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Palm Pre evicted from iTunes (yet again)
,----[ Quote ]
| Apple's Thursday update to iTunes - version
| 9.0.2 - yet again kicks the Palm Pre off
| Cupertino's media-sync reservation.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/29/palm_off_itunes_again/
Blackboardâs Response to Open Source: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
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| Blackboard has not been having a good time
| in the state of North Carolina. As I noted
| recently, the University of North Carolina
| (a Blackboard customer) reported highly
| favorable results of their pilot study of
| Sakai, with an outcome of further
| investigation into Sakai as a full
| replacement of Blackboard as their primary
| LMS. It turns out that this was following on
| the heels of a similar study done by the
| North Carolina Community College system
| favorably comparing Moodle to Blackboard.
| The details were different but some of the
| underlying dynamics were the same: the open
| source system in each case was found to be
| functionally equivalent to Blackboard for
| all practical purposes, the open source
| platforms did roughly as well as Blackboard
| (in the Moodle evaluation) or better than
| Blackboard (in the Sakai case) in usability
| evaluations, and Blackboard was deemed to be
| expensive relative to the alternatives.
`----
http://mfeldstein.com/blackboards-response-to-open-source-fear-uncertainty-doubt/
Recent:
Bye Bye Blackboard
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| Each student would get a WordPress.com blog (because I don't
| see the sense of abandoning a VLE to encumber yourself with
| the admin load of administering WordPressMU or any other
| centralized installation - let's put it in the cloud). This
| would serve as a place to submit assessments and receive
| feedback. Students could choose whether their blogfolio was
| public or only visible to instructors. The joy of RSS-
| everywhere in Wordpress would make large numbers of students a
| joy to administer.
`----
http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/2009/09/bye-bye-blackboard.html
Court rules against Blackboard in patent case
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| A federal appeals court has found all 38 of Blackboard Inc.âs contested
| patent claims to be invalid in ongoing litigation between the D.C.-based
| education software company and its Canadian competitor, Desire2Learn Inc.
|
| This is the second time in the course of the three-year lawsuit that courts
| have poked major holes in Blackboardâs patent.
`----
http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2009/07/27/daily26.html
Court Strikes Down Blackboard E-Learning Patent
,----[ Quote ]
| Even as the Patent Office realized it needed to rethink the patent, the
| lawsuit moved forward, with Blackboard scoring a win. Of course, just weeks
| later, the USPTO gave an initial rejection of the patent. The original court
| ruling was (of course) appealed (separate from the USPTO ruling), and the
| good news is that the appeals court has dumped the entire patent.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090728/0233445678.shtml
Blackboard: Federal Circuit Again Find Software-Related Means-Plus-Function
Claims Invalid for Failing to Disclose Sufficient Structure
http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/07/blackboard-v-desire2learn-fed-cir-2009-blackboards-patent-covers-an-internet-based-educational-support-system-and-metho.html
Blackboard Swallows Its Competitors, Tossing Open Alternatives a Bone
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| It's an interesting situation playing out in the academic software market
| that other software vendors would do well to watch. By swallowing its
| competition, Blackboard is keeping its hold on the marketshare and presumably
| positioning itself for the future. But simply buying competitors to keep hold
| of the market, and not making changes to retain the customers that opted for
| their products over yours in the first place isn't sustainable. There are
| alternatives -- there are always alternatives. In its drive to purchase, not
| revise, Blackboard has tossed its open source competitors a great
| opportunity.
`----
http://ostatic.com/blog/blackboard-swallows-its-competitors-tossing-open-alternatives-a-bone
Next Step for Blackboard and Open Source
,----[ Quote ]
| While open source advocates tend to view Blackboardâs for-profit,
| license-based model with disdain, the company has responded with a public
| commitment to embrace free sharing of code when possible. Its first effort to
| that end, earlier this year, was a partnership with Syracuse University to
| develop a free software plug-in that would bridge the divide between the
| Blackboard interface and data from Sakai, one of the main open-source course
| management packages.
|
| Today, at the annual conference of Educause, the higher education information
| technology group, Blackboard is announcing a similar project to integrate
| with Moodle, the other primary open source alternative. Although it was
| previously known that Moodle would be next, the announcement revealed that
| Iowa State University would develop the plug-in with support from Blackboard.
`----
http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3496
Blackboard Partners With Iowa State University To Develop Moodle Integration
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| Blackboard Inc., a leading provider of educational enterprise technology,
| announced today that it has partnered with Iowa State University to develop
| software that will allow institutions to connect their Blackboard(R) learning
| environment with the open source Moodle course management system.
|
| In July, Blackboard announced a similar partnership with Syracuse University
| to develop an integration for the open source Sakai course management system.
| Both efforts -- which will be made available at no cost to institutions in
| the Blackboard community -- are part of Project NG, Blackboard's multi-year,
| multi-release effort to deliver a next generation teaching and learning
`----
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Blackboard-Partners-With-Iowa-State/story.aspx?guid=%7B2BFCD9B5-0218-409B-9A0A-6EA52D986818%7D
'How to Put the Whole Educational Process Online'
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| Q. You've recently announced that you plan to help allow open-source software
| to integrate with the Blackboard system. That's an interesting move. Is this
| an attempt to kill open source by having colleges move it off to the side at
| their universities?
|
| A. At many universities we are the standard learning system on their
| campuses. There is maybe a division that is running open-source software. Why
| should students or faculty care what the back-end technology is that's
| powering that course? They don't care. â They should log into Blackboard and
| have access to all of their courses. We've been working hand in hand with a
| lot of schools that have open-source systems on their campuses, and we want
| to make sure we're supporting that.
`----
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i03/03a01801.htm
Blackboard Customers Consider Alternatives
,----[ Quote ]
| Blackboard has become the Microsoft of higher-education technology, say many
| campus-technology officials, and they don't mean the comparison as a
| compliment. To them the company is not only big but also pushy, and many of
| them love to hate it.
|
| [...]
|
| LeTourneau's contract with Blackboard ends this year, and campus officials
| may join the growing number of colleges switching to Moodle, a free,
| open-source course-management system, or Sakai, another free program. Those
| systems have grown feature-rich enough to pose serious challenges to
| Blackboard. Giants like the Georgia Institute of Technology and the
| University of California at Los Angeles, along with smaller colleges, like
| Louisiana State University at Shreveport, have made the jump.
`----
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i03/03a00103.htm
Patent Office Will Continue Reexamination of Blackboard's Controversial Patent
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| The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected a request by Blackboard
| Inc. for a temporary halt in the officeâs review of a software patent the
| company holds concerning course-management systems.
|
| This year Blackboard won a lawsuit in federal court against a rival software
| company, Desire2Learn, for violating the patent, though Desire2Learn has
| appealed the decision. Meanwhile, Desire2Learn had formally challenged the
| validity of the patent with the patent office, arguing that it is overly
| broad and covers technology that other companies had developed before
| Blackboard filed its patent. The patent office issued an initial verdict in
| March that rejected all 44 of the claims that make up Blackboardâs patent.
| But that review is ânonfinal,â meaning that the review is still underway.
`----
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3276/patent-office-will-continue-reexamination-of-blackboards-controversial-patent
Related:
All 44 Blackboard Patent Claims Invalidated by USPTO
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| This decision actually should have come before the trial verdict but was held
| up because the USPTO had to decide what to do about the separate filings from
| D2L and SFLC. Now, in addition to the fact that Blackboard will be able to
| argue against the ruling with the USPTO, there are a number of questions
| regarding how this affects the court case.
`----
http://mfeldstein.com/all-44-blackboard-patent-claims-invalidated-by-uspto/
The Blackboard Patent and Blackboard's Big Idea
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| Now that the Blackboard Patent Court Case has begun, let's recap the main
| issues. Blackboard sued Desire2Learn for patent infringement. What is the
| patent claim and what is at stake?
`----
http://tatler.typepad.com/nose/2008/02/what-did-blackb.html
Blackboard Inc. Is Awarded Payment From Competitor in Patent Case
,----[ Quote
| "This is a signal event in educational technology," said Alfred H. Essa,
| associate vice chancellor and deputy chief information officer for Minnesota
| State Colleges and Universities. "It means that the big boys are playing for
| keeps and will use their patent portfolio at any cost to crush and deter new
| entrants. As a community, it will take us a long time to recover from this
| mess."
`----
http://chronicle.com/free/2008/02/1828n.htm
Taurus/Orion/Spangenberg Hold Off Ford in Madison; Blackboard-Desire2Learn
Trial Begins in Lufkin
,----[ Quote ]
| Interestingly, Desire2Learn is blogging about the trial. Desire2Learn has
| already invalidated 35 out of the 44 claims of the '138 patent. I love how
| Desire2Learn refers to the inventors in quotes - "inventors." From
| Desire2Learn's blog, we learn that the Software Freedom Law Center filed an
| ex parte reexamination request, and Desire2Learn filed an inter partes
| reexamination request. Both were granted, and are continuing in parallel to
| the trial. We also learn that Judge Clark did not rule on any pending summary
| judgment motions, and decided to hold them for trial.
`----
http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2008/02/taurusorionspangenberg-hold-off-ford.html
Blackboard Patent Goes to Trial
,----[ Quote ]
| The Blackboard patent infringement case against Desire2Learn goes to trial on
| February 11, 2008 in Lufkin, Texas. The trial is expected to last two weeks.
| Both sides will have no more than 18 hours to present their case.
|
| [...]
|
| By all accounts Blackboard's patent is a stupid one and never should have
| been issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
`----
http://tatler.typepad.com/nose/2008/02/blackboard-pate.html
Blackboard Problems Leave Vista on Double-Secret Probation
,----[ Quote ]
| On college campuses, Microsoft's Vista operating system may be in
| danger of failing courses that use Blackboard, a key software
| program for communication between teachers and students.
`----
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2109454,00.asp
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