442 Posts from 2004

Blog Pile

Vultures Circling RSS

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As we predicted, the time is ticking on the young, naive open-ness of RSS; witness the gathering vultures circling overhead. Greed, chasing of a dollar, and even the smallest crack are an open invitation for the party-crashers who will usurp everything that is open and collaborative just for a few shiny pennies.

RSS: It’s Not Just for Bloggers Anymore

Yup, the viagra pushers are game too.

Is Ad-Supported RSS the Next Big Thing?

Next biggest things since pop-up porno? portals? push-technology?

RSS Is The New News “RSS (alternatively Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is the new way sites and blogs distribute content. You probably already know this. But here’s something you may not know: How to make money in RSS software.”

How virtuous, what an epitaph that would make.

Buy & Sell RSS Ads Place your ad in RSS feeds throughout the web. Reach users who read content in RSS aggregators.

What not just spit in their cereal bowl? Kick sand in their face?

Monetize your RSS feed. Maintain total control over the ads placed in your feed. Expose all of your content via premium RSS feeds.

Monetize this, eh?

Circling, circling, circling… here come the vultures.

More Vultures…

Blog Pile

Kicking the XServe

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As the blog turns… Since our MovableType move last month to a new server, a shiny Apple XServe, I’d been noticing that email notifications of trackbacks and comments reported not the IP address of the person who had sent the comment/trackback, but the IP address of the server itself. Hard to block spam roaches by […]

Blog Pile

PubSub Offers a Neat Twist on Eating RSS Feeds

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I’ve just taken a brief look at PubSub following some mentions at the RSS Winterfest. This service takes a different angle on aggregating feeds, almost “Downse-ian” like EduRSS in that you can track among thousands (they say) of RSS feeds for particular keyword searches. And the results are presented to you via RSS! PubSub lets […]

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Repositories Folly (FoD Syndrome)

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Previously on CDB, on the doubts of “Learning object repositories”… “The folly is that educators will give up some time to share information about resources they have created or used”. Now a different slant. I had lunch recently with a colleague working on a new grant funded project– creating discipline-specific “learning objects” and yes, their […]

Blog Pile

Furl Those URLs

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Just took a quick at Furl, a new web site for organizing bookmarks centrally (tip of the blog hat to Seb). The concept is not new at all, but I have found most of these sorts (e.g. BackFlip) too tedious to maintain. It’s gotta be simple. Bookmarks/favorites in web browsers have hardly evolved since Mosaic. […]

Blog Pile

Wah Hoo! Old LEE Software Glides on By

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One of my procrastinated pending projects was updating our Learning English Electronically (LEE) CD-ROM software, a still well-used English Grammar coded with Macromedia Director 5.0 in 1998 and updated last in 2000. I had read some time ago that Director Apps needed to be authored in at least version 8.5.1 to run in Windows XP […]

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MLX Package of the Week: The View from Where I Sit

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Trying another “new aiming to be regular” CDB feature, highlighting an interesting “”package” from the Maricopa Learning eXchange. This is is special because it is not a “reusable learning object” (RLO) but a ‘reusable idea object” (RIO?) Maybe we can breed a whole raft of meaningless acronyms, like RCA (re-usable classroom activity), RCS (reusable communication strategy), RCP (reusable class project), etc. But again I digress.

This one is also special because it comes from a long time veteran teacher, both a passionate teacher in class and online, someone with an uncanny knack to truly reach and touch her students, and someone who excels and doing effective things with rather simple but effective strategies. I recall these computer workshops Donna and I did back in the mid 1990s, typically in those computer classrooms where the participants were more or less huddled behind monitors- she brought out a classroom technique she called “mouse up” to get their attention. Simple, effective, (and fun). . But again I digress.

Anyhow, Donna has shared an introductory activity she uses as the first bulletin board assignment in her online classes. Rather than a dry, “introduce yourself, what you do, what are your interests” sort of thing, she has applied this activity called The View from Where I Sit (an in this vein of RIOs, she learned this one from another faculty member at a summer workshop).