by Derek Morrison, 21 April 2011 Some time ago I posted Open Opportunities, Open Threats? (Auricle, 30 April 2009) in which I opined that, far from breaking out in a fearful sweat or reinforcing the status quo barricades, the transition to an open source MLE/VLE solution could provide an invaluable organisation-wide opportunity to refresh and […]
Archive for the ‘Web Services’ Category
Road testing ‘Tales of Things’ and QR Codes
April 17th, 2010
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by Derek Morrison, 17 April 2010 So what’s are those strange objects embedded in this posting? Why are they there? The Tales of Things web site went live yesterday and so I’m using this posting to try it out. Tales of Things is part of the EPSRC funded TOTeM project which is exploring aspects of […]
More universities going Google Apps
January 23rd, 2010
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by Derek Morrison, 23 January 2010 N.B. The following item represents the views of the author alone and should not be construed as necessarily representing the views of any other individual or organisation. The UK Open University is joining the growing number of institutions adopting or exploring the Google Apps for Education offering. Another notable […]
Google as the digital ‘Library of Alexandria’?
November 3rd, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 3 November 2009 There’s an interesting On the Media item called The Infinite Shelf (27 March 2009) about Google’s vision of creating the digital equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. I think it’s well worth listening to the MP3 download of this interview with Harvard’s Robert Darnton author of Google & the […]
Why Mendeley?
September 18th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison (first posted 7 September 2009, updated 18 September 2009) With the strapline “Organize, share and discover research papers” Mendeley is clearly pitching its hat into the academic software ring. There is certainly an interesting mix of people behind this enterprise who have obviously decided that there is a business opening not currently […]
They’re coming to take your content away!
August 21st, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 21 August 2009 It’s hard to think of a more ironic example of the new world order that media companies would like to inflict on us than that recently demonstrated by Amazon’s recent auto-deletion of George Orwell’s 1984 “purchased” by owners of Amazon’s Kindle ebook platform. The story was all over the […]
Storm Clouds – addendum
June 23rd, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 23 June 2009 Here’s a slight addition to my orginal Storm Clouds online essay (Auricle, 9 September 2008) in which I reflected on the risks of the cloud computing paradigm. A recent Guardian edition had an interesting piece on the risks to our data when it’s stored in the ‘cloud’ (Freedom to […]
Clickable music videos – product placement or useful model?
February 8th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 8 February 2009 The headline Pop fans click on to stars’ sing’n’sells was enough to make me wince when reading the Sunday newspapers and the story also offered its own share of reflective shudders about how those clever marketing types are ramping up product placement big time. The story was based around […]
