Creating and Capturing New Knowledge
What is it about a community that causes it to not only produce, but also transfer, knowledge? It is certain that a community produces artifacts, codifications of the knowledge it creates – look at any academic society and the first evidence of its work is the set of journal articles and other publications it produced. More...
Writing on the Brain
This commentary on Alice W. Flaherty's The Midnight Disease asks the question: why do people write? Perhaps, the author suggests, it's a disease? Certainly the list of great writers has no shortage of manic and drug-addled basket cases. More...
Fundamental Issues With Open Source Software Development
The five major issues outlined in this article correspond with my own experience, especially bad user interface, poor documentation. The other issues speak more to the functionality of the software: feature glut, programmer centered design, and blindness to good features in commercial software. More...
Beyond Just School: Goa Project Tries to Ensure Children Actually Learn
Interview with Marita Adam, the coordinator of this project run out of the health-focussed non-profit organisation Sangath in the Alto Porvorim locality in Goa. More...
ODRL Workshop, Day One
I am in Vienna, Austria, attending the first Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) workshop. With about 10 minutes of internet access time, I cannot provide a proper newsletter, however, I am pleased to make available my summary notes from Day One. Day Two will follow tomorrow, and if I can find a cybercafe on the weekend, I will provide a catch-up issue of OLDaily as soon as I can. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, April 22, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...
ODRL Workshop Day Two
With my ten minutes of internet access for today, another very short newsletter (if you are trying to email me, I have not seen email for four days now, so please be patient). This link is to my summary notes from the Open Digital Rights Language, Day Two, featuring summaries of presentations and notes from the dicussion in the afternoon. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, April 23, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...
Distributed Digital Rights Management: The eduSource Approach to DRM
Full text of my paper, in PDF, presented at the ODRL Workshop in Vienna. This paper described in detail the DRM startegy we designed for the edusource project, with architecture diagrams and screen shots. By Stephen Downes, et.al., Stephen's Web, April 23, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...
Institutional Archives Registry
Listing of known Open Archives Initiative (OAI) repositories with numbers of records and growth charts. So far, something like 180 repositories are listed (view them by type and by country of origin by clicking 'browse') though as Stevan Harnad indicates in his email, there are more out there. More...
Google IPO Could Re-energize Valley
Everyone is going ga-ga over the possibility of a Google IPO. Let me go on the record as being (possibly the only person in the world to be) opposed to the idea. Sure, an IPO would generate a whack of cash. But Google makes money now, good money. More...
Will Publishers Perish?
"Many authors," offers this article, "have become frustrated with conventional publishers, entrenched by market projections, annual styles and the unmentionable word 'returns.'" Count me among them, not because I don't think I could get a 'real book' published, but because I don't care to sign my life away to do it. More...
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