Group items tagged

The Zenbox Project's main objective is to provide easy access to a Linux-based graphical desktop environment to blind users of notebooks.

"Open education" matters because it's already happening all around us. .. although it may not be mainstream yet, it is very real. The models continue to grow and combine with the ethos of open access and the methods of open source.The choice for us, as individuals and educational organisations, is in how we respond.

"Ning announced repeatedly that it would delete free networks whose creators had not paid for one of its new pricing plans by midnight Aug. 20. On Aug. 21, however, Ning extended this deadline to August 30. Here's the announcement of this extension on its Help page: Deadline for Selecting a Ning Plan Extended to August 30, 2010 A number of Network Creators, particularly those based outside the United States, have requested more time to arrange for payment and make the right decision on a plan for their network. As a result, we have extended the deadline for selecting one of the three new plans (Ning Mini, Plus and Pro) to August 30, 2010. Beginning on this date, we will block access to any free Ning Network that isn't subscribed to one of the three plans. Please let us know if we can help, or if you have questions or comments. Thank you!"

A wonders about free networks being stull online. Exchange with Thunder X. Eric Suesz:\n"Hi, Alex. All free Ning Networks are now locked and can't be accessed. At some point, the space the data takes up on our servers will be overwritten. There's no plan to send you an email when that happens."

A very odd affirmation by Ning's Eric Suesz

On July 24-25 2008, the World Blind Union (WBU) and KEI convened an experts meeting to consider a possible WIPO Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons.

Stated more succinctly as a "general theory of learning in the web era," to borrow a phrase from Jim Shimabukuro, computer technology (e.g., $10 computers) + access to the digital storehouse of human knowledge + social computing + cognitive tools + teaching and learning practices consistent with the learning sciences + leadership to catalyze change = transformation of education.

Welcome to Camera Obscura, the womb without a view http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/blind.html ... (skip to detailed site map)

By not supporting medium-sized deployments of, say 30 to 5000 laptops (a typical order from a school or an educational authority) the OLPC Foundation betrays an instinct for paternalism. We have too much paternalism in education already, and the technologies in Sugar were designed to give children democratic access to education.

I think we should permanently cut off the internet access of any company that sends out three erroneous copyright notices. Three strikes and you're out, mate.

The celebrated openness of the Internet -- network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic -- is quietly losing powerful defenders. Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

By Claude Almansi and Jan Schwartz October 3rd, 2011 "Scoop.it is a new application that is still in beta, although it's fairly easy to get an invite to join. Claude Almansi found the app, sent an email about it to a list serv, which prompted Jan Schwartz to join. We've only been at it for a month or so, but already both of us have found some good information that we otherwise would have missed, and we are helping to spread the good work about education technology and change. First, some information about Scoop.it that Claude dug up. The web service was conceived in France, launched in December 2010 and its web site is in English. It's a social site for sharing news events and articles via subscription. Even if you don't subscribe, Scoop.it can be used to look for information items selected by others on a given theme via its public search engine. You do need to subscribe if you want to create and curate your own topic on a given theme or subject. For example, Jan was particularly excited to find a blog written as a result of a live chat sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education, which talked about the topic of Cathy Davidson's recent book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn. There were four panelists and 1500 participants on the chat and one of them, David Palumbo-Liu, wrote a blog about his experience, which was very different than Jan's and so an interesting read for perspective. She would not have found that blog if not for Scoop.it. Claude curates a site for Multimedia Accessibility. Currently Jan is 'scooping' under the title Technology for Teaching and Learning . You can curate as many different topics as you like."

So hereby I want to announce that the code which was/is known as Swiss Bundestrojan/Superintendent trojan variant will be free, open, available and accessible to anyone who respects the GPL, and who is interested in the structure and construction of trojan horses and who is also curious what the root of all the rumours was.

MediaMosa is a Full Featured, Webservice Oriented Media Management and Distribution platform. MediaMosa and VP-Core model MediaMosa is a state-of-the-art, scalable Middleware Media Distribution Platform and facilitates access to, and usage of (shared) storage capacity, metadata databases, transcoding- and streaming servers.

This column argues that the proposed settlement of this lawsuit is a privately negotiated compulsory license primarily designed to monetize millions of orphan works. It will benefit Google and certain authors and publishers, but it is questionable whether the authors of most books in the corpus (the "dead souls" to which the title refers) would agree that the settling authors and publishers will truly represent their interests when setting terms for access to the Book Search corpus.

Amazon's new world-beating gadget isn't the savior of the e-book, genre. It's a proprietary, market-protecting anomaly in a world of increasingly open standards and accessible media. Shame on you, Amazon. (...) The thing that e-books need, I'm convinced, is PDF. Secure, reflowable, customizable PDF. The reader devices need to be easy on the eyes, lightweight, and allow users to shunt any PDF to it, whether it's a specially formatted e-book or not. If I am paying $300+ for essentially a document storage device on steroids, I need to be able to put my own junk on it, too. (...)You might be lining your own pockets and making a few sales, Mr. Bezos, but you're also promoting confusion in the marketplace and causing division in the e-book space at a time when everyone else is pushing for convergence and open standards. Thanks for nothing.

All you really need to know about the dangers of digital commodification you learned in kindergarten.\n\nThink back. Remember swapping your baloney sandwich for Jell-o pudding? Now, imagine handing over your sandwich and getting just a spoon.\n\nThat's one trade you'd never make again.\n\nYet that's just what millions of Americans are doing every day when they read "books" on Kindle, Amazon's e-reading device. In our rush to adopt new technologies, we have too readily surrendered ownership in favor of its twisted sister, access.

The author of the software in question, titled Kindlepid.py, is listed as Igor Skochinsky, a hardware hacker who performed a remarkable analysis of the Kindle and described in December 2007 how he was able to gain access to the device. It's unclear why Amazon waited so long to respond with a legal threat, and why the company targeted MobileRead.com: Skochinsky's original blog post about Kindlepid.py is dated December 2007, and the copy of the Kindlepid.py software hosted at the Googlepages.com Web-page posting site is still available for download at http://skochinsky.googlepages.com/azw-0.2.zip

Sequel Pro is a fast, easy-to-use Mac database management application for working with MySQL databases. Sequel Pro gives you direct access to your MySQL databases on local and remote servers.

"DICE aims at providing support to teaching and non-teaching staff of Swiss higher education institutions in copyright management of digital content for eLearning. The goal of DICE is: (a) Increasing awareness of copyright issues related with digital content, in order to provide sound knowledge and eliminate unreasonable fears. (b) Developing fundamental skills in intellectual property and copyright management for higher education staff (e.g. understanding basic rules applicable in Switzerland, using Creative Commons licenses, etc.) (c) Increase the readiness and ability of authors to publishing open access resources (aka Open Educational Resources)"

A PDF file equipped with well-formed tags may be "reflowed" to fit different page or screen widths, and will display well on handheld devices. Tagged PDF files also work better with the screen-reader devices used by many blind and other disabled users. In most cases, tags are necessary in order to make a PDF file comply with Section 508.