Keep recipes free -- megnut.com


Now I haven't seen copyright notices on my restaurant ordered food. Then again cheesburgers and hot turkey sandwiches are rather "common" fare. But apparently plagiarized recipes, and copy cat presentations are a concern, and addressed in various degrees of indignation. But do we need to slap on a copyright tag to a new soup and charge licensing fees to those chefs who want to make it?Choice Learning

Online Rights Canada: "Online Rights Canada (ORC) is a grassroots organization that promotes the public's interest in technology and information policy. We believe that Canadians should have a voice in copyright law, access to information, freedom from censorship, and other issues that we face in the digital world. Join us by using the form on your right to sign up for email updates."Choice Learning

blog*on*nymity - blogging On the Identity Trail:

A recent study published in The American Sociological Review suggests that "Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than they did 20 years ago"




Odd that the decline in friendship in the last two decades has coincided with the rise of the networked society. Are we losing close friendship as we cultivate less intimate on-line relationships?Choice Learning

Barbara Ehrenreich and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have joined forces to create United Professionals, a nonprofit networking agency for “unemployed, underemployed, and anxiously employed” white-collar workers. The idea for the organization grew out of the research for her latest book, "Bait and Switch." Ehrenreich, intending to covertly enter and expose the degrading and volatile world of corporate employment, spent nearly a year searching for a job through websites, networking events, career coaches, only to discover it was worse than she thought.

This organization is for "the 20-somethings who come out of college with an average of $20,000 in debt and are stuck in low-wage jobs. And this is not what they expected with a college degree. The other group is people in their late 40s and beyond who find that they are suddenly judged as too old to be in the work force.”




The goal is to form a voting bloc, or at least a coalition of interests. “It’s not just a matter for the poor, the chronically poor,” Ehrenreich explains. “The insecurity and instability of the middle class is part of the picture and we want those middle-class people to see that things like universal health insurance and a better safety net are in their immediate self-interest. I think we can build a majority movement for economic justice in this country."Choice Learning

What is a community? What is a weblog? How can they be used together? Nancy White has done a great series of postings discussing these issues. Of particular interest is her taxonomy of three types of blogs - single blog centric, topic centric and community centric. Terry Anderson expands on her discussion to explore his relationship with Elgg and his use of Elgg to "generate community" in the MDE program. I am attempting a similar activity with a class of graduate studnts in the Masters in Communications Technology program here at the faculty of Extension at University of Alberta. The commitment of individuals to the "community" is demonstrated by their attention to the blog postings; if they don't come and contribute, there is no vitality to the community, in fact it isn't a community. Without vibrant and ongoing interactive exchanges there is nothing but stale blogs.Choice Learning

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/neutrality.html





There was an excellent Bill Moyers show on PBS last night, and one segment of it dealt with the net neutrality issue. It is excellent and I highly reccomend that people visit Bill Moyer's site and check out the videos. It is a scary time for the voice of the ordinary citizen, at risk as the telcos and cable companies seek to control the internet highway. We are at a major crossroads. For a short while we had a movement toward equality of voice through the web and the connections we can make. Now our short attempt at flattening the earth and chipping away at the controlling hierarchies is at risk - because net neutrality is at risk...




"So why "neutrality?" Because since the Internet's inception, everyone, every site, regardless of the data load, has been given equal-i.e., neutral-treatment by providers, their content transmitted at equal speed. Net neutrality advocates argue that changing this system will give unfair advantage to deep-pocketed content providers, while start-ups, small businesses, and nonprofits who can't pay the piper will be unduly punished. The telecom proponents of the tiered system insist that they need these new fees (in addition to those paid by their users) to recoup the costs of updating their networks to handle all the new data-heavy content. Many also object to the additional government regulation and involvement that would be necessary to enforce net neutrality.

Neutrality supporters worry that without regulation, there's no guarantee that some traffic would move over the net at all. In other words, neutrality supporters say that only with regulation would internet users be guaranteed access to whatever they want to read, listen to, or watch online, and that without regulation, large telecom companies could block or censor things they don't like without consequence.

This past summer, Congress took up the issue. Following a huge lobbying campaign by both sides, including millions spent by the cable and phone corporations, the House voted down an amendment to the Act that would have made the Federal Communications Commission responsible for enforcing neutrality. In the Senate, a similar amendment was defeated in committee, but net neutrality legislators managed to table a vote on the telecommunications bill indefinitely in hopes that they can somehow force the issue back to the forefront."




Another example of how money can buy the votes of a democratic nation.Choice Learning

"Let There Be Wi-Fi" by Robert McChesney and John Podesta:




U.S. consumer pays more for less - and the great divide grows:




"American residents and businesses now pay two to three times as much for slower and poorer quality service than countries like South Korea or Japan. Since 2001, according to the International Telecommunications Union, the United States has fallen from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband penetration. Thomas Bleha recently argued in Foreign Affairs that what passes for broadband in the United States is “the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world.” While about 60 percent of U.S. households do not subscribe to broadband because it is either unavailable where they live or they cannot afford it, most Japanese citizens can access a high-speed connection that's more than 10 times faster than what's available here for just $22 a month. (Japan is now rolling out ultra-high speed access at more than 500 times what the Federal Communications Commission considers to be “broadband” in this country.)"Choice Learning

Published on saschameinrath.com


US vs. EU -- Broadband Rate Comparison. AKA, More Evidence of US Market Failure.

Created 2006-09-11 11:45

More and more European cities are getting into the Municipal broadband game, and they're blowing the doors off of US pricing models. How does this compare with US multi-megabit broadband rates? As it so happens, I have been looking for multi-megabit broadband for several community organizations I work with -- here's quotes from late July from AT&T for their new, supposedly innovative, "Opt-E-Man" services:

3 Year - 20 Mb - $3,300 monthly with a $0 nonrecurring5 Year - 20 Mb - $2,950 monthly with a $0 nonrecurring

3 Year - 10 Mb - $2,600 monthly with a $0 nonrecurring5 Year - 10 Mb - $2,450 monthly with a $0 nonrecurring

In other words, for 20% to 40% of the speed of what Paris is offering, I have to pay roughly 7000% to 9400% more. Let's let that sink in for a moment -- how could we end up with a system that provides a tiny fraction of the service for mark-ups that are tens of times more? Clearly the EU is doing something right that the US is failing miserably at -- and it's now spreading rapidly throughout the EU. Meanwhile, innovative projects across the US are being choked off by exorbitantly priced broadband services. One has to wonder, how many of these examples have to crop up before we start taking telecom companies to task for their continuing failure to maintain competitive pricing with the rest of the industrialized world.

[UPDATE1] A vigilant reader pointed out that one could get the "impression that municipalities are going to be the entities that offer FTTH in the EU. That is not necessarily true. For example, in the Paris situation that you mention, I believe that the provider will be a private entity. Also, there has been a lot of recent attention focused on the sensational take rates in the FTTH project in Hillegon, Netherlands, where the provider of FTTH is also private entity. Otherwise, keep up the great work." Very good point!Choice Learning

From Wireless Toronto - Following Philadelphia and Washington D.C., Boston appears poised to take the non-profit route to providing “civic bandwidth”.... more and more cities seem to be recognizing that relying on private (profit-oriented) providers may be counterproductive to genuinely addressing “digital divide” issues.




Richard O’Bryant from the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University has emphasized that there are some key issues that must be considered, lest Boston (or any other city considering public Wi-Fi) end up in a “we built it but noone came” scenario.




According to O’Bryant, these issues (and recommendations for addressing them) include:




1) policy makers should refrain from the temptation of the city becoming an Internet or quasi-Internet service provider. The service should be attached to institutions and entities that will not be so readily subject to changes in leadership and leadership ideologies and priorities.




2) build the system as a public and private partnership. However, the process should be a bottom-up instead of top-down approach. In particular, identify community level individuals and groups to develop specific community needs assessments and gauge, (i.e. through polling/surveys), what the expected utilization rates might be.




3) policy makers should also be prepared to inform and train residents, specifically those technologically challenged, on how to make meaningful use of their new found wireless Internet service.




O’Bryant’s recommendations are right on, and are good starting points for any plan of this nature…




Non-Profit may Run Boston Wi-Fi Network




Associated Press BOSTON — The city is considering an unusual approach to creating a citywide, low-cost wireless Internet network: putting a non-profit organization, rather than a private service provider, in charge of building and running the system. A City of Boston Wireless Task Force Report released Monday recommended that Mayor Thomas Menino assign an as-yet unidentified non-profit to raise the $16-million to $20-million (U.S.) in private money that the city estimates it will need to build and begin running the Wi-Fi network. Other cities have generally relied on a single private contractor to assume up-front costs and financial risk for a chance to expand its business. Although Boston’s strategy depends on the willingness of foundations and businesses to come forward with cash donations, officials believe having an existing or newly formed non-profit in charge is the best way to ensure the project meets its civic goals and steers clear of special interests.Choice Learning

Reuters/Second Life » IBM eyes move into Second Life ‘v-business’: "Computer services giant IBM has plunged into Second Life at the urging of its “metaverse evangelists” Roo Reynolds and Ian Hughes, using it as a location for meetings, training and recruitment. But the company is also eyeing revenue opportunities that could have it vying with Second Life design firms to bring real-world businesses into the virtual realm.

“E-business was a strategy for us, why not v-business?” said Reynolds, known in-world as Algernon Spackler, at the “My So-Called Second Life” conference in London on Tuesday. “I don’t mean to be competitive with Rivers Run Red or Electric Sheep, but just like we set up a bricks and mortar business online, we could integrate a company’s services in a virtual world.”'Integration with services, integration with data — exactly what we helped people do back in the days of e-business, that’s sort of what I envision us doing,” he said. “Mind you, I’m an evangelist, not a strategist, but if I had to guess that’s where we’re going.”

IBM has embraced Second Life to an extent unmatched by any other major company — it has more than 230 employees spending time in-world, and it owns some half-dozen islands. Some are open to the public, but most are private, with restricted access for the public."Choice Learning

Sloodle - 3D Learning Management System: "SLoodle is a project to integrate the VLE platform Moodle with the 3D world of Second Life. Imagine a Moodle course that, if you wanted, could turn into a proper 3D interactive classroom with all your Moodle resources available to your students in the virtual world. "




It had to happen - the creation of a v-classroom. take the 3D artefacts of second life and integrate into an open source LMS and voila - the v-classroom.Choice Learning

Reuters/Second Life » Prof gets funding for virtual Shakespeare world: "Prof gets funding for virtual Shakespeare world

Wed Oct 18, 2006 10:10pm PDT

By Adam Reuters

SECOND LIFE, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Indiana University Professor Edward Castronova has made a name for himself as an economist who studies virtual worlds. Now he’s been awarded a US$240,000 grant to create one himself, based on the world of William Shakespeare.

“What we plan to do is have people encounter the texts in Shakespeare and ideas in the text at many points within a really fun, multiplayer game, so without even knowing it, they gradually are learning more about the bard’s work,” said Castronova, (right) author of “Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games.”

But Arden, Castronova’s planned world, will have a hidden purpose beyond teaching: he plans to use it as a Petri dish for testing out economic theories by creating controlled experiments within the game’s population.

“You have two randomly selected populations and do a policy variation in just one of them,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. “What if (Karl) Marx had been able to say ‘Hey, let’s try out communism, we’ll set up two worlds and in one the workers will own the means of production, and in the other they won’t, and we’ll see what happens to equality and growth and all these things we care about.”

It’s a strategy that could give social scientists unprecedented ways to test out their theories.

“If we set up parallel worlds and get people distracted to go hunt the dragons or something, behind the scenes we can run little experiments that they may not necessar"Choice Learning

Brightcove enters the game- and webcast video takes new turn on the web - the connected web.




Contribute and view your video creation on the Brightcove site or create your own video "station" page in Brightcove or syndicate Brightcove's video offerings to third-party Web sites (blogs and more) offer your videos as paid downloads or streamed for free, with ads. Brightcove will sell ads and pool them among its customers, or it will plug in commercials that content creators sell themselves.

“Launch a business in our system in a week,” said Brightcove's founder and CEO, Jeremy Allaire, who formerly was chief technical officer at “Flash” graphics creator Macromedia Inc. before it was acquired by Adobe Systems Inc."




The concept...Back in the spring of 2004, a couple of us dreamed up the future of television. We dreamt of an open model for TV, fashioned on the architecture of the Web. We saw a world where there were no gatekeepers, but rather a web-like distribution network that could create a marketplace for video distribution. In this new world of video and rich media colliding with the Internet, we envisioned that content creators and media owners would be in control -- that they could directly reach consumers, and could tap the incredible power of the web to match their content to a global, fragmented audience that was incessantly clicking from site to site, from search to search. We thought, how could we help enable and organize this imminent chaos? A lot of existing models and ideas inspired us, including eBay for it's open, self-service and democratized commerce platform, Google for it's ability to organize chaos, and create value through every node of every website on the Internet, and even Comcast and DirectTV, who in their own way have created expanding distribution networks that have contributed to the fragmentation of TV that is underway, while providing platforms that content owners could rely on to reach consumers.Choice Learning

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1: Follow the link above and be prepared to be intrigued, overwhelmed and maybe you'll find something useful... a valuable resource for students, teachers, and school administrators...a compilation of Web 2.0 products grouped into two main categories: “Tools”; and “Office Applications”. Some more specific services include: organizers, gradebooks, research tools, document managers, diagrams, and more.Choice Learning