By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Google Presentations: The New Google Docs Module
A lot of people are talking about the new Google presentation service. This article from Robin Good offers an overview. I set it up for myself and imported one of my presentations. The slide design is pretty basic, but I like being able to include the audience in the sidebar (I wish I could make the sidebar bigger). And I like the 'revisions' feature, which lets me go back to previous versions. What I'd really like is a slide library I can simply draw from to create presentations. But you can't even drag and drop slides inside presentations. More...
Digital Rights Management and Consumer Privacy
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Digital Rights Management and Consumer Privacy
When you read this report you'll utter, as I did, "Holy cow!" or words to that effect. "This report confirms that DRM is currently being used in the Canadian marketplace in ways that violate Canadian privacy laws." And really blatantly, too. "We observed tracking of usage habits, surfing habits, and technical data... we observed e-book software profiling individuals... A number of organizations used DRM to collect, use and disclose personal information for inappropriate purposes (e.g., Napster indiscriminately monitors its customers' communications to 'check for ...abusive language')". More...
Open Source and Open Standards
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Source and Open Standards
Four postulates on the role of open source in standards-based and online learning technology. Rob Abel, CEO of the IMS Global Learning Consortium, offers this guest blog post with the intent of enticing people to take part in the IMS community. It's not a very enticing invitation - I mean, let's face it, individuals play virtual no role in IMS; it's an organization dominated by large institutions and corporations. But I joined the 'community' anyways (not the first time I've signed up on the IMS site, by any means) - that way I can see, no, not a discussion board or social network, but rather some articles and reports I can download. More...
September 19 - Talk Like A Pirate Day
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. September 19 - Talk Like A Pirate Day
Arrrrgh. It's 'Talk Like a Pirate' Day once again - has a year passed so quickly? Well, me hearties, this here is a nice article from last year with advice for would-be swashbucklers. Like: "Choose yer battles well, mate. If ye shoots a broadside at a galleon, ye'd best have more than a dinghy to back it up." Arrrrgh! Ye got that right, mate! And most important, "Know that you are master of your own ship. You never have 'no choice' in your life, even if you're in prison and shackled hand and foot. Even if you're about to die, you can choose to die well". More...
Leaked Media Defender E-Mails Reveal Secret Government Project
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Leaked Media Defender E-Mails Reveal Secret Government Project
This was a pretty big story in the hacking and file sharing community over the week-end. After repeatedly denying it was trying to set up 'honeypot' lures for file sharers, MediaDefender, a site affiliated with music publishers was caught red-handed after hundreds of leaked emails showed them heavily involved in a site called MiiVi. Allegations were originally made last July but the story broke this weekend with the release of the emails. More...
How the Social Web Came to Be (Part2)
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How the Social Web Came to Be (Part2)
Trebor Scholz has posted the second part of his length presentation on the history of social networking. It's interesting to look at social networking retrospectively, though when he asks, "is the history of the social web the history of mainstream culture?" the answer seems to be "yes". More...
One Laptop Per Child - Where in the World Is That Cool Green and White Laptop?
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. One Laptop Per Child - Where in the World Is That Cool Green and White Laptop?
What's interesting about this post is not so much that it's about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO computer, but that it's blogged by Nortel Chief Technology Officer John Roese. And maybe it's pushing things at Nortel in the right direction - "this initiative has been a great tool to get some of our R&D professionals to 'think differently' about the changing world of Hyperconnectivity". More...
The First Step On a Journey to Excellence?
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The First Step On a Journey to Excellence?
The old Matt Groening cartoon in this post is worth the price of admission. The discussion surrounding the cartoon focuses on the question, "Would you sacrifice occasionally excellent for consistently good?" Like all hypotheticals, it assumes that both horns of the dilemma are attainable (I look for 'occasionally good' - anything else is a bonus). Anyhow, Don Ledingham writes, "we all too often in education - worldwide - conspire to 'protect' children from the impact of a weak teacher. Perhaps the first step we need to take on our 'Journey to Excellence' is to work together to ensure that no teacher could ever be descibed as being weak." I personally think that the whole 'excellent teacher' vs 'weak teacher' dialogue is misplaced. More...
The Great E-Book Debate
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Great E-Book Debate
Another attempt to revive e-books. Nielsen writes, " Xplana Learning has assumed a leadership role in the development of e-books and online learning platforms, and has indeed redefined e-books in order to maximize usability and engagement." Well fine. But here's the thing. If you look at, say, Project Gutenberg, you'll see that we've pretty much solved the problem of putting books online. We can use plain ASCII, we don't need a special player, and it all works pretty well. The thing with e-books, is that they promise to deliver what publishers want, and not so much what readers want. More...
Moncton in September
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Moncton in September
If you're finding the website a little slow, I hear you - the traffic has surged in the last few weeks and the web server is struggling under the load. Especially the database. So I need to try to find a way to make the site more efficient. Speaking of home - I took these photos from around the city of Moncton here over the last few days. And pictured directly above is my home, the house where I live. Stephen Downes, Flickr September 17, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Flickr]. More...