Intel Starts Delivering on Wireless at IDF
I'm sure it's a very good processor, but what about the name? The new Intel product - characterized as the internet on a chip - has been called 'Manitoba.' For those of you who don't know, that's the name of a Canadian province, a place where I used to live, in fact. More...

Eligibility For Dot-Edu Internet Addresses To Be Expanded
A wider range of educational institutions in the United States will not be able to obtain .edu domains, according to this report. More...

Dublin Core
Whew. You've just finished tagging your thousands of items in Dublin Core. Now you can relax, right? Wrong. There is a great deal afoot with Dublin Core. I confess, I'm not clear on all of it (and information on the web is basically impossible to obtain). More...

Happy Birthday, XML!
This week marks the fifth anniversary of XML. The specification was published as a 25 page document on the W3C site on February 10, 1998. Things, as they say, have become more complex since then. " Five years ago, XML tools could be developed by a good programmer in a week; now it may take full-time teams of the best programmers to keep up. More...

Computers Take Over the Classroom
"We learnt the inner workings of a computer. In fact it's an electronic machine, through which we can send and receive letters," said student Kamar Kumar. Well in fact they're learning a lot more than that in Indian schools as the country works hard to teach computing in its schools. More...

.Net Patent Could Stifle Standards Effort
Just as .Net was generating steam as a platform for web services, it has emerged that Mocrosoft holds some key patents and may use them to "dictate how, or whether, developers of software and devices can link to the .Net initiative." It's no surprise that Microsoft holds patents, but it is a surprise that the company would not release them to the standards initiatives building up around web services. More...

Unraveling the Mysteries of the Connected Age

The point of this article is to show how organized and progressive behaviour can emerge from disorganized and uncontrolled networks. More...

Optimizing Flash for Search Engines
Macromedia won't like it, but I have to agree with this advice from Shari Thurow: don't use Flash if you can do the same thing in HTML. This article lingers (naturally, given its source) on the failure of most search engines to index Flash sites. More...

How Dark Patterns Trick You Online
Nerdwriter, YouTube, 2018/04/13
Pattern recognition is a critical literacy. This video makes it clear why, with vivid examples of how hard it is to close your account, and how easy it is to pay money. Companies use tactics like 'roach motel' and acculturation in order to persuade you to take actions that work against your best interests. The term 'dark pattern' was coined by  in 2010. Here's a Hall of Shame from Harry Brignull's 'Dark Patterns' website. More...

YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals
Camila Russo, Bloomberg, 2018/04/11
The idea of blockchain-enabled alternatives such as DTube is that viewers can pay for content directly through tips or subscriptions, thus avoiding the tracking and advertising pervasive on platforms like YouTube and Google. But a quick look at DTube shows the risks as well - scam links in the comments, for example, or unsavory videos on the home page. Yes, it can be worse than YouTube out there. More...