CourseCast of the Week

Episode 0026, 11/30/2007

Title: Searching College Lectures, Attending Class on Your Cell Phone, Google Knows Where You Are; Facebook Turns Off Beacon

Welcome to Course Technology's CourseCast of the week, Episode 26, recorded November 30th, 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 - MIT Develops Video Search Tool for Online Lectures

MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative is striving to provide all MIT courses online to the general public for free. There are currently 1,800 MIT courses offered online at ocw.mit.edu. Many of the courses include video recordings of class lectures. One of the challenges of learning through online video lectures is in finding specific topics of interest. Unlike a textbook or Web site, videos don't provide a table of contents, an index, or a search engine to flip directly to the information you need. You generally have to listen to the entire lecture in a linear fashion until the desired topic is presented.

To solve this problem and provide greater service to its online students, MIT researchers have developed the Lecture Browser, a keyword search utility for video. The first step in the process is to use speech-recognition technology to convert the video audio into text. The text is then displayed below the video as captions. The second stage of the process employs AI software to organize the long strings of sentences into logical high-level concepts. This provides a kind of table of contents for each video. Once the process is completed the text version of the videos can be searched just like with any online search engine. Search results provide video segments that relate to the key word.

With more and more schools making lecture videos available to students, MIT's new Lecture Browser tool is sure to spread to other schools.

Source: Searching Video Lectures (Technology Review)

Story 2 - Attending Class on Your Cell Phone

You’re probably used to teachers asking students to turn off cell phones during class. If you enrolled in "The Mysteries of the Pyramids" class at Japan's Cyber University, you would be REQUIRED to use your cell phone in class... because the class is designed for delivery over cell phone. Students view lectures and PowerPoint presentations through streaming video while they listen to the teacher narrate. Teachers have the ability to take attendance and check on each student's progress through the lessons. Student and teacher interaction takes place through social networking tools. The course is free for subscribers of Japan's Softbank phone service, except for the usual cell phone service charges. Not coincidentally, Softbank owns 71 percent of the Cyber University.

Sources: Taking College Classes on a Cell Phone (Top Tech News)

Story 3 - Google Knows Where You Are

Google is rolling out a new service for its mobile version of Google Maps. "My Location" allows mobile phone users to press the zero key while running Google Maps to show their current location. The system calculates the location of the handset by the signal strength to nearby cell towers, or through GPS. Cell phones with GPS show the user's location as a dot on the map. Cell phones without GPS show the location as a slightly larger circle since the technology isn't quite as precise as GPS. Either way, the cell phone user is able to see a map of their current location automatically without having to type in street and city information.

Google is marketing "My Location" as a convenience to users, but the broader implication should not be overlooked. This is one of several steps Google has recently taken towards location-based advertising. If Google is able to detect where you are, it will be able to broadcast relevant advertisements to your phone for nearby businesses. Location-based advertising has been eagerly anticipated by marketing and advertising companies as a very powerful method of targeting customers. With Google and others aggressively pursuing this technology, I suspect we'll hear a lot more about it in the coming years.

Privacy concerns have been raised about Google's new location technology. However, Google Maps allows users to turn off the feature, and Google claims to have taken measures to keep location information private and secure. Google's "My Location" is included in the new Beta version of Google Maps for selected handsets.

Source: Google Takes Mobile Maps to the Next Level (Top Tech News), Google Maps for mobile gains location-seeking abilities sans GPS (ars technica), Google releases useful “my location” feature for cell phones (Venture Beat), Google service uses cell towers to locate users (Computerworld)

Story 4 - Facebook Turns Off Beacon

Beacon is the part of Facebook's new advertising platform that works with business partners to track Facebook user's online interests and share them with friends. So, for example, if Facebook user Suzanne went to blockbuster.com and rented Stephen King's "The Mist", Suzanne's friends would see a posting in their Facebook news feed stating something like "Suzanne likes ‘The Mist’", click here to rent it". If this sounds a bit ethically unsound to you, you are not alone. Thousands of Facebook users have spoken out against the service, and Facebook has listened....kind of. Now Beacon will be turned off in user accounts allowing the user to opt in if he or she is interested in the service. Facebook still keeps tabs of the partner sites you visit and your activities there. Opting out simply tells Facebook that you don't wish to share that information with others.

Source: Privacy concerns prompt U-turn at Facebook (Computerworld), Lit by protests, Facebook Beacon gets update — critics might not be happy (Venture Beat), Facebook reevaluating Beacon after privacy outcry, possible FTC complaint (ars technica)

New Briefs

  • In what is being referred to as the "cyber cold war" it has been discovered that 120 countries, including the U.S. are involved in operations that use the Internet to spy and launch cyber attacks on their enemies. An investigation uncovered attacks that target the critical systems of countries including electricity, air traffic control, financial markets and government computer networks.(Reuters, Computerworld)
  • Greenpeace released its Guide to Greener Electronics which ranks tech companies according to their policies on toxic chemicals and recycling. Some names you might recognize include Sony and Dell that rated relatively high indicating healthy environmental policies, Apple and HP rated in the middle, and Microsoft and Nintendo at the low end, Nintendo the worst. (ars technica, Newsfactor).
  • Google is investing tens of millions of dollars in research to develop electricity from renewable energy sources at a price much cheaper than coal. (Wired, ars technica)
  • Researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology have developed a new inexpensive fiber optic cable from plastic that may make it possible to solve the "last mile" conundrum; that is to extend the reach of fiber the last mile to individual residences at an affordable price. (ars technica)
  • The New York Times is reporting that Google will soon be offering an online storage service that will allow users to store large quantities of files with Google for access from any INternet-connected device. The story has raised concerns from security and privacy groups. (Top Tech Stories, ars technica, Computerworld)
  • Verizon has announced that it will open its network to any application running on any device from any developer next year, opening the door to Google's Open Handset Alliance, and many other devices and technologies. (ars technica, Top Tech News)
  • A consortium of companies has acquired the necessary funding to run a six thousand mile fiber optic cable from Sudan to South Africa. The project will bring telecommunications and high-speed Internet to many South Africans for the first time.(Top Tech News)
  • A recent study has determined that 3.3 billion people use cell phones. That's approximately half the world's population. The study showed that fifty nine countries have more than 100 percent "mobile penetration".
  • Using the same technology as Google is using to locate cell phone users, a new cell phone application being offered in London England allows users to send the word Toilet as a text message to 80097 for instant directions to the nearest rest room. (Reuters, Engadget)

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!