By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Avalanche
The creator of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen, responds to the Microsoft Avalanche proposal and on academic papers in general: "I think that paper is complete garbage. Unfortunately it's actually one of the better academic papers on BitTorrent, because it makes some attempt, however feeble, to do an apples to apples comparison. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why RSS and Folksonomies Are Becoming So Big
George Siemens writes, "It's unusual to encounter an article that knocks Google as out of synch with the nature of information online. The author of this post, however, does exactly that, stating that the web is changing too rapidly (Google's page rank system was created when blogs really didn't exist, and the web was mainly about static content)...and that by tracking the nature of the dialogue through tags and RSS, tools like technorati are effective and giving end users what they want, when they want it." Right. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Saint John
If you were vacationing in New Brunswick today you would probably be lounging at the beach as we enjoy 35 degree (celsius) temperatures. Or maybe you'd be touring old Saint John, an industrial city with an industrial edge, but with enough history that with restoration and attention to detail it could be as well regarded as Old Quebec. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. (Critical) History of ICT in Education - And Where We Are Heading?
According to Eric Duval, technology has had to day a minimal impact on the way we learn. Why is this? To a large degree, writes the author, because the old cultures get mixed in with the new ones. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MicroContent is Everywhere
Those of us who were involved in the early days of learning objects will see a lot of similarity between that concept and this description of microcontent offered at the Microlearning 2005 conference currently taking place in Innsbruck. Similarity, at least, that persisted up to the point where the concept was captured by content producers and converted into something that would be sold by vendors, organized into 'packages' by resellers, and passively consumed by learners. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Real Work. Real Audience. Real Learning
Will Richardson gets an important point. "I love this story about Amy Gahran (whose Furl feed is worth following, btw) putting together a group of citizen journalists to cover a controversial housing development in her town." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. WebCT Campus Edition 6: Frequently Asked Questions
Karen Gage, Senior VP of Marketing for WebCT writes (this is the full email, not edited in any way, except to place the link provided under the heading instead of in the text): "I wanted to alert you to some inaccurate or misleading information that you passed on in OLDaily yesterday in your piece on 'WebCT Price Increases'." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Digital Debacle
Students at the University of Maryland write, "The university's decision to extend Cdigix's trial does not offer students a genuine alternative to illegally pirated media." The system works only on Internet Explorer. It won't allow downloads to, say, iPods. People aren't using it. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Cheater's Guide to LinkedIn v 0.1
While titled to appeal to certain sensibilities (and not the good ones either) this item is nonetheless a pretty good guide on how to take advantage of LinkedIn (or, for that matter, any social network - see the list provided by Scott Allen and David Tetten). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MYTH: Patents Protect Small Companies
This blog, which is new to me, addresses that murky area where enterprise, information technology and health care overlap. Some good content, including especially this item, which asserts, bluntly: "If you don’t have the financial resources to support years and years of patent litigation, then your patents have no teeth." Well argued. More...