By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Has Blackboard Filed Another Patent Suit?
We reported in these pages last July when Blackboard announced its plagiarism detection service. I wrote, "Blackboard does not even blush when it claims that 'SafeAssign is a unique plagiarism prevention service because student and/or faculty papers are included,'" mentioning the oft-cited TurnItIn. Well now the other shoe has dropped. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MyNewport - MyLearning Essentials for Facebook
This is an interesting article showing how a university mashed its local information system with Facebook. "MyNewport is a Facebook application that allows students to access to MyLearning Essentials resources from Facebook." That said, it is worth noting, Facebook is a closed platform. Graham Attwell: "Yes the college VLE uses open standards. But Facebook does not. It is one thing providing access ot a developers kit to write applications to get data in to Facebook. But what about the other way round. How can learners get their data from Facebook into their Portfolio. As far as I can see they can't." Why do we keep having to learn the same lesson over and over. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wikipedia - Hypocritical?
I think Sean FitzGerald has a point here. As Wikipedia has suffered more and more criticism (criticism with is, I might add, for the most part reactionary and baseless) it has felt itself pressured to be 'more authoritative'. But this has been in turn defined as 'based in traditional media' with increasing frequency. The most recent case - where a hugely popular video has been removed from the 'movie' listing because it has not been reviewed by nationally-known reviewers - is a case in point. The movie has been widely viewed and widely reviewed. But it's a web-only phenomenon - probably because it's not generating megabucks for some studio. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Intel, OLPC Come to an Accord
According to the Associated Press article, "Intel will join One Laptop Per Child's board and contribute money and technical expertise to the project." Intel's press release. Andy Carvin responds, "Hallelujah." Well maybe. But, "without a doubt, Intel would love to oust AMD as the processor supplier. After all, that is Intel's core business - not selling little computers." It's good to see companies like Intel and Microsoft and others finally get interested in the other two thirds of the world. But it's also hard not to see them as being a little crass. Like, what is this? "Intel and One Laptop Per Child might seek ways to package their computers together. For example, Intel's Classmate, which has to be plugged in, might be an option for governments to deploy in urban schools, while the XO laptops, which use very little power and can be mechanically recharged by hand, could go into rural districts." What about the wireless? The student centered design? The open source? Does Intel buy off all this, for a board seat and some cash? E-Commerce Times calls it a merger. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Facebook - Friend or Foe?
I thought Facebook was pretty good, in a limited proprietary application sort of way. Then it introduced widgets and third-party applications, and I find myself constantly being asked to joing this application of that application. Meanwhile, Judy O'Connell writes, expressing the angst of the social software user, "I'm not yet sold on Facebook - but on the other hand I am pretty tired of skipping from one NIng network to another - and overwhelmed by the fact that I could actually be writing what amounts to a blog on each of my networks. Chills the spine." She adds, We're told that a major development in the history of widgets occurred just this week; the W3C published a draft of the first widget specification. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. This Year It's Hair Salons
The music industry has now decided to charge hair salons for playing music while people are getting their hair done. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. TouchGraph
Another on of those web visualization tools that works both for Google searches and Facebook accounts. The star of the show, though, is the Java application that grabs the websites' favicons and uses them to illustrate the connected network of related sites. Alan Levine covers it in a recent post, on which Scott leslie opines, "touchgraph has been around a long time, but man is this much improved. Nice find". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Universities, Not Facebook, May Be Facing Collapse
Now this is how to start a blog post: "When I wrote my post on Facebook WILL Die I never expected to read a headline article on the front page of the Guardian which gave a Secret List of Universities Facing Collapse". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Google Vs Everyone: 10 Markets Where Google Wants to Win
Interesting list of ten major technology applications - from search to video to social networking - describing Google's application in the area and then a list of the competition. This is true: "Google is the 600-pound gorilla: the company that no one wants to see build a competing product. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Killed by Google
Cody Ogden, 2019/03/26
This is a list of 149 products and services that have been killed by Google over the years. It stands as an object lesson in why you should not depend on commercial vendors and platforms for critical services. More...