Microsoft's Big Role on Campus
Four years ago Microsoft donated $25 million worth of technology to MIT. Was the result, as some critics predicted, the Microsoft Institute of Technology? The software has become pervasive. More...

Microsoft Eats Crow to Protect Users
Even I feel something for Microsoft these days. As the article says, "the Lovsan, Sobig-F and Nachi worms that spread like wildfire this week showed that the hole left open in the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol of Windows was big enough to drive a truckload of worms through." More importantly, the attacks have been devastating, bringing numerous enterprises (not to mention my own in-box, which is getting more than 1,000 SoBigs a day) to their knees. More...

Microsoft Sends OneNote to School
Odd. I haven't received mine yet (the constant barrage of criticism probably hasn't helped - heh). But Microsoft is giving away its note-taking software, one-note, to certain academic institutions. More...

Apple’s Longtime Education VP Shares Frustrations With Slow Pace of Change
Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge, 2018/08/01
For someone who says we have to "rewire education" John Couch says a lot of things that sound like the same old thing. Apple’s former vice-president of education is plugging his new book Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student's Potential. More...

Smarter Toys, Smarter Tots?
Forget online learning: this is where the big money is. "Parents spend $2.8 billion per year on educational toys for infants and preschoolers," according to this article (probably citing U.S.-only figures). But the gist of this story is that these toys will not deliver the educational improvement their marketers promise. More...

Google Ads a Threat to eBay Trademark?
I don't know where ebay would be if it couldn't use the brand names of other companies on its site, but the same logic doesn't appear to have occurred to its lawyers as it demands that Google cease allowing advertisers to use the eBay name in their ads. More...

Even 'Obvious' Ideas Can Be Protected With Patents
More discussion regarding the 'business method' patents issued in our field. I know their supporters claim that they spur innovation, but really, how could this be. More...

Trade Winds
Much more interesting is this account of the use of wireless instant messaging in the classroom. In this case, the text chat was displayed on a large screen in front of the room. "A panel on Web services featuring Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff provoked the most talked-about moment of the conference – at Benioff’s expense.... We thought this (Benioff's point) was news, until Ross Mayfield, CEO of one of the Web’s leading blogging software providers, Socialtext, led an online chat charge showing that most of this was apparently untrue." The author does a nice job of tracing the phenomenon. More...

Blackboard Building Blocks Developer Conference
David Carter-Tod is doing a fine job of blogging the Blackboard Building Blocks conference, despite his struggles with Internet Explorer. The conference is intended for developers of open source tools and utilities related to Blackboard. There is also a dedicated blog for the conference, but in the blogging game, experience shows. More...

Son of Napster: One Possible Future for a Music Business That Must Inevitably Change
This is a devious, underhanded plan that would skewer the music industry and which is, probably, currently legal. At the core of the plan is this line of reasoning: individuals have the right to copy CDs that they own for backup purposes. So, to allow many people to copy the same CD, share the ownership of the CD. This is it; the rest is all implementation. More...