Fortnightly Mailing

EU beginning to see broadband Internet access as a universal entitlement

In the EU, if the majority of citizens are using a telecoms service, explains this BBC News article "EC call for 'universal' broadband", the EC rules - known as the Universal Service Obligations - dictate that the service must be available for all.Thus wherever you live in the EU you can get a fixed phone line, and such phone lines must be of sufficient quality to "permit functional Internet access", which, in the UK is taken to mean a dial-up speed of 28.8 kilobits per second. (The Universal Service Obligations also provide for things like production of a telephone directory and the availability of pay-phones.)

Now that such a high proportion of EU citizens have broadband the EU is reviewing the Universal Service Obligations to see if "functional Internet access" should now mean access to broadband.  Conceivably the Obligations may change in 2010. The push from this seems to be coming from Viviane Reading, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, who gave quite an on-the-ball speech today on social networking sites and their economic and societal importance.

Educational Technology Allowance - to help disadvantaged children get access to the Internet

The Times (and the BBC) report that on 23/9/2008 Gordon Brown is expected to announce a new Educational Technology Allowance:

"The Prime Minister is to announce proposals to ensure that all schoolchildren in Britain[*] have access to the internet. There are 1.4 million school-age children who live in households with no internet connections.

Under a scheme that will cost £300 million over three years Mr Brown will unveil an educational technology allowance, by which those households will be given vouchers of up to £700 to pay for broadband connections, technical support and computer equipment. The money will come from the schools and families department’s existing budget and mainly from efficiency savings.

Ministers say that lack of internet access at home disadvantages children when doing their homework and in acquiring computer skills, now needed for 90 per cent of new jobs. It would also help parents to keep in touch with schools and learn more about their children’s performance from the e-mails sent out by teachers."

* the scheme will apply in England only.

For some background to the Educational Technology Allowance, see this May 2008 Update on the Home Access Taskforce [44 kB PDF - 5 pages] report on the Becta web site, along with some January 2007 commentary here in Fortnightly Mailing.

Anand Rajaraman: Google's Chrome, and the "cornerstone of privacy on the Web"

Anand Rajaraman's Google Chrome: A Masterstroke or a Blunder? has some interesting insights. Excerpt:

"The cornerstone of privacy on the web today is that we can use products from different companies to create isolation: desktop from Microsoft, browser from Mozilla, search from Google. These companies have no incentive to share information. This is one instance where information silos serve us well as consumers. Any kind of vertical integration has the potential to erode privacy."

Nicholas Carr: is Google God or Satan?

Nicholas Carr's The Omnigoogle is worth the 5 minutes it will take you to read in full. It concludes:

"God or Satan? When you control the economic chokepoint of a digital economy and have complements [that is, subsidiary services that do not cost you much to provide, and which complement your primary business] everywhere you look, it can be difficult to distinguish between when you're doing good (giving the people what they want) and when you're doing bad (squelching competition). Both Google and Microsoft have a history of explaining their expansion into new business areas by saying that they're just serving the interests of "the users." And there's usually a good deal of truth to that explanation - though it's rarely the whole truth.

Google differs from Microsoft in at least one very important way. The ends that Microsoft has pursued are commercial ends. It's been in it for the money. Google, by contrast, has a strong messianic bent. The Omnigoogle is not just out to make oodles of money; it's on a crusade - to liberate information for the masses - and is convinced of its righteousness in pursuing its cause. Depending on your point of view as you look forward to the next ten years, you'll find that either comforting or not."

Nicholas Carr on Google's new browser Chrome + my three halfpenny worth

Nicholas "The Big Switch" Carr is quick with a brief calm first reaction to Google's release of a test version of its Open Source browser. My three halfpennyworth is that we should expect Chrome to work well with Google Aps (Documents, Spreadsheets, Google Mail, Sites etc), where Google thinks there is substantial not-generated-by-advertising revenue to be had from organisations (and ISPs) outsourcing to Google their email (and, in the case of organisations) the software for writing, and the storage for, their internal content; and with Google Gears.

Some Blackboard and Desire2Learn bits and pieces

Source: Blackboard Inc. Sneak Preview of Project NG

Several Blackboard- and Desire2Learn related items come my way in the last few weeks, but holiday absence prevented me from using them. 

First, two long posts by Jim Farmer on Michael Feldstein's e-Literate blog:

• 11 August - about Blackboard software licences;
• 27 August - about Blackboard's financial performance (with some discussion about the company's UK market share, based on a comparison between UCISA's 2005 and 2007 CIS surveys).

Second, a slick and impressive promotional video from Blackboard about its "Next Generation" product - known as Blackboard NG - which has been described to me by someone on the inside of Blackboard as "light years ahead of Blackboard 8.0" (see also Nial Sclater's description of a talk about NG in Manchester earlier this year). I watched each of its eight "chapters".

The inexorable shift to online learning, in US HE at least

Mixed = at least one online and one onground class

Fall enrollments '04 = 4,396  ~~  Fall enrollments '07 = 4,855

For the first time I have a reason to use an animated gif/chart, and with its author Ray Schroeder's permission. Ray writes, about the University of Illinois at Springfield:

"The next click of that chart will move us to a place where fewer than 1/3 of our students are taking only on-ground classes.  Forgive my bias in thinking that what we are seeing at UIS will spread among the rest of the 500 regional state universities. "

 

Coroner calls for Government action on sleep apnoea

Today my sister and brother in law issued a media release stemming from last month's Inquest into the death of their son Toby. Regular readers of Fortnightly Mailing may remember from a long post I wrote in October 2007 that my 25 year old nephew was killed 2 years ago on his way to work in Liverpool. His car was waiting in a morning rush hour queue on the M62 motorway approaching the Rocket Interchange. The queue was hit from behind by a heavy goods vehicle and Toby’s car was crushed. The driver of the HGV had fallen asleep at the wheel, and was later diagnosed to be suffering from Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA).  When we investigated OSA we found serious weaknesses in the way that the condition is controlled by Government, by the road haulage industry, and by General Practitioners.

Following the Inquest, the Coroner issued a Rule 43 Report to the Lord Chancellor, calling for major changes in the way that sleep apnoea amongst lorry drivers is dealt with. The media release [137 kB PDF] provides full details, and includes the Rule 43 Report itself, as well as the bulk of a fascinating and comprehensive report to the Inquest by Dr Dev Banerjee, who is Consultant Respiratory and Sleep Physician at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital.

The Coroner's Rule 43 Report calls for the following:

• regular medical screening for all lorry drivers;
• amendment of the DVLA Medical Examination Report form to improve identification of undiagnosed sufferers from OSA;
• fast track medical assessment of commercial drivers involved in road traffic collisions;
• better education of all drivers on the dangers of tiredness when driving, in the same manner as drink-driving campaigns;
• better education of commercial drivers to make them aware that a diagnosis of OSA is almost certainly not the end of their livelihood as a driver.

Under new rules that came into force on 17 July, the Lord Chancellor is required to respond to a Coroner’s Rule 43 Report within 56 days.

European e-Inclusion Awards - closing date 12 September

The European Commission has launched the first ever European e-Inclusion Awards. The Awards will "celebrate the best and most imaginative uses of Information and Communications Technology to reduce digital and social exclusion". The closing date for applications is 12 September. Excerpt:

"The European e-Inclusion Awards are open to organisations in the public, business and voluntary sector or civil society. There are seven competition categories:

• Ageing well
• Marginalised Young People
• Geographic Inclusion
• Cultural Diversity
• Digital Literacy
• e-Accessibility
• Inclusive Public Services"

Court in Texas denies Blackboard's motion for contempt against Desire2Learn

According to Desire2Learn, Blackboard Inc.'s forcefully worded motion for contempt against Desire2Learn was denied by the court in Beaumont, Texas, yesterday. Blackboard has apparently failed to convince the court that the changes made by Desire2Learn in Version 8.3 of its VLE are "only transparently cosmetic", and "do not design around the claims of the ’138 patent".  Blackboard had sought explicitly coercive damages in its motion for contempt:

"Blackboard suggests that for each day following this Court’s order that Desire2Learn uses, sells or offers for sale version 8.3 or associated services, Desire2Learn should be ordered to pay Blackboard $23,000.00. No litigant can be permitted to simply choose to pay a sanction and continue to violate a federal district court’s injunction, however. If, after five days, Desire2Learn continues to defy the order, the daily sanction should double to $46,000.00. And if, after five more days, that sanction is insufficiently strong coerce Desire2Learn into compliance, it should double again. The sanction should continue to increase until Desire2Learn complies."

so the failure - even if it is only a temporary failure - must come as a relief for Desire2Learn. Expect more on this in the next few days on the Desire2Learn and/or on the Blackboard patent information pages, especially once the full judgment from the case is published. Conceivably this may have a sting in its tail for either company.