The Facebook Application Ecosystem: Why Some Thrive, and Most Don’t

What do the killer apps on the Facebook platform have in common? What must you build into your application if you want Facebook users to adopt it and pass it on to their friends? In this live webcast, Shelly D. Farnham, Ph.D. discusses the application features that lead to success on the Facebook platform, including the best practices to launch and build Facebook apps, what people are using the top Facebook apps for, winning ad strategies, and how to innovate for success.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008 (17:00 GMT)

Free; registration required.

Source: O’Reilly Events

Webinar — The Outlook for Foundation Giving in 2008

Join us from the comfort of your own office to hear the latest perspective on how grantmaking foundations are being affected by current trends in the U.S. economy and how foundation giving might fare. Steven Lawrence, senior director of research at the Foundation Center, will present findings from the Foundation Center’s new report, Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates: Current Outlook, and address the following topics:

• Did foundation giving falter as the economy began to slow in 2007?
• Given a weak economic climate, what is the outlook for foundation giving in 2008?
• What do prior downturns suggest about the current funding environment?

The webinar will conclude with a question-and-answer segment.

Thursday, May 15, 2008, 2:00-3:00 pm (Eastern Time)

Source: Foundation Center

Brokaw Spoke at MIT on April 2, 2008. The program runs 48 minutes and includes a Q&A segment. The programs title is, “Life is Not Virtual.”

From the summary:

In this heartfelt address, Tom Brokaw characterizes the transformation of the world by digital technology as a second “Big Bang,” a time of great possibility, but also of danger.

This revolution is being advanced not by “a small collection of monkish wonks working in a secret lab” but by a vast and ever larger population ranging from inventive teenagers to military analysts in the Pentagon, says Brokaw, who feel “power at their fingertips and in the bowels of their servers.” They believe that the world is limited only by their imagination. Yet, cautions Brokaw, “life is not a virtual experience. If we develop capacity and leave out compassion, what is the reward? What are the consequences if speed overruns reason?”

Source: MIT World

From the post:

A technology report (PDF) by a Harvard University student shows that of all the digital tools that professors use, Harvard students find most useful online course material and syllabi.

The report said students want courses to have “a Web site that contains readings, notes and other content so they can be accessed easily during the semester,” wrote Anthony A. Pino in a blog post about the report. It is based on responses last December from 328 undergraduates and 120 graduate students.

Source: Wired Campus

+ Indonesia Blocks YouTube, MySpace Over Dutch Film -AFP

+ blinkx Partners with Deutsche Welle to Offer Premium International News Coverage

+ AOL and TheStreet.com Expand Content Partnership

+ ProQuest’s C19 Index Adds Index Records From LexisNexis (via Info Today)

Library of Congress staff and George Oates from Flickr, the popular photo-sharing site and Web 2.0 innovator — describe the pilot project in which the Library has mounted photographs from its Farm Security Administration and George Grantham Bain collections on the Flickr Web site.

View the Webcast

Source: Library of Congress

From the article:

Indonesia said Tuesday it would block access to YouTube unless the video-sharing Web site removes an anti-Muslim film by a Dutch lawmaker within 48 hours.

Communications and Information Minister Mohammad Nuh said the government sent a letter to the site informing it of its demand on Tuesday.

“The deadline is two days. If (the film) is not removed by that time, we will block YouTube under cooperation with the Internet service providers,” Nuh told reporters in the capital, Jakarta.

Source: AP

The Conference on Convergence and Connectivity 2008: Broadband, Wireless and Mobile: Archived Conference Webcast

The Conference on Convergence and Connectivity 2008 (CCC 2008): Broadband, Wireless and Mobile brings together the best available input from industry, government and academia to develop a vision for digitally connected communities with an emphasis upon the applications and services delivered to public, private and individual users. By gathering leaders from different fields in a neutral setting, we hope to address opportunities created by digital communications technologies, as well as to develop guidance of values in a long-term strategy for future innovations.

The conference took place on Wednesday, March 26, 2008.

Source: Rice University

+ Podcast: Columbia’s James Neal Provides Copyright Update (via Digital Koans)

+ Top 10 Search Terms: TechWeb TechEncyclopedia

+ Plinkits: Pre-built Library Web Sites that Libraries Love

Product Update: Now Encoding at 700 KBPS
:

…we’ve given our transcoders a major kick: we’re now transcoding user uploads to 700kpbs! That’s up from 300 kpbs in the past. Transcoders are those robots that diligently turn your video file into flash format. We also boosted the capacity of our uploader. This means better and faster uploads from start to finish. Of course, this doesn’t re-encode anything you’ve already uploaded; this is for new uploads only. As always, the final quality depends on the original video file. So keep your bitrate high, we’re ready for it.

So, here’s Yahoo! Video by the numbers: a 16:9 aspect ratio, 150 mb uploads, and 700 kpbs transcoding.

Source: Yahoo Video Blog

Global voices, global visions: International radio and television broadcasts via the Web
Compiled and written by: John H. Barnett, assistant director, PALCI: Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc.

Source: C&RL News

PBS American Experience has launched The Presidents Online at http://www.pbs.org/presidents/2008, as the online component of an unprecedented public television initiative that, for the first time, will make available more than 25 hours of presidential programming online, on TV, and on the go. The project comes at a critical moment in American politics: this year, American voters will take part in a landmark election, where for the first time in over a half-century, neither the sitting President nor vice president is a contender for the Oval Office.

Source: URLWire (Hat Tip to Pete W.)

+ Credo Adds Harvard University Press Titles

+ TiVo to provide YouTube videos directly to television
See Also: Youtube Opens Up Video Library To Developers

+ Plans to Digitize Papers of Theodore Roosevelt (Bismark Tribune)

+ Google Service to Help NJ Transit Riders (via AP)
See Also: i-Metro
i-Metro is one amazing service!

+ Yahoo May Join Google-Led Social Networking Alliance (via NY Times)

Webcast: Games and Civic Engagement

Video games could transform the world some day, if only their potential could be fully realized. These panelists dream of a day when industry, politicians and game players themselves explore how this new medium can educate and engage.

PANELISTS:
Mario Armstrong: NPR Technology Correspondent;
Co-founder, Urban Video Game Academy
Armstrong’s website

Ian Bogost: Founding Partner,Persuasive Games LLC
Assistant Professor, School of Communications, Georgia Institute of Technology
Bogost’s website

Recorded at MIT on November 8, 2007.

Source: MIT World

Computing Legend Douglas Engelbardt Speaks at UC Berkeley
Recorded on February 26, 2008

At Stanford Resarch International, Engelbart pioneered such firsts in computer technology as the mouse, display editing, windows, cross-file editing, idea/outline processing, hypermedia, and groupware. Awarded the National Medal of Technology, the highest honor given to America’s innovators by the U.S. President

Source: webcast.berkeley
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