Canadian Hailed as Father of PC
From the 'setting the record straight' department: although most people credit the American company Apple with having invented the PC, the MCM-70 Microcomputer, developed by Canadian Mers Kutt 30 years ago, four years before the Apple, has been recognized as the first PC by the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. More...

Skype Hype Is Tripe
Greg Ritter offers some comments about my recent comparison between Skype, the free VoIP software being distributed by Kazaa, and the VoIP system being installed at Dartmouth. More...

She Says She's No Music Pirate. No Snoop Fan, Either
The RIAA lawsuit against Sarah Ward has been withdrawn. Just as well, since Ward's computer, a Macintosh, cannot even run Kazaa, the program she is accused of using. Despite this, the RIAA admits no error and reserves the right to sue again. More...

Yahoo IM Update Shuts Out Third Parties
Like Microsoft before it, Yahoo! is planning to disable third party access to its instant messaging software. The major victims will be those who use software such as Trillian to use multiple instant messaging solutions. More...

Email v. RSS
This is one of these quiet discussions that could go somewhere. Right now, the focus is on explaining why RSS won't replace email. But I don't think the option has been completely explored. More...

Lead Balloons, Stone Canoes, and Learning Styles
This paper says a great deal of what I would like to say on the subject of learning styles, and draws essentially the same conclusion I have drawn with respect to online learning. More...

Learning Objects: Contexts and Connections
I would have preferred to link to individual articles, but the publishers have chosen to distribute this book, consisting of about a dozen articles as a single 1.1 megabye PDF file. Oh well. It's worth the time to download, though: there is some good and important writing here. More...

When Books Break the Bank
The prices for textbooks are high enough, and publishers have added the more recent practice of bundling texts with guides or CD-ROMs, and the net result is a cost to students far out of proportion to the value they receive. It won't be long before the internet becomes a genuine alternative, at which point we will hear a collecting wail from the publishing sector. More...

UN Panel Set to Focus on Technology in Education and Development
The World Summit on the Information Society is something that - to me at least - seems like something far away, as though it's happening in another world. It's only happening in Geneva, of course, which for many readers is just down the road, and for me, no further away than Vancouver. More...

March of the DVRs
Gosh, why would anyone not think people will skip through the commercials? Still, the video industry has a bit better a take on this: withness the numerous product placements in, say, Big Brother Four. More...