PEGGasus Opens for Business Nov. 24
One of my projects launches today, the PEGGasus learning marketplace. "The PEGGasus vision is to bring together, in one location, information about as many professional development events and opportunities as possible - a location where these opportunities can be searched, evaluated and selected by people in the Alberta engineering and geoscience professions. We want to be your resource of choice on matters of continuing professional development." Originally based on my paper, The Learning Marketplace, PEGGasus has benefited from two years of collaboration and development by the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA), the Institute for Professional Development at the University of Alberta and Terra Prime. More...

AT&T sues eBay over PayPal
Collecting money over the web? AT&T feels it owns the process, basing its claim on a patent filed before the web was invented. One wonders why AT&T would wait more than a decade to actually assert its supposed intellectual property, much less actually develop anything using it. More...

Fidelity Investments Looks To Acquire TEDS
Another merger in the e-learning space as Fidelity Investments acquires TEDS, an LMS company. Or at least, they've signed a memorandum of agreement to do so (and the celebration is set for Monday). E-Learning Guru's Kevin Kruse says this merger is even bigger than Docent-Click2Learn. More...

Amazon's New Database Likely to Help Sales of Some Works, May Undermine Others
That the Author's Guild is protesting against comes as no real surprise (certainly much less of a surprise than the Guild's last tiff with the online bookstore, in which they protested against the online sales of used books). The Guild contends that "these publishers do not have the right to participate in this program without their authors' permission." Of course, the publishers' permission may not be needed: Amazon is not providing access to the books, only short excerpts. More...

Search Inside the Book
Amazon.com's new 'search inside the book' service provides a granularity of search that the designers of learning object technology have so far only dreamed of. More...

How to Hate Microsoft
This is one of those articles where the comments are much, much more interesting that the item itself. More...

Blackboard Looks Likely To Go Public
Citing a "teady stream of investment bankers" going through Blackboard's 18th and L Street offices, this article speculates that Blackboard is about to launch an IPO. The time is right for the company, especially after landing a contract with the Department of Defense last week. More...

Source of Worry for Microsoft
Two not unrelated news items. The information mavens here at NRC have concluded that it cannot be secured, and so have disabled access outside the building, which has prompted me to install the Mozilla Thunderbird email reader, which even in beta is much nicer to use. More...

Microsoft Plans Longhorn Client in 2005, Server in 2006
Microsoft is now expected to delay the release of it's 'Longhorn' Windows client until the end of 2005, and perhaps even as late as 2006. More...

Microsoft Office as Strip Mall
Short commentary and more links to the story I picked up last week where Microsoft is making access to Amazon available through office applications. More...