E-Books: Challenges and Opportunities
A look at the current state of e-books, with an in-depth examination of the use of Safari, an e-book service owned jointly by Pearson Education and O'Reilly that provides about 2000 titles. More...

Rip. Mix. Feed. Decentralization of Learning Resources: Syndicating Learning Objects Using RSS, Trackback, and Related Technologies
Absolutely outstanding presentation prepared by Brian Lamb and Alan Levine for EDUCAUSE (in the form of a wiki, so if you don't like it you can change it). The key message: "There's been too much focus on schemas and models for cataloging objects and precious little attention to building meaningful content. Thankfully, there are some signs of change." And the change is coming at the speed of a freight train, which will leave a lot of vendors in the dust if they're not careful. More...

If RSS ain't broke...
Good article on some of the discussion surrounding the potenmtial traffic problems that may be caused when numerous RSS readers check for new content every hour. The author argues that the complainer, Robert Scoble (who works for Microsoft) is depending on a flawed example to make his point, an MSDN aggregator that pulls together a thousand RSS feeds and which must be reloaded every time one of those changes (probably built by the same geniuses that brought us Outrlook). More...

Ebooks Ready for Take-off as Sales Accelerate
As sales have nudged up slightly, a print publication (with, we observe, a vested interest) has once again touted the coming wave of ebook readers. It's an easier call to make today - witness the success of the iPod as a music-specific device. But with prices still hovering around ten dollars for a title and with the content locked down, we're not there yet. More...

Newsflash! Technologies Can Support Online Collaboration!
The audio isn't ready yet, and there were no PowerPoint slides, but my afternoon workshop in Adelaide need not reamin a mystery any longer thanks to this content map Marty Cielens captured of the discussion. Today's newsletter comes to you from Strahan, Tasmania, Australia. More...