In a bid to attract more developers to its Berkeley DB open-source embeddable database, Oracle this week released two upgraded versions with new APIs for simplifying application development and, for the first time, support for Microsoft's C# and .NET Framework.
- By John K. Waters
- 09/16/09
Red Hat has released the fourth update of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) platform, which the company is calling the foundation of its virtualization portfolio.
- By John K. Waters
- 09/03/09
Red Hat has released a significant upgrade of its Java middleware platform consisting of an extended services-based architecture with support for numerous new programming platforms and integration with Amazon's EC2 cloud-based service.
- By John K. Waters
- 09/01/09
Desire2Learn this week announced that its Desire2Learn Learning Environment has been certified by the IMS Global Learning Consortium to comply with the IMS Common Cartridge Standard 1.0.
Panopto this week announced that it has developed a module to integrate CourseCast with the open source learning management system Moodle. Moodle. CourseCast is a lecture capture platform that is available free for academic institutions.
Expenditures by enterprises on open source software jumped 34 percent last year, and spending in 2009 is on pace to increase at least another 24 percent, according to a forecast released last week by IT market researcher IDC.
- By Jeffrey Schwartz
- 08/10/09
Blackboard's patent on learning management system technologies has been overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The court ruled Monday in favor of Desire2Learn and invalidated some claims in patent No. 6,988,138, also known as the "Alcorn patent" or the "138 patent." But the saga will continue.
The United States Department of Education reported recently that it's found some evidence to support the notion that blended learning is more effective than either face to face or online learning by themselves. Further, between online and face to face instruction, online is at least as good and may even have the advantage in terms of improving student achievement and potentially expanding the amount of time (and quality time) students spend learning.
MySQL originator Monty Widenius and Percona CEO Peter Zaitsev have recently formed the Open Database Alliance (ODA), a vendor-neutral consortium that aims to become a hub for the MySQL open source database community and its associated eco system. The ODA said it is also seeking to be a forum for derivative code, binaries, training, and support.
- By Jeffrey Schwartz
- 06/22/09
Indiana's Michigan City Area Schools is in the midst of renovating hundreds of classrooms at fourteen school sites. Through a new technology initiative, called HiTEC ("High Technology Educational Classroom"), the district is outfitting its classrooms with a wide range of interactive A/V technologies and control systems and funding the whole thing through savings realized through an open source initiative.