Thursday, August 29, 2002

Contrasts (or equal time?) Down by the Diploma Mills Stream, By Kendra Mayfield, Wired News. Where it used to be some obviously fraudulent operators offering academic degrees in exchange for money and minimal amount of paperwork, it has morphed into a more sophisticated model, where the degree mill offers tutoring and all the trappings of an academic program, but in fact it is still an avenue to getting a degree quickly, said Michael Lambert, executive director of the Distance Education and Training Council. Virtual Degrees Virtually Tough, By Julia Scheeres, Wired News. 7:31:22 PM    comment []

Navigating the Erie Canal by canoe. Milo Bryant, a reporter for the Syracuse Herald-Journal, and his buddy, Dave Bzdak, a Syracuse University graduate student writing part-time for the newspaper, rented a canoe for a 10-day Erie Canal journey in the summer of 1996. They paddled nearly 350 miles. Milo and Dave filed daily reports for the Herald-Journal during their journey. Along the way, they answered questions submitted by readers via the newspaper's NewsLine and Syracuse OnLine services. We saved the reports - "Milo & Dave's Big Adventure" - for you here: 5:31:02 PM    comment []

Three Benton Headlines ESTABLISHING AN EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVE IN GHANA Dr. Pharra DeWindt, an American teacher from Buffalo, New York, partnered with Ghanaian educators to establish an online cultural exchange between her students and theirs. Dr. De Windt established a pen-pal exchange between her 11-to-15 year-old American students and a group of students at the Agona Duakwa Islamic Secondary School in Ghana. After a year of paper and pen correspondence, Dr. De Windt traveled to Ghana to set up a real time chat between the students using NetMeeting software. It was first time the Ghanaian youth had used computer technology. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Dr. Pharra DeWindt] http://www.digitalopportunity.org/fulltext/dewindt20020827.shtml KILLING THE COLLEGE RADIO STAR College radio isn't about numbers - it's about fun. For student radio stations across the country, that fun may be short-lived. Thousands of college radio stations that broadcast over the Internet are wondering how they will pay for upgrades required to comply with new webcasting licensing rules. The Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) ruled in June that webcasters would have to pay record companies for the right to broadcast music. But this requires tracking every song streamed - perfectly possible with computer hardware and software, but also an added expense. Part of the problem is that CARP is unlikely to allow a long enough transition period for small volunteer-run college stations to acquire equipment and change their record keeping procedures. [SOURCE: Wired News, AUTHOR: Brad King] http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54726,00.html AMERICAN WIRELESS WEB USAGE NEARS 10 MILLION, SURVEY SAYS While wireless Internet usage is still at an early stage, there is already a significant audience for it, according to a survey by comScore Networks. The survey, released Wednesday, said the number of people in the U.S. who use personal digital assistants or mobile phones to go online is nearing 10 million. The majority of wireless Internet users are men, and they also tend to have higher incomes. While men make up only 48% of the overall Internet population, they are 72% of those who use PDAs or mobile phones to go online. Nearly 60% of those using mobile phones and PDAs to go online have an annual household income of more than $60,000. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Ross Snel (Dow Jones Newswires)] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1030569945976766875,00.html?mod=technolog y_main_whats_news 11:30:06 AM    comment []

Real-Time Testing of Internet Filtering in China (Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School) To help broaden the list of pages tested and to provide the general public a means of finding out whether particular pages of interest are filtered, we have created the form below, which will run a realtime query via our methods. We consider this approach an experiment in "open research"; we are as yet uncertain whether sites submitted and tested using this system will in fact broaden our pool of tested sites, but we will analyze submissions and publish results when available. 11:30:04 AM    comment []

''Economist as Engineer'' (because a technology is a way of doing things, not some physical stuff). When Economics Shifts From Science to Engineering, by Hal R. Varian, NYT. Al Roth's game theory and experimental economics page 10:29:59 AM    comment []

Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia, by Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School. Abstract: The authors connected to the Internet through proxy servers in Saudi Arabia and attempted to access approximately 60,000 Web pages as a means of empirically determining the scope and pervasiveness of Internet filtering there. Saudi-installed filtering systems prevented access to certain requested Web pages; the authors tracked 2,038 blocked pages. Such pages contained information about religion, health, education, reference, humor, and entertainment. See highlights of blocked pages. The authors conclude (1) that the Saudi government maintains an active interest in filtering non-sexually explicit Web content for users within the Kingdom; (2) that substantial amounts of non-sexually explicit Web content is in fact effectively inaccessible to most Saudi Arabians; and (3) that much of this content consists of sites that are popular elsewhere in the world. Coverage: Sau di Censorship of Web Ranges Far Beyond Tenets of Islam, Study Finds, by Jennifer 8. Lee, NYT. 10:29:58 AM    comment []

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION: Safe at Any Speed: How to Stay Safe Online if You use High- Speed Internet Access. (Available in HTML and PDF versions.) Cartoon Turtle Enlisted for Web Safety Campaign (Reuters) 10:29:56 AM    comment []

Whe n the Cellphone Is the Home Phone, by Simon Romero, NYT. 10:29:55 AM    comment []

MOVEABLE FEAST, By Thane Peterson, in Business Week Online: Plenty of Food for Thought [C]an you actually fry an egg on a hot sidewalk? 5:29:07 AM    comment []

Pity the politicians (NUA Internet Surveys Weekly editorial). It's somewhat galling to hear a politician lecturing the nation about how it must embrace technology when most seem either unable, or unwilling to do likewise. [ . . . ] [D]espite the fact that one in four British MPs receive more than 25 emails per week from constituents, just one in 20 politicians said they were comfortable using email. [ . . . ] I'd hazard a guess that such a pattern is repeated around the world. I'd also suggest that it's a situation that's unlikely to change anytime soon because most politicians don't realize how common it has become for people to communicate via applications like email. 2:28:39 AM    comment []