA versions of the same articles. Another is how to build a better manipulation-proof (or do-no-evil) search engine. Another is why Google is paying Elsevier rather than Elsevier paying Google. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.) (PS: I have the same questions myself. If the payments are for click-throughs from the main Google index, then I worry. If they are for click-throughs from well-identified ads, then I don't worry. The early reports on the plan are not helpful on this point, but it may be that Elsevier is arranging for relevant ScienceDirect articles to appear in Google's ad space, in the righthand column of the hit page, in response to user searchstrings. I just ran Google searches on a dozen keywords sure to elicit ScienceDirect content, and saw nothing from ScienceDirect in the ad space. Do we scratch this hypothesis or try again later?) [Open Access News] 7:55:47 PM      Google It!.

Infrastructure for UK e-theses. JISC will fund "a test-bed implementation" of "infrastructure to support the deposit, access and use of research theses for the UK Higher Education (HE) sector". It is now soliciting proposals, which are due at noon on November 3, 2004. [Open Access News] 7:53:36 PM      Google It!.

Order in the e-Court! [Slashdot:] 7:50:39 PM      Google It!.

Join In Our Ocotillo Kickoff (blogs, wikis, discussion boards are standing by). Some readers may have followed our mention new efforts this year with our 'Ocotillo' faculty-driven technology initiatives, now in its 18th year of existence. This year, we ripped the page right out of the Small Pieces Loosely Joined concept and built a system to support our four action groups that will lead activities and projects on: Learning Objects ePortfolios Hybrid Course Structures Emerging Learning Technologies Each group publishes their activities, findings, ideas on a weblog. Each group also has a wiki of its own to build collaborative resources, and a discussion board to have "conversations" (previously alluded to in July 2004). The map sort of looks like: larger image So four groups times a blog,, wiki, and board = 12 information sources.. plus a blog for the General faculty Ocotillo chair and we have it all tied together with RSS or RSS-like feeds to present a dashboard view of all the activity... we call Ocotillo Central: http://graphite.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/ This week we've announced to our system the new setups via an online kickoff event. We have short video welcomes from the 8 faculty co-chairs, plus our Chancellor, 2 Vice Chancellors, a Dean, and the faculty general chair. These have been set up to be available in QuickTime, Real, or Windows Media streaming formats. The ideas is to give our people an idea who is leading this initiatives, and why they are important, and then ask them to join in on some discussions via our web boards. Well, the action has been okay, but slow. People are reading the boards, and we can see a number of account created there, but there is not a whole lot of discussion... so to set some things into frothy motion, I am inviting any CogDogBlog readers to join in-- as our intent all along was to have this system by open to people inside and outside of Maricopa. So here it is. Visit the Virtual Kickoff at: http://graphite.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/kickoff.php where there are instructions for how to use the discussion boards. The boards are open to the world to read, but to participate, you must register to create an account (and confirm via an auto generated email). So come on in and stir things up. Who knows what will happen. We have been working on getting people who have experience or expertise in these areas to join us as "guests" for topical discussions in the web boards. Contact me if you want to be a virtual guest. [cogdogblog] 7:48:18 PM      Google It!.