XML.com - XML Protocol Technology Reference

This article gives an overview and essential information about the most important technologies and initiatives in the XML protocol area. Most of these technologies are being developed under the auspices of either a multi-vendor consortium or standards body.

The Register: M$ charges students who don't use its software

A US university has outraged its student rag by trying to charge $20 for Microsoft software access - even if students don't use it.

Jeremy [iRights] Bowers makes some insightful comments in the RE: Horses to Water: Why Course Newsgroups Fail thread.

I wonder how much of the course newsgroup failure problem can be traced to the general lack of writing ability. I'm in my last undergrad semester and while I no longer see people who can't spell "the" reliably, I still would say my writing skills (which I don't consider anything special) are in the 95% percentile for engineers.

By now I hope most of my students will know how important I believe writing skills to be.

David's Thursday issue of SiT has a wee op-ed on the use of newsgroups:

As with all tasks in a course, posting assignments, whether e-mail or newsgroup, only make sense as a means to an end, i.e. as part of a larger learning objective and assignment.

I certainly agree with David that the medium is a means to an end but there are some advantages to newsgroups - threading being one - in comparison to e-mail. If I do get e-mail that I think should be widely disseminated then I often post (the reply to) it to the newsgroup for the class.

Much of the discussion about this issue is actually taking place in the class newsgroup(s) so I'll summarise them in this thread in due course.

Thanks to everyone who is taking the time to contribute to the discussion.

David is teasing his readers in today's issue of Serious Instructional Technology

Duncan, don't suppose you know of any applications that integrate e-mail and web site management do you? B-)

Not entirely without coincidence Seth chips in too:

I'm trying to find more educators to work with in developing Conversant - based course-support sites. We had one extremely successful site this summer that generated over 1000 messages in just a few weeks, partially because the students could participate however they wanted (and partially because the teacher was good at getting the students involved, among other reasons).

Seth, I'm very interested in setting up a Conversant site along the lines of [Friday] Crusoe's Companion Website! from last academic year. That site generated over 600 messages in a similar timescale with over 100 contributors so I'm delighted to hear that Conversant has handled a similar load.

I have also to confess that I haven't explicitly told the membership of Duncan's Jotter that they can participate in the discussions and posts via e-mail (SMTP) and news (NNTP) protocols in addition to the web (HTTP) interface. Would anyone be interested in hearing about this? ;-)

Incidentally, the main reason I use newsgroups to support my teaching is that it's more convenient than continually updating web pages on a static site. <tongue align='cheek'>A dynamic site with web, e-mail, and news interfaces, message threading and searching capabilities would be my idea of computer-mediated teaching nirvana!!</tongue>

Duncan

Yesterday I successfully bid for a brand new Umax Astra 2200SU [vnunet.com review] on a QXL auction. At a bid price of £89 I reckon I've saved about £40 off the lowest price I've seen. Looking forward to scanning some of my holiday snaps ;-)

I know I indirectly referred to the Horses to Water: Why Course Newsgroups Fail study yesterday but it deserves it's own direct link:

It is now fashionable for university administrators to embrace computer-mediated communication as part of their strategic plans, in large part because the medium seems to hold great potential for increasing enrollments and decreasing costs. It also may hold some potential for education. Yet little is known about how much of the educational potential of computer-mediated communication can be realized.

The Register: Intel claimed to have squeezed IBM to dump Transmeta

IBM's decision to dump its planned Crusoe-based ThinkPad 240 had nothing to do with benchmarks, and everything to do with Intel, according to sources close to Transmeta. Quanta, which was to build the machines, was surprised when the project was abruptly cancelled; one Transmeta partner who declined to be named told The Register: "It was on schedule, fully functional, and IBM were very happy with it."

Update:

The Register: Desperate Dell begging Transmeta for a Crusoe deal?

Humorously, it seems that IBM's PC division initially wanted to explain that they'd decided not to go ahead with the machine because of uncertainty about supply. Until they were forcibly reminded by ballistic IBM Microelectronics execs that the supplier was none other than, er, IBM Microelectronics.