By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Chris Anderson[Edit][Delete]: On Media Elitism and The "Derivative" Myth, The Long Tail [Edit][Delete] July 12, 2006
How often have you heard something like this? "Without the New York Times, there is no blog community. They'd have nothing to blog about." Yeah, it's the old story. But it's not true. Check out these statistics: "Technorati shows that there are currently 555,000 posts linking to the New York Times. Nearly 800,000 posts mention the Times in one way or another. Sounds like a lot? Not if you pull back and look at the entire blogosphere. Technorati is currently tracking 2.7 billion links." Another way of putting it is to observe, with the author, that "roughly 300 times more people talking about themselves (and the world around them) than talking about what the New York Times has written about." P.S. Wired magazine has just bought the online service, Wired News. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wesley Fryer[Edit][Delete]: Intel Supports the WRONG vision of 1:1 in Schools, Moving at the Speed of Creativity [Edit][Delete] July 10, 2006
I have to agree with the headline. And I would add that Intel has crossed the line between pandering to fears and giving the customers what they want. The ClassMates PC is apparently an answer to the $100 computer project. But, "Teachers will be able to conduct lessons on laptops while students follow on the Classmates. If students try to surf the Web while class is in session, the computer will block them and warn them politely to pay attention." This is exactly the wrong way to use computers in the classroom. More...