By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Politics of Web 2.0
Jeff Jarvis writes of web 2.0, "This is a new architecture. It's a dynamic architecture." Susan Crawford adds, insightfully, "It's even more than that — it's political. These meta-informational thingies are letting us see our online environment in ways we can't possibly see the offline world". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. We Are the Web
Kevin Kelly looks back on the emergence of the web, the launch of Netscape, and how his magazine - Wired - took it all in. "Wired offered a vision nearly identical to that of Internet wannabes in the broadcast, publishing, software, and movie industries: basically, TV that worked." Something very different happened, though. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Principles for Evaluating Websites
How do you know whether something you read on the web is true? You can't know, at least, not for sure. This makes it important to read carefully and to evaluate what you read. This guide will tell you how. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, July 16, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Workflow and Web Services
Just to keep you up in the rapidly changing world of e-learning frameworks, JISC and DEST have agreed to collaborate, the major result being (naturally) a name change - the E-Learning Framework is now joined by (replaced by?) the The e-Framework for Education and Research - and a new website. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Australian Flexible Learning Blog and Site Web
Nifty link to a map of the Australian educational blogosphere, with links to individual blogs (some of which, ahem, have not been updated in quite a while). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Web Content by and for the Masses
The New York Times discovers Web 2.0 - "From photo- and calendar-sharing services to "citizen journalist" sites and annotated satellite images, the Internet is morphing yet again. A remarkable array of software systems makes it simple to share anything instantly, and sometimes enhance it along the way." It's not just Yahoo! and it's not just online journalism - it will reach right into your online course and turn it inside out. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. My Web 2.0
Yahoo! is beta-testing the closest thing to the semantic social network I've seen so far with My Web 2.0, which is a combination social networking and content sharing site. It also incluides tagging (which I think is what Yahoo! really wanted with Flickr). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Userplane Releases Free Webchat Option for Any Website
Just launched, this is a commercial application (the free version is supported by advertising) but well worth a look because of its elegant design and functionality. Userplane's webchat text, video and voice (depending on what you support or want to support). Hosted on Userplane's servers, it is placed on any web page using a simple Javascript. It may take a few seconds to load the application first time, but it's very fast thereafter. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen's Web Community
Many of you have felt the sting of being accused of being a spammer by my discussion board system in recent weeks. Nobody regrets this more than I, as I have missed numerous worthwhile contributions. I have rewritten my discussion system from scratch and moved it over to the main site today. It isn't perfect - far from it - but at least it won't call you a spammer. That's the least I can do. A full code release - GPL of course - is coming soon. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, May 6, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...