Category Archives: technology

Worthy of Support?

Posted on 2010-11-04 by alan

Telus CEO touts ‘Switzerland’ approach to content.

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What’s Wrong With Usage-Based Billing?

Posted on 2010-11-03 by alan

The folks at OpenMedia.ca are concerned about the recent CRTC ruling to allw Bell to apply usage-based-billing to independent ISPs. But I don’t se the problem. So long as everyone gets the same speed of sevice regardless of data type … Continue reading →

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TV vs Internet

Posted on 2010-10-09 by alan

This article at the Tyee addresses the broader issue of whether ‘Net Neutrality’ is enough if the physical network used by the internet is being shared with competing services owned by the owners of the infrastructure.

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Artificial Leaves from North Carolina

Posted on 2010-10-03 by alan

Thanks to reader Colleen McGuire for pointing out  this interesting development. It does look promising if it can be developed further, although as one of the researchers said, “We do not want to overpromise at this stage, as the devices … Continue reading →

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Network Environments for Personal Learning

Posted on 2010-09-24 by alan

In week 2, the focus of #PLENK2010 shifted from the basic terminology, and emphasis on user “client-side” tools to the “server-side” area of support tools

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myPE(N)L ctd

Posted on 2010-09-24 by alan

So here is my current Personal Environment for Networked Learning (which I think of as the interface with physically remote people and information):

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My PE(N)L

Posted on 2010-09-24 by alan

is a mess (like this post) because my data streams are not well integrated.

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PLENK Feeds

Posted on 2010-09-16 by alan

My Sept 13 post on PLEvsPLN does show up in the link from the #PLENK2010  Feeds List, but never seems to have been captured by the aggregator for the Daily.  So I’m giving it another go here just to see … Continue reading →

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PLENK Week 1

Posted on 2010-09-13 by alan

Week 1 of the #PLENK2010 course on Personal Learning Environments,  Networks and Knowledge is devoted mainly to getting used to the terminology.

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More Defense of Links

Posted on 2010-08-31 by alan

Scott Rosenberg (who I was led to by Crawford Killian) shares my skepticism re the “studies” cited by Nick Carr. And what is more, he actually took the trouble to read them carefully and point out some of the nonsense … Continue reading →

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CRTC consultation on Obligation to Serve

Posted on 2010-08-10 by alan

For what it’s worth, here is the main point I made in my submission today: with regard to the question about ensuring access for all Canadians, I said: CRTC should set national rate caps for broadband access via both telephone … Continue reading →

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@maferarenas on microblogging and learning

Posted on 2010-08-10 by alan

My linking to this is evidence for @Downes of more real interesting learning from #CritLit2010. But it’s not just the shape of the network that’s important here; it’s also the semantic content of what we are linking about. (If we … Continue reading →

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Is Google Evil?

Posted on 2010-08-09 by alan

No this isn’t about the Verizon thing; it’s something completely different. I was looking at both Feedblitz and Google’s Feedburner as tools for offering email subscription service, but despite claims in the help files on both sites that Google is … Continue reading →

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New Web Host

Posted on 2010-08-08 by alan

For some time I have been looking forward to the arrival of WordPress v3 which, among other things, enables easily setting up a separate blog for the CMR website. But to install it I needed my host to run a … Continue reading →

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Mythical Myths – #1: People read on the web

Posted on 2010-07-24 by alan

Many of the items in this list of usability myths are genuine myths, but the very first one is not. There are two reasons that “People read on the web” is not a myth (by which I mean a widely … Continue reading →

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Assessing Learning in #CritLit2010

Posted on 2010-07-22 by alan

Stephen Downes post on Semantics at Half an Hour: Having Reasons is devoted largely to the issue of how to establish the well-foundedness aspect of knowledge as well-founded true belief. A large part of the discussion was devoted to the … Continue reading →

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CritLit2010

Posted on 2010-07-20 by alan

#CritLit2010 is now over. I enrolled in this largely out of curiosity about what it would entail and in the knowledge that my travel plans for subsequent weeks would make it difficult to devote much time to it.  I was … Continue reading →

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Categories, Links, and Tags

Posted on 2010-06-28 by alan

Both Heli Nurmi and MCMorgan have commented on the CritLit2010 week 4 reading from Clay Shirky Shirky: Ontology is Overrated — Categories, Links, and Tags. I can’t help feeling that the idea that search based on content and tags will … Continue reading →

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Does the Internet Make You Smarter?

Posted on 2010-06-11 by alan

I was led to this by a #CritLit2010 Tweet from Ruth Howard. In it Clay Shirky responds to Nick Carr and others who worry that “the internet is making us dumber”. But I think to some extent Shirky misidentifies the … Continue reading →

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Collateral Murder

Posted on 2010-06-09 by alan

Arrest over leaked video of US gunship attack – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). The video really is shocking – especially since nothing I could see (except the camera) looked remotely like a weapon to me.  But the former soldier … Continue reading →

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