By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Google News: Customized News
The blogosphere is gaga over Google's new customized news. From where I sit, Google has now replicated the functionality of the 1998 My Netscape page - except without the RSS feeds that allow you to select your own sources. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. AutoLink Again
Google's new Toolbar has the capacity to insert links into web pages. The links point to things like maps from Google's map service and definitions from answer.com. Some in the blogosphere have not reacted well to this development, Dave Winer for example launching a barrage of criticism. There is no question in my mind that Google ought to be allowed to do this - we work under the assumption that Google will allow me to do the same to its pages, and that Toorbar advertisers will allow me to use and repurpose their content. Rip, Mix, Feed. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Adobe is Spying on Users, Collecting Data on Their eBook Libraries
Nate Hoffelder, The Digital Reader, 2014/10/10
Another company joins the ignoble ranks of those spying on its users. "Adobe is gathering data on the ebooks that have been opened, which pages were read, and in what order. All of this data, including the title, publisher, and other metadata for the book is being sent to Adobe’s server in clear text." Here's a timeline. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Microsoft and Other Firms Pledge to Protect Student Data
Natasha Singer, New York Times, 2014/10/08
It may be too early to say that vendors have gone into panic mode, but the idea of large-scale learning analytics is taking a (well-deserved) hit this week as the idea founders on the rocks of individual privacy. The California student privacy statute was signed into law last week by Governor Jerry Brown. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Google unveils Drive for Education
Charlie Osborne, ZDNet, 2014/10/03
Google continues its push to commoditize learning management. It "said Tuesday that the academic version of its online storage solution can be used with Google Apps for Education and boasts unlimited storage with transfer support for files up to 5TB in size. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dungeons and Dragons vs the art of business strategy
Simon Wardley, Bits or pieces?, 2014/09/15
I think I'm pretty good at business strategy - I certainly have managed thus far to organize some reasonably large projects. But I didn't learn my skills from business school (I doubt my ethics and policits would permit me to graduate from such a place). More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How to ditch Google for more privacy and fewer ads
Derek Walter, PC World, 2014/09/15
The four methods suggested are: use DuckDuckGo instead of Google Search, use Firefox instead of Chrome, use FastMail instead of GMail, and use Zoho instead of Google Drive. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tropes vs Anita Sarkeesian: on passing off anti-feminist nonsense as critique
Ian Steadman, New Statesman, 2014/09/05
Misogyny is of course not limited to video games, but it is of particular concern there, and its prevalence explains why critic Anita Sarkeesian raised $158K from more than 6,000 backers to make a series of videos on "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games". As Ian Steadman writes in this commentary, it's nothing we wouldn't expect from informed critique in any other discipline. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Windows Store is a Cesspool of Scams — Why Doesn’t Microsoft Care?
Chris Hoffman, How-to-Geek, 2014/09/12
I learned firsthand about the cesspool of scams around the same time this article came out, in mid-August, when I was struggling with the Windows video player app. Windows 8 didn't come with a native DVD player (something I find incredible) so I went searching for one, and found scam after scam (including the many many fake-VLC apps described in this article. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Coursera
Jonathan Mayer, Web Policy, 2014/09/12
Coursera is learning yet another lesson learned long ago by real LMS providers: you can't fake your way to privacy and security; you have to have real measures in place. Stanford's Jonathan Mayer identifies three major flaws:
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