Student Smartphone Use Doubles; Instant Messaging Loses Favor - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Student Smartphone Use Doubles; Instant Messaging Loses Favor
By Kelly Truong
Smartphone use among college students has almost doubled since early last year, a study by a researcher at Ball State University found.
The study confirms what has become common knowledge: cellphones are almost ubiquitous on college campuses, with 99.8 percent of students owning one or more. But in the national survey of about 500 students—which has been conducted twice a year since 2005—new details emerged on the kind of phones they own and how they use them.
How the World Is Spending Its Time Online [STATS]
Brenna Ehrlich
So… whatcha doin’ over there on that laptop, denizens of the world? Well, according to a new study from Nielsen showing Internet usage in April 2010, 22% of the time, you’re engaging with social media.
Yeah, 22% might not seem like a mammoth percentage, but you have to take into account the fact that this finding is on a global scale. Also, a few more telling takeaways from the report:
* Currently, three quarters of Internet (Internet) users worldwide visit a social network or blog when they go online — that’s a 24% increase over last year.
* Joe Average (the international version) spends 66% more time on these sites than he did a year ago — for example, your average user spent 6 hours on these sites in April 2010, while last year he spent 3 hours, 31 minutes.
* Facebook (Facebook), YouTube and Wikipedia (Wikipedia) make an appearance among the world’s most popular brands.
We’ve seen ample proof of the burgeoning popularity of social media in the past — just two months ago, Nielsen reported similar growth — and it makes sense. Facebook has been giving Google (Google) a run for its money when it comes to traffic, and YouTube (YouTube) recently surpassed two billion views per day.
The Souls of the Machine: Clay Shirky’s Internet Revolution - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Souls of the Machine
Clay Shirky says the Internet revolution has only just begun.
This is worth reading, I think. Enjoy!
Here’s my MousePath from some time at work today. The large black dot is when my mouse didn’t move as I was out on a coffee break. 
Tags: Data
Velocity of Media Consumption: TV vs. the Web Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox
Summary:
The granularity of user decisions is much finer on the Web, which is dominated by the instant gratification of the user’s needs in any given instant. Content must cater to this rapid pace.
I enjoy reading Jakob Nielsen’s website so I thought I’d pass this link along. In comparing television to the web, Nielsen posits that television is “easy” as the programming is all presented to us whereas on the web we are constantly making decisions about what to do–read, click, watch, etc.
I’d be curious as to how this might apply to gaming, too.
Tags: nielsen, tv, web
How to beat Amazon’s Kindle. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine
This article caught my attention today. I wonder if/when there will be competition with Amazon’s Kindle? The ideas in this article aren’t bad I think and at the same time, the Kindle really is its own reading “ecosystem,” which will be a tough act to change.
It’s here that Kindle’s rivals will find it hard to compete. Amazon is the Internet’s master retailer, and the Kindle’s killer feature is its convenience. When you buy a Kindle, it comes pre-loaded with your Amazon account info; you don’t even need to enter your credit card number to buy any books. And then there are all those customer reviews and the amazing recommendations—not to mention the huge selection of popular, cheap titles.
How could anyone compete with that? Here’s one idea: Pull down the restrictions. The Kindle’s biggest problem is its “Hotel California”-content model: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Because Amazon uses its own proprietary eBook format, every book you buy is tied to the Kindle and other devices Amazon deigns to approve, like iPhones and iPod touches. Sony recently embraced the ePub document format, which—though it’s still copy-protected—works on multiple devices. This lets you buy a book for your Reader but be assured that your library won’t get deleted if you get some other gadget in the future. The ePub format also lets you hook into other sources for books—for instance, the Reader lets you borrow eBooks from your local library. Google just put 1 million public-domain books online—these will work on all devices that read ePub, which means everything but the Kindle.
FLYP
Normally I don’t click on ads on sites that I visit, but this one caught my attention. I clicked and went to this new kind of online magazine that combines print with video in a compelling way. I read an article on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and found the experience quite enjoyable. Subscription is free, and there’s also an RSS feed if that works for your taste, too. The site does require the latest version of Flash though.
~ Share and Enjoy~
Tags: online reads
Google Web Elements
A new item from the Google today: Web Elements. I can say that the name is decent with this one Basically you can take small snippets of Google tools and embed them into your webpage. For example, you can embed a presentation that you’ve got in Google Docs, or a Google Map. Perhaps one of the coolest of the Elements is the Conversation one, as people can add comments to your site when they’re visiting.
I think I’m finding these interesting because part of me is reading RSS just a tad bit less and I’m going to the actual sites and checking them out. There are a lot of great designs out there and I like what I’m seeing. One of the sites that I’ve been enjoying lately is the Rapid eLearning Blog. This is a blog about designing eLearning instructional situations, mostly aimed at corporate life, but it all applies to what I do as an ITRT offering Professional Development. One of the keys to offering quality PD is simply planning it well. Having objectives and developing some kind of assessment that tells you if the people that you are teaching “got it.” It’s a good site and worth some time spent there.
~ Share and Enjoy~
Tags: Rapid eLearning
Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning - Emerging Technologies for Learning
Some weekend reading for those who are interesting. There’s a lot here, but it looks worthwhile.
Kids and Kindle - James Fallows
My wife is only days away from receiving her exciting new new-to-her Kindle, which is to say that I expect soon to get my hands on a Kindle 2. Meanwhile this note from a good friend about the machine’s effect in his household:
An (unreported?) Kindle phenomenon: 11-year old girl, drove parents crazy by not reading books because totally addicted to electronics, has now transferred total addiction to Kindle 2 - and now does nothing, ever, but read books, one after another. In bed, in the car, while eating - while crossing streets!
[My wife] says, “Let’s buy Amazon stock. In six months, the world will have discovered this particular phenomenon.” (She is the one who had the sudden insight that this might work for [our daughter].)
This from one of my favorite writers who blogs for The Atlantic Monthly magazine, from yesterday. Perhaps the Kindle and other e-readers will spark an interest in reading for some students? Having approached the issue of reading before, this one got me to thinking is all . . . .
