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Turn Your Laptop Into an Earthquake Sensor | Comment
Writing Students and Professors Fight to Keep Theses From Being Freely Available Online | Comment [4]
Educause Issues Statement on RIAA's Methods of Catching Music Pirates | Comment
ABC News to Open 5 University News Bureaus | Comment [10]
How a Lawsuit Over Electronic Reserves Could Affect Colleges | Comment [5]
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May 12, 2008
Media Company Says It Will Start Social-Networking Sites for Ivy Leaguers
Manhattan Media announced today that it is forming a new division, Ivy League Media, to cater to alumni of the eight Ivy League institutions: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities, Dartmouth College, and the University of Pennsylvania. The division will create magazines and social-networking Web sites for the institutions’ alumni, and also organize social events.
Manhattan Media, a New York-based publisher of newspapers and magazines, also says it has acquired 02138, a lifestyle magazine for Harvard alumni. Beginning in 2009, the magazine will increase its frequency from quarterly to every other month. The magazine was founded in 2006 by Bom Kim and Daniel Loss, both Harvard alumni.
If the new Web sites prove successful, might they lure Ivy League alumni away from the social-networking site Facebook—even though it got its start as a site exclusively for Harvard students? —Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Monday May 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]May 9, 2008
School Administrator Files Lawsuit Over Facebook Profile
A high-school dean of students and a Roman Catholic archdiocese are suing Facebook over a fake profile created with the dean’s name. They are trying to get Facebook to identify the creators of the phony page, the Indianapolis Star reports.
Facebook took down the profile in April but has declined to name its creators. Impersonating someone or using a false name is banned in Facebook’s terms of use.
This is not the first Facebook impersonation case, and some have noticed a rise in the number of Facebook users who are using aliases—either original or borrowed—on their profiles. Know of any cases of hijacked profiles on your campus? —Catherine Rampell
Posted on Friday May 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]May 7, 2008
'Twittering' During a Campus Lockdown
Over on the blog bavatuesdays, a professor tells of a visit yesterday to the University of Richmond for a lecture that was interrupted by a lockdown following reports of a gunman on the campus. As the audience sat in a dark, locked room awaiting their fates, hoping and praying that tragedy wouldn’t befall another Virginia university, they began communicating and comforting each other via Twitter.
“I found the act to be really soothing,” Jim Groom, an instructional-technology specialist and adjunct professor at the University of Mary Washington, wrote on his blog. “People at UR were sharing information and giving advice to one another, while the larger network from around the world was sending regards, prayers, questions, and their well wishes.
“I had a very powerful sense that those ‘others’ were there with us from beyond that lab, or even the UR campus. I can’t fully explain why that felt so good, someone even offered a Safety dance from abroad, nothing like a laugh during a moment of untold strangeness. …
“For those thinking about a means to manage a crisis, I would put Twitter, or an application like it at the top of the list. It proved invaluable today for all sorts of reasons, and it made all the other means of connecting with others and collecting information dreadfully inadequate.”
Here’s a link to Mr. Groom’s tweets from the day. —Catherine Rampell
Posted on Wednesday May 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]May 6, 2008
Using Technology to 'Hack' College Life: an Interview With a Student Blogger
Kelly Sutton, a junior in computer science and film production at Loyola Marymount University, co-founded a technology blog by and for college students. About 1,000 people a day visit the blog, called Hack College, which he runs with a few friends at the college.
Q. What is your favorite piece of advice on the blog?
A. We’re in the process of writing a feature called “students should blog.” We personally believe that blogs are kind of replacing résumés as far as indicators of talent and past experiences. We’ve had a lot of job offers come directly from the blog itself. We definitely think more students should consider blogging.
Q. But haven’t students gotten in trouble for blogging things that come back to haunt them?
A. Obviously do it responsibly, and realize that if you make a sex blog or something, that’s going to be tied to your name as long as you live, with the way stuff tends to be archived on the Internet. But if you want to be a sex psychologist, that could be the best thing for you.
Q. What is the most popular piece of advice you’ve posted?
A. The most popular post by far is “10 Ways to Recover a Lost Word Document.” Most papers are done using Microsoft Word.
Q. What is the most important way technology has changed student life in recent years?
A. It’s no longer weird to spend a lot of time on the Internet. Students will jokingly admit to spending hours on Facebook. The habits that they’re forming right now will eventually lead to different collaborations that weren’t possible in the past.
Q. What’s the biggest downside of all this student technology?
A. It’s adding a lot of overhead to a student’s life — the time it takes to check all the social networks and online platforms.
Q. Is technology making teaching better?
A. Oftentimes professors trying to use technology or plug into the generation using technology fail miserably. It’s like, “Let’s make a podcast.” Well, what problem is that podcast solving?
Q. What are your crystal-ball predictions for campus technology?
A. I think a lot of the social networks will putter out and die. Facebook will be here to stay, and there are a lot of them that I would like to see stick around, but realistically they’re not going to.
Q. How did you personally get interested in technology?
A. I learned how to operate a computer before I learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. Both of my parents studied electrical engineering, so it’s just kind of been a part of my life ever since I was born. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Tuesday May 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [7]April 16, 2008
Student Gets University Help via Twitter After Egypt Arrest
A University of California at Berkeley graduate journalism student received help from the institution after sending out messages through Twitter while under arrest in Egypt, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
James Karl Buck was arrested while photographing a demonstration in Egypt. He sent out the message “Arrested” on microblogging service Twitter, and friends in his network quickly notified Berkeley and the U.S. Embassy. The next day a local attorney hired by his university got him out of jail, although his interpreter, who is not an American citizen, apparently remains behind bars.—Catherine Rampell
Posted on Wednesday April 16, 2008 | Permalink | CommentNew Internet2 Social Network
The Internet2 K20 Initiative yesterday announced a new social networking site for the 50,000 primary and secondary schools, community colleges, libraries, and museums connected to the Internet2 backbone network.
The site, Muse, was developed by student Web programmers at the University of Washington for Internet2, an advanced computing consortium of colleges and businesses. Five regional Muse sites have also been set up, according to a press release.
Muse users can visit the site to learn how others are using Internet2-enabled technologies. Members can learn more about Muse at the Internet2 K20 Initiative Meeting on Monday, April 21, 2008. —Catherine Rampell
Posted on Wednesday April 16, 2008 | Permalink | CommentApril 15, 2008
Blogs May Be Rendered Obsolete by New Technology
Academics interested in blogging for research-review purposes might want to take notice to some new developments—and debates—happening on the Web.
RSS feed aggregators are quickly becoming more sophisticated. New sites are cropping up, such as the recently-opened beta of Shyfter, which allow users to not only share their feeds, but also discuss specific posts in one place.
Some bloggers have taken issue with those developments. They say that Shyfter benefits from the use of their content and draws away discussion from their own blogs to another site. It makes it harder to track comments to their posts and keep discussion going.
The concept, however, doesn’t appear to be much different than what happens everyday on news sites such as Slashdot, which has a robust community of contributors.
It seems the heart of the matter is who gets to moderate or control the discussion.
Martin J. Weller, of the British-based Open University, has a forward-looking post on the evolving nature of blogging. He points out that blogs are having more competition with sites such as Twitter and FriendFeed for establishing discussion online because of their immediacy.
If discussion moves away from blogs themselves, one wonders if bloggers would still have incentive to publish.—Hurley Goodall
Posted on Tuesday April 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [8]April 9, 2008
Rochester Institute Technologist Invents Online Game to Build Social Connections
Games aren’t just for fun. They also can be used to motivate people in their workplaces and their homes, says Elizabeth Lane Lawley, director of the laboratory for social computing at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
At a keynote address today at the annual Computers in Libraries conference in Arlington, Va., Ms. Lawley described a game she helped to create with Microsoft called Social Genius. The goal of the game is to encourage people in an organization to become familiar with each other and socialize more. They’re presented with online photographs of colleagues. The more faces they correctly identify the more points they accumulate. People also accumulate points for updating their online photos and biographical data.—Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Wednesday April 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]Should a Facebook Poster Be Liable for a Party That Became a Riot?
A wild street party near the campus of Michigan State University that was promoted on Facebook has law-enforcement officials in East Lansing, Mich., considering whether the event’s online organizers should be held accountable for causing a riot. Some 3,000 to 4,000 young people attended the event, called “Cedar Fest,” at a privately owned student apartment complex near the campus last weekend. Police officers broke up the party with tear gas after fights broke out and partygoers attacked officers with bottles and cans. More than 50 people, including 28 Michigan State students, were arrested.
Because the party-turned-riot was organized on Facebook, East Lansing officials may seek to hold the creators of the Facebook event accountable, according to The Detroit News. The Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union monitored the party and has taken an interest in the possibility of charges against its organizers. “It’s possible that there could be civil-liberties problems when they ultimately decide to charge,” the chapter’s executive director, Kary Moss, told the newspaper.
The campus newspaper, The State News, also reported that law enforcement planned to prosecute “those who made pro-riot posts” on the Facebook event page.
The riot has spawned numerous YouTube videos, articles, and, of course, Facebook groups. One group, “I Got Gassed at Cedarfest 2008!”, reminds Facebookers not to admit to any illegal activities, lest the police be scouring the site for more lawbreakers. —Catherine Rampell
Posted on Wednesday April 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [6]April 7, 2008
Facebook Is Expected to Reach Settlement in Lawsuit With Rival Social-Networking Site
A legal dispute over whether Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, stole the idea for the wildly successful social-networking site from fellow students at Harvard University is on the verge of settlement, according to a report on The New York Times’s Bits blog.
An anonymous source told The Times that the founders of ConnectU, a social-networking site that sued Facebook in 2004, is prepared to settle the case for undisclosed terms.
While Mr. Zuckerberg was an undergraduate at Harvard, he worked briefly as a programmer for ConnectU’s founders, and they allege that he quit the project abruptly and used their ideas in Facebook (originally called thefacebook.com) before ConnectU opened its doors. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Monday April 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [1]