By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Apple Digital Campus Exchange
The Apple Digital Campus Exchange is an online community for educational technologists using Apple products and features weblogs by noted developers. It crossed my radar screen through the D'Arcy Norman, who was invited to blog for the site a couple of weeks ago. Against common wisdom, however, the people at Apple decided to require a login to view the posts. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Google Print Search
You can now search Google Books, and the masters behind the search engine have done it right. Pointing to this resource, Aaron Swartz offers a sample search. Clicking on the search brought me (surprisingly) a useful result, this Perl text from O'Reilly, Perl Template Toolkit. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Microsoft launches 64-bit Windows
Every few months I pass along the warning that 64-bit computing is coming soon and that administrators need to be preparing budgets to support the substantial hardware and software transition that will follow. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Disney Offers Web Education
Talk about your Mickey Mouse courses. The service is directed toward preschoolers and offers a range of interactive activities featuring Disney characters. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Google is Syndication Shy
I think there's a germ of truth here: "Feeds may be Google's greatest enemy. If Google did offer feeds that connected users with the information they are looking for from the Web they would miss the opportunity to advertise to them. What will remedy this? Google will incorporate contextual Adwords ads into these kinds of feeds, much like Overture has done. What’s taking so long? Beats me." But the answer is this: if Google can aggregate, anyone can aggregate - and who is going to aggregate advertisements. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Yahoo 360
Yahoo takes a big step toward the semantic social network with a service that blends social networking with blogs. Yahoo 360 is now available in beta. You can connect to your instant messenger, post your photos (unlimited storage, says the web page), display your LaunchCast radio, and more. I've set up a page on the service. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Googlebug Gaining Momentum; Ourmedia Not as Good As It Sounds
The main point of this post is to argue that using centralized services is a bad idea. Hence, for example, a bug in the Google search service cause widespread disruption. In the same vein, depending on a centralzied service such as OurMedia (or, as I have commented recently, Flickr) can for the same reason be a bad idea. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Issues in Federating Repositories: A Report on the First International CORDRA Workshop
Good summary that doesn't waver from the necessary questions facing the CORDRA initiative, "an open, standards-based model for how to design and implement software systems for the purposes of discovery, sharing and reuse of learning content through the establishment of interoperable federations of learning content repositories." Questions like: what will this infrastructure provide that Google doesn't. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Gnews2RSS at VoidStar.com
A PHP script that converts Google News to RSS. If Google complains, tell them to put it in one of the links Google Toolbar produces. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Microsoft to Buy Groove Networks
Groove had its problems but it was still far ahead of anything Microsoft ever produced. That makes Microsoft's acquisition a good move for both companies. More...