Newsforge recently cited the interview, “Free Software – Free Society!” with Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman. In the interview, Stallman provides his unique perspective on various issues, notably:

1) The Free Software movement vs. capitalism – “Well, we are not against capitalism at all. We are against subjugating people who use computers, one particular business practice. There are businesses, both large and small that distribute free software, and contribute to free software, and they are welcome to use it, welcome to sell copies and we thank them for contributing. However, free software is a movement against domination, not necessarily against corporate domination, but against any domination.”
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This may have been around for a while, but I just noticed Into the Blogosphere, a collection of online edited essays re: weblogs. There are some excellent voices here! It’s a must read if you are interested in the impact of blogging on culture and society.

Full URL:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/

There have been interesting articles lately which demonstrate how the iPod can be transformed from personal music hardware into a social, file-sharing device. For instance, last June, engadget described the steps necessary to “Make your own Pirate Radio Station with an iPod“. The article provided information on significantly increasing the range of an iTrip mini (FM transmitter) to allow for the broadcast of music to local FM devices.

Now, The Register reports the availability of software which can help transform the iPod into a P2P file-sharing device. To do this, a user needs a Pocket PC (or PC), an iPod and the program from Simedia, and this “enables you to publish your iPod playlists and have anyone in the area listen to previews or download tracks wirelessly from those playlists.” The program allows for streaming or file transfer abilities.

This is interesting as the concept of this file-sharing, wireless “BluePod” was mentioned almost two years ago in another Register article, and now, it looks like it has become reality.

A while back I posted a link to “10 Cool Things to Do With Furl“. Now, Amy Gahran has added a few more to the list in her “More Furl Tricks” post. What I like about this is that these are actual applications by Furl users. There are certainly some great ideas here.

I just came across CopyScape. This website hosts a useful service that allows individuals to find duplicate instances of web content. This may be useful if you are concerned about your own web content being copied and posted online by others. And thinking as a teacher, as I have students developing and designing (hopefully) original web content, this would be an excellent tool to use for the detection of plagiarism. While I am not a big proponent of policing plagiarism, if students are made aware of this service, the fact may just help as a deterrent.

Breaking Windows recently listed a few effective Google search strings that can be used to locate all sorts of shared media files on various servers. For instance, to locate MP3 files, try copying this string into a Google search:

“parent directory ” MP3 -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

Or searching for MS ISO’s? Try:

inurl:microsoft filetype:iso

It’s amazing what you can find even without P2P software, which is usually loaded with tons of spyware.

Of course, this information is for educational purposes only.

See the complete list of search strings at:
http://www.breakingwindows.com/archives/geek_speak/001396.php

I recently came across the journal article, “(My) Three Principles of Effective Online Pedagogy” by Professor Bill Pelz at SUNY. Most people who read in this area, won’t find much new here, but Pelz presents what has worked well for him in his own classes so it’s worth a read for those wanting to improve their own pedagogy.

Here’s a conference announcement I just received that may be interesting to some of you out there.
—
Learning Conference – 2005
Faculty of Education, University of Granada, Spain, 11-14 July 2005
http://www.LearningConference.com
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I have been an active member of TappedIn.org, an online educators’ professional development community that has been around for quite a few years now. There are often some really neat online sessions lead by prominent educators in the field, so it was no surprise that Bernie Dodge led a session at the end of June relating to the use of blogs within the WebQuest format. One of the neat things about TappedIn is that text conversations within in the environment are automatically transcribed. So, courtesy of EduBlog Insights, here is the complete transcription of this informative session.

What an amazing run!!! In a 1-0 victory over the highly favored Portugese team, the Greeks have become the 2004 UEFA champions.

See full details of the win here. What a great moment for Greeks all over the world!

Yahoo News reports that the Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team has advised consumers to quit using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer due to its security vulnerabilities. Of course, security is not the only reasons to stop using IE and move toward much better alternatives, but perhaps this will be the stimilus for Microsoft to work on IE’s serious security issues and to get the browser to conform to W3C standards. Of course, these are two big issues, so I won’t hold my breath … but I’ll continue to enjoy Mozilla and Firefox in the meanwhile.

Update: I just noticed a good article from Newsforge which speaks to the security issues with IE and explains how to “replace and disable Internet Explorer“. It’s worthwhile looking at.

Although I was unable to attend, I noticed some neat presentations posted from NECC 2004 related to Blogs, Wikis and WebQuests.

It looks like Bernie Dodge packed the house with his presentation titled “Blogs and Wikis as WebQuest Tasks“. There are plenty of relevant links here on how one can integrate Blogs and Wikis into these inquiry-oriented activities. It will be interesting to see a few WebQuests developed with these tools thoughtfully integrated.
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