Archive for April, 2008

Ethiotube: you a tube, me a tube, everyone a tube-tube

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

I’ve posted some great Amharic dance videos earlier, and today I came across Ethiotube.net, a Youtube clone started in February this year and describe themselves in this way:
Founded in February 2007, EthioTube is the leader in Ethiopian online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos related to Ethiopia worldwide through a […]

More thoughts on Indonesian project to buy copyrights

Monday, April 7th, 2008

(Background here, here and here) From Kompas, April 7, 2008, through [i:boekoe], Rab A. Broto, director of the Sekolah Penulis Pembelajar (School of Writing and Learning?).
It cannot be denied that the policy of the government to buy copyrights of text books, as was mentioned in the Department of Education (DoE) Policy Number 2, 2008, […]

Reading list dump

Monday, April 7th, 2008

I keep a list of books or articles to read. Sometimes I have kept it as a Google Mail draft, this one I transferred from there into DevonThink. It’s not structured in any way, the entries are messy, often quick copies and pastes, just enough information to be able to Google something. These are things […]

Indonesian text books: First copyrights bought

Monday, April 7th, 2008

(Read about the background here, and here). An update on the copyright buying project, from [i:boekoe], taken from an article in Kompas, March 27, 2008.
The Department of Education has bought the copyrights of 37 books in 2007, and will buy 250 titles more in 2008. The books will then be accessible through the internet and […]

Many great free textbooks from India

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

I have written about the plan to buy the copyright for textbooks in Indonesia and publish the books online (here, and here). Today I found out, through the excellent Indian book blog Scholars Without Borders that the Indian National Council on Educational Research and Training (NCERT) offers free downloadable versions of many Indian K-12 text […]

OpenCourseWare around the world: China and India

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

The idea of OpenCourseWare in its current incarnation started with MIT (note that the Wikipedia page I linked to talks as if MIT are the only ones in the world who do OCW - I should update it, but I won’t manage tonight, unless someone beats me to it). They received funding from the Hewlett […]

Online conferences, teaching and learning in Second Life, SLanguages 2008

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Hybrid models
The new tools available for connecting us and sharing text, video and audio has made it possible to put online many of the interactions and events that used to require moving many people physically to the same place. There are many ways of attempting to do this, more or less successfully. I think hybrid […]

Google Books step aside - OpenLibrary makes reading fun

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

Google Books vs OCA
We’ve heard a lot about Google Books, whether it’s Google’s grand plans or them getting sued by publishers, as well as various complaints about quality control (see this First Monday article). There have also been discussions about the terms of use (many books that are clearly in the public domain show up […]

Sore di Tugu Pancoran, Iwan Fals

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

This mp3 provides much better quality sound, but below you can see the live performance. The lyrics are the same.

sore tugu pancoran
pillar at night at Pancoran (famous area in Jakarta)
si budi kecil kuyub menggigil
the very little guy shivers
menahan dingin tanpa jas hujan
trying to stand the cold without a rain jacket
di simpang jalan tugu pancoran
on the […]