Forecasting Technological Change

Jon Gold forcasts upcoming technological changes .

-DD

Eliminating Traffic Lights

Lucas Mearian notes that traffic lights would be obsolete if all vehicles drove themselves. He cites research being done at MIT (see video).

-DD

The Value of Cultivating Former Employees

Sharon Florentine reports that many firms are actively cultivating a relationship with former employees . Some of these workers return as quality "boomerang" employees, while others create a positive vibe for their former employer.

-DD

Mobile Phones and Injuries

Bob Brown reviews records of injuries where mobile phones are involved, and learns that individuals in their teens and 20's are at the greatest risk.

-DD

Wi-Fi Usage Can Be Analyzed to Track Behavior in a Location

Patrick Nelson observes that Wi-Fi tracing can be analyzed to discover behavioral patterns of Wi-Fi users in specific locations. He posits that this will be very useful to researchers, including those in commercial marketing.

-DD

Highway Safety

Michael Cooney reports that distracted driving is a major problem in the United States.

-DD

Data Scientists' Role

Katherine Noyes suggests that data scientists spend too much time cleaning and organizing when they should be developing new algorithms.

-DD

Finding Great Students

Santiago Iniguez suggests how to obtain students with great potential for a business school.

-DD

The Spread of HTTPS

katherine Noyes promotes a Google report on HTTPS and Internet security

. -DD

Industrial Security

Robert O'Jarrow Jr. wrote about industrial security .

-DD

Reading for Pleasure

Christine Smallwood investigates the world or readers .

-DD

Telepresence and University Attendance

Telepresence robots are going to require policy decisions for universities with attendance policies. Would a student be counted as present if they are participating in classroom discussion using a robot, rather than being physically present?

I suspect that universities are restricted from revising attendance policies to include telepresence, as accrediting agencies and U.S. financial aid regulations would all need to agree to any such policy before adoption.

-DD

Slavery

Kevin Bales has written about modern slavery in Blood and Earth . The Longreads website periodically offers book excerpts on intellectually chanllenging topics.

-DD

Edge Extensions Developed By Microsoft

Gregg Kiezer reports that Microsoft's Edge web browser will be able to run extensions developed by the company. Initial addons will be a translator, a mouse gesture extension, and the Reddit Enhancement Suite. Under development are addons for AdBlock, Amazon, Evernote and more.

-DD

Auto-Renewal of Contracts

Joshua Briones, Crystal Lopez and Lauren Miller have written about the hassles of auto renewal for customers and business owners.

-DD

Personal Cloud Security

Matt Hamblen shares a new cryptography technique being developed at MIT.

-DD

Collaboration and Overload

Sharon Florentine reports that 20-30% of team productivity is due to less than five percent of employees. A lot of employees do not want to be part of teams, and bad team experiences cause that feeling to take hold during many employee's work life.

-DD

Challenging Students to Read Difficult Books

Ashley Thorne suggests that students will accomplish more if challenged to read difficult texts.

-DD

Small Wins

Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer discuss the power of striving for incremental success . Consistent "small wins" maintain motivation much better than a project without repeated positive feedback.

-DD

Convenient Libraries

Lynn Silipigni Connaway suggests that the quest for convenience has become a primary force governing library usage. She supports this view by quoting Ranganathan’s Fourth Law, “Save the time of the reader.”

-DD

Mastering Conversation

Andy Molinsky suggests that adding a personal interpretation of facts is a key element of being a conversatioalist .

-DD

Zeigarnik Effect

Psychwiki serves as a useful dictionary of psychological theory , such as this one about the Zeigarnik Effect and the desire of humans for task completion.

-DD

Android 6 Tips

J. R. Raphael shares twelve tips for using Android 6.0 .

-DD

Gender and Language

Lucy Ferris explores language and gender .

-DD

On-Site Search

Sachin Kamdar strongly endorses any web marketer offering on-site search . He suggests that site search provides a great deal of user friendliness and engagement.

Kamdar recommends that old content be retained unless there is a pressing reason for its removal. He provides the example of hardware firms which keep old device driver software available on their sites as a convenience for those with legacy equipment. With a good search tool, this content can have a minimal impact on site usability, but continue to make older content available.

Kamdar cites a conversation with SitePoint content editor Ophélie Lechat, who makes the following observation:

Visitors who use site search tend to view five times more pages than visitors who don’t, and they spend six minutes longer on our site.... On-site search lets us get into the minds of our visitors and helps us fill in the gaps where we’re not providing exactly the right kind of content.

-DD

Health Monitoring

Johnny Evans suggests that soon companies may require employees use wearable devices to monitor employee health . Mandating the use of a wearable device such as the Apple Watch may lower insurance rates, but has the potential to reduce individual privacy.

-DD

OCLC Research Report for 2015

OCLC produced a report on its new activities .

-DD

Changes In Gift Card Transactions

Evan Schuman reports that retailers are reducing the face value of gift cards in order to limit their liability under new laws. Schuman suggests that it would be less onorous to track the ID of either the purchaser or user of gift cards.

-DD

Open Data Button

George Williams reports the beta release of the Open Data Button , a tool for requesting access to research data.

-DD

Ormandy Warns That Anti-Virus Software Is Flawed

Tavis Ormandy warns that the security software he has examined is flawed, and that the "industry standards" are too weak.

-DD

Choosing a Learning Management System

Michael Feldstein portrays the agony of selecting a Learning Management System .

-DD

Financial Stability Among Academic Institutions

Andy Thomason shares an Education Department index for gauging a university's financial stability .

-DD

Minimal Numbers of Apps Are Being Downloaded

Jason Jones observes that few people are adding more than a few apps to their smart phone.

-DD

Apple e-Book Price Fixing

Grant Gross reports that Apple needs to compensate users as a result of a price fixing trial.

-DD

Sleep Debt in the University

Jason B. Jones explores the effects of sleep debt on academics and human awareness.

-DD

Benefits of Meditation

Ferris Jabr provides evidence that the human brain needs meditation , or at least time away from a task, for optimum effectiveness.

-DD

TSA Lines At U.S. Airports

Robert Poole notes that the delay for TSA inspection is increasing as staff training time has increased from 6 weeks to 13 weeks with no increase in total staff count. TSA intends to promote the PreCheck program, which expedites the inspection of low-risk travelers. Airlines are furious about the delays, which in some cases delay flight departures.

-DD

The End of Class

James Lang suggests that professors should have a plan for concluding each classroom session.

-DD

Pi Day

Brandon Butler suggests ways to celebrate Pi Day .

-DD

Ransomware

Lucian Constantin offers tips to avoid being taken down by ransomware .

-DD

Major Microsoft Windows Update Planned for June, 2016

Andy Patrizio says that Microsoft will release a major operating system update in June, 2016.

-DD

"The Division" Videogame Trains User Cooperation

John Brandon reports that The Division video game seems to be encouraging social cooperation.

-DD

Russian Websites

Global Sources explains how to find Russian internet sources using Russian databases.

-DD

Startup Snafus

J. R. Raphael observes common mistakes which can sink technology-based startups.

-DD

Andy Rubin and Artificial Intelligence

Jason Tanz interviews Andy Rubin about his work with artificial intelligence.

-DD

Vivaldi Web Browser

Jon Gold reports on the development of the Vivaldi browser by Jon von Tetzchner. Like many browsers it will have a foundation in Chromium.

-DD

Google and User Privacy

Google has created a video describing how Google handles search warrants .

-DD

Critiques of the EdTech Industry

Joshua Kim offers a short opinion piece on faculty lack of trust in the EdTech industry . In my opinion, the many pointed comments following his piece add a lot of insight to the question of trust which Kim raises. For example, ALSOTPS commented:

One reason that faculty...and academic staff and program assistants and anyone else in academia....is that the technology drive/shapes programs and processes, not the other way around. How many times have additions/changes etc to Peoplesoft, for example, created more headaches without ANYONE asking if the changes helped or hindered? How many times have your tech people changed your system without advanced warning about what in the programming would change? Why the changes in the first place, except to make work for IT people and money for the TECH industry?

In sum, the comments seem to say that professors do not trust profit-centered firms to look out for anything but their financial bottom line. My own take is that faculty may also feel that they are losing the ability to influence institutional technology commitments (such as selection of a Learning Management System), and thus control over the course environment is shifting to cost-focused administrators who are rewarded primarily for reducing expenditures.

-DD

Hewlett-Packard Develops A Phone That Doubles As A Computer

Agam Shah reports that HP has developed a phone that will also serve as a low-powered desktop with the addition of a keyboard and mouse. According to Shah, "The Elite X3 has 4GB of LPDDR4, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and a microSD slot for up to 2TB of storage."

-DD

Apple iOS amd Missing E-mail

Evan Schuman reports that his iphone sometimes deletes a few extra e-mail messages when he deletes a large quantity of emails.

-DD

Election Data Analysis

Sharon Machlis comments on the news media misuse of data in reporting on the U.S. elections.

-DD

Google Street View

Google has posted a humorous video illustrating how street view works.

-DD

Encouraging Critical Thinking

David Gooblar observes that a powerful narrative can cause people to disregard facts . He offers listening and Socratic dialog as a vital tool for developing the critical thinking of students.

My takeaway from this article is that an online classroom (and perhaps broadcast media as a whole) makes this type of dialog much more difficult. Instructors must be very intentional if they wish to develop critical thinking in their online students.

-DD

E-Mail's Founder Dies

Bob Brown reports that Ray Tomlinson , the programmer who developed the e-mail protocol, died at 74.

-DD

Wearable Use Expands

Matt Hamblen writes about the growth potential for the wearable peripheral market , which grew 171.6% over 201according to an IDC report.

-DD

Default Passwords Should Be Changed

Ms. Smith observes that default passwords should always be changed if privacy is needed. She cites Paul Moore, who exposed how default passwords were a flaw in a major corporation's security efforts.

-DD

Empowering Thought

Jenny Brockis suggests four ways to boost brain energy at work.

-DD

Google Chrome vs. Microsoft Browsers

Gregg Keizer observes that Google Chrome is slated to surpass Microsoft browsers in user share before the end of the summer of 2016.

-DD

Loading and Unloading Cloud Data

Brandon Butler shares how Amazon makes it easy to load massive amounts of data to their cloud environment. Downloading the data can also be accomplished, though Amazon charges fees for that service.

-DD

Resilience

Maria Konnikova notes that perception is key to maintaining resilience. Techniques for perceiving can be taught, meaning that proper training can enable more people to survive tragedy.

-DD

Directory of U.S. Government Agencies

USA.GOV provides a directory of U.S. government agencies and services .

-DD

Apple Encryption Issues

Evan Schuman comments on the conflict between Apple Corporation and the FBI over encyption.

-DD

American Memory Project

The U.S. Library of Congress maintains the American Memory Project , an index of images that define American history.

-DD

Browser Translation Tools

Dan Price suggests web browser tools for language translation .

-DD

British Academic Hiring

Rachel Herrmann shares observations about British university hiring practices .

She notes that continual publication is very important to departmental funding, so a scholar with nothing published has no credibility in the British university hiring process.

-DD