In a very special timetraveling episode, the Digital Campus crew journey back to 2007 to hear from their old selves–specifically, what they said about e-books when Amazon’s Kindle was released–and whether their present selves agree with their ghosts from the past in light of the release of the Kindle 2 and the mobile version of Google Books. Also covered on the podcast are the demise of rumor site Juicy Campus and music site Ruckus, the impact of Creative Commons and downloads on YouTube, and the addition of history to Google Earth. Picks for the episode include a programming interface for New York Times articles, a blog on the futures of learning, a search engine for open journals, and a site for medieval manuscripts.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Kindle 2
Google Book Search Mobile
New York Times Article Search API
Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts
Futures of Learning blog
Google Earth 5’s Historical Imagery
JURN search engine

Running time: 49:18
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Aside from the technical challenges of moving museums online, there’s the cultural challenge of squaring the curator’s focus on the actual, authentic object with the free-for-all, non-hierarchical nature of the web. That’s the tension addressed in the feature story on this episode, a follow-up to concerns expressed at the Smithsonian 2.0 conference. We’re lucky to be joined in the discussion by Sharon Leon, Director of Public Projects at the Center for History and New Media. In the news roundup, we assemble our own stimulus package, talk about Creative Commons on the White House website, look at the impact of Gmail going offline, and debate a possible change to Wikipedia’s moderation policy. Picks include a new grant, Omeka training, museum awards, and (despite protests by Mills) a Twitter client.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Broadband, Computers Part of Stimulus Package
Wikipedia Co-Founder Calls for Major New Moderation Policy
New White House Copyright Policy
Smithsonian 2.0
National Postal Museum’s Arago website
Best of the Web at the Museums and the Web 2009 meeting
Digging into Data Challenge
TweetDeck
Omeka Workshops
Gmail Goes Offline

Running time: 45:14
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Tom and Dan kick off the new year by annoying Mills with tales of Twitter and tweets. In our newly extended news roundup, the panel looks at the use of Twitter at academic conferences; assesses the Palm Pre and the future of mobile apps for education, museums, and libraries; wonders about touch screens and the blind; thinks once again about the use of e-book readers on campus; discusses the end of Google Notebook and what it says about putting your research in services that might fail; debates the wisdom of putting academic articles on Wikipedia; and gives an update on Europeana, the EU digital library.

Other links for the episode:
Amanda French on the digital MLA experience
HearPlanet iPhone application
The American Association of History and Computing
ReframeIt and Web Annotation

Running time: 49:32
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Dan, Mills, and Tom round out 2008 with the top ten most significant stories, trends, and technologies of the year. The regulars discuss how netbooks, Google Books, e-books, and iPhones made 2008 a year to remember. What will make the list in 2009? The regulars offer some predictions as well.

Running time: 51:30
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This Thanksgiving week in the U.S. we have a cornucopia of news, starting with the reaction of Harvard to the Google Book Search settlement and including the end of email service for students at Boston College and two efforts to create an “academic Google.” We also launch a new segment, “We Told You So,” to gloat over the predicted death of Google’s virtual world, Lively, and over continuing problems in Second Life. Picks for this episode include a new site on place-based computing, a couple of easy (or bizarre) ways to write a book, and an easy-to-learn programming language.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Harvard on Google Book Search settlement
Lively No More
“Eric Reuters” on Second Life
Europeana
Boston College Will Stop Offering New Students E-Mail Accounts
RefSeek
Reference Extract
Google SearchWiki
Processing 1.0
Place-based Computing
FortyChapters
QuillPill

Running time: 44:27
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The big news this week was the announcement that a settlement had been reached between Google and authors and publishers over Google’s controversial Book Search program, which has scanned over seven million volumes, including many books that are still copyrighted. The Digital Campus team takes a first pass at the agreement and tries to understand how it might affect higher ed. Other news from a busy week include the release of the first phone based on Google’s Android operating system, and Microsoft’s conversion to “cloud” computing. Picks for this podcast include a new report on teenagers and videogames, a new version of Linux for the masses, and a program to help you focus on the Mac.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Google Book Search Settlement Agreement
Open Library
Ubuntu
Think for the Mac
Android
Microsoft Azure
Pew report on teens and videogames

Running time: 49:29
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This time on Digital Campus the regulars tackle the notion of “digital natives,” the conventional wisdom that says children born during the Internet era (say, since the late 1980s) understand digital technology intuitively. Are today’s students naturally fluent in the language and customs of digital technology, or are they more like the rest of us, who have to work hard to make computers work for us? We take a look at both sides of the debate. In the news roundup we discuss Google’s latest digitization project (newspapers this time), the publishing lobby’s attempt to close NIH’s open access research portal, and two new foundations to support good things on the web.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Google to Digitize Newspaper Archives, New York Times
Backlash Against Open Access, Ars Technica
Digital Promise
World Wide Web Foundation
The Generational Myth, Chronicle of Higher Education
Harvard Professor Sees Answers to Nagging Web-Youth Issues, Cnet
A Companion to Digital Literary Studies
What to Look for in Tech Staff, Tech Therapy
Many Eyes

Running time: 48:49
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The Digital Campus crew was lucky to be joined by Bryan Alexander, the Director of Research of NITLE, on this episode. Bryan tracks emerging trends in technology and higher ed, and gives us the inside scoop on what’s up and coming for the 2008-2009 school year. Our wide-ranging discussion in that feature segment and the news roundup covers the latest in mobile technology, ebooks, digital scholarship, course-management-systems, virtual worlds, gaming, and audio, video, and image-sharing, among other topics. We also obsess a bit about the significance of Google’s new web browser, Chrome. Join us for another year of Digital Campus!

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Making the History of 1989
Synthasite
Jason Calacanis on demoing digital products, part 1, part 2
NITLE Prediction Markets
The Shadow IT Department
Google Chrome

Running time: 1:05:53
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On this episode we were lucky to have a live link to Alexandria, Egypt, for Wikimania 2008, the international meeting of those who work on Wikipedia and related open collaborative projects. In the feature segment we talk with Liam Wyatt of Wikipedia Weekly, who gives an insider’s scoop of the issues, debates, and future of Wikipedia. In the news roundup we discuss Yahoo’s new open search service, BOSS, and Google’s new virtual world, Lively, among other things. Picks of the week include some advice from Google’s blogs, some rich web-based applications, and Gmail power user tweaks.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Wikimania 2008
Wikipedia Weekly
Yahoo BOSS
Google Lively
Aviary
Google Labs Gmail tweaks
Requesting reconsideration using Google Webmaster Tools
Technologies Behind Google Ranking

Running time: 48:03
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As forms of scholarship move from the analog world of paper to the digital realm of the web, a debate has begun about how to give credit—if at all—to these new forms for the purposes of promotion and tenure. What will happen to peer review? What kinds of digital work should “count,” and how? That’s the featured discussion on this episode. We also cover the launch of Firefox 3, university presses putting their books on Amazon’s Kindle device, and the release of better copyright records.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Google publishes copyright status of books from 1923-1963
U.S. Copyright Office Record Search
Mills on “Making Digital Scholarship Count”
Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage
Creative Commons Case Studies
MozillaZine on “about:config”

Running time: 44:02
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