Rainlendar
Todd Bingham showed me this nifty application this afternoon. I don't know what it took to set it up, I do know it's Windows-only, he said it can be synched with your Outlook Exchange calendar, and I know from seeing it that it's about as useful a took as you could hope to find, a great little calendar that becomes a part of your desktop. More...

DLORN Upgrade
I have made a minor upgrade to DLORN, the site that harvests learning resources RSS files. Specifically, DLORN listings are now available by RSS (0.91), Javascript and in ticker format. More changes coming. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, July 30, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect].

Feature Creep: 500 Books In Your Gadget Bag
So why aren't e-book readers taking off? The old stand-by excuses - that they are hard to read, and that people prefer books - are falling away as the technology gets better and people become used to reading electronic content. The sticking point is DRM. Still, the author argues, " If publishers stop wanting DRM, it's the end of popular creative arts. Not as we know them, but period." This wiull eventually be overcome, he argues. More...

Alt-I-Lab Results: Mind the Gap...
Wilbert Kraan summarizes the recent Alt-I-Lab meetings in San Francisco. The gap is "between user expectation of interoperability and reality." From where I stand, what's happening here can be summed up with this sentence: "The final concern raised last year - just build stuff - stop making new specs - doesn't appear to have had much traction." Basically, the report describes a bunch of beginnings... but that's it. More...

MSN NewsBot
Microsoft has launched a beta version of what it calls NewsBot - essentially a clone of Google News (and another recommender style news service, but I forget the name of it off the top of ny head). The The UK version has been around since last year some time. More...

701 Tips for e-Learning
On the one hand, reading this book is addictive; I was up to tip number 70 or so before I realized I had been drawn in. On the other hand, the staccato delivery wears a little thin; by tip number 70 I realized it wasn't going to draw to anything like a conclusion. More...

Three Reasons to Publish an E-Newsletter AND a Blog
I ask this question from the opposite perspective - given that I have RSS feeds, Javascript feeds and a webpage, why do I continue to publish the email newsletter? And of course the answer is that the majority of my (known) readers sontinue to do it by email. More...

When the Convention is a Classroom
When the Progressive Conservatives held their convention in Ottawa to elect Joe Clark their leader and eventual Prime Minister, it was a great learning experience for me. Aside from listening to the delegates and touring the booths (Flora Macdonald gave me an apple) I took home a ransom of souvineers - buttons, posters, banners, and one delegate. More...

More RSS Joins for the Ocotillo Action Groups
The experiment continues and the Small Pieces Loosely Joined is beginning to illustrate the sort of complexity and sophistication possible with low-tech low-control processes. These systems will soon outstrip the capacity of any centralized learning management system (imagine trying to centrally administer each cell in the growth of a tree, or each stream in the flowing of a river system). More...