Becta have been complaining to the Office of Fair Trading about Microsoft.
The BBC reports that:
The UK computer agency Becta is advising schools not to sign licensing agreements with Microsoft because of alleged anti-competitive practices. The government agency has complained to the Office of Fair Trading.
Becta is advising schools not to move to Microsoft’s subscription licensing model. They are also advising schools to look at open source solutions as well.
This blog is not really new, I did blog about e-learning when I worked at the WCC, but I have reached a milestone with this blog, my 200th post (this one). The blog has also had over 4000 visits. Thanks for visiting and here’s to the next two hundred posts.
You’ve heard of Second Life (which I don’t get) now there is MetaPlace!
The BBC is reporting on this new development in virtual worlds (which isn’t quite ready yet).
A free tool that allows anyone to create a virtual world has been launched. Users of Metaplace, as it is known, can build 3D online worlds for PCs or even a mobile phone without any knowledge of complex computer languages.
Read rest of article on BBC News.
Apple have announced that they are launching the iPhone in the UK. It will go on sale on November 9th on the O2 network.
“We picked the best one, the most popular carrier, it’s O2. We’ve since lowered the price of the US phone of the 8GB phone, in the UK the price of the iPhone is £269 including VAT.”
That’s a lot of money for a phone, be interesting to see what the data costs will be?
As I write it’s about five minutes before the Apple event at the Apple Store in London gets underway.
Generally it is accepted that this will be the launch of the iPhone in Europe.
It will be interesting to see if it is a 3G version or whether the fact that O2 have been upgrading their network to EDGE will mean that the UK iPhone will still be EDGE only.
Not long to wait now…
According to a report by Sheffield University the UK exported £28bn worth of learning in 2003-04.
That’s a lot of learning…
Mashable is reporting that Wikipedia has reached two million articles.
Wikipedia has hit a record 2 million articles for its user-regulated online encyclopedia. On Monday, the English Wikipedia’s two millionth article was “El Hormiguero,” detailing the Spanish TV show of the same name. After its launch six years ago, I think we can all attest to the establishment of Wikipedia, its example of effective crowd wisdom, and its lasting power as a long tail entity.
There are concerns in the academic community over relying on articles from Wikipedia, and therefore any lecturer or learner using such sources is advised to also consult and confirm sources, say using an online published reference in addition such as Britannica Online. Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) has also recommended this approach (in a podcast interview).
Just a follow up to my previous post.
As you can see from the following photograph that it doesn’t take much, seems like they used a screwdriver to get in!
Still lots of hassle dealing with insurance companies. More annoyance more than anything else. I was lucky that I didn’t lose any data (all backed up).
Another annoyance has been changing passwords. Though I am sure that the thieves are not really that interested in my Flickr photographs and my Facebook profile, I’d rather be safe than sorry. I didn’t use the laptop for personal financial stuff so there is virtually no risk there.
Following the comments on the previous post on having a whip-round, which really touched me, I have setup Paypal to allow this to happen. Thanks in advance, much appreciated.
I really enjoyed ALT-C this year, however as I was leaving the conference I found that my car had been broken into, my work laptop had been stolen, as well as a digital SLR camera and my funky bluetooth printer which had gone down so well in my workshop.
The thieves had done their best and as a result my passenger door was so damaged that I couldn’t secure the car and had to drive all the way home. I was suppose to be only going as far as Birmingham for a JISC Collections workshop tomorrow.
I am insured, but with excesses I am going to be somewhat out of pocket as a result. I have also paid for a hotel room I can’t use and couldn’t cancel.
I am trying to not to let this get me down, it is more annoying more than anything else.
Great conference, for me though it ended on somewhat a sour note.
Found this interesting article on the BBC News website.
Girl overdoses on espresso coffee – A teenager was taken to hospital after overdosing on espresso coffee.
It would appear that she had seven double espresso coffees and as a result had overdosed on caffeine!
A warning to all coffee lovers out there, I know that a lot of teachers and lecturers seem to thrive on coffee, or they can only survive through the average day in FE by drinking coffee.
It would seem that extra caution is needed where I work as we now have Starbucks coffee available in our college cafes and I quite like the off Starbucks espresso now and again .