Fortnightly Mailing

BrowserCam - test how web content looks on different combinations of browser and operating system

Updated 15/12/2013

I wrote about BrowserCam in the 31/5/2004 Fortnightly Mailing and included some sampe screen-grabs. Since then the service, which enables you to submit web content for testing across a large number of browser/operating system/platform combinations, has been extended, and the BrowserCam site redesigned. Good enough to deserve being recommended a second time. Unfortunately, BrowserCam ceased to run in February 2013. A possible alternative would be CrossBrowserTesting, though I have not tried it.

Quick Online Tips

Quick Online Tips has  "Technology News, Smart Blogging Tips, Essential Computer Software, and Web Services”. Access the most popular of these, 6 of which are described as being regularly updated.

Comparative evaluation of proprietary and open educational technology systems

This is the latest Monthly Report from the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education - by Ken Udas, Director, and Michael Feldstein, Assistant Director, SUNY Learning Network at the State University of New York, USA.

Abstract

 Selecting a learning management technology has increasingly become a mission critical and strategic decision for higher education institutions. As technology supported and online learning has become more prevalent and learning management technologies more important institutional features, the selection environment has become increasingly complex. This paper presents a comparative model developed specifically for evaluating learning management software for adoption decisions in which open source software (OSS) and proprietary options are under consideration in higher education. It is intended to support senior academic administrators and policy makers who are responsible for or influence the software evaluation and selection process by proposing a methodology that accounts for organisational context and software system characteristics, while also providing the advantage of cross-organisational comparison.

The full text is available for free download (as a 31 page PDF) to individuals with an email address with an OBHE subscriber.

Messiness is a virtue - David Weinberger - 80 minute MP3

Presentation, with a faltering start, but some good insights about half way in about the Semantic Web and the "trouble with ontologies", given recently by David Weinberger at Harvard University's Berkman Centre:

My topic wasn't why you really should tidy up your office. (You know you should.) It's about knowledge and why we have thought neatness is a sign of a proper understanding of a topic, why it's good that our mental categories are messy, what Aristotle got wrong, and whether the Semantic Web is too much of a fuss-budget for its own good.

Download MP3 file.

Improving the accessibility of your web site - new W3C guidance

The World Wide Web Consortium has just published Improving the Accessibility of Your Web Site.

Abstract

Most organizations already have a Web site, and most of those sites were developed without considering accessibility. Thus most Web sites today have accessibility barriers that make it difficult or impossible for some people with disabilities to use the site. Some sites have several significant barriers; others have only a few minor barriers. Sites developed to meet Web standards such as XHTML and CSS usually have fewer barriers. While implementing accessibility on an existing Web site may seem overwhelming at first, there are  approaches to make the process more efficient and effective. This document provides guidance for fixing accessibility barriers in existing Web sites; in other words, repairing accessibility problems, or retrofitting a site to improve accessibility. It provides approaches and tips for:

• getting started, understanding the issues, and communicating your  commitment to improve the accessibility of your site;
• developing a retrofitting plan by identifying accessibility barriers and prioritizing repairs; repairing accessibility barriers on your site efficiently and effectively;
• addressing next steps after initial retrofitting.

Digital libraries - ten years on, "Ariadne is still the best guide"

February 2006 (decennial) issue of Ariadne, with articles by Lorcan Dempsey, Peter Brophy, Cliff Lynch, Derek Law, John MacColl, and Reg Carr and others.  Google Challenges for Academic Libraries by John MacColl from Edinburgh University ends with this (deadpan?) statement of principle:

As librarians, running pleasant study environments, containing expert staff, providing havens on our campus which are well respected, and building and running high-quality Web-based services, we will decide which of Google's offerings we wish to promote, and which we are prepared to pay for. And we will stand up - no matter how wealthy we assume our students and academic users to be - for the principle of free and equal access to content, and for the principle of high-quality index provision, whether free or at a cost, because without those principles we are no longer running libraries.

... which I hope makes you want to read the article in full.

Semantic Web - interview about early adoption in the life sciences

Worthwhile, if fuzzy enough to give podcasting a bad name, 10 minute interview done in December 2005 by Salvatore Salamone, senior IT editor of Bio-IT World, with Matthew Shanahan, chief marketing officer of Teranode, in which Shanahan provides examples of the Semantic Web in action in life sciences.

Google search syntax - summarised on one printable page (and a cross-platform keyboard reference)

Of course we all know how to use search tools efficiently. In which case this handy one-page summary of Google's syntax will be of little value. Personally I would like to have it as a mouse mat, backed up on the London Review of Books cross platform keyboard reference, image above.

Emerging technologies for learning - report from Becta

Thanks to Andy Black for highlighting Emerging Technologies for Learning, a new ~50 page Research Report from the British Educational and Communications Technology Agency (Becta). This "covers emerging technologies and some of the future trends that are likely to have an impact on education".  With a Foreword by Andrew Pinder, ex-UK-Government e-Envoy, and now Chair of the Becta Board, it has 5 main sections, each written by a different author, each of whom is active in the commercial world in the area their section covers:

1. Mobile technologies: transforming the future of learning, by Geoff Stead
2. The ambient web, by Bill Sharpe
3. The future of human-computer interaction, by Paul Anderson
4. Social networks, by Leon Cych
5. The broadband home, by Michael Philpott

The different sections stand alone from each other, and, no bad thing, have different structures. The report will become dated quite quickly, though I did make a diary note three years hence to check if Geoff Stead's "in three years time" predictions about mobile technology stand up. One grouse about the report is its 2 column design format, which makes it tiresome in the extreme to read on screen. Becta should have changed its document style guide by now.

Monthly bulletin for content developers by email from Becta

The British Educational and Communications Technology Agency (Becta) publishes a free monthly emailed bulletin for content developers "alerting you to key developments and information relevant to learning resource developers and providers".  You can sign up for it right here, using your browser's back button to return to Fortnightly Mailing from Becta's subscription confirmation screen.

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