Blog Archive 2008

If one had to think of the countries in which blogging is most popular, the United States, Canada, the UK would likely be the first to pop into one's head. Then perhaps Latin American countries, China?

In fact, the country with the third most bloggers in the world is Iran, according to Wikipedia. Technorati rates Farsi as the tenth most popular language of blogs in its 2008 state of the blog report. Even the president has a blog.

According to CNET, Wikipedia has received $890,000 in funding from the Stanton Foundation to create an easier-to-use interface. Wikipedia's goal is "to identify the most common barriers to entry for first-time writers, and then work to systematically reduce or eliminate them."

Contrary to the opinions of many parents, time spent online is important for teenage social and technological skill development, according to a new study from the MacArthur Foundation. This ethnographic study interviewed over 800 teens and parents about digital media use and logged over 5000 media use observation hours. The researchers found that teens use digital media for two primary reasons: friendship-driven activities and interest-driven activities.

The New York Times launched a new version of their front page last week called "Times Extra" that incorporates related or supporting blog posts and news articles from outside sources, including competitors.

Rene Weber from the Communication Department spoke at CITS's Faculty Lecture Series on December 5 on the topic of Video Games: Motives, Responses and Consequences.

Some interesting highlights from Rene's talk:

* The video game market is huge. Children and young people play quite a bit, but the average age of a video game player is 35 years old.

The Lori Drew case has received a lot of media attention due to its technology angle. Briefly, Drew is charged with three counts of violating federal computer statutes and one count of conspiracy, for creating a fake MySpace account she allegedly used to help torment her daughter's friend, 13-year-old Megan Meier who later committed suicide. This Wikipedia article summarizes the case.

One spam email generates one response for every 12,500,000 emails a spammer sends out.

Yet spammers are still making a lot of money - US$7000 per day! This is less than they used to make, however, so perhaps spam filters and human behavior have improved filtering mechanism.

A new study found these results. The study made no promises for a longer life or greater happiness.

Without question, one of the big success stories to emerge from the 2008 presidential election is the Obama campaign's use of the Internet and web 2.0 tools to reach people.

The US Army has used innovative recruiting tools for a long time: video games and websites, for example, are two ways that technology is used to reach out to potential recruits.

Starting on Veterans' Day the Army added webcasts (video podcasts) to its arsenal of tools, complete with Q&A.