Tag Archives: news

news

LSC to be scrapped…

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The Government is going to scrap the LSC in plans announced in a White Paper.

The government’s £10.4bn skills agency, the Learning and Skills Council, is to be closed down – with most of the funds to be transferred to local authorities.
The plans have been announced by the government in a White Paper setting out the funding mechanism for the raising of the school leaving age to 18.

Local authorities will now be responsible for commissioning courses and training for older teenagers.

Read the full story on the BBC News website.

news

Microsoft licenses Flash Lite and Adobe Reader LE for Windows Mobile Devices

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Adobe announced today that:

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced that Microsoft has licensed Adobe® Flash® Lite™ software, Adobe’s award-winning Flash Player runtime specifically designed for mobile devices, to enable web browsing of Flash Player compatible content within the Internet Explorer Mobile browser in future versions of Microsoft Windows Mobile phones. Microsoft has also licensed Adobe Reader® LE software for viewing Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) documents including email attachments and web content. Both Adobe products will be made available to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) worldwide, who license Windows Mobile software.

Read the full press release here.

news, vle

Moodle 1.9 Released

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Today sees the release of Moodle 1.9.

Our latest release fresh from over 5 months of community beta testing and improvements. This release is like a “gold reference” version, but usually the daily build above will be even better. Moodle 1.9 not only has lots of requested new features but some very large performance improvements over Moodle 1.8. We recommend all sites upgrade to 1.9 as soon as practical, especially if you are seeing poor performance in some areas.

Download it now.

Thanks Gary.

news, nokia

Microsoft targets the mobile web

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Microsoft targets the mobile web

BBC reports on how Microsoft has signed a deal with Nokia to put Silverlight on Nokia phones.

Microsoft has launched a bid to capture a segment of the growing market for rich web content on mobile phones.
The software firm has signed a deal with handset manufacturer Nokia to bring its Silverlight platform to millions of mobile phones.

Silverlight is seen as a competitor to Adobe’s Flash, which is already used by popular websites such as YouTube.

The software will first be available on Nokia’s high end smart phones running a Symbian operating system.

Read more.

news

Goodbye Netscape Navigator

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BBC reports on the end of an era for the web icon which once had 90% of the browser market.

A web browser that gave many people their first experience of the web is set to disappear.

Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 March 2008, the company has said.

In the mid-1990s, as the commercial web began to take off, the browser was used by more than 90% of people online.

Its market share has since slipped to just 0.6% as other browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox have eroded its user base.

news

Nintendo Wii used for therapy for burns victims

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The BBC has an interesting report on how the Nintendo Wii been used to provide therapy for burns victims.

The Nintendo Wii games console is being used as part of physiotherapy treatment for patients in South-East England.

Burns victims and those with hand injuries are being offered spells on the console to boost their recovery.

In an accompanying article the BBC asks the question:

So is the evidence stacking up that the sought-after games console is not just fun, but good for us too?

I have seen how TechDis have promoted the use of the Wii and these articles show how games consoles have uses beyond merely playing games.

firefox, news

500 million Firefox downloads

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Firefox the alternative browser of choice has reached the 500 million downloads milestone.500 million Firefox downloads

Firefox just reached 500,000,000 downloads. This is an absolutely phenomenal milestone for Firefox. It is sort of hard to imagine what that number means. For some perspective, that’s roughly the audience size of 10,000 Rome Colosseums combined. It would be the weight, in kilograms, of 8,500 Boeing 747 airplanes. In dollars, for $500 million you and 15 of your friends can fly to the International Space Station.

Read more.

Firefox is my browser of choice on the Windows platform and I use it all the time on my Mac alongside Safari.

Download Firefox.

facebook, news

Facebook on decline

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The BBC reports on how the number of Facebook users in the UK declined by 5% in January.

Social networking site Facebook has seen its first drop in UK users in January, new industry data indicates.

Users fell 5% to 8.5 million in January from 8.9 million in December, according to data from Nielsen Online.

To be honest this doesn’t surprise me, my use of Facebook has declined. I use Facebookin order to engage with other e-learning colleagues and friends. There are various groups to which I belong and like to discuss work related issues with people I have met at conferences, events or have known for some time.

However the explosion of zombies, vampires, pointless quizzes, doughnuts, etc… has really put me off the whole Facebook experience. I guess some people find that aspect fun and enjoy and fair play to them, but in terms of social networking and engaging with others it I don’t want that. I have fun elsewhere.

Having said that 8.5 million users is a huge user base. So I won’t delete my account (partly because that can be difficult if nigh on impossible) and will pop in now and again.

Facebook on decline

For the moment I will stick to Jaiku and Twitter.