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Open Source Doc Management With KnowledgeTree
freshmeat.net: Project details for KnowledgeTree
“KnowledgeTree is a feature-rich document management system featuring knowledge management, document version control, hierarchical document management, support for common file formats (MS Word, MS Excel, PDF, TXT, HTML), extensible meta data, creation of custom document types, application managed document links that guarantees consistent data and eliminates emailing documents, easy publication of documents, subscription agents, archiving according to expiry date, expiry time period, or utilisation for enhanced speed, and much more.“
May be of interest to teknoids looking for a less expensive solution to knowledge management.
Bob Barker Endows Another Animal Law Course
Bob Barker Gift Endows Animal Rights Law Course (Northwestern University News)
“Bob Barker, host of the Emmy award winning “The Price Is Right” and a longtime proponent of animal welfare, has donated $1 million to the Northwestern University School of Law to endow a course in animal rights law.
The Bob Barker Endowment Fund for the Study of Animal Rights Law will provide students an opportunity to earn course credit. Course topics could include: how humans interact with and use animals; current animal protection laws; species protection; and international wildlife law.
Barker has previously made $1 million gifts to the University of California at Los Angeles, Duke University, Stanford University and Columbia University. It all began with a similar endowment established in his name at Harvard Law School by FemantleMedia, which produces “The Price Is Right.”“
WordPress to PDF
WP2PDF
“WP2PDF is a collection of scripts that convert one or more entries created with the blogging-software WordPress to PDF, a very popular universal document format. It is highly configurable and can easily be integrated in an existing Blog running WordPress.“
Yahoo Mail Goes to 1 Gig
InfoWorld: Yahoo’s free mail service to offer 1GB of storage: March 23, 2005: By : APPLICATIONS : SECURITY
“Yahoo will increase the inbox capacity of its free Web mail service for the third time in the past nine months, now raising storage to 1GB, exceeding Microsoft’s Hotmail and matching Google’s Gmail.Yahoo Mail users all over the world will begin to see the larger inboxes between late April and early May, said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo’s vice president of communications products.“
Vex – A Visual Editor for XML
Vex – A Visual Editor for XML
“Vex is an editor for XML documents. The “visual” part comes from the fact that Vex hides the raw XML tags from the user, providing instead a wordprocessor-like interface. Because of this, Vex is best suited for “document-style” XML documents such as XHTML and DocBook rather than “data-style” XML documents.“
Novell’s Brainshare 2005 Is Now!
NewsForge | Novell’s Brainshare 2005: Day 2
“CEO Jack Messman kicked off Day 2 at Brainshare 2005 with a confident keynote that recounted promises made last year, Novell’s execution of those, and a flurry of new product announcements. If Novell is acting in desperation, as some have suggested of their move to Linux, it doesn’t show itself in their public face. NewsForge also spent some time on the exhibition floor and a lot of time in the press room, where Novell was conducting rapid-fire one-on-one briefings for the media.The announcements included a partnership announcement with JBOSS, Identity Management, the Open Source application ecosystem, a program to validate stacks on Linux, enhancements and support promises for GroupWise, a small business server, and cross-platform management. All them revolve around Linux. All these announcements –and a replay of the keynote — are available here on the Novell web site.“
Xebece – Information Visualization
freshmeat.net: Project details for Xebece
“Xebece is a multipurpose tool for information visualization and organization. It can be used to set up intriguing presentations. Likewise, document management is straightforward and effective if you use Xebece. Application fields of Xebece include presentations, courses and training, document management, mind mapping and brainstorming, and knowledge management. This program was formerly known as Calientra or Ontographics.“
Novell Readies Linux Desktop 10
Novell Says Its Next Linux Desktop Will Surpass Windows
“While Microsoft still has the monopoly on the desktop market with its Windows operating system, Novell is readying new features and functionality that it believes will propel its Novell Linux Desktop offering into the mass market.“
NLD10 will feature Beagle desktop search and 3-d effects on the desktop.
Students Do Better Without Computers
Slashdot | Students Do Better Without Computers
“The Telegraph is reporting a large study that shows that the less students use computers at school and at home, the better they do in international tests of literacy and math. The more access they had to computers at home, the lower they scored in tests, partly because they diverted attention from homework. Students tended to do worse in schools generously equipped with computers, apparently because computerised instruction replaced more effective forms of teaching. “
There are some good comments in this piece. This study highlights the ambivilence toward the use of computers in education. It is not that difficult to find evidence on both sides of this argument, but the thing that one should carry away from it all is that computers are a tool. And any tool can have a either a negative or a positive impact depending upon how it is used.
I think the key to primary and secondary education in the US is parental involvement. Know what your kids are doing in school and at home, guide them in decisions on which tools to use, and be proactive about what is going on in your child’s classroom. Yes, it is a lot of work, but raising children is no easy task.