Fortnightly Mailing

3/8/2007 - Blackboard Inc. v Desire2Learn - court issues order construing claim terms

Michael Feldstein is quick to note Desire2Learn's 4/8/2007 announcement of the 3/8/2007 outcome of  the "Markman Hearing" in the Blackboard v. Desire2Learn patent infringement case. (The purpose of the Markman Hearing is for the trial judge to determine the meaning of the claims at issue, and to instruct the jury accordingly, with the judge's ruling subsequently open to being appealed by either party.)

According to Desire2Learn the effect of the judge's determination, if not successfully appealed, is to render invalid independent claim 1 and dependent claims 2 to 35 in Blackboard's Patent 6,988,138. (There is one  other independent claim in the patent - claim 36, upon which the remaining 9 claims 37 to 44 depend.)

For an overview of the process you may find it helpful to review pages 2 to 5 of the 23/8/2006 Notes of a teleconference between Blackboard Inc. and the Association for Learning Technology [135 kB PDF], in which I took part, from which I have excerpted two paragraphs in the continuation post below.

Key workers on the One Laptop Per Child project talk about the project

Here is 6-minute video from May 2007 featuring key people in the One Laptop Per Child project: Walter Bender, Mary Lou Jepson, Chris Blizzard, Owen Williams, Marcelo Tosatti, John Palmieri, and Eben Eliason.

Smartphones "are the PCs of the developing world"

(Updated 7/82007)

Freely available 2 page report by Jessica Marshall in the 4/8/2007 New Scientist highlighting the utility of smartphones in the developing world. 2 excerpts:

"Smartphones may seem like a frivolous indulgence for rich westerners, but it turns out that their added features can be harnessed to help people in poorer countries do business, educate their children and even hold those in power to account."

"Farmers can also use photo and video-recording facilities on cellphones to share information about farming practices. In India, the non-profit organisation Almost All Questions Answered (aAqua) already operates a network where farmers can send questions to agricultural experts via text message or the internet, and check crop price information. But it is only accessible to those who can read, says Srinivasan Keshav of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. 'If you're educated, you can send text. If you're not, you need video or audio.'"

See also (via David Weinberger), this lucid 5/8/2007 article by Ethan Zuckerman in the Boston Globe "Building big: start small - a radical new way for poor countries to get the phones, power, and roads they need"about the take-off of mobile telephony in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and its economic impact.

Back-links:

• 28/7/2007 - Point-to-point wi-fi brings internet access to all;
• 27/1/2007 - Mobile phones in Africa;
• 14/12/2006 - Wireless Ghana;
• 17/10/2006 - What would you install on One Laptop Per Child;
• 22/9/2006 - 80% of the population is covered by a mobile network.

The seemingly impossible is possible - data visualisation

Via the Open Rights Group mailing I came across this wonderful 18 minute talk by Hans Rosling, the Swedish co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation about the need for datasets to be made publicly available. Gapminder is "a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development". This is "done in collaboration with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations". [Parts of the talk Rosling gave are similar to a much more effectively recorded, longer, and more wide-ranging talk - including..... sword-swallowing - at the March 2007 TED conference in Monterey, and this is the second video in the continuation post below. The first as an equally compelling talk given by Rosling in 2006.]  One of Gapminder's tools is Trendalyzer, which in March this year was acquired by Google, with Trendalyzer’s developers leaving Gapminder to join Google. I do not know how long you have been able to access a Google-hosted implementation of Trendalyzer, but if you've any interest in data visualisation tools, or in health, or in international development, spend some time examining it. If you get stuck, then the Gapminder World Tutorial, will help you get the hang of the tool. Rosling also has a web log.