By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rethinking the iPhone
I think there is something to this line of reasoning: "Any sort of device consolidation, like what the iPhone possibly promises, is a pipe dream and runs counter to real and immutable trends. The problem is, nobody wants to admit that these trends exist-yet they do." And this strikes a responsive chord with me: I'm sick of being ripped off by the entire mobile-phone game." if you follow this link, read it quickly and get out - the relentless advertising on the page is really annoying and constantly blots out the text. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. From YouTube to YouNiversity
Henry Jenkins has been getting some media recently, probably a result of his recent books on culture, blogging and gaming. I saw most of his talk in Boston, and the text is the Web 2.0 line familiar to most readers. George Siemens picks up on this assertion: "To educate such students, we don't so much need a faculty as we need an intellectual network." And this is exactly right: "The modern university should work not by defining fields of study but by removing obstacles so that knowledge can circulate and be reconfigured in new ways. For media studies, that means taking down walls that separate the study of different media, that block off full collaboration between students, that make it difficult to combine theory and practice, and that isolate academic research from the larger public conversations about media change." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Second Life University
MSN Encarta covers 'Second Life University'. It's mostly upbeat - while nodding to some of the drawbacks (the learning curve, having to type in order to talk) it points to some of the oft-touted benefits of the 3D environment. Via Pacific Rim Exchange. It makes me wonder (because there's a lot invested in making Second Life appear to be a viable platform and the 'next web' - what happens if Microsoft buys Second Life? Could it keep the platform more or less proprietary and essentially take over the 3D web by integrating it with Windows? Yes - it could. Which is why the battle of ideas over Second Life is so important. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Google to Host Atom Publication Protocol Plugfest
This is a bit odd, because my experience is that Blogger isn't really supporting the Atom API (the old Blogger is, but the new Blogger isn't). Here's my experience. And from that experience, I can say it would be nice if we had working libraries. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Second Life Brand Map
What's interesting about this map of Second Life is that it illustrates in a way no number or words could illustrate, this 'corporate utopia' of the world consisting almost entirely of islands owned by corporations or other large organizations. More...