Dave Sabol

Here’s who’s shaping what you read, watch, hear, write, buy, sell, befriend, flame, and otherwise do online.

Despite what Time magazine would have you believe, you are not the most powerful or influential person on the Web. At PC World we love online personals, social networks, and videos of people falling on their keisters as much as the next person, but without the folks who create the Craigslists, MySpaces, and YouTubes of the world, much of the Web’s potential would be lost among spam sites and other online detritus.

The 50 Most Important People on the Web | PC World

Adding and editing content via wikis growing in popularity at companies.

Just as employers are figuring out the role of blogs, their value and downside, along come wikis. Actually, wikis have been around for quite some time, but experts say it’s just now that mainstream employers are starting to tap into the power of such Web sites – where users can add and edit content at will – as a means of collecting employee knowledge and enhancing productivity.

Even as the research firm Gartner Inc., based in Stamford, Conn., is predicting that by 2009 half of companies worldwide will be using wikis, employers ranging from investment banks to book publishers to nonprofits are using them in a variety of ways:

It’s information collaboration | Newsday

U.S. media conglomerate Viacom Inc. Tuesday unveiled a licensing deal with Joost, a new Internet service that specializes in commercial video content. Key to the agreement was Joost’s promise it would protect Viacom’s copyrights, Viacom Chief Executive Officer Philippe Dauman said. This stumbling block led to the collapse of similar talks with YouTube parent Google Inc. two weeks ago. Unlike YouTube, which carries mostly short video clips uploaded by users, Joost’s strategy is to run full episodes with high-quality resolution, like TV but online, Joost said.

Viacom Inks Video Deal with ‘YouTube Killer’ Joost | Sci-Tech Today

Employers see big benefits from e-learning compared to more traditional training methods, according to research from e-skills UK. Eight in 10 employers said the biggest drivers for using technology to teach is the accessibility, flexibility and cost-effectiveness that high-tech courses offer. Currently these courses generally consist of training programmes offered to staff on their PCs – either via the internet or via dedicated training software.

Employers Embrace E-Learning | Silicon.com

In response to a challenge from a free and open software group, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has agreed to re-examine all 44 claims of a patent that covers e-learning tools.Patent No. 6,988,138, awarded last year to the academic technology company Blackboard, is titled “Internet-based education support system and methods.” It involves the ability to grant different people, such as students and teachers, different access rights to online resources such as grades, files or quizzes.

Feds to revisit e-learning patent | News.blog | CNET News.com

Jane Hart is building an E-Learning for Free Information Service to create a one-stop place to access a variety of free resources not only to create different learning and performance solutions but to provide the best advice and best practice in doing so. The site is still growing, but there are already some great resources available to view.

Jane Hart’s E-Learning Pick of the Day

As it tries to usher in a new era in computing, Google is promoting its software applications in kindergarten through high school classrooms, where kids who have grown up with the Web are more likely to experiment with different technology.

CNN.com

It looks like the education space could be the first, real place where Linux could grab beachhead in the desktop PC market.

The Chart

What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages.

The Simple Dollar

One can discuss, whether web-generators are useful or not. On the one hand, they don’t challenge our creativity, but on the other hand they make our life easier and save our precious time. However, it doesn’t matter really. What matters is that we use them if we have to solve some problem quickly and efficiently.

Smashing Magazine