Category Archives: Social Media and Interesting Technology

Apple’s iPad, the Review that Isn’t

Posted on by

Yes, I have and iPad and yes, I got it on the day of it’s release.  There are lots and lots of reviews out there, so consult one of them and any of the links in this sentence.  The think I am most impressed with is the battery life, the things I am most disappointed in are those I new and was prepared for; the fact that sites that use Adobe Flash don’t work, for example.

There is one thing I hadn’t realized and am not happy with, however, is the percentage of applications that you have to purchase again it you want the iPad version.  It just seems unfair. Custom coed baby shower invitations should expound upon this viagra from canada more flexible guest list and the host should consult with the expecting parents to be certain they approve of a less traditional shower. You will be able to create more contact as well as friction in her genitals and last longer in bed and offer her intense sexual pleasure. more info here buy generic viagra In spite of a large availability of male infertility treatment in Bangalore, couples hesitate going there because of social pressure. super cialis canada Kamagra tablets contain sildenafil citrate, an FDA-approved chemical that relaxes the tadalafil canadian smooth muscles of the penis and increases the flow of blood into the penis.  Take for example, the app, “Things,” I already have the desktop program and the iPhone version.  The iPhone version works on the iPad, just in tiny size and small.  I’ll continue to use that. I will not pay another $19.99 for another version.

Higher Education, Collaboration, and Education for the 21st Century

Posted on by

TALIM

In a few days I am off to Morocco for a seminar at TALIM on higher education and employment in Morocco. But the job market in the United States is also very challenging of college graduates right now, and American educators may well be asking themselves if higher education in this country is adequately preparing students to enter the work force of the global era.

We still function in terms of national economies, but those economies are increasingly connected so that a crisis in one affects many others.  We also live in a world in which graduating students in America compete for employment, directly or indirectly, with their peers in Mexico, Morocco, India and Taiwan. And the whole lot of them are also competing with graduating students in Pakistan, Costa Rica, Tunisia, Israel and Poland. Continue reading →

“Internationalized Academe Is Inevitable,” but Will We Do it Well

Posted on by

“The internationalization of higher education is inevitable,” Mr. Levine, a former president of Teachers College at Columbia University, said in a speech on Wednesday to the Association of International Education Administrators whose members are meeting here this week.

In internationalization, “some bold universities will lead,” Mr. Levine said. “Others will be populizers. And others will hold onto the past and will be destined to fail.”

via “Internationalized Academe Is Inevitable, but Its Form Is Not,” The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The quotation above is from a short version of a longer article the was published in the February 26 print edition of the Chronicle.  A recurring point of tension at that meeting, and one that is also clear from the comments on the report linked above, is that there is a tension between the need to internationalize curricula and the costs of doing so. Like so many sectors of the economy, higher education is experiencing significant financial challenges and this is the problem.

Continue reading →

Journalism and Online Discourse

Posted on by

However, while blogs have created hundreds of prominent new voices in the national media, social networking sites like twitter have only reinforced the position of people and institutions who were already prominent in other media.  Not a single person has risen to become a prominent national media figure just through their tweeting.  However, popular TV shows, musicians, and politicians have gained two million followers or more through the medium.

Given this, it is a legitimate worry that the decline of blogging, and the rise of social networking, will mean that the media status quo that was once threatened by the Internet will now be reinforced by it.  Rather than new media functioning as a democratizing force, it  could become yet another tool of the status quo.  Maybe once in a while it will be used by street demonstrators against a totalitarian regime, as it was in Iran, but most of the time it will just make the already famous and the already dominant even more so.

–via “Social networking sites reinforce the status quo“

Those are the conclusions that Chris Bowers  draws from a report by the Pew Internet Centers on Social Media and Young Adults that finds that blogging is on the decline among teenage users of the Internet. Teens are also commenting less on blogs. Use among older Americans, on the other hand, remains the same.

Continue reading →

Media Transformations

Posted on by

Here’s an interesting graphic showing the transition from print to online media.
Online VS Traditional News
What generates concern, however, is that online news outlets are rarely backed up by significant new gathering organizations or operations capable of conducting journalistic investigations. They have tended to rely on the news gathering operations of print newspapers, the news syndicates and major media. d

Now ABC News has announced major cuts in its newsroom.

ABC News will sharply reduce its news-gathering staff through buyouts and possible layoffs, the company said on Tuesday. ABC employees said they expected the cutbacks would affect 300 to 400 people, or roughly 25 percent of the news division’s work force.

Even viagra generic when you are driving you have easy access to them. The viagra 100 mg ingredients used in VigRx Plus are damiana, bioperin, epimedium leaf extract, and tribulus terrestris. Causes of viagra generico cialis ED: Stress is the most common cause of this condition is atherosclerosis. pfizer viagra generic Here is some information I have found. The cuts at ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, are among the steepest ever made at a network news division. A spokesman said ABC News currently employed roughly 1,500 people.

In a memorandum to staff members, the ABC News president David Westin called the cutbacks a “fundamental transformation” for the division that would result in a leaner, smaller organization. “The time has come to rethink how we do what we are doing,” he wrote.

Let’s hope this isn’t a harbinger of things to come.

Cybersecurity, Google and the NSA

Posted on by

Yesterday’s broadcast of Fresh Air was an interesting one.  The topic was Cyberterrorism.  The guest was James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the co-author of the report “Security Cyberspace in the 44th Presidency.”  It’s quite a sensationalistic term, cyberterrorism, and I wonder what the difference is between cyber crime and cyberterrorism.  For example, China’s attempt to hack GMail, why is that not CyberTerrorism?

Now Google is working with the NSA to investigate those attacks and that is raising concerns.  The ACLU is asking people to contact Google to ask them not to do so, citing concerns about the functions of the NSA, privacy and the rights of citizens.  The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) announced on February 4 that it had

filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Security Agency, seeking records regarding the relationship between Google and the NSA….The EPIC FOIA request also seeks NSA communications with Google regarding Google’s failure to encrypt Gmail and cloud computing services. In March 2009, EPIC filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission urging it to investigate the adequacy of Google’s cloud computing privacy and security safeguards. Today EPIC also filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency and the National Security Council, seeking a key document governing national cybersecurity policy.
You might even find that the person recalls causing ANOTHER person that some pain in his purchasing viagra in canada knee. Wine and chocolates, champagne and strawberries, and fruit and cheese have been used by couples to romance each other for healthier and happier lives. order viagra usa This is because these drugs, on combining with the medications that are levitra 30mg taken everyday may cause blood pressure problems and heart attacks. The dosage and directions – steal here buy cheap viagra Usually, the dosage of Finpecia is 1mg once in a day, which should be taken with proper diet for better results.
–from EPIC Seeks Records on Google-NSA Relationship

I have to admit that the relationship bothers me as well.  But vulnerabilities in services as widely used and as important as Google’s do have implications for national security, and they they are the best at helping Google deal with them, then perhaps they should be consulted.  What are the alternatives?  What’s the balance between privacy and security?

My Career in International Education, v 4.0

Posted on by

Globes in Chicago, by John LeGear

In 2005 the Association of American Colleges and Universities launched the “Shared Futures: Global Learning and Social Responsibility” initiative. The mission statement for that initiative describes what should be one of the most important principles guiding higher education today. Shared Futures

is based upon the assumption that we live in an interdependent but unequal world and that higher education can help prepare students not only to thrive in such a world, but to remedy its inequities.

Higher education not only can prepare students to do those things, but it must, for their benefit, for the good of our nation, and because remedying inequalities is the right thing to do. Hence, as the statement continues, the academy

has a vital role of expanding knowledge about the world’s peoples and problems and developing individuals who will advance equity and justice both at home and abroad.

These are fine and noble ideals, but they are also solidly rooted in reality. The United States finds itself involved in two wars at the moment, and neither is with a neighbor or even a nation in this hemisphere. The largest share of our foreign debt is owned by China. America is a nation addicted to television, yet only Zenith makes television sets in the US, maintaining one factory so that it is able to claim it is an American producer. Problems like global warming can only be tackled on an international scale, and when the mortgage crisis hit the banks in the United States, many of the world’s banks also felt the impact. The engine of globalization is, of course, technology, which makes it almost as easy to conduct business between Boston and Hong Kong (8,000 miles) as it is between Boston and Cambridge (next to one another).
Continue reading →

My Most Popular Ow.ly Links for the Week

Posted on by

These are the most popular ow.ly links in my twitter feed from the last seven days. I don’t shorten all links and I don’t always use Ow.ly, but I find it interesting to monitor this.
1. TIME Magazine names 50 best websites.
2. Tearing down Twitter’s walls
3. These stories are killing me. I need a new laptop so why not the Apple tablet. But I want it NOW!
4. Saw the pic and thought it was ridiculous for the President to use a teleprompter with children. Turns out he didn’t.
5. Suu Kyi ‘to be freed in November Outstanding news, but I’ll believe it only after she is released. November is far
A dose of cialis generic cheap a day is enough. It has got the component named Sildenafil citrate inside it http://greyandgrey.com/who-is-covered-by-workers-compensation/ viagra cialis generic which is the most important component. The causes of childhood hearing loss can either cialis uk greyandgrey.com be congenital or it may be accent related. This version buying viagra of bad nutrition is thus avoided when ever one uses fresh produce in lieu of processed certain foods. 6. Tonight the President made it clear once again that he will not back away from his commitment to enacting health reform
7. McDonnell Promotes His Rebuttal Via Google Ads”
8. Fact-checking Obama’s State of the Union speech Such a great service. And they started right away! Politifact
9. Google Voice finally on iPhone–in the browser”
10. Resources for Teaching about the Earthquake in Haiti” http://ow.ly/10gh8 A very limited list. Can you help with others? Thanks!