Group items tagged

Note not only the growth of boradband but the surprising number of people who still don't have it.

"Home broadband adoption stood at 63% of adult Americans as of April 2009, up from 55% in May 2008. The latest findings of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project mark a departure from the stagnation in home high-speed adoption rates that had prevailed from December 2007 through December 2008. During that period, Pew Internet Project surveys found that home broadband penetration remained in a narrow range between 54% and 57%."

Short history of social networks circa 2009 from the perspective of Gina Bianchi, co-founder of Ning.

"...as more and more elements of everyday life move online, the lack of Web access also puts certain populations - the poor, rural residents, those with less education - at risk of being marginalized and left without an important tool for connecting to education and health and social services, advocates say."

A good newspaper account of the "digital divide" problem.

special coverage by Global voices of the Iranian election

Overview of Twitter by @ev - good for an introduction to the service, circa 2009.

Great short blog post from my old '2 sort' folder that gives the authors answer to "why you should use Twitter." From 2009, but I think it still holds up well.

NYU professor and Internet thinker Clay Shirky gave a talk Tuesday at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, our friends just on the other side of Harvard Square. His subject was the future of accountability journalism in a world of declining newspapers.

"Someone recently asked me, 'If McCluhan is right and the medium is the message, what is the message of Twitter?" My response: "Here It Is and Here I Am.'"

Interesting discussion of the differences between Facebook and Twitter, especially among 18-24 group.

"All too frequently, someone makes a comment about how a large number of Facebook Friends must mean a high degree of social capital. Or how we can determine who is closest to who by measuring their email messages. Or that the Dunbar number can explain the average number of Facebook friends. These are just three examples of how people mistakenly assume that 1) any social network that can be boiled down to a graph can be compared and 2) any theory of social networks is transitive to any graph representing connections between people. Such mistaken views result in broad misinterpretations of social networks and social network sites."

"Those who are seeking social media careers need to remember to remember that social media technologies are secondary to meeting business and customer needs."

"Social media strategy doesn't require dozens of corporate subcommittee meetings and a 70-page master plan. In fact, all you really need is one sentence that can keep you on target and on customers' minds."

The usage of these technologies in learning processes is not a fad, it is just a normal reflection of the evolutionary development of internet. Our students like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, ect. and spend much time in these virtual places. The informal learning based on Web 2.0 exists and functions like a "university in shadow" with possibilities of a borderless digital learning environment. So, why don't the educators present the power of social media for learning and better strategies for its utilization?

For the last few years, I've been spoiled. I've been surrounded by people who, when asked a question, immediately bring out a digital device and look it up. The conferences that I've attended have backchannels as a given. Tweeting, blogging, Wikipedia-ing... these are all just what we do. It's not all there - it's still broken. My cohort is still always in search of a power plug and there's a lag between the time a question is asked and the point at which the iPhone's slow browser is loaded, the query is entered, and the answer is given. Still, we're getting there. Or so I thought.

"Does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology?"

"Iranians are blogging, posting to Facebook and, most visibly, coordinating their protests on Twitter, the messaging service. Their activity has increased, not decreased, since the presidential elections on Friday and ensuing attempts by the government to restrict or censor their online communications."

Wall Street Journal's take on the #cnnfail event.

"When thousands of Iranian citizens flooded the streets to protest the controversial results of last Friday's presidential election, news viewers in the U.S. rushed to Twitter to protest what they saw as a lack of coverage of Iran on CNN."

I've overdone this metaphor, but I really do see the panoply of sources we have about Iran as an intelligence service to the masses.

"It's difficult for some industry observers to see a comeback for MySpace, the large online social network that has seen its popularity flatline and its hipness surpassed by younger sites like Twitter and Facebook in recent months."

"In a sweeping ruling with little precedent in the eight-year history of Wikipedia, the committee blocked editing from "all I.P. addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates, broadly interpreted." The ruling did allow users from those addresses to appeal to be reinstated on a case-by-case basis."