Tech 101 - Episode 1

CourseCast of the Week

Episode 0037, 02/22/2008

Title: CourseCast 37: Student Gossip, Telecom Balloons, Mind-Reading Game Controller

Description: Student Gossip, Telecom Balloons, Mind-reading Game Controller

Welcome to Course Technology's CourseCast of the week, Episode 37, recorded February 22nd, 2008. 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 - Online Student Gossip

JuicyCampus.com provides students with an outlet for juicy anonymous innuendo. The site which is in beta, has been rolled out to 57 universities, and has become hugely popular with posts being viewed hundred or thousands of times. However, it would appear that a backlash against the site is growing fueled by students who have been victims of malicious and fabricated stories posted there. Student leaders, newspaper editorials, and posters at a number of universities are calling for a ban on JuicyCampus. College administrators are powerless to regulate access to the site. U.S. law offers no protection for individuals from social networking Web sites such as JuicyCampus. Meanwhile, students worry about what impact a slanderous story on the site will have on their lives, and how their friends, family, and future employer may react when the story pops up as a search result on Google. This situation confronting college students is nothing new for college professors who have tolerated anonymous sometime slanderous attacks from students on ratemyprofessor.com.

Sources: Students Fight Back Against Gossip Site (Top Tech News)

Story 2 - Telecom Balloons

This one I couldn't pass up. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is looking to partner with Space Data Corp, a company that provides wireless telecommunications using balloons! Space Data Corp launches 10 balloons a day, 15,000 over the past four years, each with a valuable payload: a $1500 transceiver. One balloon-carried transceiver provides the wireless coverage of 40 standard cell phone towers. The telecom balloons are leased for a variety of uses including military, well monitoring, vehicle tracking, pipeline monitoring, and providing medical services to the Navajo Nation. Now Google wants to hire Space Data Corp's balloon technology for a project having something to do with providing Internet and wireless service in rural areas. Balloon telecom is not without its challenges and overhead. Each balloon only lasts about 24 hours before it pops in the thin upper atmosphere, at which point a parachute is deployed to gently return the transceiver to the earth. Balloons cost about $50 and the company pays GPS toting hobbyist $100 to retrieve the receivers.

Sources: Google Looking at Balloons for Wireless Coverage (Top Tech News), www.spacedata.net

Story 3 - Mind-Reading Game Controller

A mind-reading game controller, or "neuroheadset," is now available from Emotive Systems for $300. The EPOC Neuroheadset straps onto your head, reads your thoughts --- specifically commands such as drop, push, pull and stop --- and wirelessly transmits them to the gaming device. The headset uses gyroscopes to determine the orientation of your head and uses that information to adjust the virtual environment of the game. It also reads 30 expressions and passes them on to your game character so that he, she, or it smiles, or scowls, as you do.

Sources: New Game Controller Reads Your Thoughts and Acts (Top Tech News), Neural input devices could bring thought control to hardware (ComputerWorld), www.emotiv.com

New Briefs

Microsoft is providing college students with free access to its development software tools in a program called DreamSpark that it hopes will ingratiate the company with the young population and train them in Microsoft-specific methodologies. (Toothaches)
Since the Virginia Tech shootings, many colleges are installing or updating emergency notification systems that notify students, staff, and faculty of emergency situations through cell phone and Internet messages. Unfortunately, not everyone involved is interested. Participation rates are at 50 percent or less at UCLA, New York University and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. (Computerworld)
Intel has unveiled a new gaming and high-end computing platform that sports two quad-core processors and a powerful graphic card - are immersive virtual-reality systems for home use just around the corner? (Computerworld)
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile are all offering $99 unlimited calling plans, with unlimited data plans coming soon. (Computerworld)
Apple has cut the price of its 1 GB iPod Shuffle by $30, to $49, with a 2Gig shuffle for $69 coming soon. (Computerworld)
A British company has developed software that uses Wi-Fi and RFID to determine if a laptop PC is being stolen, films the thief using the PC's built in camera, sends the film to the owner over the network, then self destructs, destroying all data on the hard drive. (Headline Watch)
The International Telecommunication Union has stated that the cause of the mysterious damage to five undersea telecommunications cables in the Persian Gulf may have been an act of sabotage. (Yahoo)
The spy satellite hurtling towards earth that I've been reporting on was blasted out of space by a US Navy missile, destroying the poisonous fuel, and nationally sensitive videos and photos. (Wired)

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. E-mail us with your suggestions for the show at course.coursecasts@cengage.com. Until next time have a great week and be sure to take advantage of the Power -- of Technology!