By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. David Carter-Tod[Edit][Delete]: Blackboard's Pending Patents, A poke with a sharp stick [Edit][Delete] August 22, 2006
An item from David Carter-Tod lists more pending patents submitted by Blackboard. It will take some analysis of these, but they again appear to be concepts already established at the time of the filing.
Take, for example, the "method and system for conducting online transactions." The application describes a system where users have an account with an organization that acts as a broker for sales of third-party materials. Yes, a 'store'. But more to the point, the description seems to be almost a clone of the system I describe here and elsewhere. Not, again, that I am claiming to be the first person ever to think of it. But I was definitely ahead of - and published before - Blackboard's patent application. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. StevenB: Google Jockeys For Conference Sessions, ACRLog August 17, 2006
Someone at the Masie Center must be reading blogs, as this items tells us that the next masie conference will use Google jockeys, people who search Google for resources (displayed on a large screen) while a presenter talks. The conference will also have someone developing mindmaps during presentations, a la e-learning forum. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Richard Waters[Edit][Delete]: Apple lays Legal Claim to The Word 'Pod', Financial Times [Edit][Delete] August 15, 2006
Open the pod bay door, HAL. Somebody should explain the meaning of the word 'theft' to these corporations. The word 'pod' was a perfectly good word, usable by all, until Apple came along. And then the company simply snagged it out of the public domain and now claims it as its own. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Steve Hargadon[Edit][Delete]: SupportBlogging's New Google Custom Search Engine, November 1, 2006
Another attempt at an edublogger custom search in Google, this one hosted by Support Blogging. Again I searched for 'downes', again I got incorrect results. Why? My best guess is that my site wasn't listed among the edublogger sites selected, since no results from my site showed up. Now not to praise myself too much, but: who would create an edublogger search and not include downes.ca. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mark Cuban[Edit][Delete]: Some Intimate Details on the Google YouTube Deal, Blog Maverick [Edit][Delete] November 1, 2006
Support for some of the speculation I offered the other day about the Google purchase of YouTube - yes, it is a way to deal with the problem of uploaded commercial content. According to this item, the purchases revolved around a deal to compensate the networks, but without requiring that they in turn compensate the artists. The deal also works for Google because the networks then turned around and sured other video uploading services, giving Google free reign in the domain. Google gets its monopoly, the networks get to clamp down on uploading, and the artists and users get... well, nothing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release[Edit][Delete]: IBM Files Patent Infringement Lawsuits Against Amazon.com, IBM [Edit][Delete] October 27, 2006
Seriously, I don't care at all what one large corporation does to another, and in the long run, it makes no difference. And after its one-click patent lawsuits, Amazon deserves what it gets. But the significant here is that this latest patent fight illustrates that there is utterly no point developing commercial software or online services unless you are a billion dollar company. Be as innovative as you want, you'll still be dinged with a ridiculous lawsuit for "Presenting Applications in an Interactive Service" or "Storing Data in an Interactive Network" or even "Ordering Items Using an Electronic Catalogue." Of course, none of these frivolous patents should ever have been granted. More...