Category: NewsFeed

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Hewlett Foundation Awards $1.5 Million Grant for Open Textbooks

The third and last of Monday’s news developments also comes in the digital textbook arena — but from the free, rather than for-profit, perspective. The Community College Collaborative for Open Educational Resources said the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation had given it $1.5 million in new funds to expand its work, which focuses on increasing the number of free, online textbooks and training community college instructors on how best to use such books. Its main resource, the Community College Open Textbook Project, has dozens of college members and seeks to significantly expand the number of freely available digital textbooks it makes available.

via News: Textbook Bonanza – Inside Higher Ed.

Would be really nice if CALI could come up with some grant money to fund development of our open education resources projects including eLangdell and the Legal Education Commons.

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Sony Reader Goes EPUB Only

On Thursday, Sony Electronics, which sells e-book devices under the Reader brand, plans to announce that by the end of the year it will sell digital books only in the ePub format, an open standard created by a group including publishers like Random House and HarperCollins.

via Major news: Sony goes EPUB only; scraps its own format!! | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home.

This is a big deal and puts some pressure on Amazon to open up the Kindle to more formats natively and let its ebooks onto other devices.

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6 More GA Banks Fail, 16 So Far in 09, 64 Nationwide

Regulators on Friday shut six banks in Georgia and a small bank in New York state, raising to 64 the number of federally insured banks to fail this year.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the banks: six bank subsidiaries of Security Bank Corp., based in Macon, Ga.; and Waterford Village Bank of Clarence, N.Y.
The six Security banks had a total of 20 branches, which will reopen during normal business hours starting Saturday as branches of State Bank and Trust, the FDIC said.
They are: Security Bank of Bibb County, based in Macon; Security Bank of Houston County, based in Perry; Security Bank of Jones County, based in Gray; Security Bank of Gwinnett County, based in Suwanee; Security Bank of North Metro, based in Woodstock; and Security Bank of North Fulton, based in Alpharetta.

via 6 More Georgia Banks Shut Down – News Story – WSB Atlanta.

The only thing that surprises me is that we haven’t seen any actual runs on the banks.

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It’s Here: MSFT Windows 7 Hits RTM. Are You Ready?

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have hit the Release to Manufacturing milestone. OEMs can get their hands on it this Friday, while MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able to get it on August 6. Consumers will have to wait until October 22.

via Microsoft: Windows 7 is done, on its way to manufacturers – Ars Technica.

Hey, who knows, it may start turning up on law student laptops this semester:)

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New Drupal Theming and Design Resource: design.acquia.com

It is so amazing to have a great, global community of passionate Drupalists. It usually means that you can quickly find people who are of like mind that want to help the Drupal world grow in ways that are new, unique, and useful. Today is no exception: I’m happy to say that Jeff Burns and Acquia have partnered to merge his 3rd World Themes project into Acquia’s design-oriented microsite design.acquia.com.

via A great kickoff of design.acquia.com as a design-focused Drupal resource | Acquia.

Looks like this will become an excellent resource for the Drupal theming and design community and a major contribution from the Acquia team. Focus is on porting existing themes from other systems.

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Delta Adds $5 Surcharge for Bags Checked at Airport

Delta currently charges domestic passengers $15 for the first checked bag and $25 for a second bag. For flights starting Aug. 4, passengers who check bags at the airport will pay $20 for first checked bags, and $30 for the second bag.

Fees for bags checked in online remain the same, Delta said.

via Delta announces $5 surcharge for bags checked at the airport – Atlanta Business Chronicle: .

I hope they fixed online checkin. The last 2 Delta flights I had I couldn‘t check-in bags online.

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Acquia Picks Up $8 Million In Series B For Drupal Development

Acquia, a startup that commercially develops and distributes open source content management system Drupal, has raised a whopping $8 million in series B funding led by North Bridge Venture Partners with Sigma Partners participating. This bring Acquia’s total funding to $15 million.

Acquia, whose co-founder and CTO Dries Buytaert created the Drupal platform in 2001, tells TechCrunch that the company will use the funding to help create and expand the market for Drupal in the enterprise world. Drupal hopes to expand its existing base of 200 subscription customers.

via Acquia Finds $8 Million For Development Of Publishing System Drupal .

Looks like Acquia is headed in the right direction.

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Judge Holds IP Addresses Identify a Computer Not a Person

“In order for ‘personally identifiable information’ to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies a computer,” U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones said in a written decision.

Jones issued the ruling in the context of a class-action lawsuit brought by consumers against Microsoft stemming from an update that automatically installed new anti-piracy software. In that case, which dates back to 2006, consumers alleged that Microsoft violated its user agreement by collecting IP addresses in the course of the updates. The consumers argued that Microsoft’s user agreement only allowed the company to collect information that does not personally identify users. Microsoft argued that IP addresses do not identify users because the addresses don’t include people’s names or addresses. The company also said that it did not combine IP addresses with other information that could link them to individuals.

via MediaPost Publications Court: IP Addresses Are Not ‘Personally Identifiable’ Information 07/07/2009.

Interesting decision. Of course it is fairly true. Since most IP addresses are doled out to consumers on a random rotating basis using DHCP, it would be easy to argue that a particular IP address does not “belong” to a particular person, so it is not a way of identifying them. In reality, IP addresses do stick around and often can be attached to a particular person. SOunds like a need for balance here.

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Yawn, Google Chrome OS Finally Announced

The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

via Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google Chrome OS.

So, take an open source operating system, build a new window manager, add a killer app to capture the hearts and minds of the multitudes. Hmm, sounds like Apple and OSX and iTunes. Of course this is different, its GOOGle!!! Anyway, I’ll really just wait to see it in real life. Blog posts are cheap.