By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release[Edit][Delete]: Mirapoint and Blackboard Partner, Mirapoint [Edit][Delete] October 10, 2006
Blackboard is continuing to consolidate, signing a deal with the Mirapoint email application, thus supporting single sign-on for LMS and email. This is a good thing. And any email solution that isn't Outlook is a good thing. But Blackboard owning the entire university infrastructure (and suing anybody who dares enter that space). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Vicki A. Davis[Edit][Delete]: How to Search Google Educational Videos, Cool Cat Teacher Blog [Edit][Delete] October 10, 2006
In all the hoopla surrounding the story that Google bought YouTube I had forgotten about Google Video - funny, because I use it more than I use YouTube (larger video, bigger file uploads). Of course, you can search Google video - and this item shows how to narrow the search to educational videos. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release[Edit][Delete]: Blackboard and SAP Announce Global Agreement, Blackboard [Edit][Delete] October 9, 2006
If you have to use SAP (as I do) for anything, it's probably your most hated software. No surprise then that Blackboard is entering into a 'strategic agreement' with the company. "Blackboard and SAP are implementing this service-oriented architecture to help institutions deploy integrated end- to-end processes." Any chance of open APIs here? Thought not. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mary Jo Foley[Edit][Delete]: What Microsoft Still Isn't Saying About WGA and Volume Activation 2.0, ZD Net [Edit][Delete]ZD Net [Edit][Delete] October 4, 2006
What they're not saying, of course, is whether your copy of Windows will shut down if it spots any unauthorized content, or whether it will shut down only if it finds unauthorized Microsoft content. But really - it will be just too tempting for Microsoft not to sell its shutdown service to software vendors, content providers - anyone who wants to lock down content. From my perspective, this opens a huge gaping hole in the market for a software vendor to sell to people and businesses who demand full control over their own computers. I thought this might be Apple, but it appears they will play the content lockdown game too. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mitchell Weisburgh[Edit][Delete]: Education and Training Research from BMO Capital Markets, PILOTed [Edit][Delete]PilotEd [Edit][Delete] October 4, 2006
Mitchell Weisburgh summarizes the BMO Capital markets' Equity Research on Education and Training report (aside: I never did like the name switch to BMO. Contrived and artificial.) "There were $200 billion of private investments in the education market in 2000. There was $181 million in 2003. This bounced back to $364 million in 2005... Digital content represents about 20% of supplemental content market, but is expected to grow to beyond 25%". More...