Google Scholar vs. Real Scholarship
The funny thing about this article is that an almost identical spate of articles appeared after the launch of Google news. Google news vs. real journalism. But like the critics of online journalism, the author seems more intent that students read books in person than any real failing of Google. His main criticism - that not all articles are available - is hardly Google's fault; the search engine is hardly able to break the hold of subscription based publication services by itself. More...

E-Learning Adventures Beyond the LMS
I soimetimes feel pretty lonely in my criticism of the LMS approach to education, but my observation is that there is a groundswell of opinion looking for something more. Opinion such as is expressed in this article. More...

Sun Plans Patent Protection for Open-Source Solaris
When I gave a talk about open source in Moncton last week, I was asked about the legal risks of open source. After all, Linux doesn't come with any protection against patent lawsuits. I mumbled something about assuming your own risk. But on reflection, it seems to me that what this represents is not an issue but a business opportunity - providing legal shelter for large corporations wanting - but afraid to - use open source. It's an advantage that was not lost on Sun. The company recently announced that it would make its Solaris operating system - a flavour of Unix, very similar to Linux - available for free. More...

Online Lecture: Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue: Technology, Politics, and the Fight to Control Digital Media
Unmediated summarizes: "The video of my Princeton President's Lecture, "Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue: Technology, Politics, and the Fight to Control Digital Media" is now online. More...

Google Scholar
I could cover just this item today, and it would still be a full newsletter. Google scholar searches the databases of acadmeic publications and returns listings of published papers. One neat new feature: for any paper, it also shows the cites. More...

New Directions in Learning
Today's brief newsletter is coming from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, in Canada's north where, I'm happy to report, my hotel came equipped with free broadband internet access. Today is just a brief update as I'm off to give a seminar in fifteen minutes; I'll follow up with a fuller newsletter tonight. This item consists of slides and MP3 audio (Part One (7.6M), Part Two (9.2M)). You know you're speaking to the right group when three of them are wearing those black "I'm blogging this" t-shirts. :) By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, November 18, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...

Comment Spam Blocker
I have installed a new spam blocker in my discussion area (the place you reach when you hit [Reflect]). Actually, I had several running, one which actually blocked all comments - a little less than useful. If you had a problem posting a comment recently, this should be fixed now. But I still have my main spam filter, a wonderful array of misdirects and hidden keywords designed to fool automated systems and yet let real people post comments anonymously. I'll email the code to anyone I know who asks and promises to keep it reasonably well hidden. It's in Perl only, but of someone wants to code a PHP bit it should work equally well for wikis (assuming it works reasonably well - I'm still testing, but so far it has worked beautifully). By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, November 16, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...

101 Things That The Mozilla Browser Can Do That IE Cannot
For Mozilla, but all of these apply to the new Firefox browser (except the last one - they replaced the giant lizard). More...

Engadget Podcast.13 11.12.2004
Podcasting is moving very fast - this site discusses how they embed text links and images and even GPS into their MP3, so that people listening can follow along with non-audio content. More...

Hardware Devices - iPods at the Gate
Some people are calling it a publicity stunt, but as podcasting gains ground Duke will be thought of as the university where it was done a good four months (at a minimum) prior to anyone else. This article describes podcasting at Duke website (More). More...