Need more convincing that it will soon be impossible to tell whether a video of a person is real or fake? Enter Samsung’s new research, in which a neural network can turn a still image into a disturbingly convincing video. More...

Chatbot–based customer services are increasingly in demand. Advancements in AI technology, natural language processing, neural networks and speech recognition are making chatbots more effective and affordable. More...

Does online learning spend more on technology and less on people? That’s the latest question posed by Eduventures Chief Research Officer Richard Garrett, in an essay published on the Encoura website. More...

World Campus isn’t known for splashy ad campaigns like the $100-million-a-year one planned to promote the soon-to-be-renamed University of Maryland-Global. More...

To lead Apple you could need a degree. But to sell apps on the App Store you certainly don’t, says Tim Cook. Computer-science graduates in the US can expect to pay over $100,000 to get an education and a piece of paper that says they’ve completed a bachelor’s degree. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unknown[Edit][Delete]: How Do Developers Use HTML?, Google [Edit][Delete] January 27, 2006
Absolutely fascinating analysis of how HTML markup us used by developers, based on a Google study of roughly a billion web pages. Authors of metadata standards should look at these results (though they certainly should have observed these trends long before now, and yet, for some reason, don't take them into account). Perhaps the most telling - and characteristic - remark in the Google study comes in the discussion of the use of the body element: "One conclusion one can draw from the spread of attributes used on the body element is that authors don't care about what the specifications say. Of these top twenty attributes, nine are completely invalid, and five have been deprecated for nearly eight years, half the lifetime of the Web so far." Now we have to ask, when people don't care what the HTML standard says, why would they care what your standard says. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unknown[Edit][Delete]: Disney Launches Online Theme Park, Stuff [Edit][Delete] January 27, 2006

I have long warned about what e-learning would look like when Disney got into the picture. That day has come. "Walt Disney has launched an online subscription service aimed at preschool children, completing its plan for what a Disney executive called 'an online theme park'. The advertising-free [except for the ubiquitous branding - SD], Playhouse Disney Preschool Time Online costs $US49.95 a year and is the most learning-oriented of Disney's internet subscription services for kids". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Kate DuBose Tomassi[Edit][Delete]: Stanford On ITunes Is For Everybody, Forbes [Edit][Delete] January 26, 2006

The author states that it is "an unprecedented move" as Stanford moves with Apple to podcast "a wide range of lectures, speeches, debates and other university content through iTunes." I am at a bit of a loss to figure out what's unprecedented. Podscasting lectures? No, I've been doing that for two years, and I am by no means alone. Allowing free public access to university course content? No, MIT has that pretty much sewn up with OpenCourseWare. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jeff Utecht[Edit][Delete]: Google in China, The Thinking Stick [Edit][Delete] January 26, 2006

As everybody (absolutely everybody) in the blogosphere has noted, Google has agreed to censor search results destined for China. My question is: if they are so willing to do this in China, could they have done it here? How would we know. More...