Free vs. fee: Underground Still Thrives
Despite the launch of several new subscription based music services, their success is dwarfed by the free services such as Kazaa. More...

Giving a Virtual Voice to the Silent Language of Culture: The Cultura Project
This very interesting paper looks at the findings of a project comparing culture as expressed in the meanings of words. The proposition expressed and supported by the author is that a culture cannot be defined by a set of things known or remembered by its members. More...

Scholars Who Blog
The Chronicle discovers blogging - and some of the dynamics of the new medium - with a wide-eyed "gee whiz" kind of story. Among the surprises noted by the author: scholars who write about topics outside their areas of expertise and students who are able to converse as peers with professors. More...

Weblogs and Discourse
Interesting paper from last week's Blogtalk conference in which the author describes how blogs can help educators achieve their 'hidden agenda' - fostering reflection, critical thinking and interdisciplinary discourse. There's a lot of good thinking in this paper but the important bit is only touched on tangentally. More...

IE/AOL/Netscape: What Happens Next?
Some good commentary in this blog entry, plus links to the main articles in this story. In a nutshell: Microsoft has paid AOL $750 million, effectively ending the anti-trust suit filed by Netscape. This has led to widespread (and justified) speculation that AOL will drop Netscape. More...

Commons.edu
The Creative Commons is due to release a draft educational use version of the CC license today. This link is to some preliminary discussion of the concept, which isn't really getting a smooth ride. More...

Capitalism, Caculus and Conscience
We begin today's somewhat long newsletter (after Friday's email fiasco I have a bit of catching up to do) with this scathing indictment of the U.S. system of standardized testing. The argument, in a nutshell, is that the tests are rigged to ensure that disadvantaged children fail. More...

Exploring XML and RSS in Flash
This four page guide outlines the basics of using RSS in Flash. Unfortunately, for those of us who aren't really deep into Flash coding, it doesn't really show us what the result looks like. More...

The FCC, Weblogs, and Inequality
In the wake of media deregulation in the United States (or, more accurately, a new regulation regime allowing greater ownership) the author looks at the lessons offered by a completely unregulated medium, weblogs. More...

Why We Should Share Learning Resources
Frank statement of why educators need to share learning resources. Among the list of reasons, this observation: "The current environment is moving to increased expense and tighter copyright restriction. We are now at a point where an alternative is needed. Waiting (or not doing anything) will result in a market where profit is the greatest focus of education, not learning." That doesn't mean that there should be no commercial content whatsoever. More...