Category Archives: standards

5 lessons for OER from Open Source and Free Software

Posted on March 13, 2014 by

While the OER community owes some of its genesis to the open source and free software movements, there are some aspects of how and why these movements work that I think are missing or need greater emphasis. 1. Its not … Continue reading →

Posted in cetis, open education, standards | 6 Comments

Open Source Meets Open Standards

Posted on March 21, 2013 by

I’ve just published a post over on the OSS Watch team blog on open source and open standards, introducing a new OSS Watch briefing paper on the topic. This is where my CETIS and OSS Watch roles cross over! The … Continue reading →

Posted in cetis, standards | 2 Comments

Unhosted – building web apps without servers

Posted on August 29, 2012 by

For some reason I never came across this before, but it seems there is something of a movement (complete with manifesto) promoting client-side-only web apps. According to the Unhosted site: By “unhosted web apps” we mean browser-based apps with no server-side backend. Unlike … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, development, javascript, mashups, standards, widgets | 8 Comments

SPAWS: Lessons Learned So Far

Posted on August 28, 2012 by

The funded part of SPAWS is coming to a close, so its time for me to write about some of the things I’ve learned so far from working on this project. Is the LearningRegistry Node infrastructure suitable for sharing paradata … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, development, lessonslearnt, standards, widgets | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Realtime Web Competition Hots Up

Posted on August 8, 2012 by

Whether its live streaming of status updates, chatting live with friends, or playing games, there has been a significant trend for adding more real-time capabilities to the web, something that has been noticeable since the introduction of instant messaging and … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, javascript, jiscobs, standards | 1 Comment

Are procurement frameworks useful in selecting IT solutions?

Posted on April 24, 2012 by

There is an article in the Guardian today about procurement, and in particular how universities are handling litigation risks by using procurement frameworks and agreements, and moving procurement decisions more centrally. To be fair, the article is more concerned I … Continue reading →

Posted in cetis, standards | 2 Comments

Design challenges for user-interface mashups: user control and usability in inter-widget communications

Posted on March 7, 2012 by

I originally wrote this as a paper submission for WSKS 2011 as part of my work on the OMELETTE project, but decided to withdraw it – however I think it might be interesting given there is a lot of discussion … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, development, mashups, standards, widgets | 4 Comments

Web Intents

Posted on December 2, 2011 by

Most web developers are familiar with handling integration with other applications using APIs and messaging protocols, but we could be in for a major shift in how we connect applications with the emergence of web intents. Some demos were released … Continue reading →

Posted in standards | 2 Comments

The Future of Offline Web Applications

Posted on October 27, 2011 by

W3C has received 27 position papers for a workshop on November 5th on the Future of Offline Web Applications, which are all worth a read if you’re interested in Widgets, AppCache, and Web Apps in general. They are all quite … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, mobile, standards, widgets | 2 Comments

PhoneGap and Widgets

Posted on October 7, 2011 by

Its been a busy month for PhoneGap, what with being acquired by Adobe and submitting their code to the Apache Incubator. For those who don’t know already, PhoneGap provides a way for developers of mobile web applications to convert their … Continue reading →

Posted in apps, mobile, standards, widgets | 2 Comments