Episode 0005, 05/07/2007
Welcome to Course Technology's CourseCast of the Month, Episode 5, for May, 2007.
This is Ken Baldauf with more technology news and information targeted at college students.
This CourseCast is brought to you by Course Technology. Check out www.course.com for innovative textbooks and creative electronic learning solutions for higher education.
Story 1 - Colleges vs. the RIAA & Congress
Where do you get your music, and what are you doing with it?
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) continues to target college students who share music files over the Internet in efforts to prosecute them for copyright violations. Making copies of music files, and sharing them with others, even if the music is purchased legally and given away for free violates the copyright terms of most music recordings. The Wisconsin State Journal reports that a federal judge has ordered the University of Wisconsin in Madison to provide the RIAA with the names of 53 students who shared digital music files over the Internet. Meanwhile, North Carolina State University has received 23 subpoenas for students who used its network to share music files. UW, Madison and North Carolina State are two of several universities being pressured by the RIAA to turn over students for legal action.
The reason the RIAA is unable to go after the students directly has to do with the manner in which users are identified on the Internet. It’s fairly easy for the RIAA and others to see what users are doing on the Internet by examining the packets of data that travel over the Internet, where they come from, where they go, and what they contain. Unfortunately for the RIAA, but fortunately for us, those packets are not tagged with the name of the individual who sent them, but rather with a 32-bit Internet address. Only the user's Internet Service Provider can connect an Internet address to an actual person. So the RIAA must get the Internet Service Provider, such as AOL, Comcast, or a University or business, to provide the name of the user associated with the incriminating Internet address. Typically, Internet service providers don't want to give up this information either for ethical reasons or because they fear losing customers. The RIAA must then leverage the power of the courts to force the service provider to fork over the information. This occurs at dozens of universities every year.
Some schools are feeling additional pressure from the US Congress. The presidents of 19 universities received surveys from the US Congress looking to find out what the universities are doing to curb music and movie piracy on campus. The schools were identified by the RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as the top piracy schools in the US. According to an Ars Technica article, House Judiciary Committee member Lamar Smith made a veiled threat to universities that do not provide satisfactory answers back to Congress. He said that if they "do not receive acceptable answers, Congress will be forced to act."
Story 2 - The evolution or de-evolution of the written word
Do you text? Text messaging has become a favorite mode of communication for many college students. Zipping off and receiving dozens of messages each day is a useful and fun way to stay in close contact with friends. Typing out full words and sentences is an inconvenience in this fast-paced mode of communication, so most of us use shorthand - just enough consonants and vowels to get the message across.
While convenient, our shorthand messages may be eroding our ability to properly construct written sentences; or at least that is what Ireland's State Examination Commission suggested in a recent report. Annual examinations of Irish high school students revealed a sharp increase in the frequency of errors in grammar and punctuation. Educators blame the "emergence of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging as a popular means of communication."
What do you think? Have your written English skills been effected by text messaging? If so, is this a social trend that should concern us? Try a Web search on "Text Messaging" and "English Skills" and you'll find articles representing both sides of the issue.
Story 3 - New Cell Phone Developments
A couple stories this month provide a peak at the future of the cell phone.
News agency Reuters reports that Nokia, Samsung, LG, mobile telecoms carriers, and credit card companies have united around one standard initiative to turn cell phones into electronic wallets. Using wireless signals, cell phones will act as credit cards, allowing consumers to make payments by simply holding the cell phone over a wireless reader."Want a snack from a vending machine?" Just hold your cell phone against the payment pad. Larger purchases would require keying in a PIN. Similar systems have been tested around the world for years, but this new system promises faster global adoption due to its low cost, ease of use and industry acceptance. Trials with the new standard will start in October.
Reuters also reports that new technology is coming to T-Mobile users later this summer. T-Mobile will be offering a new handset that can connect to Wi-Fi wireless Internet or the traditional cell network. The service called Hotspot at Home, allows a mobile phone to "seamlessly switch from cell towers to available Wi-Fi networks when the user comes within range," states an Ars Technica article. Using wireless Internet rather than the cell network will allow users to talk without using up minutes on their cell phone plan. It will also stream media, such as music and movies to your phone much faster than the cell network. The service is likely to cost an additional $20-$30 per month.
Story 4 - Summer Fun on the Web
Now that schools out for summer, you may have some time to use your computer for something other than homework, unless you're taking summer classes. In either case, you'll want to check out some fun new online resources that are the talk of the Internet.
No doubt you've heard of MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook, but have you checked out Joost, Twitter, and Flickr?
Joost, spelled J-O-O-S-T, is getting a lot of attention in the tech news and commentaries because it is the first Internet TV application that appears to have a viable future. Currently in its last stages of beta testing, joost offers on-demand programming from Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, Spike, National Geographic, Reuters, CNN, and many other content providers delivered over your high-speed Internet connection to your computer. Joost is the brainchild of the cofounders of Kazaa and Skype. It uses P2P distribution to stream video to its subscribers. Joost is legal and free, and supported by advertising. Joost will come out of beta later this month and become available to all at www.joost.com. As one of its beta testers, I can attest that Joost is definitely something you'll want to check out.
The Web community has also been all a-twitter about twitter; www.twitter.com describes itself as a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Members post short messages from cell phone or computer, throughout the day informing friends and/or the world about what they are doing. Twitter is also free.
Flickr, spelled F-L-I-C-K-R, has become the hands-down favorite Web site for publishing photos. Flickr, acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, is free for use online at www.flickr.com. The site allows users to store and share photos with the Flickr community. Flickr became famous for its use of tags for categorizing photos. For examples, the photo of your dog at the beach might be tagged with "dog", "Labrador", "beach", "vacation", "Frisbee", and other related tags. Flickr users who search the site for "Labrador" will see your photo as well as all photos on the site tagged with "Labrador". Flickr has become so popular that Yahoo is closing down its own photo service, "Yahoo Photos" and sending its tens of millions of users to Flickr.
Joost, twitter, flickr; three fun Web sites to check out this Summer.
Story 5 - News Briefs
Finally a few news briefs to close this month’s CourseCast.
There have been many articles published this month speculating about Microsoft buying Yahoo!. Most analysts seem to think that it is only a matter of time, and that the merger would benefit both companies.
Google has confirmed rumors that it will be adding a PowerPoint-like presentation tool to its suite of free online applications.
Cingular's announcement that the iPhone will arrive on June 11 was apparently wrong. Apple has announced that it is on schedule to ship the iPhone in late June. We'll see!
Well, that's it for this month’s CourseCast. Links to this month's stories and many more news and information resources are provided at the CourseCast Web site accessible from www.course.com. Until next time, have a great month, and be sure to take advantage of the Power -- of Technology!