RSS Feeds Can Build Web Traffic, but Fence Sitters Note Problems
The first thing you'll learn from this article is the meaning of the term 'scraping', something I think a number of academic publications are ripe for. Scraping illustrates the power of RSS: "yanking control" over information viewing from the providers and placing it into the hands of the readers. More...
TOIA - A First Look
The author takes a spin though the TOIA - Technologies for Online Interoperable Assessment system - and offers this review. Some usability issues, a quirky Java engine that would stymie someone like me (turn it off? I didn't even know it was on!) and a smallish question bank. More...
NMC 2004 - Who Runs the Show?
Some heat is being generated around the 'Small Pieces Loosely Joined' project at NMC 2004. I can offer clarifications for my bit: all feeds harvested by Edu_RSS are used to generate the NMC 2004 coverage are listed here. Martin Terre Blanche makes this observation: "The 'don't ask me - it's somebody else's responsibility' syndrome is typical of large, centralised bureaucracies and Alan's response (in his persona as centralist faction coordinator) is therefore to be expected. However, I have to admit that it may also be a symptom of decentralisation - of small pieces loosely joined. For a user of systems made up of loosely coupled pieces it can be quite frustrating to figure out who is in charge of what." But you need to understand - my NMC continuing coverage is not part of Alan's presentation. It is a separate and parallel initiative that collaborates with his presentation. More...
Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow
A victim of its own success, writes this author, a former employee, Microsoft depends on its Windows operating system for revenue - a system that is full of usability, stability and security flaws and won't be updated again for years. More...
Web Users to Gain Creative Commons Access to the BBC
This came to me from a few sources: the BBC is licensing all of its content under Creative Commons. More...
ODRL Workshop Report
The official workshop report from the first Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) conference is out. Of most interest is the Future Directions at the end of the report. More...
Fine-Tuning Your Filter for Online Information
The New York Times take on RSS, offering ti as a content filtering service. This isn't a bad interpretation, since as many commentators have noted, RSS feed readers are a lot more efficient that email or web browsers. More...
Take-Off DataPoint Workshop
Robin Good explains this nicely in today's newsletter: "The Take-off RSS news reader from DataPoint gathers RSS news and sends them directly into a Microsoft Access database. From there they can be easily pulled inside one or more presentation slides. Thus, you could have fresh and updated news feeds to show on your class opening presentation slide or you could display the latest relevant stock, or future prices for the very items that you have been covering in your presentation." I haven't tried it, but it's a great concept. More...
Collaboration Supercharges Performance
Really nice set of notes (and I love his use of images) from Jay Cross on collaboration. Note well the diagrams showing the evolution of computing models and the evolution of learning models. More...
Gurus versus Bloggers Take 2
Another fun installment of Design by Fire's 'Gurus versus bloggers' design showdown. I'll spare you the suspense: "Another shutout: Bloggers, 8. Gurus, Zilch." I'm not even slightly surprised. More...
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