XplanaZine

Here’s our take on news that matters for Wednesday, November 16. Today’s theme is do-it-yourself and here are some links to related news items.

• It’s been described as the Craig’s List killer by some and the eBay killer by others. Right now it’s not either but since we’re talking about Google anything is possible, right? At any rate, Google Base is now live! So, go ahead and start posting, listing, and referencing stuff for free. Might as well be on the first wave.
• CNET is pushing wikis of late and this article, Taking back the Web through wikis, captures much of the disruptive and influential force of wikis. From the article: “Moments after the eye of Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, news agencies everywhere rushed to report the story. But among the quickest to begin offering comprehensive coverage wasn’t a formal news organization at all. Instead, it was a loose collection of self-appointed “citizen journalists” reporting, linking and photographing from Louisiana and around the world. And the organization for which they were working, called Wikinews, wasn’t paying them a dime.”
• And speaking of do-it-yourself initiatives, believe it or not there’s a whole new trend around building your own cell phones. Not that this should surprise us too much. It is, after all, a natural evolution from building our own computers (now passé) and doing mods on our game systems.
• Finally, Ars Technica asks is the mobile phone music market reaching critical mass? It’s a good question. iTunes is only one solution for this market and, so far, much the companies that gain early advantage have the best hardware. Down the road (5 years), everyone will likely be using iTunes, Yahoo, and google for most of their music from a portal perspective, but the gadget wars will rage a while longer. look for an early split between phones and traditional MP3 players with an eventual convergence and phones taking over a majority of the market. It’s only a matter of design from here on out.

Now, here’s a recap of our favorite posts from the edublogging community from the past 48 hours.

• From Godfrey Parkin : Post on e-learning growing up.
• From Alan Levine : Post on the intensely personal nature of blogs.
• From Anne Davis : Post on the ups and downs of a high school blogging project.
• From George Siemens : Post on the mainstream media meltdown and its effect on textbook publishers.
• From Stephen Powell: Post on Personal learning Environments.
• From Albert Ip: Post on a popular podcast for learning spoken Mandarin Chinese.