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Digital Campus expands its roster to four with the addition of Amanda French as our newest co-host. It’s a busy week to start the new era, and we jump right in with news that Amazon is trying to revive the venerable pamphlet for the digital age. We turn next to three stories out of EDUCAUSE, including the Gates Foundation’s big splash, Second Life’s big flop, and Sherpa’s big promise. We applaud UVa and NARA’s announcement of open access to the Founding Father’s papers, and setting aside our iEverything for a change, we discuss some interesting new offerings from Microsoft, including Windows Phone 7 and Bing’s new Facebook-powered social search. We wrap things up with a some ideas to help you deal with the distractions of the online world.

Running time: 58:10
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How and why do a critical mass of people adopt new technologies such as virtual worlds or the Theremin? That’s just one of the issues we discuss on a freewheeling podcast featuring another two “irregulars,” Steve Ramsey and Bryan Alexander. The news roundup includes an analysis of the Nook and the Droid, among other oddly-named devices, and an exploration of what real-time search could do for researchers.

Running time: 54:10
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Dan and Mills welcome Tom back from paternity leave with a whirlwind roundup of the last month’s news. The regulars try to keep it real, exposing a scandal in scientific journal publishing, assessing the buzz surrounding the launch of a new computational search engine, questioning recent applications of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and delving once again into the Google Books settlement and some late breaking developments at the University of Michigan Library.

Other links mentioned on the podcast:

Cohen and Rosenzweig, Web of Lies? Historical Knowledge on the Internet
U.S. Copyright Office triennial DMCA exemption review
California’s open source digital textbook initiative
Microsoft Funds Opposition to Google Books settlement
Brewster Kahle on the Google Books settlement
The University of Michigan and Google Amended Digitization Agreement
Virtual Box
Zotero 2.0 drops

Running time: 51:52
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On this podcast we finally put to rest the Great Facebook Controversy of 2007. We tell listeners how to turn off Facebook’s intrusive Beacon advertising system, and note LinkedIn’s attempt to capitalize on Facebook’s stumble. We also assess the importance of privacy for search engines given Ask.com‘s move to make it easier to search anonymously, and revisit the rise of the podcasting of lectures now that commercial companies are entering the market. Our featured story examines the potential educational uses of cell phones on campus and in museums and libraries, looking ahead to Google’s Android cell phone operating system and other application platforms. Our links for the week include exhibition software for museums, a great new academic blog from Stan Katz, and a simple way for libraries and museums to turn cell phones into audio tour handsets.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Omeka
Podlinez
Brainstorm: Stan Katz

Running time: 52:00
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Think Google is scary with all of the information it gathers about you through your web searches? Wait until Facebook starts its advertising platform based on all of the likes and dislikes you’ve given it, and combines that with the power of Microsoft, which just bought a stake in the biggest social network on campus. We tackle privacy, anonymity, and giving away personal information in this week’s podcast. In the news roundup we celebrate the release of Apple’s new operating system upgrade, Leopard, and whether it and Ubuntu can begin to steal market share from a faltering Windows Vista.

Other links mentioned on the podcast:
New York Public Library Labs
Anthony Grafton on “Future Reading”
Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy

Running time: 51:11
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What are students, researchers, and librarians supposed to do with the tremendous volume of digitized scholarly materials now available to them? We discuss the problem of information overload in this week’s feature segment. The news roundup turns into an iPhone-fest–or is it an iPhone-bashing? Dan tries not to go near an iPhone for fear of an impulse buy, while Tom and Mills debate the true value of Apple’s new gadget. Helpful tips for the week include a site for getting to know “learning 2.0,” a great new blog on museums and technology, and a digital Time Magazine archive.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Learning 2.0
Electronic Museum
Time Magazine, 1923-2007
Enable dictionary and thesaurus on Google Docs

Running time: 51:07

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Bill Turkel joins us on the podcast to discuss his fascinating work on “history appliances,” or the possibility of making history more real by creating physical environments and interfaces that truly immerse us in the past. In the news roundup we ponder whether the opening of Facebook to outside developers means possibly better integration with academic services or merely the end of its pretty interface, applaud Google’s new “universal search” for returning video and other media in addition to text, express skepticism that Google has crushed the market for online term papers, and wonder if a university might soon suffer the same fate as Estonia, which saw its computer networks swamped by “hactivists”–or the Russian government.

Sites mentioned on the podcast:
Digital History Hacks
Dave Lester’s Blog
Seashore
Phixr
Scratch
Place-based Computing

Running time: 45:26

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