MeaningPhil Stuff?

RDF--Connecting Knowledge Nuggets in the Online World

2008-04-02T09:17:00.003-05:00

RDF is a fascinating standard for the person who wants to connect pieces of knowledge in the online and/or digital world. Knowledge management has always been a favorite topic of mine. Maybe because of my background in higher education where I found it very rewarding to help learners learn and aid in the process to provide staff and faculty with all the data/information they needed in order to make "evidence based" decisions.

The quoted highlights below come from a 3 page paper on the topic of "What is RDF?". Please click the title of each section to find the original article on XML.com. And if you would like to see the entire article with my highlights included--feel free to click the "annotated" link just to the right of the title.

XML.com: What Is RDF Annotated

tags: metadata, rdf, semanticweb, xml

The current web is a decentralized platform for distributed presentations, while the SemWeb is a decentralized platform for distributed knowledge.

Resource Description Framework (RDF) is the W3C standard for encoding knowledge.

The real content, the knowledge the files are conveying to the human, is opaque to the computer.

What is meant by "semantic" in Semantic Web is not that computers are going to understand the meaning of anything, but that the logical pieces of meaning can be mechanically manipulated by a machine to useful human ends.

Life can't be neatly packed into tables, as in relational databases or hierarchies, as in XML.

Files on the Semantic Web need to be able to express information flexibly.

Start Node Edge Label End Node vincent_donofrio starred_in law_&_order_ci law_&_order_ci is_a tv_show the_thirteenth_floor similar_plot_as the_matrix

Files on the Semantic Web need to be able to relate to each other.

We will use vocabularies for making assertions about things, but these vocabularies must be able to be mixed together.

RDF was originally created in 1999 as a standard on top of XML for encoding metadata

Since then, and perhaps especially after the updated RDF spec in 2004, the scope of RDF has really evolved into something greater. The most exciting uses of RDF aren't in encoding information about web resources, but information about and relations between things in the real world: people, places, concepts, etc.

XML.com: What Is RDF--Page 2 Annotated

tags: metadata, rdf, semanticweb, xml

Most of the abstract model of RDF comes down to four simple rules:

A fact is expressed as a Subject-Predicate-Object triple, also known as a statement. It's like a little English sentence.

Subjects, predicates, and objects are given as names for entities, also called resources (dating back to RDF's application to metadata for web resources) or nodes (from graph terminology). Entities represent something, a person, website, or something more abstract like states and relations.

Names are URIs, which are global in scope, always referring to the same entity in any RDF document in which they appear.

Objects can also be given as text values, called literal values, which may or may not be typed using XML Schema datatypes.

Entities are named by Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), and this provides the globally unique, distributed naming system we need for distributed knowledge.

There are also other types of URIs besides http: URIs, such as URNs and TAGs, which you'll see below.

Since URIs can be quite long, in RDF notations they're usually abbreviated using the concept of namespaces from XML.

In an RDF/XML document there are two types of nodes: resource nodes and property nodes.

Notation 3 (N3), or Turtle, is another system for writing out RDF.

XML.com: What Is RDF--Page 3 Annotated

tags: metadata, rdf, semanticweb, xml

The simplicity and flexibility of the triple in combination with the use of URIs for globally unique names makes RDF unique, and very powerful.

It's a specification that fills a very particular niche for decentralized, distributed knowledge and provides a framework to enable computer applications to answer questions we wouldn't dream of asking computers today.

tag: digital world, RDF, XML, Semantic Web, metadata, Knowledge Management

Diigo V3 released

2008-03-20T10:46:00.001-05:00

Liberty Alliance Approved Identity Management Solutions

2008-01-10T07:58:00.000-06:00

This article from PRnewswire provides an excellent overview of some of the solution providers that are Liberty Alliance approved. In addition to the link to the full article, see my "clippings" below.

Liberty Alliance Announces First Companies to Pass Full-Matrix SAML 2.0 Interoperability Testing @ SYS-CON Media

Liberty Alliance, the global identity consortium working to build a more trusted Internet for consumers, governments and businesses worldwide, today announced that products from Hewlett-Packard, IBM, RSA, The Security Division of EMC, Sun Microsystems and Symlabs, Inc. have passed Liberty Alliance testing for SAML 2.0 interoperability.

Hewlett Packard - HP Select Federation 7.0 patch1A - HP Select Federation 7.0 enables the comprehensive, cross-enterprise SSO and sharing of identity details through the concurrent support of all the major federation standards.

IBM - Tivoli Federated Identity Manager, version 6.2 - IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager (TFIM) delivers a versatile federated single sign- on solution that conforms to SAML, WS-Federation and Liberty ID-FF federation protocol standards and offers a modular web access management and web-services identity trust management for use in an SOA environment.

RSA, The Security Division of EMC - RSA Federated Identity Manager 4.0 - RSA Federated Identity Manager enables enterprises to share trusted user credentials securely and confidently. RSA Federated Identity Manager v4.0, the latest release, is designed to simplify administration and accelerate deployment timelines. RSA Federated Identity Manager v4.0 supports SAML 1.1 and 2.0, WS-FED v1.0 and ADFS v1.0. The solution includes out-of-the-box integrations with numerous authentication authorities including BEA Weblogic, IBM Websphere and Microsoft IWA and .NET. Partner configuration management is aided by a configuration dashboard and automated metadata exchange.

Sun Microsystems - Sun Java(TM) System Federated Access Manager 8.0 - Sun Java System Federated Access Manager 8.0 is the next release of Sun's access management and federation solution. Developed from the OpenSSO open source distribution (http://www.opensso.org/), Sun's Federated Access Manager will provide comprehensive access management, federation, and web services security as modular components within a single Java application. Customers will be able to choose what components to deploy, while maintaining a single license and product. This product will be a key component of Sun's identity management portfolio.

Symlabs, Inc. - Symlabs Federated Identity Suite version 3.3.0 - Symlabs Federated Identity Suite is a complete set of components with the flexibility to create an ideal identity management solution for nearly any environment. It includes a federation server with identity provider, service provider, and identity web services capabilities, plus client connectors, templates, samples, and a powerful built-in scripting language to build, integrate and customize identity management solutions in record time. Symlabs Federated Identity Suite can be tailored for service provider, network operator, or enterprise network deployments to create circles of trust, enhance existing systems with single sign-on/log-off, or roll out new identity-based services that make it safe and easy to use personal and business information in networked applications.

tags: liberty alliance project, federated identity management, identity management, SAML2.0

Federated Identity Management

2008-01-09T08:30:00.000-06:00

Okay...if you say that data is going to be exchanged and more technology services will be outsourced to experts--How are you going to handle identity management? (You might say to me).

For data to be exchanged between organizations in a safe manner, there will have to be some form of authentication that works across "party lines". Somehow, it has got to get easier for outside vendors to gain access to data, servers, lab and staff computers so that these "experts" can provide their expertise.

Lately I've been reading about the Liberty Alliance Project. It turns out that this organization is seeking a "standards" based approach to these challenges.

tag: digital world, identity management, federated identity management, liberty alliance project

Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council

2007-12-10T09:16:00.000-06:00

As a firm believer that the higher education market is going to have to outsource much of its "technology" management--I think the work of the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council is very important.

You can find more details about their work at: www.pesc.org

This organization manages the creation and facilitates the adoption of new "data exchange standards" for the higher education environment. These standards will become more important as the world around us continues to move to a "services" oriented model.

Exchanging Data

2007-11-09T08:58:00.000-06:00

I'm fairly certain that there will be many types of databases used to store digital information. In other words, the idea that everyone would use the same database technology to store all of their information is not ever likely to happen, nor would it necessarily be a good thing. For the idealist though--like myself on occasion, I'm enthralled by the potential of all digital information being stored in a SQL compliant relational databases.

Okay--so enough of that idea. The truth is that data exchange between these databases is a fairly important topic. If there can't be one giant database for everything we need rules or standards to help make data transitions/transactions easier.

I've been aware of and reading material from Dave Winer for a long time now--maybe 13 years. At some level he's on my "folk" hero list because I respect him as a master of "organizing the digital world". He was really a pioneer in the area of software based "outline" programs (Thinktank, Ready and More) and while I haven't used his object database for long while, I have been deeply impressed by its capabilities.

At the moment there seem to be two competing technologies in the data exchange arena. Mr Winer and Microsoft have collaborated on XML-RPC--which if I understand correctly is now recognized as SOAP. Now a technology called JSON enters the scene--and as it happens--not without controversy.

mikechampion's weblog : The JSON vs XML debate begins in earnest Annotated

Finally, in the larger scheme of things it doesn't matter. What does matter is that there be standardized, widely supported means for making data interoperable across applications, platforms, programming languages, and time. Life would be easier for us infrastructure implementers if there were a single, stable standard, but it's unrealistic to expect that XML 1.0 would be the last word on the subject. We will cope with whatever happens -- small tweaks to address critical bugs that JSON illuminates, multiple de facto data interoperability standards, guided evolution of XML to be a better universal data interchange format, or wholesale revolution to produce a better world.

Simon Willison

The sweet spot for JSON is serializing simple data structures for transfer between programming languages. If you need more complex data structures (maybe with some kind of schema for validation), use XML. If you want to do full blown RPC use SOAP or XML-RPC. If you just want a light-weight format for moving data around, JSON fits the bill admirably.

What do we lose from not using XML? The ability to use XML tools. If you’re someone who breathes XSLT that might be a problem; if like me your approach when faced with XML is to parse it in to a more agreeable data structure as soon as possible you’ll find JSON far more productive.

A Mental Model for the Physical World

2007-10-25T08:31:00.000-05:00

While I prefer to keep my "organizing" to the digital world, I was intrigued by this video. Discover Magazine sponsored a "string theory in 2 minutes or less" user generated video contest and this was the winning entry.

String theory could provide us with a new mental model of how the physical world fits together. By the way the "viewer's choice" was also very good.

Book Reviews and Microformats

2007-10-17T11:47:00.001-05:00

As a chronic organizer of all things digital I have been intrigued with “microformats”. In a conversation with my youngest son—he was curious about applying star ratings to book reviews. It turns out that his teachers are using “wikispaces” to aid in the teaching process (way to go teachers!) and they want to be able to apply a star based rating system to their book reviews.

In my quest to answer his question I did run across some good resources:

hreview creator—this tool creates hreview code for you. The site provides a form to input the appropriate values and provides the code for copying and pasting into your web page.

Wetpaint and Socialtext are also good tools for creating “wikis” (alternative options for wikispaces).

Amazon now offers a media library where users can add books (and other media types) to their account. The student would be able to apply a star rating, add comments and “tags”. The beauty of this service is that a student can very easily search and order new books—when the book is ordered, it automatically pops up in the media library (it isn’t automatically shared with the outside world though unless a setting is changed to allow for that to happen).

Google books has also has a tool called “my library” that allows a user/student to keep a list of books. As with the Amazon tool you can add a review, rating and tags to each entry. The service from Google Books has an RSS feed feature—Amazon might, but I didn’t see it. The RSS feature could allow the teacher to subscribe to each students book list via an RSS news reader like Google Reader. This would allow the teacher to see new and changed entries in a particular students book list (very cool).

Interestingly enough, a website called “LibraryThing” beat both Amazon and Google to the punch with their service. My favorite item about this site—you can use a cue cat scanner to improve the book input process. A Max OSX based application called “Bookpedia” is also cue cat scanner friendly (I’m a registered user of this one).

SCORM Compliance

2007-10-10T16:00:00.001-05:00

I’m addicted to “standards”. I can’t help myself! I suppose part of this comes from my unstoppable desire to create order out of disorder. Course descriptions, course content, syllabi, assignments—they’re all just a wild mess of relatively non re-usable objects.

SCORM is a standard for online course delivery that tries to combat this with re-usable objects called “Sharable Content Objects” (SCOs). These SCOs are made up of one or more “assets”. An asset, by definition is an "electronic representation of media, text, images, sound, web pages, assessment objects or other pieces of data" (see clippings below).

SCORM Version 1.2 Overview for Developers Annotated

Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) allows learning content from any vendor to play in any SCORM conformant Learning Management System (LMS).
SCORM was created in cooperation between government, academia and industry and it consolidates the work of AICC, IMS, ARIADNE and IEEE’s LTSC into one unified reference model.
Basically there are 2 parts SCORM Version 1.2: the Run-Time Environment and the Content Aggregation Model.
The Run-Time Environment specifies how content should behave once it has been launched by the LMS.
The Content Aggregation Model specifies how you should package your content so that it can be imported into an LMS. This involves creating XML files that an LMS can read and learn everything it needs to know about your content.
All communication between the content and the LMS is handled by this adapter, thus the content author does not need to worry about communicating with the server, he only needs to be able to find the API Adapter and make the appropriate JavaScript calls.
This separation of client and server is essential to SCORM in that it ensures the portability of content by forcing it to run on a standard platform (the web browser).
There is no SCORM conformant method for content to communicate with the LMS through other methods such as web services, or HTTP requests.
Content Aggregation model is divided into three parts, the Content Model, the Meta-data and Content Packaging.
The Content Model describes the content being delivered.
The Content Model defines a powerful model for breaking content into arbitrarily sized units of reuse. These units are called Sharable Content Objects (SCOs) and Assets.
An Asset is simply an "electronic representation of media, text, images, sound, web pages, assessment objects or other pieces of data".
A SCO is a collection of one or more assets that represents a logical unit of learning.
The defion of a SCO is left up to the content author to define under the guidance that a SCO should represent the smallest unit of learning that the LMS should track.
To achieve reuse, a SCO should not be context sensitive, it should not reference other SCOs, and it should not link to other SCOs.
The Meta-data specification provides a mechanism to describe the content using a pre-defined and common vocabulary. This vocabulary is broken into nine categories:
The Content Packaging specification defines how the Content Model and Meta-data are implemented.
From a technical perspective, the two most important things to take away are that all communication between content and an LMS is handled via JavaScript and that all content should include an XML file called imsmanifest.xml which describes its structure and other characteristics to the LMS.

Organizing Visual Data

2007-10-04T11:54:00.001-05:00

My LinkedIn connection, Jeff Stewart, from Trekk Cross Media alerted me to the information for this posting.

I can’t imagine a better example of “organizing data” than what is in this video. While we might naturally think of data as “text” based, this example shows what can happen when visual data is organized. This is a great example of the developing “semantic web”.

The Professor who uses visual information in the classroom (architects, visual arts, graphic design etc.) will want to keep an eye on this technology.

“Super Crunchers”—A Book Review

2007-10-02T09:50:00.001-05:00

This book is all about organizing data to create information to support the quest for gaining knowledge.

I absolutely enjoyed this book and give it high marks for any of the following categories of people:

· Customers—very enlightening

· Entrepreneurs—interesting opportunities

· Problem solvers—a slew of data available

· Concerned Citizens interested in the authoring and implementation of effective public policy

· High school math student who wonders “How is this class going to help me?”

· Ethicists—“with great power comes great responsibility” (Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben)

Geek Books and the Digital World

2007-09-27T15:34:00.001-05:00

I have become a fan of books from O'reilly publishing. They are famous for the "Hacks" series and in fact, if I were teaching a statistics class I would strongly consider using Statistics Hacks.

But, that’s not actually what I wanted to talk about. As a tablet pc user I do a lot of reading on my HP Tabletand one of my favorite finds has been O’reilly’s “online books” website called safari. The shelf life of a good technology book isn’t always that long, but with this service I can read the whole book through, and if it’s good enough, I can order the paper based book at a 35% discount (what?? that’s amazing).

I pay 20 dollars a month to be able to have 10 books on my virtual bookshelf. Once a book is added to the bookshelf it has to remain there for 30 days. But, even though I can only have 10 books on my bookshelf (they have to be on my bookshelf, otherwise they can't be read), the search function can find subjects across the entire library of publishers (what?? that’s amazing). If the search turns up a book that's not on my bookshelf, I can add it--that is, if I have open slots on my bookshelf.

The downside if there is one—the bookmarking tool is a bit clunky. But, the good news, use Diigo and not only can you bookmark the page, but you can even store the paragraph clipping for future reference. Because the site is password protected you will need to login to Safari, before clicking your diigo bookmark link.

Recent Report from Educause on Students and Their Expectations for IT

2007-09-18T11:52:00.002-05:00

Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Students' 'Evolving' Use of Technology

This article provides a very interesting overview of some observations found in an annual survey sponsored by Educause (The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2007) about how the current college student's expectations of IT enhanced learning is "evolving".

A Concern:

While the "sage on the stage" style of teaching has not been the preferred model for a while now, it is going to be even less effective with the "digital natives" crowd.

A Prediction:

Google Docs and Wiki spaces are going to be increasingly important components of the "learning" toolbox. The price is right for one thing (free) and faculty will increasingly want to be independent of the "controls" placed on them by IT management at our higher ed institutions.

A Recommendation:

IT management teams should take a hard look at what they're doing to support the academic mission. The availability of specific services by outside vendors has changed dramatically. A few years ago it was important for IT teams to provide an email infrastructure to support the academic mission, but now with both Google and Microsoft providing email services it no longer seems prudent. Microsoft's Version Google's Version

Cooperation and Collaboration in Higher Education

2007-09-14T14:31:00.001-05:00

Google Code - Updates: UW and Google: Teaching in Parallel Annotated

Big Business (Google) collaborates with Higher Education (University of Washington) to teach students about Grid Computing. And that's not all, UW invites other universities to get in on the action. This is a great story with awesome potential.

A list of items that I highlighted from the article--see link at the top of this entry for the article in its entirety (including the full annotated version).

Earlier this year, the University of Washington partnered with Google to develop and implement a course to teach large-scale distributed computing based on MapReduce and the Google File System (GFS).

The goal of developing the course was to expose students to the methods needed to address the problems associated with hundreds (or thousands) of computers processing huge datasets ranging into terabytes

Mind Mapping Meets Wikipedia

2007-09-13T13:59:00.000-05:00

As a strong advocate for any tool that aids the learning process, I have to give a PG rating (Pretty Great) to http://www.wikimindmap.org. So, let's say for instance that we want to continue our learning on RSS news feeds.

Visit the site http://www.wikimindmap.org
Set the appropriate language, which if you're reading this you'll probably want to set it to en.wikipedia.org.
Enter a topic like RSS

or go directly to the results by clicking below: http://www.wikimindmap.org/viewmap.php?wiki=en.wikipedia.org&topic=RSS

Can Brittanica Do This?

2007-09-11T14:37:00.001-05:00

New Tool Mines Wikipedia Truthfulness Annotated

I happen to really like wikipedia--especially as I'm trying to keep up with the latest "tech" jargon. In the world of academia, however, it has its detractors. And understandably so--mature and wise scholars sometimes can be tricked by the accuracy of an entry, so it is no wonder that young students may get tripped up. A software tool like the one in this article could really help Wikipedia be a more trusted tool in the classroom. As the article states it's not fool-proof, but the reality is that our students, I hope, will be applying critical thinking skills to anything they read.

A list of items that I highlighted from the article--see link at the top of this entry for the article in its entirety (including the full annotated version).

Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, the Web encyclopedia's reliability varies wildly.
Now a computer science professor hopes to give users a better baloney detector: software that flags questionable lines in Wikipedia entries.
he software will color text some gradation of orange if there is reason to doubt its content. The deeper the orange, the more likely it is malarkey.
by analyzing the reputations of the contributors responsible for each line.
In general, the less tinkering your work on Wikipedia engenders, the more trustworthy you are deemed to be.
For example, in an extensive entry on the old Commodore 64 computers - http://tinyurl.com/2dbggk - the Santa Cruz software tags just three lines, each an unfootnoted statement of purported fact.

A Great Overview of RSS Newsfeeds

2007-09-10T15:54:00.000-05:00

I recently wrote a paper in which I talked about the value of RSS newsfeeds. In my blog reading I ran across this video that is a very good (and easy to understand) overview of RSS.

Google Books Update

2007-09-07T14:40:00.001-05:00

Your Own Google Books Library, and More Annotated

This update is provided by Philipp Lennsen who writes for one of my favorite blogs (Blogoscoped). I continue to be drawn to things that could change the classroom and I really think Google's initiative with Google Books has the potential to be an amazing teaching resource. A list of items that I highlighted from the article--see link at the top of this entry for the article in its entirety (including the full annotated version). your library is RSS-ified for others to subscribe to, and you can export it using another custom XML format listing title, author, ISBN and such. Importing books is possible as well by providing a list of ISBNs.

Google's embed dialog also allows you to directly blog something with Blogger, or add it to Google Notebook.

The Google Books project, formerly called Google Print (project name "Ocean"), continues to evolve aiming to become "the" book search center with an abundance of research options and data mining features, like maps integration, or the new popular passages.

Right now the biggest obstacle for users I see are the often confusing separations between public domain books, partner books and library books.

And why shouldn't I be allowed to clip fair use passages from copyrighted books, for instance?

In related news, the New York Times reports that both Amazon and Google will be entering the ebook market this year.

Fair Use--An Important Topic for Higher Education

2007-08-31T11:28:00.001-05:00

This is a fascinating topic. Especially as the younger generation seems to thrive on taking bits and pieces of various media (i.e. parts of a song)and re-mixing it into something for public consumption. Dan Tapscot and Anthony D. Williams covered this topic in their book entitled Wikinomics ("Prosumer" chapter, if I remember correctly). It seems that times are changing--Philipp Lenssen from "Blogoscoped" notes that Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are backing a Defend Fair Use Initiative This is an amazing development! Microsoft thrives on a proprietary software, yet the latest version of the Office Suite (2007) is actually XML content and a zip file. In other words, the proprietary file format that was used in Office 2003 is now very "open" in Office 2007. What is this world coming to--the more I know the more confused I get.

CCIA - Defend Fair Use

American Marketing Association Paper--To Be Presented at the Higher Ed Symposium

2007-08-20T15:33:00.000-05:00

I authored the following paper that was accepted by the American Marketing Association to be presented at the upcoming Higher Education Symposium in San Diego, November 11-14, 2007.

A CHIEF ENROLLMENT OFFICER THAT SLEEPS AT NIGHT—A WEBSITE THAT WORKS

ABSTRACT

Today’s student prospects have a myriad of communication options available to them. Where the telephone and mail strategies seemed to work in the past, that’s not always true anymore; the website seems to be the most effective place to get the message out to prospects. With that comes the need for our institutions to practice strong knowledge management as it relates to organizing content. Organizing the success stories of our respective learning communities is very important to a successful recruitment process. This paper seeks to provide overview information to its reader on Content Management Systems, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) news feeds, and Taxonomies.

Full paper available as a Google Doc

The Future Classroom

2007-08-19T17:14:00.001-05:00

Wiki becomes textbook in Boston College classroom Annotated

Anyone in higher education should take note of the following article. It makes me think of two questions that need to be answered as the needs and services the future student will expect from our higher education institutions continues to change:

1. Will open source software, like the wiki and Google Docs, replace the proprietary software of companies like "Blackboard" and "Microsoft Office" respectively? 2. Will retention of the higher education student be negatively impacted by the lack of the interactive web based tools like those cited in this article? A list of items that I highlighted from the article--see link at the top of this entry for the article in its entirety. At many colleges and universities, wikis are used mostly as a supplement to primary teaching tools like textbooks and labs, while other Web 2.0 technologies -- such as social networking sites like Facebook -- have become a staple of student life.

In one Boston College professor's classroom, however, wikis have become a primary learning tool, replacing textbooks and allowing improved collaboration among students.

Gerald Kane, assistant professor of information systems at the Chestnut Hill, Mass., school, has been using a wiki from SocialText Inc. as the primary teaching tool in his classroom since October, relying on the technology to integrate content from other Web 2.0 technologies like social book-making tools, RSS systems, and Google for his "Computers in Management" courses.

Some recent research surveys have found that some companies are investing in wikis, but the technology is used less heavily than other Web 2.0 tools like RSS feeds and social networks.

The survey concluded that companies are investing more heavily in Web services, RSS, podcasts, social networking and peer-to-peer networking

A Search Engine for Video (AOL)

2007-08-18T16:14:00.001-05:00

AOL's Truveo Introduces New Video Search Site And Consumer Destination Annotated

Last night, Truveo relaunched as a consumer video search destination. Emphasizing branded content (including branded channels), it may be the most comprehensive video search site on the Internet.

Arguably Truveo overwhelms users with too much content and too many choices, but there will be refinements over time as users interact with it.

The single biggest drawback to the site (esp. vs. YouTube) is the fact that many (though not all) of Truveo's content partners contractually require that videos be served on their sites rather than on Truveo

Peer to Peer Filesharing (P2P)

2007-08-15T15:01:00.001-05:00

Education 2.0: The College Student's Guide to File Sharing Annotated

A list of items that I highlighted from the article--see link above for the article in its entirety.

Heard of Napster or BitTorrent? Both are peer-to-peer networks through which your computer, equipped with the proper software, can find files to download.

The actual file transfers happen between your computer and other computers using protocols that distribute the file-sharing load among all the computers, or "peers," on the network. As a true P2P network without a central server to be sued, raided by police or otherwise confiscated, there's little chance of BitTorrent ever being shut down. The protocol's great popularity means there's no shortage of juicy intellectual property to fill every last perpendicularly stored bit your hard drive has to offer. Many colleges block BitTorrent traffic Direct Connect is somewhat risky business for college students who seek large quantities of internet content. Every new public hub you visit is one more that might reveal your queries and the files you're sharing When privacy is at a premium and download speed doesn't matter, it's hard to beat one-click hosting services like Megaupload, RapidShare and Sendspace While one-click hosting is fairly private at the moment and darknets keep content away from prying eyes, it's all for naught if your university actively monitors traffic and is determined to shut down peer-to-peer activity. We recommend you check your college's "acceptable use policy" and similar documents to determine their position on file sharing before engaging in potentially illegal activity, or at least make sure you save three grand, the going rate, in case you get caught. For the legal perspective, go right to the source: the United States Copyright Office FAQ

The Dog Days of Summer

2007-08-01T09:11:00.000-05:00

MeaningPhil Stuff?

RDF--Connecting Knowledge Nuggets in the Online World

Diigo V3 released

More Reading on Identity Management

Liberty Alliance Approved Identity Management Solutions

Federated Identity Management

Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council

Exchanging Data

A Mental Model for the Physical World

Book Reviews and Microformats

SCORM Compliance

Organizing Visual Data

“Super Crunchers”—A Book Review

Geek Books and the Digital World

Recent Report from Educause on Students and Their Expectations for IT

Cooperation and Collaboration in Higher Education

Mind Mapping Meets Wikipedia

Can Brittanica Do This?

A Great Overview of RSS Newsfeeds

Google Books Update

Fair Use--An Important Topic for Higher Education

American Marketing Association Paper--To Be Presented at the Higher Ed Symposium

A CHIEF ENROLLMENT OFFICER THAT SLEEPS AT NIGHT—A WEBSITE THAT WORKS

ABSTRACT

The Future Classroom

A Search Engine for Video (AOL)

Peer to Peer Filesharing (P2P)

The Dog Days of Summer