The best things I found at E-Learning 2006:

Online Student Support Services - A Best Practices Monograph

Assessing readiness for new e-learners: READI tool

People Putty is an inexpensive way to create a digital assistant. You can even turn your own likeness into a digital talking head.
Haptek makes the digital assistant software
Sinclair College has an example of the "buddy" for a keyboarding class. Click on Class Overview to see some of the functionality.
You have to download a special player but it is free, quick, and easy.

Moodle, one of the Open Source IMS platforms, is gaining ground fast with many new features and many new large adopters around the world. It doesn't currently have all the functionality of D2L, Blackboard, and others; but it is closing the gap rather quickly.

The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD, for short (I'm serious)) has purchased and refurbished about 65 old houses/mansions/buildings around Savannah and uses them for classrooms, offices, galleries, and many other things. Not only have they helped save many old and beautiful structures, but they literally have made the city of Savannah into their campus. It's really quite amazing.

RSS feeds are really the only efficient way to gather, organize, and consume the overwhelming amount of useful digital information that is out there in the blogosphere, wikisphere, and all those other spheres.