BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer software that many students use to download films and software, will take steps to make itself less hospitable to users swapping files illegally. As part of a deal it has reached with the nation’s major movie studios, BitTorrent will no longer let people use its Web site to locate pirated movies.

The deal may frustrate some would-be file sharers, but it won’t stop illegal activity altogether. Savvier BitTorrent users will still be able to use a number of other search services that have popped up on the Web if they want to locate movies they can download with the software. (Associated Press)

Apple-computer users at Bowdoin College can now find out the day’s dining-hall menu at the push of a button, thanks to a free piece of software called a "widget." The software, which is available on Apple’s Web site, was developed by John Hall, a sophomore at the college. It is a plug-in to Apple’s Dashboard feature, which pulls up a series of small information windows that appear over the desktop temporarily when the user presses a function key. Apple allows anyone to develop such plug-ins, which include programs that let users track packages and check the weather, among other things.

Martin Benjamin, a visiting assistant professor of Swahili at Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, is using the Internet to create a comprehensive dictionary of Swahili, a widely spoken language in Africa. An updated dictionary of the language has not been produced for 30 years. (The Hartford Courant)

Shawn Fanning—who started the war over file sharing when he designed the first version of Napster—now envisions a digital world where recording labels that want to sell songs online can post them for download, set a price, and let the marketplace do the rest. The key to such a community, he says, is a program called Snocap. The software, designed by Mr. Fanning, allows record companies to tag their songs and require file swappers to pay for the tunes if they try to download them illegally.

Snocap might sound promising to record executives, but there’s no guarantee the software will revolutionize song swapping. So far the only digital music service to embrace Mr. Fanning’s technology is Mashboxx, and that company comes with a bit of baggage: It is backed by Sony, whose experiments with intrusive copy-protection software have not endeared it to consumers. (The New York Times)

Instead of sending students with questions about campus life to glossy Web sites or noisy discussion boards, some colleges are starting wikis, interactive Web pages to which anyone on the campus can contribute. What’s more, contributors can edit one another’s posts. One of the most successful wikis, run by users at Case Western Reserve University, already has over 400 pages, which are devoted to topics like campus clubs, local bars, and the university’s strategic plan.

Are Cliffs Notes too detailed for you? Do texts like Paradise Lost and Wuthering Heights have too many pesky real words and not enough abbreviations? If you answered "yes" to either of those questions, Dot Mobile, a mobile-phone service for British students, has just the thing for you.

The company is about to unveil a new service that condenses classic works of fiction—by turning them into text messages. A precis of Romeo and Juliet, for example, will run just five terse sentences:

FeudTween2hses-Montague&Capulet. RomeoM falls_

As a graduate student at Columbia University sits in class, he notices 10 students with laptop computers—and of the four computer screens he can see, only one shows any signs that its owner is taking notes. By current standards, that’s about as focused as a wireless classroom gets.

Fearing that students succumb too quickly  to the siren calls of e-mail and Instant Messenger, officials at a number of colleges have considered blocking wireless in the classroom. But some technology boosters say that’s unnecessary. There is not much evidence, they say, that in-class distractions adversely affect students’ performance. (Slate)

Swarthmore College students are producing a weekly radio broadcast intended to broaden understanding of the war in Iraq and its impact on Americans and Iraqis. Called "War News Radio," the show features in-depth interviews with soldiers, Iraqi expatriates, and others, along with news from Iraq. (The Chronicle, subscription required)

This afternoon, the Progress and Freedom Foundation hosted a panel discussion about Google’s Library Project, the search company’s effort to scan millions of books from a handful of top research libraries. Alan Davidson, a lawyer for Google, was present to talk about what he saw as the altruistic motivations of the Library Project. Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs for the Association of American Publishers, which recently coordinated a lawsuit against Google over the project, sat on the other side of the table to deliver sharp retorts to Mr. Davidson’s points.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Davidson often played up the commercial benefit of the Library Project to publishers—the fact that readers in the world may end up using the service to find and buy books that they never knew existed. He also stressed that the displays of the searched books still under...

The International Children’s Digital Library is more than just a repository for kids’ books, say its creators; it’s also a case study in what makes "millennials" tick. By recruiting grade-school students to help design the archive’s online navigation tools, researchers at the University of Maryland at College Park may gain insight into how a new crop of students learns to process information. (CNET News)