November 2010
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More than a third of Higher Education Faculty are... →
Some of the facts
35.2% of respondents used Twitter in some way, compared to 30.7% last year, so use is clearly on the rise
29.7% claimed to be either “very familiar” or “extremely familiar” with Twitter (versus 21.9% last year)
Of those that do use the application, 53.9% said they rarely or never use it to communicate with students
16.9% of faculty said they have used Twitter but then...
October 2010
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At Microtask and CloudCrowd, Assembly Lines Go... →
DO one assigned task on your computer. It shouldn’t take you more than two seconds. Repeat 14,399 times. Congratulations! Your eight-hour work day is complete.
No such workplace yet exists, but with the fiendishly clever creation of standardized two-second tasks, delivered to any computer connected to the Internet, it is now technically possible to set up.
Microtask, a start-up company in...
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Minimalist Profile? Facebook Knows About You, Too →
You think you’re so clever. You think you’re gaming the system. You hardly put any information on Facebook anyway—you just use it to lurk and occasionally “poke” people—so how can Facebook be mining data, targeting ads, or making money off you at all?
Think again.
» via Fast Company
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The Consumerization of IT →
In the last 10 years, the web has brought us countless innovative technologies which enable consumers to get things done simply and without fuss, whether it’s finding information, buying goods and services, managing finances, sharing documents, communicating with friends, finding a job, setting up meetings, backing up a PC, or any number of other activities. So why, when you go to work in a...
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Irony: Book About Recording Industry's Mishandling... →
A few weeks back, we noted that book publishers apparently simply did not learn from the mistakes of the recording industry — specifically pointing to DRM and (more importantly) the fact that they’ve started pricing ebooks higher than physical books. Now, in a moment of supreme irony, Copycense (who has been highlighting various ebooks priced over corresponding physical books) is...
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New at iTunes U: Free E-Books →
You can now get free e-books on iTunes U. Apple announced today that Oxford, Rice, and the Open University have all added digital books to the lectures and other materials traditionally available on the popular educational-content platform.
From Oxford, the new trove of e-books includes Shakespeare’s entire First Folio. The Open University added 100 interactive books, with 200 more to come by...
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Some hotel chains ditching the front desk →
Traditional front desks, however, may be destined for a scrap heap teeming with bygone lobby fixtures like key boxes, desk bells and hat racks. Some mid-market chains already are dumping imposing check-in counters for cozy, one-on-one welcomes or for virtual check-ins through kiosks or mobile devices.
In addition to Andaz, Courtyard by Marriott has renovated 201 of its 800 U.S. lobbies, swapping...
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Your Fingers Know When You Make a Typo →
The brain uses two different checks to guard against sloppy copy, a new study finds. By using a doctored word processor to sneak errors into typed words and surreptitiously fix typists’ real errors, researchers teased apart the various ways people catch their own mistakes. The study, published in the Oct. 29 Science, highlights the complexity of performance monitoring.
» via Wired
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Net cost of college tuition and fees lower than in... →
A new report from the College Board might prompt a different sort of sticker shock: The net price of college tuition and fees, after factoring in student aid and inflation, is actually lower now than five years ago.
Tuition and fees rose 7.9 percent between 2009 and 2010 at public universities for in-state students and 4.5 percent for private four-year nonprofit colleges, according to the annual...
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As College Fees Rise, Aid Does Too, Reports Say →
As their state financing dwindled, four-year public universities increased their published tuition and fees almost 8 percent this year, to an average of $7,605, according to the College Board’s annual reports. When room and board are included, the average in-state student at a public university now pays $16,140 a year.
At private nonprofit colleges and universities, tuition rose 4.5 percent to...
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5 Things Netflix Streaming Can Teach Higher Ed →
1. Replace Yourself: Offering unlimited streaming for $8.99 a month (1 physical DVD out at a time) may seem like the best way to cannibalize a core business of charging people $16.99 a month for 3 DVDs. But Netflix knew that if it did not take this step then someone else would. Much better to grow the customer base by offering a superior product at a good price than to try to hold on to a...
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What Facebook Tells Researchers About Friendship... →
College freshmen are more likely to make friends with peers they share a dorm room or major with than they are to befriend those from similar racial backgrounds, a study on the Facebook profiles of first-year students found.
A paper on the study, which will be published next week in the American Journal of Sociology, was conducted by researchers at Harvard University and the University of...
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Place Search: a faster, easier way to find local... →
Today we’re introducing Place Search, a new kind of local search result that organizes the world’s information around places. We’ve clustered search results around specific locations so you can more easily make comparisons and decide where to go.
» via The Official Google Blog
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Apple Has Already Won the Flash-HTML5 War →
A majority of web video is now HTML5-ready, according to new research from MeFeedia, showing that web standards — and Apple — are winning the day when it comes to how video is delivered and viewed online. The research shows that the amount of video viewable in an HTML5 video player has doubled in the last five months and now accounts for 54 percent of all video content online.
It’s important to...
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Smartphone makers ready to wage war on radio over... →
The great smartphone FM tuner device mandate crusade shows no sign of lessening. The National Association of Broadcasters has formally endorsed a proposal to the musicFIRST coalition that would green light over-the-air radio stations paying performance royalties to musicians—and more.
On top of a play-for-pay schedule, the blueprint says that both sides will push for...
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Microsoft's consumer brand is dying →
Consumers have turned their backs on Microsoft. A company that once symbolized the future is now living in the past.
Microsoft has been late to the game in crucial modern technologies like mobile, search, media, gaming and tablets. It has even fallen behind in Web browsing, a market it once ruled with an iron fist.
» via CNN
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The end of the public university in England →
The lessons to be learnt from the American experience are that fees will continue to rise, unequal access between rich and poor will become structural to the system, and the for-profit sector will grow. Buckingham University, once the only for-profit private in the entire UK, may well become the model. In July, the Minister responsible for higher education, David Willetts, made BPP (now owned by...
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Those Bits Aren’t Free: Netflix Could Be Racking... →
Investors are cheering on Netflix as it moves from DVDs to streaming video, and keeps adding customers along the way. But “digital” doesn’t equal “cheap” for Reed Hastings’ company. In fact, the online move has cost Netflix at least $1.2 billion.
That’s the amount the Netflix has committed to paying Hollywood studios for the rights to stream their movies and TV shows. And it’s up from $229...
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Iceland Wants to Help Keep Your Digital Secrets →
One of the consequences surrounding the most recent release by Wikileaks of documents relating to America’s war in Iraq is a renewed interest in the safe and secure hosting of contentious data. The prospect of hosting secret or questionably legal data within the United States has become increasingly less appealing, due mostly to expanded wiretap authority by the federal government.
Of course,...
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E-Mail Spam Falls After Russian Crackdown →
You may not have noticed, but since late last month, the world supply of Viagra ads and other e-mail spam has dropped by an estimated one-fifth. With 200 billion spam messages in circulation each day, there is still plenty to go around.
But police officials in Russia, a major spam exporter, say they are trying to do their part to stem the flow. On Tuesday, police officials here announced a...
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Audit shows records at National Archives at risk →
An audit prompted in part by the loss of the Wright Brothers’ original patent and maps for atomic bomb missions in Japan finds some of the nation’s prized historical documents are in danger of being lost for good.
Nearly 80 percent of U.S. government agencies are at risk of illegally destroying public records and the National Archives is backlogged with hefty volumes of records...
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$5 million to encourage innovation in digital... →
Journalism is fundamental to a functioning democracy. So as media organizations globally continue to broaden their presence online, we’re eager to play our part on the technology side—experimenting with new ways of presenting news online; providing tools like Google Maps and YouTube Direct to make websites more engaging for readers; and investing heavily in our digital platforms to enable...
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LimeWire Told by Judge to Disable Its File-Trading... →
A federal judge in New York issued an injunction on Tuesday that will essentially shut down LimeWire, the big music file-sharing service that has been mired in a four-year legal struggle with the music industry. The case has already resulted in the company and its founder being found liable for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Although LimeWire, the file-sharing service...
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Technical University Comes to Fruition in North... →
Of all the fantastic tales to come out of North Korea — the country’s leader is injected with the blood of virgin girls, he made 11 holes-in-one during his very first round of golf, each grain of rice he eats is inspected by hand for imperfections, his youngest son and would-be successor has had cosmetic surgery to make him resemble his grandfather — not one of these seems as improbable as the...
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The End of the Textbook as We Know It →
You’ve heard it before: Digital technologies blew up the music industry’s moneymaking model, and the textbook business is next.
For years observers have predicted a coming wave of e-textbooks. But so far it just hasn’t happened. One explanation for the delay is that while music fans were eager to try a new, more portable form of entertainment, students tend to be more...
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The MLS Project →
Improving the lot of librarians in terms of status, income, and prestige were among the goals of “the MLS project,” but Swigger argues that the results have been mixed, partly because we have never really managed to convince others of our value, and partly because our “jurisdiction over information access” is being undermined. The question we should be asking is not whether librarianship is a...
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The university lacks capacity to change education →
Make no mistake, dramatic changes are occurring in education. These changes, due to the reluctance of the academy to map activities to the reality of the external world, are driven by external innovation. Quite simply, higher education is not in control of its fate as it has failed to develop the capacity to be self-reliant in times of change.
» via elearnspace & Mind Dump
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There is No New Media: It’s All New Consumption →
For the media industry (which is video, music and print), there has been one more, and perhaps the farthest-reaching, failure: the inability of the folks to grok that today’s audience is not tomorrow’s audience. It goes without saying there’s a whole generation of folk that has either grown up, or are growing up, on the Internet. Their consumption and online behavior is going to be predicated on...
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Amazon: 14-Day Lending Coming to Kindle "Later... →
Amazon will allow Kindle users to lend books to each other for 14-day periods, the company announced this afternoon.
The lending feature has been one of the primary selling points of Barnes & Nobles’s Nook e-reader, which is slated for a refresh next week. As with Barnes & Nobles’s lending feature, Kindle lenders will not be able to access the book on loan during the 14-day period, nor...
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Not so shocking: TV networks block Google TV →
Google describes its new Google TV as a “platform that combines your current TV programming and the open Web into a single, seamless entertainment experience.” But broadcasters don’t necessarily want to see that delicious combination of peanut butter and chocolate Web and TV—and they’ve now taken to blocking Google TV access.
Think of this as a continuation of the...
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Average College Debt Rose to $24,000 in 2009 →
College seniors who graduated in 2009 had an average of $24,000 in student loan debt, up 6 percent from 2008, according to an annual report from the Project on Student Debt.
The increase is similar to those of the past four years, the report said, despite the recession, probably because members of the class of 2009 took out most of their debt before the economic downturn began.
» via The New...
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Our Obligation to Adapt →
We need to devote some time to rethink how we – faculty and students alike – read, write, study, research, and more generally, learn. As a relatively new dean, I have asked faculty to rethink their classes, not by tweaking a syllabus by adding or removing a book, but by thinking about today’s and tomorrow’s students. While this process has just commenced, I find that, generally, faculty are eager...
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PA sets out restrictions on library e-book lending →
The Publishers Association has set out an agreed position on e-book lending in libraries that will see library users blocked from downloading e-books outside of the library premises. Faber c.e.o. Stephen Page announced the new guidelines this morning (21 October) at the CILIP Public Library Authorities conference in Leeds.
Page told conference delegates that “all the major trade publishers...
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Why Wireless Spectrum Matters →
“I believe next year … smartphones will outnumber regular phones,” said Phil Weiser, who, as the senior advisor for technology and innovation to the National Economic Council director, represented the Obama administration on the panel. “To have this revolution in only six years is amazing.” Add to that the number of iPads and tablet computing devices and other...
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Jammie Thomas' third P2P trial looms; RIAA... →
The recording industry has deep pockets, but even RIAA largesse has its limits. Case in point: the Jammie Thomas-Rasset peer-to-peer trial in Minnesota, the first of the file-sharing cases to make it all the way to a verdict. In two weeks, Thomas-Rasset will have an extraordinary third trial, and the recording industry is sick of the expenses it’s ringing up to prosecute someone who...
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British Universities to See Budgets Slashed →
The news for British universities is particularly bad: Excluding research support, which will remain flat, the amount of money going to higher education will decline by 40 percent over the next four years, from 7.1 billion pounds (about $11-billion) to 4.2 billion pounds (about $6.6-billion).
The research budget will be frozen at 4.6 billion pounds (about $7.3-billion), “to ensure the UK...
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In Digital Age, Students Still Cling to Paper... →
They text their friends all day long. At night, they do research for their term papers on laptops and commune with their parents on Skype. But as they walk the paths of Hamilton College, a poster-perfect liberal arts school in this upstate village, students are still hauling around bulky, old-fashioned textbooks — and loving it.
“The screen won’t go blank,” said Faton Begolli, a sophomore from...
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6.1 trillion text messages to be sent in 2010 →
Use of mobile phones and the Internet continues to skyrocket despite a huge difference in broadband pricing worldwide, a new study from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has found.
According to the United Nations-run organization, a whopping 6.1 trillion text messages will be sent by the end of 2010. That figure, which has tripled in the past three years, means people around the...
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Microsoft Moves Office to the Cloud →
It has been a busy year inside Microsoft: the company is getting ready to introduce an entirely new mobile platform and a new type of Xbox gaming interface that uses the human body instead of a traditional controller. Now it is offering a new kind of Microsoft Office suite, called Office 365, which is based in the cloud.
In a press release on Tuesday, Microsoft said this new product was “the...
