Major bummer!! I've just lost the best part of an hour's preparation of my thoughts about the areas of interest I submitted when registering for the TLTP Dissemination Event held in Newcastle later today. Should have known better than not save my BBEdited file and just rely on a cut'n'paste into an IE form for this website. IE5 locked up my machine completely before I had a chance to post my message.

I'm not taking any chances with this message! Save often!!

Since I have an early start later this morning - to catch the 06:30 train from Edinburgh to Newcastle, I don't have the time to reconstitute my list just now. Suffice to say my interest in, and potential contribution to, the event is geared around the four Zope-based final year student projects from my ZEUS Projects and CRUXIAL Projects suggestions. Namely:

• ZAPHOD Project,
• ZEALOUS Project(s),
• ZOETROPE Project, and
• BONEZ Project

:: Boxmind.com ::

BOXMIND is the world's premier academic resource directory and ratings agency.

Or so they claim!

The Register: Vendors, users team to create secure XML

A group of 45 IT companies and enterprises has formed a group that aims to create a standard way to secure internet-based transactions that use XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

The AuthXML Working Group will develop a specification covering authentication and authorising information in XML which it will then submit to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The group includes security firms such at Check Point Software; networking vendors, such as Novell; consultancies like PricewaterhouseCoopers and end-users such as the Royal Bank of Scotland. However, the group is more interesting for who it does not include - most noticeably Microsoft, which has formed a group to develop a complementary technology.

Looks like secure XML is going to bifurcate. Microsoft's vs The Rest!!

The Register: Govt ministers distance themselves from email spy plan

Government ministers are distancing themselves from the Draconian surveillance measures proposed by NCIS deputy Roger Gaspar in a report to the Home Office.

The full text of the NCIS Submission on Communications Data Retention Law.

Thanks to Brian Carnell's hints about Using Weblog View to Create a RSS file I now have a daily RSS feed that only contains weblog entries - at http://www.smeed.org/rss/daylog.rss

via Andrea - AllTheTests.com - The Searchengine and Directory to all IQ-Tests, EQ-Tests, Career-Tests, Health-Tests and much more

Jim fills in the the RUst of the story about the pricing of Radio Userland. Like me, and I guess virtually everyone else that has had their web/music experience enhanced by RU, Jim would be happy to pay for it and help recompense Userland for the substantial investment that has already gone into the development of such a gallus app.

There has been a lot of discussion about the pricing of Radio Userland ever since it was announced that a small charge will be made for it once it's out of beta [Radio UserLand]. In August - when I had a lot of time on my hands and exam marking was an incentive for displacement activites - I had the bones of an idea* which is archived on eGroups here. Dave responded

That's very good Duncan! Almost, but I don't want to charge for Radio UserLand, and I don't want to limit people in their ability to program, quite the opposite.

Personally, I have no problem with Userland charging (a modest amount) for RU but I can see why others that may have predicated a business strategy on a free version of RU may be upset at the announcement that it won't be free. Of course, I think it would be great to have a free (cut-down) version of RU as this removes one of the major barriers to widespread adoption. I hope Userland and the RU community can come to some amicable arrangement regarding the free vs not-free version(s).

* Note: the current version of RU has wildly exceeded my expectations for 'programmability' so the ideas presented in August have largely been overtaken by developments.

Incidentally, Jim also believed it would be free

For some reason I thought it was going to be free. So did Duncan.

Jim's link to my page that states Dave had made assurances that it would be free was written a week or so after the assurance had been given.

Just to get this on record: I will be forever thankful to Dave and the rest of the team at Userland for creating that coolest of apps - Radio Userland. I have had the privilege of seeing it develop and, of course, benefitting from the free beta versions. It has been primarily responsible for bringing back music into my daily regime. I will happily pay a moderate price for it when the time comes. Just as I wouldn't expect my other indispensible apps - BBEdit, Conversant, SoundJam, Anarchie, Frontier, Eudora, etc. - to be free, I don't expect RU to be either. I'm looking forward to having time to explore the full potential of RU.

Many thanks Userland.

Jeremy takes a Look At The Community:

Things are going remarkably well around here... if this keeps up, this community will be one for the record books and endless scholarly dissertations. Here's to another year like it!

I couldn't agree more with your sentiments Jeremy. I've thoroughly enjoyed the last year being a small part of the community. Why it works so well I don't rightly know, but work it does. And Susan Kitchens' AIDS Day: Remembering Jeffry Michael is an immensely moving example of the special people that form the community. Al Hawkin deserves a special mention too:

I always appreciate a visit to Al [View From the Heart] Hawkins' weblog. It grounds me to reality and reminds me how fortunate I am.

And in February on [Friday] Crusoe's Companion Website! I put down some further thoughts about community involvement:

We aren't isolated individuals since we read (some of) each others weblogs and, like now, we participate in a 'collective consciousness' where we react to what others say. We may rarely post follow-up messages but no doubt we ponder on what has been said -- whether we agree or disagree is unimportant.

Its's been a fascinating year and just the precursor for more to come. And that's why I think reports like BBC News | SCI/TECH | The revolution will be postponed are missing the point entirely because they ain't considering the two-way web.

via SiT - The Instructional Use of Learning Objects -- Online Version

This is the online version of The Instructional Use of Learning Objects, a new book that tries to go beyond the technological hype and connect learning objects to instruction and learning. You can read the full text of the book here for free. The chapters presented here are © their respective authors and are licensed under the Open Publication License v2.0, meaning that you are free to copy and redistribute them in any electronic or non-commercial print form.

Regular readers may know that I'm fond of the odd acronym or two ;-)

I was at the annual Strathclyde University Academic Selectors meeting earlier today. One of the projects discussed was the initiative by the West of Scotland universities to encourage pupils from schools in disadvantaged areas to apply to university. For example, less than 18% of pupils from Glasgow city schools go on to higher education. In some areas of the west of Scotland the application rate is less than 4%.

The acronym for the initiative is GOALS - which IIRC stands for Greater Opportunities for Access to Learning in Scotland.

I joked with the GOALS coordinator from the University of Strathclyde at the end of the meeting and suggested that if the University set up it's own initiative it could be known as Greater Access to Lifelong Learning at the University of Strathclyde - GALLUS. In case there are some non-Glaswegians reading here's the definition of gallus from Eejit's Glasgow Patter:

Gallus: In Glasgow this is a general term of approval for anything considered excellent: 'Gallus waistcoat, wee man!' When applied to people it's more about attitude and includes elements of toughness, cheek, self-assurance and boldness: He jist stoats right inty the place as gallus as anything. Ye'd never get me gaun oot wi wan a these wee guys that think they're gallus'

Seems like the perfect acronym to me ;-)