Footenotes

Sorry, I guess that was a bummer of a headline.  Think of it as a wake-up call, the beach will never be warmer.  Seriously.

Things started off this week with some big news from Anthony Picciano’s @apicciano blog about education media giant Blackboard acquiring Elluminate.  If Elluminate sounds familiar to you that’s because our very own Adam Wandt @awandt blogged about using it quite a bit last semester.  While Adam had a pretty positive experience with the platform, I’ll be curious to see what Blackboard decides to do with it.  My hope is that they leave it alone and let the Elluminate team continue to develop it, but I suspect it’s something they want to integrate into the Blackboard portal itself.  I can see where it’s clearly a smart move for both companies; Elluminate gets a bunch of cash and Blackboard gets a better feature in their suite, but you know…*cough*…there have been some problems with BB’s stability and I wonder how well it’ll take to something like Elluminate if the two concepts are put together.  And that’s not even touching on some of Tony’s greater concerns about centralization that should probably have all of our eyebrows perked a little more.

Michael Smith @MSmith posted some more of his work, this week reflecting on art in the age of catastrophe.  I hate to play armchair critic, and wince a little when I go back and look at times when I’ve tried to publicly have an opinion on art, so I’ll just say that I really like what you did there.  As someone who came of age in the late 90s rest assured that the insulation of padded foam on everything lingered well past the ‘everything is going to kill you’ 80′s.   To that end I can’t help but feel like my generation of artists lack a certain appreciation for danger.

After a too long hiatus Helldriver @helldriver returns.  It’s hard to write about music, especially in way that does it any justice, but this blog always delivers.  Often it’s the insight drawn from writing on music that resonates the most, such as:

But in a broader sense, what’s happened to the 55 is indicative of what’s happened to New York City as a whole, which for the last couple of decades has been busy draining itself of all its wonderfully garish “local” color, and repackaging itself as one more franchise in a global urban chain store, drawing liberally on its own myths to manufacture a brand identity.

I couldn’t have said it better.  To be fair, that’s not the moral of the story so do read on, but New York and I are in a fight this week.

That being said, run – don’t walk – and catch up on what’s going on at York College’s ‘Boot Camp’.  This project is awesome and I hope to see more about on the Commons.  It’s a great idea and I hope as our community here grows we’ll see more projects similar to this appear across CUNY.

And finally, from the Community Team come two posts you should definitely check out.  Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano posted to Commons Connections and gave us a handy guide to adding users to your blogs.  Scott Voth @scottvoth posted to Wiki Wrangler about the Apture plug-in that allows readers to stay on your site while browsing links from your blog instead of being directed away.

There’s the week that was on the blogs.  I mean it people, go out and play.   It’ll be back in the classroom before you know it.