Month: February 2008

Easy or not – stealing is stealing

It really bothers me when anyone connected with education seems to accept the inevitability of digital theft and proposes alternatives to support creative individuals without condemning the behavior. We should begin any comment on the matter with a clear statement that theft is wrong and those wishing to access digital content that comes few restrictions should learn how to locate such content. I would prefer encouraging students to focus on Creative Commons material and educators to contribute such resoruces.

Will Richardson’s recent remix and commenting of a post from Edge.com verges on the “the give up” or perhaps even “the ignore”. Call me naive or idealistic. I am neither. But, the implication that we might as well concern ourselves with other models for supporting intellectual property is troubling without a statement of concern is troubling. Kids drink. Kids have sex. Kids do drugs. Kids bully each other. Educators need to accept the student and help. This acceptance of the student is typically accompanied by an effort to prevent when possible.I think it is sad that capable individuals get ripped off and I think it is important to say so.

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HowCast – Learn Something Specific

HowCast offers very brief instructional videos – short training videos offered by folks who know how. Today’s features include:

  • How to paint a wall
  • How to pack a carry-on bag
  • How to pray the Rosary
  • How to increase the life of your iPod battery

One category is focused specifically on “kids”. The offerings in this category and actually throughout the site may be helpful to teachers looking for hands-on ideas.

TechCrunch explains the startup and the format of HowCast.

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Remember the Net Neutrality Issue?

Washington Post writer Steven Levy outlines a Time Warner proposal to charge Internet users by the Gig. The monthly cut for basic service is 5 gigs (I assume this would be for less than the current price). The article mentions the capacity eaten up by those involved in illegal file sharing. New and legal online video services – the article mentions iTunes, but I would think NetFlix would possibly be a bigger problem because there is no charge per download – are also a concern.

Of course, if such fees can be applied, it will again be less expensive to rent the DVD at your local store. It will also be less expensive to use “pay per view” through your cable company.

Levy contends this is somehow different than the net neutrality issue.

This is in contrast to behavior that violates the principle of “net neutrality,” which asserts that providers shouldn’t be able tilt the digital playing field to favor their favorite Internet services (i.e. their partners or those who pay them).

I don’t see it that way. If the cable company owns the pipe, digital cable content and Internet content are still coming into your home through the same connection. If the company can restrict one form of digital content in order to increase sale of the other, they certainly are not neutral.  I’ll bet the download tax won’t be applied to pay per view purchases? Perhaps pay per view downloads require no bandwidth.

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Social Networks – Links among People

Google is promoting an API that maps connections among people. Great idea. I would guess the idea is to discover others with similar interests “a few links removed”.

The problem is that the API relies on designated “people” connections – friends lists, blog rolls, etc. There are designated tags for such links, but how many people or applications use them (see Jarvis post).

There must be another way to attempt to do this, but the methods I can think of require that the authors” of elements on the web be known. Links among web pages, blog posts, social networking sites, etc. are not just links among information sources, but also links among people. If “author” was a tag, it should be possible to create maps of linkages among authors. This would be a little different than acknowledged people links (XFN, FOAF).

I suppose the idea that taking advantage of linkages among people associated with ideas may seem a little intrusive. However, once one advances past the first level of people links a similar issue arises. My kids and I share each other as “friends”. This means I am one link away from the others on their friends lists. I feel myself growing younger by the moment, but I have no interest in discussing how to get tickets for the next Hannah Montana concert. 

Perhaps author to author links should be weighted 1 and friend to friend links should be designated 2 in creating a network map. Then, you would have the “best of both worlds”.

BTW – if you don’t understand the reference to “best of both worlds”, you need some younger friends. 😉  

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Aging Companies and New ideas

Perhaps you have noticed the bid made by Microsoft to purchase Yahoo. It always bothers me when innovators (not certain I would categorize either company among the new innovators) gets gobbled up. This seems to happen everywhere I look – it has happened to the textbook market and it clearly happens to technology companies. Joe Nocera (NY Times) makes the observation that this is a move of an old company. Remember IBM? Microsoft has been so productive, but now seems destined to try to hold on by using its financial leverage rather than its innovation and creativity. Can’t keep up with Google, buy the nearest competitor.

Flickr would be a great acquisition for Microsoft, but if Flickr is generating enough revenue to keep and develop this service, I would rather it remain elsewhere. I understand the struggles of the startups, but I object to the ponderousness when megacompanies inhale smaller companies. So, I could move my flickr images to Picasa as a protest, but that would be lot of work and I would then simply be moving between what have become the two big players. There must be a sweet spot in there somewhere. How to protect it?

Some do disagree and see this as a way to encourage rather than discourage competition.

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Kaiser Parents, Children and Media Report

I encountered a reference to the 2007 Kaiser report “Parents, Children and Media” in reading I was doing and investigated. Kaiser has been sponsoring annual studies of media for several years and the organizations funding allows them to secure a large sample size. I keep taps on the statistical data they make available.

The content in this report I found most useful described parental strategies for assuring their children use the Internet safely. It has been my opinion that school measures are too severe and home measures are too lax. The data from some 1000+ parents reported here imply parents are reasonably aware of Internet dangers.

A few sample statistics (children 9 and older):
13% of children have a computer in their bedroom (not as high as I would have expected – 78% have access)
76% of parents sometimes check on the web sites their children (not details examine histories?)
41% filter
61% have read child’s email
87% have checked child’s buddy list
82% have looked a child’s social network profile (38% of children have a social network site)

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