You can see the filing here.
That didn’t take long.
Author: Michael Feldstein
-
Blackboard Patents the LMS
I’m surprised there hasn’t been more uproar about this yet. The ever-brilliant US Patent and Trademark Office has apparently granted Blackboard a patent for…well…pretty much anything remotely related to learning management systems. As I read it, Blackboard basically owns the patent on any sort of groupware at all that is used for teaching purposes. This could have very serious consequences for both proprietary and Open Source competitors–and I define “competitors” as loosely as possible. (You could probably slam Drupal with this under the right circumstances, for example.)
For your convenience, I have copied the “Summary of the Invention” section from the patent:
-
Teaching Faculty About Wikipedia (and Social Software in General)
I just discovered Jon Udell’s wonderfully archeological screencast about the evolution of a wikipedia page. In eight and a half minutes, he beautifully demonstrates how a community negotiates knowledge construction when nobody is the boss, anybody can edit, and there are no formal processes. As we know, this is a particularly vexing question to many faculty, who are used to editorial authority being defined by a single blessed and credentialed editor or a small number of blessed and credentialed jurors in highly specialized content domains. In contrast, Udell takes an extremely specialized topic–the history and conventions of using umlauts in the names of heavy metal bands–and shows how entirely different editorial mechanisms can work very effectively.
If you do share this with your faculty colleagues, I recommend emphasizing the following points: (more…)
-
Call for LAMS Conference Papers Extended
I just got a note from James Dalziel letting me know that the deadline for papers for the LAMS conference (in Sydney) has been extended to August 9th (my birthday!). If you haven’t yet checked out the Learning Activity Managment System, then go out right away and either get a trial account or download and install it on your own computer. (It’s easy.)
If you are familiar with LAMS, then start working on your boss to spring for the trip to Sydney and consider proposing a paper. Conference details are here.
-
The Economics of the LMOS
Jim Farmer has posted a slide stack (in PDF format) on the economics of interoperability. There’s a lot of good general stuff here about service-oriented architecture (SOA) and interoperability issues from a business perspective, but 90%+ can also be read to apply directly to the LMOS concept.
Here are some highlights:
-
eBooks on the iPod Getting Closer?
A while back, I predicted that the logical conclusion of the whole iTunes U thing would be eBooks on an iPod. It would, I think, dramatically impact the textbook market (for the better) and open up all kinds of opportunities for alternative content (including free/libre content). Well, Engadget claims that the day is nearing:
We tend to field a lot of inside information here at Engadget HQ, but we’ve gotten not one, but two bits from separate, trustworthy insiders that Apple’s not satisfied merely vending Audible’s books-on-digital-audio solution. With the iRex iLiad and Sony PRS-500 Portable Reader both right around the corner, is it possible the next iPod might catch the eBook bug? We’d say the possibility is very real, since according to a source at a major publishing house, they were just ordered to archive all their manuscripts — every single one — and send them over to Apple’s Cupertino HQ. A separate trusted source let us know that the next iPod will have a substantial amount of screen real estate (as we’d all suspected), as well as a book reading mode that pumps up the contrast and drops into monochrome for easy reading. It’s no e-ink, sure, but a widescreen iPod would be well suited for the purpose, and according to our source, the books you’d buy (presumably through iTunes) won’t have an expiration — kind of like Apple-bought music, as well, but contradictory to the movie rental scheme we’ve heard rumored.
If Apple does this, it will bring eBooks (finally!) into the mainstream very quickly. And just as importantly, it creates an instant commodity distribution mechanism via iTMS/iTunes U.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
-
Viability of Open Source Companies
Matt Asay, a member of the Alfresco team, has posted some revealing data about JBoss’s growth over the last five years:
As Asay notes, JBoss’ growth is pretty impressive for any company, never mind Open Source. (The red numbers on the bottom represent revenue growth.) And this happened with their developers spending 50% of their time writing software that is given away for free. The revenues come from the consulting using the other 50% of their time. Keep in mind, too, that JBoss is not a huge company. They’re a bit smaller (measured by annual revenues) than Blackboard, though their revenue growth has far exceeded Blackboard’s. This is great data to share with any stakeholders in your institution who think that Open Source is not a viable business model.
(By the way, if you haven’t looked at Matt’s company’s product, the Alfresco content management system, you should. It’s very strong and the roadmap is even stronger. I expect it to be the best CMS on the market in a number of important categories by the end of this year.)