By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Google is Syndication Shy
I think there's a germ of truth here: "Feeds may be Google's greatest enemy. If Google did offer feeds that connected users with the information they are looking for from the Web they would miss the opportunity to advertise to them. What will remedy this? Google will incorporate contextual Adwords ads into these kinds of feeds, much like Overture has done. What’s taking so long? Beats me." But the answer is this: if Google can aggregate, anyone can aggregate - and who is going to aggregate advertisements. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Handheld Computer Yet to Reach the Masses
The low-cost Simputer developed for use in India is being regarded as a failure - "Picopeta has sold fewer than 2,000 units in the past 12 months, far below the target of 50,000. Worse, only 10 percent of those Simputers were bought for rural use. Encore software, the other company making Simputers, also sold about 2,000 units." The major reason for the slow sales seems to be the dramatic drop in price of traditional computers. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Korea, US to Develop e-Learning Standards
Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) is opening an office and test lab in Korea, according to this report. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New BCcampus Services Improve Online Learning
BC Campus made the news yesterday with its official launch of its "final major development phase of BCcampus, which will provide a single point of access to every service an online student needs." According to executive director David Porter, “This system allows learners to use their student number at their ‘home’ institution to ‘visit’ other schools and have access to the electronic library of the institution they’re visiting – all through the BCcampus portal. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MIT Students Pull Prank on Conference
Everyone has gotten a good giggle over this one. A group of computer science students created a random essay generator, printed out a random essay, and got it accepted at an academic conference. Read the fine print and you see it was accepted as an "unrefereed submission". But still. Pretty funny. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Botany Photo of the Day
Because it's a slow news day (a Friday in April - does it get any better?) and because I like things like this. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. It's a Flat World, After All
This is a great article, one that addresses the newly level playing field worldwide created by the internet and open source, among other things. The sort of level playing field that allows me to read this article in my living room, free of charge, and to send it to people I know in India, Australia and South America, where "a 14-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want." And while the author depicts it (accurately) as a challenge to America, I view it (also accurately) as an opportunity for the rest of the world. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Exemplary Online Educators: Creating a Community of Inquiry
What makes some online educators more effective than others? Using Garrison, Anderson and Archer's Community of Inquiry model as a framework, this paper undertakes a qualitative study of the question. "Online learning is not just a learning enhancement," write the authors, "it is an entirely new way of learning and teaching that is likely here to stay." Maybe, but the preliminary results from the study will sound familiar to anyone: effective online instructors are "challengers", they are "affirmers" and they are "influencers". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Go Test Go
Greg Hodgins wrote in to let me know about Go Tests Go, a service that provides online tresting to Java enabled mobile phones. Tests are geared toward professional or scholastic test or exams, such as foreign language certification and are used by students for practice. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Slim – Inexpensive – Transparent
Inteview with Martin Röll, a Luxembourger blogger living in Dreden and producer of Das E-Business Weblog and various publications on the topic. More...