So Blackboard has lost another battle in its patent war with Desire2Learn. The original patent claims been invalidated by the USPTO and the courts and yet, at the same time, there are still four other fronts open (see the good summary on D2L patent blog).
As things move forward, the question increasingly becomes “what is Blackboard [...]

No good deed goes unpunished.  I’m sure Josh Baron is feeling a little like that after his innocent comment on the Educause CIO email list generated over 35 on-list responses. There were undoubtedly many other off-list responses directly to Josh.
It started like this (the list archives are public, so you can see for yourself):
Colleagues;
Looking for [...]

Here’s the chronology for the Blackboard anti-trust investigation as far as we know so far:

Jeff Young from The Chronicle of Higher Education has a well-researched piece up on the Department of Justice’s early steps toward investigating ANGEL’s acquisition by Blackboard. If anybody out there has talked to the DoJ and would like to share some details, please let me know. You can contact me privately at michael [at] mfeldstein [dot] com.

This just in from Desire2Learn’s patent blog:

Today Blackboard announced that ANGEL’s Ray Henderson will be the new President of the Blackboard Learn division. This is great news. Ray is one of the best executives in educational technology today, known for both his competence, his integrity, and his leadership in supporting open standards and openness in general. Does this mean a new beginning for Blackboard?

Blackboard has announced that it is acquiring Angel Learning. Whether this is a “good thing” or a “bad thing” of course depends on who you are and on what happens with the two companies. It is certainly another aggressive move by Blackboard to protect/increase it’s market share. When viewed in light of the acquisition of [...]

Update: It looks like “bbplusangel” has already gotten some momentum on Twitter, so I’m switching my tag over to that.
I’ve already invited the opinions of ANGEL customers on a different post, but let me throw the doors wide open. I’m really curious to hear from all of you regarding your opinions. What are your hopes? Your fears? Your expectations? How does this change the landscape? Please comment.
Again, if you are writing your own blog post on the topic, you can ping this post by linking to it. Alternatively, I’m proposing the tag “bb-angel” for blogging, Twittering, del.icio.us…ing, etc.

I’m looking to get a sense of the reaction of the Blackboard/ANGEL news from ANGEL customers. If you are an ANGEL customer, please let me know what you think in the comments to this post. If you are writing a blog post of your own, please ping this post by linking to it. (Your post will show up as a pingback in the comments section of this post.)

As you may have heard by now, Blackboard has acquired ANGEL. There will be plenty of time for analysis in the days ahead. For now, I just have a personal message.
To my friends at ANGEL, I wish you well. You all have done great work advancing the causes of interoperability and ease of use, and in providing top-notch customer service. I fervently hope that this acquisition will give you all opportunities to continue your great work.