Episode 0025,
11/25/2007
Title: Meet the Kindle, Student Challenges
RIAA, Typosquatting
Welcome to Course
Technology's Coursecast of the week, Episode 25,
recorded November 25th, 2007.
This is Ken Baldauf
bringing you this week's technology news and information.
This Coursecast
is brought to you by Course Technology. Check out www.course.com for innovative textbooks and
creative electronic learning solutions.
Story 1 - Meet the Kindle
The biggest technology
story by far this week is Amazon's new e-book reader named the Kindle. The
Kindle is a light weight mobile device, about the size and weight of a
paperback book, that wirelessly downloads, stores, and displays books,
newspapers, magazines, and some Internet content. The Kindle is receiving mixed
reviews with some analysts predicting that it will never gain broad public
acceptance, and others calling it revolutionary and game-changing. Most
reviewers seem to think that it is a rather unattractive device with a silly
name. Kindle does, however, include some new and attractive features.
The Kindle uses a new
e-paper display that looks more like a printed page than a computer display. It
provides black and white images with no backlight and no reflecting glass. The
result is print that looks great even in bright sunlight. However, it is
impossible to read in the dark without the use of the included reading light.
The Kindle wirelessly
connects to online services for free over a cell phone network. So anywhere
there is cell phone reception, the Kindle can access its online resources.
Those resources include the Kindle store which offers over 88,000 books, and
Although the Kindle
provides wireless Internet access, its e-paper display does not make for an
attractive Web browsing experience. The Kindle is designed for e-books, and
that it does very well. It's loaded with powerful e-book functions too numerous
to list in this CourseCast. The Kindle can store over 200 titles, and can hold
a battery charge for a week of reading when the wireless is turned off. Perhaps
the most disappointing drawbacks to the Kindle are the extra charges attached
to some services. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions are costly; $13.99 a
month for the NY Times, which is reasonable, compared to the paper subscription
price, but expansive considering the paper is available online for free. Also,
the Kindle charges extra for subscriptions to blogs and email. E-books cost
around ten dollars each, and the Kindle itself costs $399.
Source: Will Amazon Kindle
an E-Book Fire? (Top Tech News), Amazon
Kindle attempts to reignite e-book market (ARS Technica), Opinion:
Why Amazon's Kindle is revolutionary (Computerworld), Kindle Sells Out
Despite Skepticism (Top Tech News)
Story 2 - Student
Challenges RIAA
The Record Industry
Association of America, or RIAA, files charges against thousands of students
each year for illegally sharing copyright protected music typically over P2P
networks. The vast majority of such cases are settled out of court with the
student forking over thousands of dollars. This week, one of those students
fought back. The method by which the RIAA gets schools to turn over students
for prosecution is in itself questionable. The RIAA typically uses the Cable
Communications Policy Act to get schools to translate the IP addresses of
suspected file-sharers into student names and addresses. A
Sources: RIAA
told to show cause why .edu subpoenas shouldn't be
quashed (ars technica)
Story 3 - Typosquatting
I'm sure that you are
familiar with this situation. You type the address of a Web site into your
browser, but rather than calling up the page you are expecting, you get a page
with links to related topics. Upon examination of the address you would
probably find a typo, maybe you accidentally typed an ‘a’ instead
of an ‘e’. You have fallen victim to typosquatting.
Someone has anticipated your typo, purchased the misspelled domain name, and
created a Web page to capitalize on your mistake, taking advantage of your
momentary attention to try to sell you something.
Many legitimate businesses
buy up misspelled domain names similar to their correctly-spelled name in order
to assist customers in getting to their site. For example, amazon.com will show
up even if you leave out the second ‘a’ in Amazon, replace both a's with e's
or end it with an ‘m’ rather than an ‘n’. However,
accidentally type www.ntv.com, instead of mtv.com and you'll find a typosquatter. In the majority of cases, typosquatting
is perfectly legal, but can range from unethical to simply smart marketing. The
ntv site would probably be considered smart marketing
by most users. But a porn site that makes use of a typo in a Web site designed
for children would be considered by most to be unethical if not illegal.
Online security company
McAfee released a report on typosquatting this week.
The report indicates that the practice of typosquatting
is growing, with most squatters targeting gamers, online shoppers, dating
sites, and children.
While typosquatting
is typically legal, cybersquatting is not. Cybersquatting occurs when someone buys the domain name of
a trademarked product in hopes to profit from selling it to the legal owner of
the trademark.
Source: Top
typo-squatted sites target children, some with porn (ars
technica)
New Briefs
That's it for this week's CourseCast.
Links to this week's stories and many more news and information resources are
provided at the CourseCast Web site at www.course.com/coursecasts. Until
next time have a great week and be sure to take advantage of the Power -- of
Technology!