November 22, 2008
Links for 2008-11-21 [del.icio.us]
- Learn, teach and earn in the MindBites how-to video marketplace
Video instructional marketplace and publishing platform * Learn from the how-to video marketplace * Teach what you know and earn money * Engage with a worldwide community - Twitter / schinker: "I've been podcasting sinc ...
I must've been having a good day; quite like this quote someone's taken from a podcast I was in: "I've been podcasting since the audio was in black and white."
via edu.blogs.com
HP's new multi-touch laptop makes use of Vista
From our better late than never dept: HP has followed up its multi-touch desktop PC with a multi-touch convertible Tablet PC, the HP TouchSmart tx2z. This lets you manipulate onscreen objects with your fingers, as with an Apple iPhone or HTC Touch etc.
HP first started selling touch-screen PCs running MS DOS back in the early 1980s, but the TouchSmart isn't based on HP technology. It's based on N-trig's DuoSense panel, which fits in front of any LCD. (DuoSense means both pen/stylus and touch/multi-touch.) Although Microsoft has said it will add multi-touch features to Windows 7, N-trig's is designed for Vista. The company says:
Windows Vista boasts unprecedented support for pen and touch input -- separately and simultaneously -- making it a natural fit for N-Trig dual mode technology.
Since N-trig's DuoSense digitizer requires only a standard HID USB driver, there's actually no need for additional drivers to enjoy native support for pen and touch in all Windows Vista applications. However, to ensure that N-Trig users enjoy the full range of pen and touch functionality, Windows Vista includes a pre-packaged ("in the box") native N-Trig UART driver.
In fact, our commitment to helping make Vista the OS of choice for mobile computing is such that Windows Vista also includes intelligent palm rejection algorithms developed in conjunction with N-trig.
Vista also supports pen operation and "flicks," and includes handwriting recognition.
The TouchSmart tx2z has a 12.1 inch screen, 2.1GHz AMD Turion X2 dual-core mobile processor, 3GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive $1,149.99. Systems will be available in the UK in January, starting at £799.
The form factor is a convertible design, familiar from many years of touch-screen Tablet PCs. You can use it like a conventional laptop, with a keyboard. You can also swivel the screen round and fold it over the keyboard to convert it into a tablet or slate computer, then use a stylus to hand-write on the screen. Or use your fingers.
Background: Bill Gates started promoting Tablet PCs in his Comdex keynote in November 2000, though companies like Go, Slate, and GRiD Systems were developing them in the 1980s. Windows for Pen Computing appeared in 1991, the Apple Newton in 1993, and the Palm Pilot in 1996. Microsoft had another go with Otto Berkes' ultramobile UMPC (aka Origami) which is now popular in education with machines like the Samsung Q1. But after 20 years, they still haven't entered the mainstream.
The huge success of Apple's iPhone has now given the tablet makers another chance. The question now is whether they can make a success of it.
November 21, 2008
YouTube is experimenting with high-definition clips and stereo sound
The mediocre quality of YouTube's video and sound hasn't stopped its fantastic success.
However, it now faces challenges from Hulu et al, and from its Google bosses, who must be wondering when it's going to start making some money. The answer, of course, is to follow Hulu and provide some good quality official content that it can put adverts against. So that's what it's doing.
Meghan Keane at Wired Blogs has posted some normal and HD videos of Where the Hell is Matt? and pointed out that:
YouTube has quietly started testing out real HD quality videos on a smattering of its content, a development that is getting attention from viewers in message boards and blog forums this week. The new format could be a big move for YouTube, as the video size is over 80MB, which means that they are probably the same H.264 encoded mp4 files available in the iTunes store.
As a shortcut to HD, where available, you can add &fmt=22 to the end of a YouTube video URL.
OK, you need a very fast connection and a nippy PC to exploit the HD format, but a growing number of people already have those.
The problem is that once you've seen and heard the HD version of a clip, the failings of the standard version become striking, even though you probably hadn't noticed them before. HD looks good, but it's making the rest of YouTube look bad.
New Gmail, just like the old Hotmail
This morning I noticed that my Gmail graphics have been upgraded so my mailbox now looks even more like Hotmail used to look a few years ago. As the Gmail blog put it:
We've also done a minor facelift to Gmail's default look to make it crisper and cleaner -- you might notice a few colors and pixels shifted around here and there.
So I immediately went to Settings, to click Themes, to try one or two of the 30 new themes that are being rolled out across Gmail servers. But it turns out I don't have Themes yet. Do you?
What would you remove from the internet
If there's one thing the internet loves, it's big ginger singers.
Numero uno, of course, is Rick Astley, but we shouldn't forget Simply Red's Mick Hucknall (very funny, but NSFW).
And now Axl Rose is joining the web's strawberry superstars, by releasing the latest Guns n' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, on MySpace. (yes, the Chinese Democracy that's been brewing since the Chinese invented fireworks).
I'm partial to a bit of Slash air guitar action now and then - but I can't help think that Axl's taken it all a bit far. Was he actually waiting for an entirely new music distribution model to bed in before he could finish the album? Couldn't he just take a lead from Metallica and the Beatles and stay away from my internets?
Calm down.
Anyway, all this is a very roundabout way of approaching this week's Friday Afternoon Question, which is:
If you could remove one thing from the internet, what would it be?
Best answer gets a free Dr Pepper.
Shortlisted for Best Education Website - Irish Web Awards
Liquid e-Learning has been shortlisted for an Irish Web Award - Best Education Website. Yay :)
How would you rate Google SearchWiki?
It's been coming for a while, but Google has launched its search listing recommendation system, SearchWiki.
Right now users who are logged in can push results up, or ban them from future listings (but only for themselves)... or they can leave comments attached to listings (which anyone else can see).
Here's a grab from a Guardian search I ran earlier - note the up arrow and cross icons.
Have you used it yet? What do you think? Useful? Pointless?
I'm very undecided - largely because, at the moment it's a very limited implementation. While I suppose it's not bad, for now the benefit is just limited to you... which seems to be a waste of the effort people will be putting in.
Why wouldn't Google expand it so that your recommendations helped inform the company's famous ranking algorithm? A number of reasons spring to mind: gaming the system and spamming are just two. But perhaps there's also a philosophical problem here - after all, on many occasions before we've heard about the company's blind faith in the machines, in the religion of automation.
But wouldn't improving search through human interaction undermine belief in the system? Shouldn't Google, with all its power and technical prowess, simply be able to build a better algorithm?
Of course, I might be getting a little over the top. Perhaps it's simply testing how people use the system before using it to harness the wisdom of crowds. But it'll certainly be interesting to see where this one goes - especially since, as we saw just yesterday, not every new idea from Mountain View makes it out alive.
Links for 2008-11-20 [del.icio.us]
- UK Villages Village Towns Communites England Scotland Wales Northern Ireland Urban, Suburban Country and Rural.
The national and local community website for every one of the 31,765 villages, towns, cities and suburbs in the UK.
via edu.blogs.com
Need help.
I often hear educators talking about “education needs to change” (I do it too). This is the case for the K-12, higher education, and corporate training/education markets.
As a small research project, I’d like to ask people to answer the following questions (on their blog, in YouTube, Seesmic, or wherever - please post a link in the comments section below):
- Does education need to change?
- Why or why not?
- If it should change, what should it become? How should education (k-12, higher, or corporate) look like in the future?
via elearnspace
E-Learn 2008
I don’t like powerpoint a whole lot. We don’t really have a good alternative for presentations. I’ve been experimenting with different approaches. Most recent is PersonalBrain, which I used for my presentation at E-Learn 2008 in Vegas today. The presentation is here.
via elearnspace
Moving to neutral tools and applications
Common Craft has produced a short explanatory video on Microsoft Live. The internet is starting to look like the desktop in the 80’s - numerous companies trying to mainstream new applications through a new centre. Microsoft integrated a variety of tools into its Office suite, making it possible for many new users to try tools that had each been unique. Working in a spreadsheet or word document became more seemless than when working with two different vendors. Now, the web is moving in that direction, with Google, Microsoft, and MySpace/Facebook all trying to do to the web what Microsoft did to the desktop. I’d like to see a world where any content works on any device…but I wonder if it will mature before someone has managed to lock in a good portion of the web in one application (or cloud).
via elearnspace
Comedy e-learning awards
Inspired choice
It started late, so most the guests were well oiled when he took to the stage after an introduction by the sponsor, the Daily Mail! Yes, the Daily Mail. He started by ribbing them mercilessly. His mother reads the Mail, which he described as a broadsheet for people with short arms, and he always knows when she’s read something awful in the Mail as she starts her sentence with ‘Well the thing that really frightens me is...’ (immigrants, Europe, labour politicians, yobs, youths, unemployed etc.) Lord Northcliffe founder of the Mail, famously said that he wanted to give people ‘a daily hate’. It became a running gag.
We then had him asking the audience where they came from, with a few choice ripostes:
West Country – you see that thing in the centre of the table (a candle) that’s fire, you don’t touch that.
Scotland – they’ll be begging for food at the border soon. The Celtic Tiger; mangy, smokes sixty a day, drinks shorts and eats chips.
The Paragon Hotel was called the Paradox Hotel and although he liked the ballroom ‘you’ve always got to worry when the foyer smells like old carpets’. Spot on with that one. The rooms were little better than doss house standard. It wasn’t advisable to walk on your room’s carpet, even with shoes. He asked us all to applaud anyone who tried to eat the poached pear dessert. They were so hard that spoons were bent trying to scoop bits off – the rubric pear, he quipped.
Winners
But his best material was kept for the winners. When he read out the shortlisted Royal Bank of Scotland and their programme ‘Understanding Business’, the entire ballroom exploded into laughter. RBS then actually won an award for another entry, and I swear that ten people got up on the stage – no wonder they’re losing money.
Then there was an award to the BBC for (I kid you not) ‘Safeguarding Trust’, more hilarity, then the BBC again with ‘Leadership Essentials’ and ‘Coaching for leaders’, our table was poorless with laughter. Don’t get me wrong the guys at the BBC do great stuff, but oh the irony. As he said, ‘sometimes the jokes just keep on writing themselves’. There was by now a curious correspondence between real world disaster stories and winning training. A statement was read from the judges that said they had awarded the BBC the award because it had been taken by 21,000 people, an astonishing take-up. True, Marcus said, he had also taken the programme, as it was compulsory. Even the BBC people were laughing like drains.
When a shortlisted NLP programme, made for the bank First Direct, was read out it felt like the 1990s. Surely this old nonsense has had its day? Reed Learning won Learning Organisation of the Year, taking us back to the 1980s, and the penultimate award seemed to be for best building, won by the no doubt fascinating, flipchart equipped Moller Training Centre. Suddenly it all felt like the 1970s.
However, it all ended on a high as Charles Jennings won the Outstanding Contribution to E-learning. Marcus was puzzled by the choice of James Brown’s Sex Machine when Charles walked to the stage, or is there more to Charles than meets the eye? And well done to the other two in this category – Laura Overton, tireless campaigner and Neil Lasher, who had a Grand Prix car on his stand in the exhibition.
My favourite gag of the evening was, ‘Only 36 shopping days to Christmas, except if you’re a bloke, then there’s only one.’ So congratulations to the organisers for a great night, a night when an industry learnt that it was OK to chuckle at itself. After staggering to bed at 3 am, I had to get up at 5.45 the next morning to catch a train - I was in dire need of Durham County Council's shortlisted 'Substance Misuse e-Learning Solution'.
November 20, 2008
With Students Flocking Online, Will Faculty Follow?
It really doesn’t have to be said, but I’ll do it anyway: we are in a climate of uncertainty. Awareness of economic issues (cost-cutting, layoffs) is high. Online learning has the potential to play a significant role in this climate. Trends indicate a growing move to online teaching and learning. This article asks: With Students Flocking Online, Will Faculty Follow?: “As online courses’ popularity continues to rise, many administrators are struggling with a steep learning curve, one whose ultimate end point is far from being determined. Questions such as how such courses should be taught (by adjuncts or full-time faculty?) often depend on institutions’ missions (expand access or generate extra revenue?) and can lead to clashes and tensions between proponents of online learning and those who remain wedded to the traditional classroom.”
My question is directed at institutions: Are our institutions (and systems) of education ready to embrace online learning strategically and more than an add-on?
via elearnspace
Living and Learning with New Media: Findings from a 3-year Ethnographic Study of Digital Youth
For the last three years, I've been a part of a team of researchers at Berkeley and USC focused on digital youth practices. This project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, brought together 28 different researchers (led by Mimi Ito and my now deceased advisor Peter Lyman) to examine different aspects of American youth life. As many of you know, I focused on normative teen practices and the ways in which teens engaged in networked publics. We are now prepared to share our findings:
- Two page summary (pdf)
- White Paper - Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project (pdf)
- Book - Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media
Already, write-ups of our research have hit the press:
- Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing (NY Times)
- Time online teaches kids important skills, study finds (Mercury News)
- ... and many more
Needless to say, we're excited by our research and uber excited by the coverage that we're getting. For years, we've been finding that youth do amazingly positive things with the technology that they use. Yet, during that time, we've watched as parents and news media continue to focus solely on what is negative. We're hoping that this report will help adults get a decent sense of what's going on.
For those who are only familiar with my research, I strongly encourage you to check out the report to get a better sense of the context in which I've been working. I focus primarily on "friendship-driven practices" but the "interest-driven practices" that motivate creative production, gaming, and all sorts of user generated content are tremendously important. I focus primarily on what happens when teens "hang out" but there's also amazing learning moments when they mess around and geek out with one another.
The book is currently available only in draft form but an updated print version will be available in the future. In the meantime, enjoy, and feel free to ask questions!!
Facebook MySpace youth learning technology MacArthurvia apophenia
New MacArthur Study: Must Read for Educators
So here is the money quote from the just released study from the MacArthur Foundation titled “Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project” (pdf):
New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in classroom setting. Youth respect one another’s authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults. Their efforts are also largely self-directed, and the outcome emerges through exploration, in contrast to classroom learning that is oriented toward set, predefined goals.
I would take a few thousand words to unpack just that paragraph in terms of what the implications are for schools, and if we read that without some sense of both fear and excitement, I just don’t think we’re paying attention.
And please, send your administrators and IT folks this message in 42-point bold type:
Social and recreational new media use as a site of learning. Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online, youth are picking up basic social and technological skills they need to fully participate in contemporary society. Erecting barriers to participation deprives teens of access to these forms of learning. Participation in the digital age means more than being able to access “serious” online information and culture. Youth could benefit from educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational institutions. (Emphasis mine.)
Finally, sit down, and mull this concept over:
Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers or adults, and notions of expertise and authority have been turned on their heads. Such learning differs fundamentally from traditional instruction and is often framed negatively by adults as a means of “peer pressure.” Yet adults can still have tremendous influence in setting “learning goals,” particularly on the interest-driven side, where adult hobbyists function as role models and more experienced peers.
Let me try to make a few points that come quickly to mind.
- Kids respect other’s knowledge online because their knowledge and expertise is transparent in ways they haven’t been in the past. The study says that kids “geek out” by finding those who share their interests both inside and outside of their face to face groups. What a surprise.
- They are more motivated to learn from their peers because they can connect around their shared passions, most of which the adults in the room don’t share.
- They are self-directed because they can be. They can get what they need when they need it.
- Their learning is “knowmadic”, as is most learning in the real world outside of school. We’re not linear, test assessed learners once we leave the system, are we?
- We have to be more willing to support this type of learning rather than prevent it, but, as always, we have to understand it for ourselves as well.
So stop reading this and go read the report, and let these questions hang:
New role for education? Youths’ participation in this networked world suggests new ways of thinking about the role of education. What would it mean to really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available through online resources and networks? Rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of it as a process guiding youths’ participation in public life more generally? Finally, what would it mean to enlist help in this endeavor from engaged and diverse publics that are broader than what we traditionally think of as educational and civic institutions?
What do you think?
via Weblogg-ed
Yahoo adds Glue to make search more useful
Way back in May, I posted Yahoo tries Glue in India, which said: "Most big search companies are experimenting with the idea of comprehensive search pages that show lots of different results -- text, images, video etc -- instead of just text. Google calls it Universal Search. Yahoo's is Glue, and a beta version has just been launched in India."
I'm sure that you have been on the edge of your seat, brimming with anticipation, ever since.
Well, you may not have too long to wait. Glue is now available at http://glue.yahoo.com/ and TechCrunch says it's "rolling out to the US market this evening." TechCrunch says:
It's also a little different than the Indian version, and includes a number of resources beyond what India's version of Glue offers. On a typical query, content from Wikipedia, Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Answers, blog search results (from Google) and YouTube videos are shown.
It has also been reduced to two columns.
However, the system is doomed as it stands. Type in a word for which there is no Glue page and it just says: "There is no Glue Page for this topic." D'oh. If Yahoo can't build Glue pages on the fly, why bother?
Storm on the web as BlackBerry approaches point of sale
We've been getting lots of traffic for Richard Wray's Hands on with the BlackBerry Storm, published on October 8, but there's a flood of new hands-on reviews with the Storm going on sale in the US tomorrow.
The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg has a review+video (BlackBerry's Storm Presses Into the Touch-Phone Fray) that refers to the iPhone and Google/HTC G1. Wired News gives the Storm 6 out of 10 in RIM's First Touchscreen Device Almost Eclipses the iPhone. ZD Net offers Hands On: The BlackBerry Storm, and is undecided. PC World isn't all that impressed, and goes for BlackBerry's Storm: Awkward and Disappointing. PC Magazine has a handy list of Your Top 20 Questions, Answered.
It might also be handy to have summaries written from the two main points of view: (1) People who actually use a BlackBerry for business and might be tempted to upgrade/downgrade from a keyboard/keypad to a touch screen; (2) ordinary consumers who have a choice between the Storm, iPhone, G1, HTC Touch and various other devices.
Well, there's also a (3) for people who think you should be able to use a phone with one hand, think it should actually be optimised for voice calls, and wonder why anybody would pay three times the price of a Nokia for a fashionable bit of tat. But they're probably not interested in reading Storm reviews anyway.
Google Lively sentenced to death
It's only a few months since Google announced Lively, an avatar-based system and one of those 20% projects from Google Labs. Well, it looked more like a knock-off of IMVU, and IMVU's boss Cary Rosenzweig said Google had tried to buy the company then hired away one of its co-founders. Whatever the background, Google Lively flopped, and The Official Google Blog now says Lively no more:
despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.
These are tough times and it's no surprise to see Google cutting a failed project. But it inevitably raises the question: What else could go? The awful Knol must be top of most people's lists. Google Video looks surplus to requirements. Orkut could perhaps do with a mercy killing. Google Sites? Google Base? Notebook? Does anybody actually use those?
busuu.com - another social network for language learners
busuu.com is yet another social network for language learners. It's a start-up based in Madrid and is still in beta. Users can access all content for free at the moment, but there's no indication of how much it might cost when it leaves beta behind.
So what's on offer? Well, busuu.com offers the usual big-hitters: English, Spanish, German, and French.
I have to admit that one of the reasons I'm reviewing this site ahead of so many others in my 'backblog' is because busuu.com is soooooo pretty. It captivated me visually. I wanted to get in and learn more about the site. And busuu.com made that easy.
It's simple to sign up. You're not browbeaten into giving away too much information - just enough to be useful.
Once you're in you've got four main tabs to navigate with:
- home
- friends
- inbox
- busuutalk
The friends, inbox and busuutalk tabs are self explanatory.
On the homepage you can see your friends, online users, recommended units, 'winners' and are prompted to take part in activities. Or you can click a tree (oh go see...it's pretty) to access the 'language garden' of your target language.
Language Garden
The busuu.com language garden lets you add units to your learning journey. You can study up to 5 units at a time. The units are pretty standard e-learning with a five step process to learning:
1 Vocabulary
Here you learn key vocabulary by watching a slideshow with audio and text. Hardly high-tech, but OK.
2 Dialog
Here you listen to an audio file with a transcript of your target language.
Alongside this, you can see and listen to an English translation.
After this, you test your knowledge with three multiple choice questions.
3 Writing
Here you can write a piece of text and submit it for peer review. Text entries are reviewed and rated.
4 Speak
In this section, you can speak to native and fluent speakers. I'm antisocial, so I only checked the feature out for how it looks - I didn't attempt to speak to anyone! Luckily, just looking completed this section for me, so I didn't have to do anything ;)
5 Test
Here's where you'll get a multiple choice picture and sound file quiz - with some very strange audio feedback in the form of cheerful or very ominous piano notes!
THE END
After you've completed a whole unit, it disappears from your learning garden and you can add another unit.
busuu.com - so what works and what doesn't?
The e-learning is not very high-tech. The slideshow method of learning a word and image by viewing and listening to about 20 words at a time doesn't really work for me. Our working memory can grasp about 7 items at a time. I'm not sure how a complete beginner could remember so many words all at one go.
Another problem with this type of picture, text and audio-based learning is that it's hard to tell what some of the images are. I ended up getting answers wrong in the test section just because I couldn't remember which image meant what. You end up trying to associate the images and audio file as much as you try to learn the meaning. It's hard to get around this.
Like a lot of the other sites I've explored busuu.com doesn't really let you practice half enough. It's a quick introduction to language but I don't know that you get to do enough for the new knowledge to be retained.
It doesn't offer one-to-one lessons with qualified teachers.
Verdict?
There's nothing very new here. And there's a lot of competition in this space now. But there's nothing terribly wrong with what's on offer at busuu.com. The site is pretty. It provides decent e-learning. It doesn't force the learner into linear learning, which is great - it's really good to be able to select bite-sized chunks of learning. It seems like a friendly site...a place you could make friends. However, I see busuu.com very much as a support to classroom-based learning. It seemed like a good way to revise or refresh knowledge, to test where you are.
Why are they called Busuu?
Apparently Busuu is a language spoken in Cameroon. A study conducted in the 80s showed that only eight people still spoke this language.
Links for 2008-11-19 [del.icio.us]
- Twitter / Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (or Dostoevsky) was a Russian novelist and writer of fiction whose works include Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov
via edu.blogs.com
YouChoose: treadmills, tennis and lifelike robots
Version 2 adds a roof and engine
On first viewing, this is the pinnacle of satire: a human-powered treadmill that can be used outdoors, because it's got wheels. Except we're assured it's real. So is it the General Motors rescue plan?
Wimbledon of the future? No
An amazing blast from the past, and arguably the second-ever videogame: "tennis", played on an oscilloscope, written at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958. New bits, please!
Welcome, human underlings!
"Jules", from the Bristol Robotics Lab, has 34 motors, rubber skin and is scarily real. Philip K Dick, where are you?
Got a technology or games video we should know about? Tell us in the comments!
Should Microsoft buy Yahoo Search, or just hire it?
There's been some discussion about whether Microsoft still wants to buy Yahoo's search business, but it may not have to. Maybe it can just hire it away. Microsoft has already picked up Qu Li, Yahoo's top search scientist, and a memo leaked to Valleywag says it has hired Sean Suchter as well. Valleywag's tipster says:
Today is the end for Yahoo Search. Sean Suchter just left for Microsoft. Everyone in the office is shocked. I've been on the Yahoo Search team for a while and he is the one key executive that it all depends on. If Microsoft has convinced him to leave and join them, they won't need to buy Yahoo Search. We will just all join Microsoft anyway. I am definitely going to send him my resume.
Suchter (German for "searcher") used to work for Inktomi, which Yahoo bought in 2003 in order to get into the search business. He probably doesn't bleed as purple as Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, and he obviously doesn't have Yang's 1990s anti-Microsoft hang-ups.
The memo to the Yahoo Search Team from Tuoc Luong says: "Unfortunately, I have to give some bad news to you. Sean Suchter has resigned," and describes him as "a Gibraltar rock." Basically it's a plea to the rest of the team to stay. It says:
I came here to take on Google because I believe Yahoo above all is best positioned to take the battle to Google. I think we're on the right path to changing the tide and would love to see everyone make the journey but I respect Sean's personal decision. I'm committed to continue the battle against Google as long as Yahoo positions Search to be competitive (and I believe we are). I hope each and all of you feel the same way and stand with me to battle Google.
But Yang's eagerness to do a deal with Google could be taken as a sign that he was willing to compromise on Yahoo Search to deal with the New Evil Empire. By contrast, Microsoft looks as though it has the will and the money to continue the fight, as hopeless as it looks.
One thing's for sure: it would be a lot cheaper for Microsoft to hire Yahoo's search talent than to buy its market share. But whether Yahoo's search talent is capable of turning around Microsoft's failing Live Search is another matter entirely. It doesn't look like a good bet to me.
Iranian 'blogfather' arrested, say reports
For several years now, Hossein Derakhshan has been at the forefront of Iran's burgeoning blogging scene. Better known as Hoder he's been writing about the country and its politics online since - and, from time to time, he's also contributed to the Guardian.
After living in Canada for some time, he recently headed back to Iran - where now, it seems, he's been arrested and accused of being an Israeli spy. Details remain unclear; the only report appears to be from Jahan News, but a summary here gives the flavour of that report:
According to Jahan News, which is close to Iran's Intelligence community, Hoessein Derakhshan, the Iranian blogger who visited Israel in 2007 from Canada, has been arrested in Tehran.
According to what the article says are "credible sources", Hossein has admitted to spying for Israel. His confessions are said to include some "intricate" points.
We know that Iran has been clamping down on internet use again recently, blocking millions of websites in its attempt to keep dissenting voices out of circulation.
Brian Whitaker's already over on Comment is Free, while the issue is also being picked up by Global Voices Online and on a dedicated Facebook group.
Let's hope for the best.
November 19, 2008
Homeschooling goes mainstream
Education is being enlarged. More choices, more options. F2F, augmented, blended, online learning, etc are enlarging options for learners and educators to deal with individual, personal needs and contexts. Much like content is fragemented from large holding structures (newspapers, books, courses), the entire education system itself is breaking into muliple specialized choices. For example - homeschooling goes mainstream: “Home education is now being done by so many different kinds of people for so many different reasons that it no longer makes much sense to speak of it as a political movement.”
via elearnspace
High-Speed Internet Coming to Africa
I’ve been suffering connection issues (see my post here). Earlier this year, I was in Accra for Elearning Africa. The connection issues were significant there as well. Participants at the conference knew the importance of connectivity in advancing African economies. Yet the problem was/is huge. Many areas don’t have electricity, never mind internet connectivity. Still, news like this - High-Speed Internet Coming to Africa - is encouraging. While foreign aid and development work are critical for Africa, the long term challenge is one of providing individuals with the tools and opportunities to shape their own future.
via elearnspace
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