By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Casual Fridays: We Can Identify Mystery Faces Just 6 Pixels Wide!
This is actually one of a series of posts on this blog about facial recognition. I'm linking to it because this sort of work is the basis for my assertion that human reasoning consists, not of rules and language, but of pattern recognition. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Digging Patents
This is actually a good idea. The U.S. Patent Office is setting up a system to post new patent applications online and to invite comments from the web, using "a Digg-style rating system to allow readers to push the most relevant postings to the top where they will be reviewed by patent examiners". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. School 2.0 Revisited: What's In A Name?
Response to some statements questioning the use of the term 'School 2.0' as an "effort at retrenchment" or an effort to "protect one's own turf". Sessums says he is "more drawn to reforming schools in the guise illustrated by Stephen Heppel's NotSchool or the Sudbury Schools," arguing that "the challenge before is to find a process that allows both order and innovation in individuals and society" because "schooling will most likely continue to be culturally and politically significant in our society." They are intended, he writes, to bring students closer to society. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Source Business Model
Tony Karrer summarizes and links to a series of posts centered around an exchange between Dave Tosh and myself on open source business models. Tosh laments that open source only works in ideal circumstances, citing as evidence the fact that his own software, ELGG, does not produce a revenue stream. My response, which Tosh took very personally, was that Tosh's problems are the result of his expectations, his business practices or his business model, and not some inherent flaw in open source as a business model, the success of which is pretty much an established fact. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Thinking About 3D Web - or Is It Web 3.0?
Reflections on Vicki Davis's recent post on Second Life and Web 3D. While nodding toward the educational benefits a 3D web will offer, Alja Sulcic says there should be open protocols and standards, that it should be more accessible, more cross-platform, and preserve the values of Web 2.0. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Does Mobile Technology Equate with Mobile Learning?
Leonard Low clarifies his thoughts on the definition of 'mobile learning', concentrating more on social factors (ubiquity, ease of use, appropriateness of use in public places, cost) rather than on the device itself. On the one hand, I can see the point - but on the other hand, the definition seems very arbitrary. None of these conditions have anything to do with being mobile (indeed, the definition explicitly excludes mobility as a consideration). And it just happens to favour closed, proprietary platforms that access restricted networks over open or open source platforms that communicate via open protocols on a peer-to-peer or networked basis. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Cool Cat Teacher Gets It - the Future of the Web (and Maybe Online Learning) Will Be 3D
Another response to Vicki Davis's post on Second like and Web 3D. Though it covers a lot of ground and is largely encouraging, this post mostly takes Davis to task for criticizing Second Life. Most significant is the following observation: "the 3D web may not be Web3D, it may be built on a completely different architecture using a completely different client. The X3D standards will have an impact, but may not win out in the end. One of the biggest drawbacks of VRML/X3D is that it does not allow for multi-user interaction, and I believe this social, collaborative aspect of 3D worlds is what has been driving their adoption". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Best Animated Gif Ever Created, I Reckon
Before we had Flash video, we had animated gifs. Which reminds us again that a video is nothing more than a series of still images (one shown every 24th or 32nd of a second). This animated gif is, as Kottke says, a tour de force. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Can the $100 Laptop Change the World?
The answer suggested by this article is "yes" and I am inclined to agree. As George Siemens notes, the first paragraph tells the story. "What if every child in the world could have a free personal laptop? Put some e-books on it, make it Web-capable, and add a palette of media tools so children could work on creative projects. Wouldn't that be incredible?" Yes it would. But there's a lot more to this story. Like, for example, how the development work proceeded. "These academicians have ideas and they aren't afraid to use them. One is that we learn by creating. Another is that education is a community-based effort and hierarchical institutions get in the way." Makes me realize that my own research organization has procedures in place to make sure something like this never happens. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Quick Guide to New USAToday.Com Features
Interesting. USA Today has redesigned their website to embrace Web 2.0 features wholeheartedly. Is the world ready for a USA Today Social Network? As Scott Karp reports, the first reviews from readers have been negative. Very negative. But I wonder. The first complaint is from a person looking for the commodity prices. This must be the only person in the world getting their commodity prices from USA Today. That doesn't mean they're totally off-base. The front page is too busy. But what do you make of this comment. More...