mpasiewicz's blog

I kicked off my morning with a ho-hum daily web surfing ritual and a stout cuppajoe, but before the caffeine kicked in, I perked up a bit when I noticed that All Things Digital had a big front and center notice about their use of cookies. They even provided information about opting out.

Very interesting. Is this a sign of things to come? In an era of where widgets, mashups, viral video and analytic services are invading the web, should more disclosure be occurring? Should we be doing more to educate and inform those who look to our sites for news and information?

Might we see library web sites that enrich their sites with data from services like Amazon or Syndetic Solutions include such notices?

EFF recently blogged about the way they're using embedded video and steps that they've taken to protect the privacy of users visiting their pages. They've created a script that prevents embeded sources from automatically downloading when you visit a page. In effect, they've created a system that offers the ability to opt-in to view the embedded media, rather that force feeding content from third parties (and associated usage tracking) into the attention stream of their audience. This seems like an important step towards elevating thought and providing protective measures aimed at third party sources (whether that mean viral video, widgets, maps, images or mashups of various web services).

They've implemented these protection measures using a Drupal module and they'll be contributing this back to the community!

I just discovered a series of interesting blog entries from Danny Weitzner, W3C Technology and Society Policy Director and co-director of MIT CSAIL. These aren't especially new links, but I thought they might be worth relaying ...

Reciprocal Privacy for the Social Web - provides an introduction for a proposal "to establish a reasonable privacy balance in social networking environment" using FOAF. Also of interest is a link from Shahan Khatchadourian describing the use of FOAF and OpenID to establish trust/prevent spam. Apparently the solution could be available from Ryan Lee as a Drupal module? In some ways, this sounds similar to the Social Network Portability concept mentioned by Stephen Downes.

Wow, this is an interesting move. Above and beyond the potential for unintended side-effects, I wonder what kind of interesting ways they'll be able to leverage this in the classroom and beyond.

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/12/04/montclair-state-mandates-use-of-gps-enabled-phones/

I've been thinking a lot about comparisons these days and I've long hoped to write something interesting about the following concepts and technologies, but I've never carved out the time.

• OAI-PMH and RSS
• Semantic Web and Microformats
• Shibboleth and OpenID
• Cyberinfrastructure and Web 2.0

I've given up any aspirations of writing something meaningful before the start of 2008, but I thought some observations might be interesting to jot down and share with the community. I guess I'll start with Cyberinfrastructure and Web 2.0

I think the two share many similar properties. In each case, the terms were coined by influential players in the field, but the definitions seem to shrink or expand based on who you talk to. In both cases, the introduction of the terms have served as a catalyst of sorts that seemed to have sharpened interest and discussion in a range of activities. In both cases, the underlying technologies supporting the phenomena existed before the terms were coined.

NPR has a two part series about online education. The only thing that might be lost in the commentary is the motives behind the pursuit of online learning among schools that have begun offering it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16638700

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16709807

An interesting supplement to these recordings might include an interview with Robert Mendenhall at this year's EDUCAUSE Annual Event.

Steve Brady, a professor at Penn State, chronicles some ideas about podcasting and offers some insights into student produced podcasts in his presentation recorded at the Supply Chain Management Educators' Conference. A PDF of his paper and supporting slides are also available.