Anti-Virus Companies: Tenacious Spammers
Many schools, colleges and universities have installed anti-virus and anti-spam filters on their systems. As a popular target for such annoying emails, I am sympathetic with the need to block the garbage before it gets to unsuspecting users (especially those using Windows and Outlook, and hence could really be harmed by the messages). But as this item notes, these programs are worse spammers than the people they try to block. More...

Self-Serving Social Networks
George Siemens spots this item looking at design approaches to social networks. The prevailing theory is that people will share because they want to contribute to the public good. This is true in some cases, but for many others, the use of a social network must satisfy some personal good. The item then reviews a few properties of successful social networks to make the point. More...

Skull Wallpaper Virus Attacks Nokia Smart-phones
Sure, it's just another virus story - a bug embedded in a wallpaper file disables most features on a Nokia phone and inserts skulls and bones as wallpaper. The bigger picture: file sharing on mobile phones was always considered to be blocked by the fact that the content provider had complete control over the hardware. More...

Learning Object Repository Software
Review and comparison of six learning object repositoriy solutions: HarvestRoad Hive, Intrallect Intralibrary, NorthPlains Telescope Enterprise, Ex Libris Digitool, Concord Masterfile and Dspace. The products are compared on a matrix of 44 features and 10 feature groupings. More...

Every Ontology is a Treaty
The latest issue of SIGSEMIS: Semantic Web and Information Systems is out - and once again, I am forced to ask why a semantic web organization can't publish their journal in XML, or at least HTML, instead of the decidedly non-semantic PDF. Anyhow, the highlight is this issue is the interview with Tom Gruber, well known for his work on ontologies. More...

Global Learn Day: GLD8 Educational Technologists Talk Online
My contribution to Global Learn Day is available as an MP3 audio feed (2.9 M) - I talk about the Firefox launch, the emergence of blogging in the Yukon, and the spirit that lies behind all this - the idea that we could provide learning to everyone in the world (please note the sound is bad for three minutes during the introduction, then my talk comes out very clearly). Another recording of my talk (by Robin Good) is available here. Robin Good also contributed a useful presentation to the event, Ten Technologies That Are Going To Change The Way We Learn - search technologies, data visualization tools, blogs, audio and video, RSS, P2P, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth (Wifi, WiMax), real time collaboration tools, and collective and collaborative filtering. By Stephen Downes and Robin Good, Stephen's Web, Robin Good, November 22, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...

50 District Schools Will get a High-tech Leap into the Future
This is one of those stories where you really wish the commercial press would tell the whole story - or at least link to things. On the surface, it's a good news story: the Philadelphia school board plans to invest some $75 million in new technology in 50 of its 275 schools, with plans to support all of them at a cost of $1.5 million per school (you will only be able to click to this item once - it's one of those fake links that makes you register if you ever go back). More...