By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Exploring IBM's vision for enterprise collaboration
Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDNet, 2016/06/15

With Microsoft entering social in a big way, it's worth taking another look at IBM's play in the space, a play backed by years of development, in-house testing, and some judicious acquisitions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Facebook pushes mobile users to Messenger app
Zoe Kleinman, BBC, 2016/06/08

I have already objected to this on my Facebook feed. Facebook is removing messages from its mobile website and requiring that people use its messenger app. I removed this app quite a while ago because it was the single biggest drain of battery and bandwidth on my phone. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Linked data and structured journalism at the BBC
Basile Simon, Online Journaliusm Blog, 2016/06/08

This item is obviously about the structuring of news articles, but the logic behind it applies equally well to learning. Here's the essence in a nutshell: news stories often repeat the same content when follow-up articles are written about the same series of events. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What we learned from designing an academic certificates system on the blockchain
Juliana Nazaré, Kim Hamilton Duffy, J. Philipp Schmidt, Medium, 2016/06/06
Some of the issues: the choice of bitcoin rather than ethereum; using a link to view certificates rather than public-private key pairs; leaving the possibility of certificate revocation in the system; privacy and transparency around blockchain; the right of the user to curate the certificates being shared; and whether the use of certificates can be tracked. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. davidneat
David Neat, davidneat, 2016/06/06

I'm not really a model maker, but I know people who are, and in any event David Neat's blog is a classic example of a sustained sharing of open learning. Subjects include where to find premade shapes, making paneled doors out of stencil card, polymer-modified plaster, and much more. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Cooperation emerges when groups are small and memories are long, study finds
Katherine Unger Baillie, Phys.org, 2016/06/06

The headline is probably overstated, but this model does provide a good answer to the 'tragedy of the commons' scenario. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Instagram to third-party developers: drop dead
Jeffrey Zeldman, Zeldman.com, 2016/06/06

I've never been an Instagram fan because the platform always felt too controlling (Pinterest falls into the same category). I don't like square photos. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How We Trained an Algorithm to Predict What Makes a Beautiful Photo
EyeEm, Medium, 2016/06/06
Is it really much of a leap to imagine evaluating people this way? Ask yourself whether this sounds like exam grading: "it’s extremely difficult and nearly impossible to break down aesthetics as a hard set of rules. Our vocabulary for defining what makes a good photo is very limited." So, what we have here is a tool that evaluates and organizes your photos in order of goodness. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Employers told to stick to ‘core business’ after Citroën blow
Jude Burke, FE Week, 2016/06/06

I lot of employers have been taking training into their own hands recently, spurred on by digital media and learning providers such as Pearson. The early returns this apprenticeship program are not encouraging. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Internet trends: the latest Mary Meeker report
Bryan Alexander, 2016/06/06
Analysis of the most recent report from Mary Meeker on internet trends, referenced here Friday. Bryan Alexander notes (among other observations) "Meeker sees speech recognition and voice interfaces going mainstream.  Good reflections here." Inside Higher Ed, unwilling to take any sort of stance, gives us 36 undifferentiated highlights. More...