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Friday, May 19, 2006
Friday Link Harvest
Every week I write up the Friday Link Harvest while listening to James Kraus live on WZBC via the Internet. Not only does he play my requests for 80s punk but he does a mean illustration for Business Filter in the Globe every Monday and he just sent me a cooool Art Guy T-shirt. Nice!
Alicia Conway at Boston.com is my new hero because she promises to help me redesign the layout of Biz Filter. Time to rearrange the furniture a bit.
Michael Chmura from Babson College writes to say that the Sloan Consortium, based at Babson and Olin Colleges, recently published research saying the colleges in the South top colleges in the North when it comes to online learning.
"Among all Southern schools offering face-to-face master's degrees, 47 percent also offer master's degree programs online, higher than the 44 percent of those schools nationwide."
But the thing that shocks me is how high even the online learning figures are in general. The Internet results in declining "face time" all over the place.
W. David Stephenson, a homeland security consultant, writes in response to Real-time maps of cities that he thinks this technology will be a critical element of crisis response – but only on an opt-in basis.
"Such a system would have to be opt in, given the current poisonous distrust of public officials regarding privacy (yet another consequence that the Bush Administration should have, but evidently didn't, considered prior to launching the NSA surveillance programs) and the risk to individuals if, for example, their national identities could be tracked without them knowing it while on vacation in an area prone to terrorist attacks or kidnappings."
As a diversion from the homeland security grind, Stephenson clicked into my Automatic name and mission statement generator post and automatically generated his own mission statement. It's Dilbert-ific.
Cube Fabulous is a new Internet reality series that's a Trading Spaces meets Office Space. It chronicles the redecorating of cubicles for office cube-dwellers. As we've discussed on this blog before, the cubicle is The Fidel Castro of Office Furniture. Reviled by workers, demonized by designers, disowned by its very creator...we're still stuck with them.
Speaking of corporate dysfunction, I stumbled upon a series of perfectly ironic Despair Inc. video webcasts on ZDNet this week. In this segment, Despair, Inc.'s Dr. E.L. Kersten explains one of several disconfirmational communication tactics which can be helpful in disabusing employees of their narcissistic delusions of parity.
Funny YouTube video: 10 Things I hate about Commandments, stumbled upon while reading Good Morning Silicon Valley.
I'm really getting into videoblogging. DC Denison of the Boston Globe turned me on to DriveTime, a weekly video blog produced during Ravi Jain's daily commute. It's my new favorite Boston-area videoblog. Last month Mary Richardson from that venerable New England news magazine Chronicle, rode along on the commute. Love it.
Anyone ever see the Bob, the singing Continental Airlines guy at the Newark Airport?
Dan Zarella says he uses WordTracker to spot cool new trends.
Stan DeSantis points out the newly launched Google Health. Search on what ails you and get info, links and remedies.
