By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. ere Comes ACTA: Canadian Government Introduces Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement Compliance Bill
Michael Geist, March 4, 2013
ACTA - the hated anti-counterfeiting trade legislation rejected outright in Europe and else where - is experiencing a North American revival. Critics complained (justly) that ACTA was negotiated in secret and "would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy." But it is nonetheless the subject of implementation legistation both here in Canada and also in the United States. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Blackboard, Desire2Learn, and Udacity Should Learn from SJSU
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, September 29, 2013
What the SJSU report tells us, says Feldstein, is that "however different the scaling model is for MOOCs, they are still online courses and have similar success factors." More here. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 1TB of Google Storage? Buy a Chromebook Pixel Instead
Alex Chitu, Google Operating System, February 26, 2013

According to my version of the Play Store, it's not for sale yet. But the marketing behind this Chromebook is very interesting. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Firefox to follow Safari
Jeff Blagdon, The Verge, February 27, 2013

Thank you Firefox. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web.The Future Of Google Plus, And Its Path To Social-Media Domination
Dave llorens, Fast Company, February 11, 2013
I think this is a generally accurate account of how Google is stocking its new (well, not so new any more) Google Plus service with members. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Google, Mozilla Team Up for Skype-Killing Video Call Demo
Scott Gilbertson, WebMonkey, February 6, 2013
What's interesting about this post is not "Skype-killing video calls" but rather the technology behind it (which I might add could just as easily be used by Skype as anyone). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. EU's right to be forgotten: Guardian articles have been hidden by Google
James Ball, The Guardian, Jul 03, 2014
I'm sympathetic with both sides here. As "the result of a European court ruling that individuals had the right to remove material about themselves from search engine results," the Guardian newspaper reports that various stories about people it covers have been removed from search engine results. More...