Online University That Gave Cat Diploma Sued for Fraud
Well, this one is all over the blogosphere and I can't resist passing it along. An online 'university' has been sued by the State of Pennsylvania after granting an MBA to a cat. Nobody has thought to test the cat. More...

Shibboleth Update a.k.a. shibble-ware
This is a great presentation, the clearest dscription of Shibboleth - a system that shares user authentication between participating universities - that I've seen. Especially useful is Slide 7 (be sure to view this in presentation mode) which shows step by step how the parts of Shibboleth interact. More...

The Tangled Internet: Is It Time For a New One?
"The soul of the Internet is up for grabs," says the author, and I have to agree. The wide open free internet has become a haven for spam artists and other low-life. But blocking the spam may result in a closed, proprietary 'secure' and 'trusted' internet that stifles free expression and open content as much as it does spam and viruses. More...

Batch Identifier Infrastructure
An open source tool for generating unique persistent digital object names and other identifiers has been released. Called "noid" (nice opaque identifier), it can be used as an identifier strategy no matter which naming scheme you choose (for example, ARK, DOI, Handle, LSID, PURL, or URN). More...

Google Scholar and OpenURL Firefox Extension
I have mixed feelings about this one. What we have is a nifty Firefox extension that works hand in hand with Google Scholar by checking to see whether your institution has a subscription to the Jorunal in question and giving you immediate access to the article. Neat. But do we really want to be helping entrench the subscription based model of publishing like this. More...

Evolving Literacy – Crafting Messages for Senses, Sensibilities, and Sense-making
Literacy is not just about reading: we also expect a literate person to write. But how many people make their own movies? Obviously, the tools aren't there yet. But we can expect that when they arrive, literacy will take a step forward. More...

MSN Spaces
Microsoft's entry into the world of blogs, MSN Spaces, launches. It's easy enough to create a blog, but not to create a personal profile on the blog - you have to have a Passport ID for that. Updating the blog was a bit tricky, and the photo that I added with my post ended up in a separate photos list. More...

Middle East eLearning Forum
Jay Cross gives us a feel (but only a feel) for the Middle East e-learning market with this summary from the Middle Eastern Forum at Online Educa Berlin. More...

SPARC Open Access Newsletter
In this, the 80th issue of the newsletter, two major developments in open access are highlighted. In what author Peter Suber calls "the largest single step toward free online access in the history of the OA movement," the National Institutes of Health (NIH) plan to support open access was endorsed by the U.S. Congress. More...

Thunderbird RC1
Once we've got you all switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox, there's another treat for you. Thunderbird, the open source email client made by the people who make Firebird, is just a hiccup away from its formal release; the RC (release candidate) is the final version before the official release, expected in mid-December. More...