Five Tips for Type in Online Learning
This is mostly good advice. I disagree only with the first dictum: use only two type styles. I typically use three: one for headlines, one for body text, and one for site navigation. More...

Unintended Consequences: Four Years under the DMCA
The Electronic Frontier Foundation summarizes its objection to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in one handy article. Three major consequences are identified: the DMCA chills free expression and scientific research, it jeopardizes fair use, and it impedes competition and innovation. More...

Chatters Quieting Down
This is one of these things that should have been forseen but is still worthy of note when it happens, if only for the lesson it offers for next time. The rate at which chat room use is increasing has slowed down. More...

Students Slowed by School Access, Time
This should be no surprise to those working in schools, but students are increasingly reporting that their internet access at school is slower than at home. More...

IceBlog
Not really about online learning, but this blog from an Antarctic researcher will help you fill some of those holiday hours. More...

Standards: Do We Really Need Them?
Useful and informed discussion of standards. After some discussion of de facto standards (what the purists would call 'specifications') and 'de jure standards', such as those approved by ISO and IEEE, the author points to the importance of open standards and suggests things you can do to start using them now. More...

The Internet in a Cup
Coffee houses... the internet of the 1600s. "A proclamation by Charles II of England in 1675... Coffee-houses, it declared, had produced 'very evil and dangerous effects...for that in such Houses...divers False, Malitious and Scandalous Reports are devised and spread abroad, to the Defamation of His Majestie's Government, and to the Disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm.'" My kind of place. More...

Winter Mist
So it has been a pretty slow news week, and today's newsletter reflects that, which some off topic but interesting items. Begin your vacation browse with this collection of photos, taken at my home in Moncton, where the weather and the melting snow produced an unusual winder fog on Christmas Day. More...

Argali White & Yellow
Though this directory serves only the United States, it's worth the time to download and instadd if only to get a grasp of the potential. Submit a name and it finds the address and telephone number. Submit a telephone number and it finds the name. More...

Students Who Live on Campus Choosing Internet Courses
As the title suggests, even on-campus students prefer online classes. Telling, though, is the account of why they prefer online classes: "I take convenience over lectures," she said. "I think I would be bored to death if I took it in lecture." Some professors, of course, are miffed. More...