Monday, January 17, 2005

Google's Dark Fibre Plans? [Slashdot:] 11:01:46 PM      Google It!.

Scott's Workblog. CETIS's Scott Wilson has launched a blog, a welcome addition to the online learning blog community and sure to be added to many reading lists. His first post, addressing the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) of the future, aligns brilliantl with the picture I have been painting in these pages: "I think the VLE of the future is going to be less like an information portal, and more like an aggregator." He continues, "as well as coordinating with offerings from learning providers in the traditional sense, the VLE of the future will connect very strongly with informal activities that inform learning, integrating with applications like 43Things, LiveJournal, and del.icio.us." Great stuff; I look forward to many more posts. His RSS is here and he also includes a FOAF (pay attention to these; we'll be reading much more about them this year). By Scott Wilson, January 17, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 10:57:51 PM      Google It!.

Patents, Open Standards and Open Source. There are some serious disputes over software patents and open standards, and Wilbert Kraan nails the point of contention exactly: "The anti versus pro software patent debate also has major consequences for the process of setting interoperability standards. Inclusion of someone's known patent in a standard immediately locks the open source competition out of that market, and often discriminates against smaller commercial software houses and newcomers." By Wilbert Kraan, CETIS, January 17, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 10:56:26 PM      Google It!.

Dancing Robots Help Preserve Japanese Culture [Slashdot:] 10:52:04 PM      Google It!.

What Else Can We Do with RSS? Lots More!. I was reading the following post, nodding my head, when the following quote blew me away. RSS is the New WWW “PiNet Library enables teachers to keep bookmarks online, so that they are available from the classroom, media center, teacher's lounge, and home office -- anyplace with access to the web. In my vision, you are creating and cultivating a personal digital library…. I use PiNet Library for my online handouts, so that as I add new links to my library, they automatically show up on the online handouts pages. If those links could be subscribed to by your Bloglines account, then you could be notified of new web sites, without having to regularly visit the handouts.” [Exactly 2 Cents Worth, via del.icio.us/tag/rss] This, for me, was a Neo moment. Whoa. Last week, Leland Johnson pointed me to Rubric, which I’ll have to investigate further as my own del.icio.us (does anyone else remember a post somewhere, sometime that you could download the del.icio.us code to run on your own server?). I’ve also been contemplating running Rubric - or something like it – for my member libraries, both for individual use and institutional use, along with sharing what is added by both. I’m going to have to find the time to pursue this idea. One other quote from this article turned on a light bulb, too. “The news aggregator will need to evolve a great deal before RSS becomes the integral and ubiquitous part of our information environment that I suspect it will -- starting with the name. But I think that it is important that we start to think about information as something that we will increasingly shape to needs. How about sophisticated news aggregators as digital textbooks? I believe that understanding these evolving aspects of how digital, networked content is organized is information grammar….” I would l-o-v-e to put David and Will in a room together and see what they come out with! Much food for thought (and fodder for presentations!). [The Shifted Librarian] 7:36:14 AM      Google It!.

When Blogging Goes Bad: A Cautionary Tale About Blogs, Email Lists, Discussion, and Interaction(1) - Steven D. Krause, Karios. ....Clearly, the role of blogs in different writing classes varies considerably. However, a quick glance through these examples (especially Mueller's and Blackmon's) would suggest that many writing teachers seem to be using blog spaces as places to fa [Online Learning Update] 7:34:00 AM      Google It!.

Measuring Literacy in a World Gone Digital. The Educational Testing Service has developed a new test that it says can assess technology literacy. By By TOM ZELLER Jr.. [NYT > Education] 7:32:48 AM      Google It!.

Child cancer 'link to pollution'. Exposure to environmental pollution while in the womb might increase a child's risk of cancer, a study suggests. [BBC News | Science/Nature | UK Edition] 7:31:35 AM      Google It!.

FDA Considers Morning-After Pill. Plan B, an emergency contraceptive, is under review again by the Food and Drug Administration after it previously denied over-the-counter sale of the drug. Women's groups charge the decision was political, not scientific. [Wired News] 7:31:01 AM      Google It!.

Open-Source Biology Evolves. Can a rebel band of scientists pool patented innovation techniques and give them away through the internet? By David Cohn. [Wired News] 7:29:34 AM      Google It!.

'Living' robots powered by muscle. Tiny robots powered by living muscle have been created by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles. [BBC News | Science/Nature | UK Edition] the Borg are us -- BL 7:28:42 AM      Google It!.