General
In Leicester Square
{{file:15010}} Meeting with some very important people, and using Four Communications' super-fast wireless hotspot. Brr, it's a little bit chilly though ...
Latest
General
Blackboard patent reconsidered; next, all software patents please
Blackboard's patent is being reconsidered. The prior art built up following the original lawsuit and presumably cited in this request is not inconsiderable, so this is good news for Moodle and the like. I'd be very surprised if the patent wasn't withdrawn. Of course,
General
Hillary Clinton asks Yahoo; wealthy, middle class Americans reply
http://theinternetispeople.com/2007/01/29/hillary-clinton-asks-yahoo-wealthy-middle-class-americans-reply/ As reported over at Bokardo, a couple of days ago Hillary Clinton posted the following question to Yahoo Answers: At the time of writing there are over 37,000 replies to this - something I find
General
Software woes, software heroes
We made a decision today to scrap the email groupware software we'd been using - SproutIt Mailroom - and move over to something hosted on our own servers. We'd struggled with some of their features in the past, but the straw that broke the camel's back
General
Elgg.net upgrade complete!
After an easy upgrade process, Elgg.net is back online. We've recoded the way the front page works on the backend - which won't make much difference to you, but makes maintaining the site much easier for us. So what can you expect from this upgrade? The
General
K-12 usage
Paul Allison has uploaded a couple of really fascinating videos of K-12 students using the Elgg site on Youthvoices.net over at Youtube. Here's the latest. Students are creating podcasts, embedding videos, writing blog posts and more. {{video:http://www.youtube.com/v/VdyM3oke2tE}} Exciting stuff!
General
The impact of open source on ICT in the EU
Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU (PDF link) is worth a read, particularly for page 216: It is obviously likely to have a strong impact on the future usage of FLOSS products and the
General
Elgg development community
I'm really happy with the way the Elgg development mailing list has been shaping up lately - so far this month we've had lots of discussion of everything from how we do the Elgg.net front page through LaTeX plugins and speed enhancement. You can sign up
General
Green my Apple
Apple has some of the least forward thinking environmental policies in the industry - whereas manufacturers like Dell offer recycling schemes and have reduced usage of known toxins, the folks in Cupertino continue regardless. Computers are becoming one of the bigger polluters, and it's nice to see that Greenpeace
General
What's on your development wishlist?
Over at the Yahoo Developer Network, they're asking members what's on their wishlist for 2007. Some people are asking for better or limitless APIs; some are asking for how-to screencasts; others for free T-shirts. My request would be for a standard, open API developed
General
The wisdom of classes: getting more out of educational networks
If you've ever mistyped a Google search request, you've probably seen the "did you mean?" prompt - a really useful touch that most of us use all the time, usually without thinking about it. It would take Google a very long time indeed to process
General
The Secret Life of Machines: The Word Processor
{{video:http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-3318912723598074205&hl=en}} This video is kind of quaint now (it dates from 1992), but I was delighted to discover that Tim Hunkin's Secret Life of Machines TV series is now completely available on Google Video. It's