pipwerks

Constructive criticism for the new whitehouse.gov

The new whitehouse.gov site has received a lot of press since its unveiling a few days ago. Many have rightly given it kudos for bringing a modern sense of design and “Web 2.0”-style social practices to the White House. I agree the new site is a big

Blackboard: Spoke too soon?

Alfred Essa posted this tidbit today: An Important Correction to the Blackboard Patent Story A number of us, including this blog, have gotten this story wrong. It’s time for a correction. The USPTO has NOT invalidated the Blackboard patent. Instead the USPTO is proposing to invalidate the patent and

Rapid Intake: Where are the standards?

Today Rapid Intake announced a new service named Unison. Not having used the service, I won’t pretend to know whether it’s a worthwhile service or not. It’s certainly an intriguing idea, and with its oft-mentioned low price, it’s guaranteed to get some industry buzz. Out of

The IMS Global Learning Consortium needs to loosen up!

Today I’m working on a simple JavaScript/XML-based quiz. I decided I’d like to use a standardized XML format for the quiz questions and answers, so I googled QTI, a common quiz format. Turns out QTI is (yet another) IMS specification (duh, I should have known that!). I

LMSs are just websites. No, really!

I had an interesting conference call the other day regarding a learning management system’s browser support. We’re trying to implement a new LMS, and it needs to be accessible for Mac users. The vendor promised us Mac support before the contract was signed and — surprise! — it doesn’t

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