Imagine a world where educational content is available online for free. Well, that future is essentially here. The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides high-quality, free education to anyone, anywhere via an online library of more than 1,600 teaching videos. We are providing $2 million to support the creation of more courses…
This is a Thai ad, ironically from a BB Phone provider. At the end, the narrator says: “Stay offline for some time to embrace your surroundings. Use the phone just as necessary.” The basic idea is: Society is connected to devices that can enhance our lives. But they also remove us from what is happening in…
Last year, I had the awesome opportunity of speaking with Dr. Elaine Young’s (@ejyoung67) Marketing Management class at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. These ’social ninjas’ are truly maximizing their use of social media tools like Twitter and Foursquare to reach target markets. But, more importantly, they are using it to market themselves. Yes, for…
Aspiring journalists, hear hear! In a conversation segment I taped last year for CampusTweet.TV, Washington Post student life and culture reporter Jenna Johnson (Twitter handle: @wpjenna) offered insights into the changing media industry. As a journalist myself, I was excited with the opportunity to exchange words (face to face!) with a real-life reporter. We spoke…
Read more Interview with Jenna Johnson, Washington Post Reporter
The book “Don’t Make Me Think” made me do the exact opposite: think. (Hence the sad confused face.) Perhaps that wasn’t the book’s intention, but it did. After close to 200 pages of explaining how to make things so simple that people don’t need to expend any effort thinking, the book made simplicity almost seem…
Slowly, the print newspaper is becoming a black and white figment of the past. This morning, Rupert Murdoch unveils the much anticipated iPad newspaper- ‘The Daily’- an all-purpose publication that is designed solely for iPads and other tablet computers. According to the people who have seen it, it contains “compelling sound” and “incorporates sight and…
Could modern democracy’s greatest force be the Internet and Social Media? More than elections, a governing body, and live town hall meetings? The world must really be coming to an end. The cyber world is emerging as a force to reckon with when battling the new democratic wave. Okay, perhaps crowning the Internet as democracy’s…
What are people are talking about on the Internet? Hot topics attracting the most buzz are clearly laid out, courtesy of Mashable’s weekly Top 10 Twitter Trends chart. It briefly describes the reason behind the buzz and the intensity with which it was discussed. It’s an easy way to track the latest in trends. Surprisingly…
Our job as journalists consists of three basic things: asking questions, chasing sources to find answers to those questions, and reporting back to the public with answers. That’s if we’re lucky. What usually ends up happening is we spend our entire day on step two- playing the waiting game with interviewees- in some cases…
President Obama is currently speaking to a televised audience of millions in his State of the Union address. I am watching. But an even larger audience awaits on the web. What used to be a strictly televised event has transformed into a digital one, a conversation developed through multiple mediums. Ian Elsner (pictured above) no…
The Social Files 