Thursday, November 9, 2006

Google says speed is king. Search executive Marissa Mayer says instant video posting made YouTube a winner. [CNET News.com] 9:41:32 PM      Google It!.

More College Students Taking Web Courses . -- Roughly one in six students enrolled in higher education _ about 3.2 million people _ took at least one online course last fall, a sharp increase defying predictions that online learning growth is leveling off.  By JUSTIN POPE. [washingtonpost.com - Technology - Industry News, Policy, and Reviews] 9:36:44 PM      Google It!.

Unplugging Your Backups. Lucas123 writes "Computerworld has an article about how consumers, home offices and company branch offices can use microwave, free space optics, WiMax, and a new Wireless USB protocol to backup and access data over short and long distances. The story says that wireless USB can be used to transmit data from one to 10 feet from a PC or laptop at up to 480Mbps, while microwave and WiMax can be used to transmit data securely over miles. Steinbach Credit Union Inc., in Canada, has been using microwave and an IP network for years to backup data to a disaster recovery site 32 miles away, the story states."Slashdot 9:29:54 PM      Google It!.

Blogs Take Lead in Reporting Polling Problems, With Supporting Evidence on YouTube. And in a new twist this year, many bloggers buttressed their accounts of electoral shenanigans with links to videos posted on the video Web site YouTube. By TOM ZELLER Jr.. [NYT > Technology] -- this may be the furture face of news reporting --BL 9:27:39 PM      Google It!.

Slightly Tongue in Cheek Presentation on "The Future of CMS". So last Friday I gave a talk at the WCET conference titled "The Future CMS." A flash version (13Mb) with both audio and slides is available, but if you'd prefer you can just grab the slides on their own (7Mb) (if you view them in 'Notes' mode you can pretty well see the full text of the talk.) Be warned, I have a hard time taking myself seriously as a prognosticator (as likely will you by the end of the presentation.) A little context; the crowd at this conference is mostly policy and admin folks - very few techies and faculty in the crowd. While there were certainly more people who had heard of the social software/Web 2.0 explosion than in previous years, it's still a crowd that I hope finds value out of this kind of presentation. This year was notable for the marked increase in both Web 2.0/e-learninig 2.0 topics and blog-savvy presenters. I had the pleasure of co-presenting with Jaren Stein and John Krutsch, the two lads responsible for the recently announced Moodle OCW module. In addition, I got to hang out and see present both Terry Anderson and Chris Lott, and finally meet the indomitable patent battlers Al Essa and Barry Dahl. Rather than being one of the self-congratulatory post-conference blog posts Terry mentioned that he hates, I actually mention all of these folks, as well as the number of blog and wiki-savy attendees in the audience, as proof of the every growing awareness and practice; at this conference I I have seen through the last 3 years the topics and practices of Web 2.0/elearning 2.0 slowly moving into what I'd consider the 'early adopters' and even the start of the 'early majority.' - SWL [EdTechPost] 9:22:55 PM      Google It!.

OU's OpenLearn Contrasted with MIT's OpenCourseWare. This blog entry by Seb Schmoller explores the similarities and difference between the Open University approach to open content and the MIT OpenCourseWare approach. It's valuable to have both approaches well underway and available to learners and teachers. _____JH ________ "Unlike MIT's OpenCourseWare, the OU is publishing complete chunks of structured curriculum, between 3 and 20 hours in duration (thus 'MIT with pedagogy'). In contrast, whereas MIT's OpenCourseWare aims to publish learning materials for virtually all of MIT courses, OpenLearn when the current grant runs out in 2008 will cover 5% of the OU's courses - around 8000 hours of learning content (thus 'MIT without completeness'). A good way to find out about the general 'ins' and 'outs' of OpenLearn is from its FAQ page." [EduResources Weblog--Higher Education Resources Online] 9:16:38 PM      Google It!.

Familiar Taste - Greasemonkey script to help you remember what you've tagged. http://www.blackperl.com/javascript/greasemonkey/ft/ So after about the 100th time of trying to tag a site in del.icio.us that I'd already tagged before (early onset alzheimer's?!? More likely the effects of my misspent youth), I thought to myself "Someone has got to have already built something that queries del.icio.us in the background and lets you know if you've already tagged a page." And sure enough, someone had, using Greasemonkey. This script (great name!) displays a small piece of text on the screen with the tags you used (and optionally, how many other folks have tagged it to) on any page you visit that is already in your del.icio.us links and then gently fades away (the fade time can be configured). I use the del.icio.us extension for Firefox already, and this would seem like a natural addition they could build into it, but until then, this script does exactly what I want. - SWL [EdTechPost] 9:15:43 PM      Google It!.