Click or Brick Colleges
Zane Berge asks the question, "Will traditional, residential education in the 21st century be found only at a few elite institutions and be only for the wealthy who can afford to attend them?" He lingers on the idea that new technologies, when they are introduced, are usually used to do old things. More...

In the Lecture Hall, a Geek Chorus
Interesting look at the impact of wireless instant messaging in the classroom. By now, though, we know what to expect. Some people read their email while others comment on the lecture. And, of course, some lecturers are complaining. More...

Extending RSS 2.0 With Namespaces
This is a very nice description of what a namespace is and why they are necessary. The idea of a namespace is that it allows you to extend the vocabulary of an XML file. So, for example, if you are not satisfied with the choices an RSS feed or a learning object metadata (LOM) gives you, add some of your own. More...

Schools Rebuke Music Biz Demands
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College have refused the music industry's demands that they reveal the names of students suspected of file sharing. But let's not get ahead of ourselves: the schools' objections are procedural, not principled. More...

OriginalWorks
This is interesting. I described last week a system that allows you to publish your own book online. Well, XanEdu is today marketing a system called OriginalWorks, a system that "specializes in publishing academic work for use in your classroom, transforming your own personal work into a professional, high quality book," according to the mailout. More...

RFID Chips Are Here
Two major items make this article worth a read. The first is the clearest evidence yet that RFID tags are upon us. If WalMart is interested, everybody is interested. The second is a very clear description of some of the implications of RFID. An RFID tag embedded, say, in a pair of jeans follows the product for its entire lifetime, broadcasting its unique identity. More...

Developing Systems of Online Payment
This is an interesting approach to online payments, very similar to what we are developing here. The idea is that you can purchase a virtual debit card from this company, Bitpass, and then deduct micropayments from the card. More...

RSS 2.0 Specification Moves to Berkman
The big news while OLDaily was shut down: Dave Winer and Userland have turned over ownership of the RSS 2.0 specification to Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The move was greeted with wide acclaim, as the specification was immediately licensed under Creative Commons, which ensures that developers can build on it without fear of someone (SCO, say) coming along and claiming royalties. More...

Attack Update
OK, here's where we stand. I have no email into or out of downes.ca - this means that if you are sending me email to stephen@downes.ca it will fail. It also means that newsletter mailouts are failing (at least, I think they're failing...). Additionally, all scheduled processes have terminated, which means that Edu_RSS will be updated manually. I have no tech support until at least tomorrow, so it looks like we'll be limping along like this for a bit. More...

Student Hackers: We Didn't Defeat Campus Debit Card System
Two student hackers, accused of breaking into Blackboard's debit card payment system, settled with the company yesterday with a statement that they never built a device to defeat the system. More...