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Viewpoint
Happy Google Year!
1/3/2007
By Terry Calhoun
Welcome to the Year of the Google. In 2007, Google will become the most frequently visited Web site on the Internet. In November of 2006, it passed Yahoo, briefly. Microsoft, of course, with required downloads of software upgrades, is the other major player. But Google, with the help of its new purchase, YouTube, will end Yahoo’s 10-year ride on the top of the worldwide visits charts sometime in 2007.
What else will excite us in 2007, or was exciting about 2006? I’ve been reading a wide range of retrospectives and prospectives and will share a little bit about each here, with linkage so that you can go through and read more of what you find most interesting.
Late last year, Gartner Inc. predicted that Vista would be the last big release of a new Windows operating system by Microsoft. "The next generation of operating environments will be more modular and will be updated incrementally," the research firm said in a forecast for 2007. "The era of monolithic deployments of software releases is nearing an end. Microsoft will be a visible player in this movement, and the result will be more flexible updates to Windows and a new focus on quality overall."
My response: Who would want to go through all that again? And that’s from Microsoft’s perspective, not the campus one. We’ve now got to deal with students who will get some version of Vista on their new Christmas present, bring it to campus, and complain that the campus machines don’t use Vista yet. Same thing after Christmas 2007: Why aren’t the machines in the lab using Vista yet?
What Will the RIAA Come Up With Next?
The record industry's dubious prosecutions continue, as the major players file suit against several unlikely defendants, including a 3-year-old child, a whippet in Cincinnati, George Gordon Lord Byron (1788-1824), minor Harry Potter character Eloise Midgen, and "the smell of fresh waffles on a Sunday morning." Most defendants settle out of court, but the smell of waffles vows to fight the charges.
The above is nonsensical, of course, but it d'es highlight the fact that whatever the current state of the battle is – Napster, Ruckus, whatever – the underlying structural tension about intellectual property rights is still there. Only the surface is resolved, and that will crack soon enough.
Recommended Reading
- Technology and Campus Services
Can auxiliary services be mission-critical? You bet they can. With tuition on the rise, Auxiliary Services departments at a variety of colleges and universities are proving that they can innovate and still save their parent institutions cash.
- Ad It Up
Commercials on television tend to enrage me and laugh tracks are guaranteed to give me a headache. Plus, where do people find the time to watch TV?
- What Is the Purpose of an Electronic Portfolio? Is the Answer the Key to Your Successful Implementation?
Among many themes, Margaret Price explores the theme of purpose in her Viewpoint. One purpose of ePortfolio is to reflect on change from a beginning to a later point in time. In a future Viewpoint, Margaret will return to the SpEl.Folio and we’ll see how her thinking and her project have evolved.
- Making Faculty Smarter about Smart Technology
If you’re not also enabling the ‘why’ or ‘what’ behind the tech tools you give your faculty, you’re not enabling effective use of those tools.
- Smashing the Shackles of Intentionally Dysfunctional Technology
Until last week, it hadn’t "clicked" inside my head that the Library of Congress could or would make specific exemptions to copyright laws.
- Response Devices Keep FSU Students Focused
Attendance is up and the number of students dozing off in class is down in Joe Calhoun’s economics classes at Florida State University (FSU). And that’s despite an increase in class size recently, with new lecture halls that seat up to 500 students at a time.
