Eulogy for E-Learning
Jay Cross expands on his suggestion that e-learning is dead in this Macromedia Breeze file. More...

Free content: Why not?
If you produce educational content and hope to get paid for it, read this article closely. The author is describing exactly the distribution model for music that I am predicting for educational content. He begins, "The best way to stem this tidal wave of thievery is to give the music away." How so? He draws the comparison with coal. More...

Phoenix Rises from Mozilla's Ashes
This is the right approach. AOL-Time Warner, which purchased Netscape a few years ago and continued the process of creating a free, open source browser engine (called Mozilla), has decided to drop the one-size-fits-all model and to instead concentrate on creating a slim web viewing tool into which additional functionality may be added as needed. More...

University of Alberta: eLearning: From Grass Roots to Mission-Critical
This article purports to be a history of e-learning at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. I say 'purports' because it is hard for me to understand how you could understake such a project without mentioning the Faculty of Extension, Academic Technologies for Learning, or any of the leaders in the field who worked there, people such as Terry Anderson and Norm Friesen. More...

RSS Feeds
I guess it's official. RSS has become almost mainstream. Yesterday, I posted a note about Microsoft's new RSS feeds. More...

Making An RSS Feed
With all the recent fuss over RSS you may be wondering how to create an RSS feed for your own content. This article is a straightforward introduction to the topic, taking you from beginning to end with clear instructions and examples. More...

DVD Jailbait
According to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), circumventing the file protection on, say, a DVD is against the law. OK, fine. But what happens when you play a DVD? In a certain sense, all DVD players circumvent file protection - otherwise purchasers could never view the product, which would make them a lot less popular. More...

The High Price of Piracy
Released by the Business Software Alliance, an industry-fronted lobby group, this report has won wide circulation. It argues that strong copy protection and legislation improves economies and lowers unemployment. According to the BSA, "Strong intellectual property protections spur creativity, which opens new opportunities for businesses, governments and workers." But if this were true, then there would be no creativity in the open source community, which eschews copy protection. More...

A New Look
I've had to field a number of complaints about my beautiful brown background. OK, fine. Today I present a new look. More...

Academic Values and the Lure of Profit
Though the one paragraph in this article about online learning looks like it was added a an afterthought, the author's main point remains valid and applicable here as well. Universities' efforts to commercialize, argues the author, through such means as sports teams and research patents, have generally been unsuccessful. More...