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The Supremes Dance their Way to a Narrow Decision

6/29/2005

What happened? Reports from those who monitor file sharing indicate that Internet traffic was indistinguishable Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from the previous week, so consumer behavior is unchanged. Grokster and StreamCast owners, staff, and investors are in a world of hurt, of course, and lawyers have a new way to earn their hourly fees. Many of us are relieved that the decision was narrow enough to not affect the technology (software and hardware) of file-sharing, just the marketing and the business plans of those who provide services based on it.

Bravo for the Duke iPod Experiment

6/21/2005

It was a daring experiment, and one that caught immediate criticism because some saw the university as “giving away toys” to the incoming freshman class. Well, iPods are ‘toys’ in a sense, and of course they were mostly used for entertainment. But some pretty interesting lessons were learned.

Bring Data

6/15/2005

Campus investments in IT play a critical role in the new world order of assessment and outcome mandates.

New Service Delivers on the Promise of Wiki Technology

6/8/2005

For a long time now, I have been asking around if anyone knows of a piece of software that would let me send email messages to an address where a database would then parse out the message and store it away in data fields-– resulting in an online database that I can then manipulate.

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Ubiquitous High-Speed Broadband

6/1/2005

A group of higher education associations has called for major changes in federal policy toward Internet communications.

Use of Institutionally-Owned IT Resources for ‘Personal Gain’

5/25/2005

What does your institution say about the use of “IT resources” for personal gain? Some institutions even encourage students to create and operate businesses from residence halls. Others have language like this: “You may not use university IT resources for personal gain.” That’s a pretty big spread in policies there and I expect that the latter one is breached several times a minute.

How IT Provisions a Student’s Home Away from Home

5/17/2005

BASED ON PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE OUR COLUMNIST ARGUES STUDENTS NEED ‘LOTS AND LOTS OF VERY FAST BANDWIDTH’

Be a Web Site Hero, Put Stars in Their Eyes(1)

5/11/2005

A recently-published white paper, titled Heroes of the Web, says an awful lot of very nice things about college and university webmasters. It says that college and university web content managers are the hardest working web content manager[s] on the planet today.

Information Wants to Be Free . . . Again

5/4/2005

IT Systems You Wear Around Your Neck: Not Just For SciFi Anymore

4/27/2005

From Duck and Cover to Flip and Power to . . .

4/5/2005

About eight years ago I learned that there was a basic computing skill that had to become part of the training for each new employee in my department: What to do if/when you spill a liquid onto the keyboard.

Content in Motion: What iTunes Can Teach Us About Managing Web Content

3/29/2005

Say Goodbye to Radar Detectors?

3/23/2005

No More Clear Skies? No More Privacy?

3/15/2005

Bones and Joints Get Older; Media Gets Unreadable

3/9/2005

Last week I came across a couple of large plastic storage boxes with all of those 5 1/4-inch floppies in them. I almost tossed them out. Not only has it been years since I have seen a drive on which I could read them, most of them were created in old, outdated software that ran on DOS, which I no longer have copies of anyway. Should I just throw them all out?

Guest Column: An Invitation to ‘Think Like an Instructor’

2/23/2005

Regular columnist Terry Calhoun introduces a guest columnist: I’ve known Steve Ehrmann for many years. The work of he and his colleague at the TLT Group, Steve Gilbert, has been of great utility to the higher education organizations with which they have consulted and whose staff they have trained, and will continue to be important in years to come.

Bet Ya Can’t Download Just One!

2/16/2005

This week I am urging you, if you already haven’t, to try out one of three nifty pieces of software that have been making my life easier/more productive. They are Mozilla Firefox, Picasa, and Skype.

Bad Spam, Good Spam: ‘Can Spam’ Changes the Nature of How We Perceive Spam

2/9/2005

Did you think that the Can Spam Act was supposed to cut down on the amount of spam we get? Well, it hasn’t . . . and it won’t. Of course, we have seen a relatively few instances of a really virulent spammer or two going to jail, pending appeals. But as a professional association executive who is responsible for a lot of e-mails getting sent out each week, I recently had my eyes opened about the true intent of the Can Spam Act.

Driving While Talking on a Cell Phone = Driving While Drunk