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A source of some open text books with a interesting back story that should act as a warning about open--they are all now ex-open text books. After 2012 the publisher decided to abandon the CC/open textbook model and shifted the licensing on all their books. However, you can not revoke a CC license retroactively, so copies of the books downloaded prior to the change are still CC. But if the publisher no longer provides access to them, they disappear from CC circulation and access--luckily in this case, some one saved the CC versions and makes them available on this website. thanks!

Seriously useful! Indeed!

Wow, this collection is extensive, and the content seems good too! I'm so glad that someone was motivated enough to make these available according to their original licenses -- but it feels a bit bittersweet as well they had to resort to guerilla tactics to keep them available. It does make me wonder -- why did the publishing company decide to start charging for their textbooks? Was the previous model unprofitable?

Text from 2011, still extremely timely, about privacy. The author, professor of Law, deconstructs the "nothing to hide" argument that says that we should not be scared to disclose private activities or information when we do nothing wrong.

"With regard to individual rights,.... there exists a private domain in man which should not be regulated or violated. This realm constitutes what is deepest, highest, and most valuable in the individual human being." http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Younkins/Social_Cooperation,_Flourishing,_and_Happiness.shtml

Privacy off course matters.It is right that if I have not done anything wrong then why should I hide it. On other hand we can not share our family relationship information with anyone.

In an article published in Psychology Today, US psychologist and business administrator Steve Albrecht argues that companies are violating freedom of expression with policies on tattoos and piercings, claiming that they want their employees to appear professional. "Doctors, teachers, lawyers, brain surgeons, astrophysicists, cops, fire-fighters and grandmothers have tattoos," Albrecht said.

nowadays most people gladly tattoo themselves to add to their image as indelible touch, but it is worth remembering that sometimes the image is nothing but work everything. So, it is better do not risk a career.

Who owns the Data or the question should be, who is manipulating the Data? The article by Alistair Croll on who owns the Data asks big questions but fails short to highlight the fact that there is someone out there manipulating the well intended, innocent data into their own profit motive agendas. Many times, I have received emails, phone calls and SMS from sales people trying to sell me something. How they got my contact details is definitely my guess that someone is busy manipulating the data, I gave away for profit motives. At the end of the article the writer makes an opinion that, we are using the internet for free? Which I disagree, because our data makes and runs the internet. Without our data, the internet will not be the internet. Without our data on Facebook, facebooks or twitter will be blank, no value and worthless. If companies are paying people to participate in surveys and opinions, then it means our free data we upload on the internet, facebook and twitter is a payment for us to use the internet. After all we have to pay to the internet service providers for us to access to use the internet, and face book. Or someone is even suppose to pay for our data, in fact we have made things easy for the marketing people who now just sit behind their laptops and manipulate our free given data for their own consumptions. Or maybe I should console myself that, since the article is old, maybe someone has answered my question?

A mi me pareció que el artículo señala dos puntos centrales, aunque resolver el tema es una empresa peliaguda. El asunto de lo gratuito en un sistema basado en la ganancia y la capacidad de aprovechar los resquicios que abren las situaciones nuevas y una buena dosis de desorientación generalizada: 1. As we use the Internet for "free," we have to remember that if we're not paying for something, we're not the customer. We are in fact the product being sold - or, more specifically, our data is. 2. The important question isn't who owns the data. Ultimately, we all do. A better question is, who owns the means of analysis? Because that's how, as Brand suggests, you get the right information in the right place. The digital divide isn't about who owns data - it's about who can put that data to work. Tal vez, como menciona natashasana, el problema sea más complejo, y reducir la manipulación al negocio deje temas relavantes fuera. Y la información que usan/manipulan es la que todos aportamos. Cierto, pero no todos la usamos o aprovechamos de la misma forma.

Considering digital identities, here's an interesting article over a new form of data privacy: our health. As health devices (i.e. smart watches) become more available and mainstream we should consider what type of data we want 'floating' around the internet such as our weights/BMIs or whatever other personal information the health device may obtain. This is one issue that the increase in technology and social communication has brought to us (not entirely a bad thing)…more personal data becoming easily accessible for advertisers. "This week, Apple has updated its privacy policy to try and ensure that developers don't market personal healthcare data to advertisers and brokers. The company is betting big on its new HealthKit platform, part of iOS 8. It gives developers a set of APIs to share their apps' data with Apple's […]"

The importance of companies´ transparency before giving personal information. Alessandro Acquisti shares a really interesting study about online privacy.

"[W]e use open source software in our solutions and will use open source software in the future. From time to time, we may face claims against companies that incorporate open source software into their products, claiming ownership of, or demanding release of, the source code, the open source software and/or derivative works that were developed using such software, or otherwise seeking to enforce the terms of the applicable open source license."

Citizen journalism refers to a wide range of activities in which everyday people contribute information or commentary about news events. People behind the citizen journalism can range from News Company to a normal citizen writing about anything they wish to share with the world. How they wish share it is up to them. They may use blogs, videos, among other social medias. The significance of citizen journalism is that they may share things that people may not know about or may share things that other "professional" sources are not willing to talk about. However, there are downsides to citizen journalism, such as reliability and validity. This site has everything you need to know about Citizen Journalism.

The resource is good. Citizen journalism is a resource that everyone can join and contribute to. However, not everyone can and is willing to join it. This is a pity of citizen journalism. on the other hand, like what is above, there are problems about reliability and validity

Due to rising prices of printed textbooks, majority of higher universities are working with publishing companies to come up with a plan. Check out the program they have come with.

This model of education would be very difficult to establish but it will save a huge amount of trees all over the world. I PADs as full text books for students is on of my favorite.

BC Open Textbooks is an initiative started by the province of British Columbia in Canada. It is open textbooks adapted and created by BC faculty. It's difficult to tell which texts are complete and ready for use as Tony Bates incomplete text that I created another post about appears on the same page with complete texts (eg Chemistry, Biology Geography.) All the texts can be modified through Creative Commons licensing. This project has been creating concern for publishers who stand to loose business in BC and other provinces if the texts get adopted outside of BC. Initially, the project was focused on creating "a collection of open textbooks aligned with the top 40 highest-enrolled subject areas in the province. A second phase was announced in the spring of 2014 to add 20 textbooks targeting trades and skills training." Initially they looked for existing Creative Commons books they could adapt and they adapted 8 textbooks. From inception to fall 2014, 2244 students have used their open texts for a savings of $353,000 or $157 per student. The aim is to reach 200,000 students annually so they are at .6% and save each $900-$1500/year, still quite a way to go. Wondering how much this project is costing taxpayers, I googled and found this article http://www.ousa.ca/2013/04/24/textbooks/ which claims $600k-$1m/year. So the government has spent $1.2 - $2 million to save students $350k over the past two years. Still a long way to go to break even. In summary, 65 texts published, 45 adoptions, 2244 student users, for a savings of $353k to date. If this was a traditional textbook publishing company, they'd soon be out of business if they weren't already.

Thank for sharing, I believe that the conclusions that this article leaves us are not surprising, although yes very interesting. "Recently, the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson conducted a survey of nearly 8,000 faculty members in higher education to find out more about how faculty are using social media. While we often post infographics showing trends or results from specific studies here at Edudemic, I found the results of this survey particularly interesting - perhaps because they were so different from what I expected." Julia Echeverria

You are so, so lucky. Here in South Africa, we are regressing, not even looking at online textbooks, but trying to reduce textbooks to only one per subject. The textbook crisis: http://mg.co.za/article/2013-08-23-00-south-africas-hidden-textbook-crisis and the regressive "solution" http://mg.co.za/article/2014-10-10-single-textbook-option-slammed. It is very frustrating for me, knowing all the possibilities, but not having any agency to get through to the authorities here.Llibraries are also failing horribly in advocating for the solutions that ARE available.

Compares the cost of articles from society and non-profit publishers to those of the major commercial publishers.

Its crazy. The numbers (of profit and control) for the publishing companies is astronomical!

Universities have received a poor deal from the system of private, subscription-based access to knowledge production since the port WW2 commercialization of the scientific publishing industry. It is absurd that the university or research funder supplies the content (the research), pays for the authoring (the time of the researcher writing the article), and provides and pays for the time of peer reviewers and academic editors. In addition, it often pays page charges or formatting charges to publishers. It then cedes copyright and finally buys back its own research at prices that have escalated at four times the rate of inflation in the past decade and a half! Considering most of this research is conducted using public funds, it becomes a moral argument when public resources are used once again to purchase access to the outputs of this research. The commercial model of disseminating research does not obey the rules of supply and demand. A relatively small number of 'core' journals occupy monopoly positions, in that university libraries have to subscribe to access their content, whatever the cost, because these journals have been established as 'must-have' resources. While the practice of 'bundling' offers the advantage of bulk pricing, it reduces room for choice, as bundles consume large chunks of library budgets, making it difficult to subscribe to smaller, individual titles. In addition, the inflexibility of indexing systems makes it difficult for new journals to establish themselves; thus compromising the potential for smaller niche subjects and newer interdisciplinary areas. Thankfully the global inequalities engendered by the commercialization of scholarly publishing are being challenged by open access.

Adobe has just given us a graphic demonstration of how not to handle security and privacy issues. A hacker acquaintance of mine has tipped me to a huge security and privacy violation on the part of Adobe. That anonymous acquaintance was examining Adobe's DRm for educational purposes when they noticed that Digital Editions 4, the newest version of ...

The Internet is challenging its users privacy, and privacy carries a different meaning in the Digital Age.

It seems internet users might just have to become "comfortable" with software companies now having access to large amounts of information about them…the new normal

A timely article on the Outernet, a service that can broadcast e-books and culled information from the internet to less wealthy nations who do not have access to the internet. A few criticisms of the emerging technology do arise: addressing literacy in less developed locations, questioning whether the information broadcast is information that would be suited for that community, and finally whether there would be a prioritization of information with paid net-connected organizations.

"But what about for the many people in the world that lack internet connectivity? The answer is still yes - at least according to Syed Karim, who explained how at TEDGlobal. The entrepreneur had been invited to the human ingenuity-themed event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to speak about his company, Outernet. The business aims to address the fact that about two-thirds of the world's population still has no internet access."

Thank you for posting this article about Syed Karim's TED talk as I had not seen it before and found it very interesting. With the outernet, I believe people living in places where this is inadequate or no access to the internet will be able to accrue information. However, I still believe more efforts need to be done to expand the web so that all can partake.

Cape Town - First National Bank on Tuesday won the Most Innovative Bank of the Year Award at a prestigious award ceremony in Washington DC honouring the most innovative banks in the world. The 2012 BAI - Finacle Global Banking Innovation Awards is a joint programme between BAI and Finacle Infosys.

"We live in an age of information overload. While many of us find ourselves inundated with vast amounts of data daily, our fast-paced society also requires us to make more rapid decisions." A very short blog post that reminds us to slow down and focus. It doesn't add much new to the conversation but the reminders are helpful, especially the one about multitasking. It truly is a myth.

i enjoyed reading it

Interesting read! 4 ways to retain your brain to handle information overload