By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Social Network Portability
My own contribution to some of the discussion of social network portability. I outline three major needs: first, social network portability itself, that is, a way to export lists of OpenIDs from social networks, to manipulate those lists, and then to import them into new social networks; second, a way to facilitate attribute exchange, that is, to describe myself and to describe other people; and third, network traversal functions. Stephen Downes, Half an Hour August 21, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Networks]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open, Digital Scholarly Publishing at AU Press
Congratulations to Athabasca University, which has launched an Open Access Athabasca University Press, "dedicated to disseminating knowledge emanating from scholarly research to a broad audience through open access digital media and in a variety of formats". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Companies That Close Networking Doors Jeopardize Their Future
This post describes coverage in Australia of a service called 'SurfControl' which is claiming that "the use of Facebook on company time is costing business up to A$5 billion a year." The claim, of course, is pure fiction. But even if it were true, it represents a valuable activity, not a waste of time. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Secrets of the Super-Learners (Graig Lambert)
Quick summary of five attributes of people who learn, from an article by Graig Lambert. The attributes are: wonder, humility, synthetic thinking, patience, and relishing mistakes. OK. But I would add to this hard work and practice, practice, practice. As Zaid says, "The key is not whether we fail or succeed during our studies, put how much effort and attitude we put into it. If the effort and right attitude is internalized into the students' mind (becomes a habit) during the learning process, he or she will eventually succeed". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New LeMill Version (1.13) Released
I don't typical announce version releases (because I would quickly drown in them) but it's worth highlighting this software, "a service and a platform for finding, authoring and sharing open and free learning resources". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Thoughts On the Social Graph
Brad Fitzgerald, the founder of LiveJournal and the developer of OpenID, offers this commentary on open social networking. Some new terminology: the term 'social graph' refers essentially to the 'social network', in other words, the set of linkages between people. And the term 'edge' is used here to mean the same as we might mean when we talk about a 'link' from one person to another. The idea is to "ultimately make the social graph a community asset, utilizing the data from all the different sites, but not depending on any company or organization as "the" central graph owner." There's a Google group for discussions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. SH Interviews DK From the UK
Interesting interview. "He just goes by DK, which are the initials of his given name, but DK has been his nickname since he was a child. His educational background is in communications and media, and started out working with youth--and became the UK's first and only Corporate Youth Officer". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Social Networking As LMS: Problems and Opportunities
Christy Tucker explains that her 'Facebook as LMS' post was "thinking aloud" and not some final conclusion. Of course not; we wouldn't think otherwise. 'Thinking aloud' is a good thing and something I would encourage. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OpenID On Stephen's Web
Stephen's Web now supports OpenID logins. This is a bit brand new, and has been accompanied by several web crashes, but I think it's stable now. If it doesn't work for you, please let me know. Don't know what OpenID is? Follow this link to learn more (I'm still writing this so give me a few hours if you don't see it right away). If you have an existing Stephen's Web account and would like to associate it with an OpenID account from some other provider (such as LiveJournal or AOL) then login first with your old Stephen's Web username and password, then select [Options] and log in with your OpenID. Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web August 20, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Branding]. More...