Adelphi's New Pay-Per-View Service

Adelphi University earlier this semester launched a new service for their Athletic program. This service is a pay-per-view Panther TV which the university is offering so students won't miss any games. Students will be able to watch games live as they happen, just as you would watch a boxing match on pay-per-view. For each of Adelphi's matches, they will have the new Panther TV up and running.

You can either buy an individual game for $5.95 or an all-access year round pass a pricey $49.95. The year round pass gets you access to the live events and video features on the website, and exclusive content only for all-access passes.

The schedule for the matches that will have this service provided is already up on the web and can be found on the AU Panther TV website. There you can also buy individual games or the all-access pass.

What is also interesting is that, if you already have an account, you can watch videos of past matches if you missed the action.

"I'm actually pretty excited about this new addition, because it shows a lot of promise and can really drive university spirit with students," said Carlos Techera, an athlete at Adelphi University. "This new service will definitely strengthen the athletic program's link with students."

Facebook Privacy Causes Outrage

Facebook, which has recently surpassed AOL has one of the top websites, has made a few changes to its privacy policy that has many reeling in anger and outrage. The privacy policy has been amended to publicize people’s personal information, pictures, and friends. On top of this, Facebook is now urging people to share their information, so the website would now be more open. However, the information is also readily available on search engines and to people who they might not want that information to be viewed by.

The new options for the privacy policy basically says that people can either decide whether their information is visible to everyone or just friends of friends.

“I hate these new private settings on facebook,” said Kevin Kusky. “They are basically forcing us to share our information with people we might not want the information to be shared with. It’s either everyone or friends of friends, what kind of a choice is that?”

As more and more members choose to deactivate accounts or permanently delete them, Facebook’s plan to increase traffic is starting to look like an unlikeable one. Betraying members and fooling them into thinking that they were changing privacy terms when they were really out to increase production and growth isn’t going to help their image.

The success that Facebook has gained so far has been partly due to member’s feeling safe and comfortable to post information and personal photos of themselves and family members.

Picture: justgiving.wordpress.com

Computers Now Making Human Faces More Realistic

Recently, Paul Devebec, a graphics designer at the University of Southern California presented his project, Digital Emily. This name pretty much sums the project up. It produces digitally created human faces that are extremely realistic. Everything is done with the computer. First, the individual who’s face is to be made is photographed a few hundred times to accurately capture his or her face.

The individual is then photographed some more using special techniques. This allows designers like Paul the ability to actually make faces with many different expressions.

This is definitely pretty awesome, especially for designers. I know that it’s a very tedious process to actually make 3d images, let alone an accurate human face to use in projects. Now with this technology, students or those going into the field can use this to make their jobs a whole lot easier.

“When you showed this to me, I was just in awe,” said Michael Fleming, a design student. “I used to use programs like Cinema4D or even 3dsMax to do what these guys are having the computer to automatically, with much more realistic results. Once I get out of school and get more into the industry I’m sure that this technology will be key in some of my work.”

Here’s the video of the Digital Emily project presentation below:

Facebook Surpasses AOL

A few years ago Facebook was just another website, but now it’s pretty much a house hold name. In a reversal, America Online or AOL used to be a house hold name, but with the advent of the internet there are many alternatives to the service.

A recent finding by ComScore has solidified that conclusion for me. The data shows that 102.9 million people surf Facebook compared to the 99.7 million on AOL Although AOL used to be the number one website, Facebook managed to attract millions and millions of visited to actually surpass the AOL site. AOL’s website decreased, as the report shows, 50.5 million while Facebook grew by 104%.

“I think that it’s obvious that Facebook would eventually pass AOL on the rankings,” said Michael Joseph, a senior at Adelphi University. “While millions of people have been flocking to Facebook, I just don’t see a reason for any one to use AOL any more. There are so many better alternatives to its internet service and to its website that I don’t even know why it’s still even a top website. Of course, though, the stats could be looking at the total number of visits the entire AOL network has, which is made up of several different, and popular, websites.”

The finding can be found at http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/15/facebook-passes-aol/

Read your Magazines on Maggwire

A creative and fun way to view magazines online, Maggwire offers free viewing of a wide array of magazines. Unlike Mygazines, a similar website which faced issues with legality and received responses of anger outbursts from several publishers, Maggwire allows web surfers the ability to browse tons of articles and quickly find fascinating articles of his/her choice, and the clincher is that it’s free.

People are able to view article ratings and can pick choose from several well known magazines like Woman’s Day, Time, Business Week, Computer Shopper, Golf, Gizmag, Forbes, Entertainment, and last but not least Macworld.

Also the website features a list of top viewed magazines as well as most commented and most rated magazine articles. When internet users click on an article they are taken directly to that magazine’s official website and are able to read the full article. Viewers are also able to choose magazine articles from just about any category including Entertainment, Business, Tech, Sports, Food & Dining, Home & Garden, Lifestyle, Women’s and Men’s.

This ease in finding articles within categories of interest allows users to access articles swiftly and in no time at all, perfect for the busy college student who has to do work but at the same time wants to take a break and read some magazines. This site is definitely a convenient way to view articles. The ability to share articles through email, facebook and twitter also adds to ease of sending articles to others.

“When I was showed this website, I first though to myself ‘how the heck did I not discover this already?’,” said Kevin Kusky, a sophomore at Adelphi University. “It’s so easy to just go on the web and read magazines, and actually good magazines at that. On top of it all, it’s free.”

Adding on to the already convenient way of giving students access to articles, Maggwire also is working on an application for the iPhone.

Picture: ccortez.com

Google Makes It Easier For Students

While it is one of the main reasons, nowadays searching isn't the only thing Google is known for. The internet giant has been expanding from their search roots to release several cool new applications like Google Maps, Google Calender, Google Docs, and Google Voice. These applications have become favorites for students all over the world. At Adelphi University, it is especially popular.

These applications, most specifically Google Docs and Google Calendar, help keep students organized. Google Docs is a free replacement to the word processor Microsoft Word, except it isn't actually on your computer, it's on the web. This makes it possible for students to open up the document they're working on anywhere they might have access to the internet. Students can start their homework on their home computer, save it on the web and then open it up at their school library to easily access and print out.

"I've been using Google Docs ever since I found out about it," said Michael Joseph, senior at Adelphi University. "It's so much better because instead of trying to find a USB stick to save my work, then go to the library and load it to access it, I just have to log into Google and it's already there for me to use. Plus, it's free."

Google Docs doesn't just do word processing. Think of it as a replacement, not only for Microsoft Word, but for Microsoft Office as a whole. It does powerpoint and excel sheets, all on the web. Being a free alternative to Microsoft Office while a web application certainly favors to students, who would prefer easy access and a free price tag. Not only that, but companies, especially in the current economy, are preferring the same thing, which is making Google Docs a pretty good alternative.

Google also seems to think that way too. In a recent article on ZDNet's Asia website Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise division stated "most enterprises will have the choice to get rid of Microsoft Office if they chose to." You can check out that interview here

(Picture from googlified.com)

Amazon's Kindle Free for PC

Amazon's Kindle was released with praise from students hoping to slim down their back packs in hopes of replacing their bulky textbooks with the web merchant giant's new book tablet. Now, they have something else to rejoice.

Amazon has just announced that the kindle will be available in a software version for both PC and Mac users. While the Mac version has yet to be released, the PC version is available -- and completely free to use.

Now, students won't need to pack their kindle along for the ride. They can take their laptop instead.

The Facebook Dilemma

Facebook, the popular social network, launched in 2004 to help students connect with each other. After initially allowing only college students to join the site, in 2006 Facebook opened up to allow everyone above the age of 13 to join. With that announcement, professors, co-workers, corporations, and families joined students in using the site. Since that announcement, the information posted on the social network has caused quite a dilemma for its users.

Fast forward to the future and nowadays the information being posted on the site, specifically by students, have been made publicly available for all to scrutinize, including their bosses. Pictures of underage drinking and other activities employers think would taint their company's image have been the basis for these students losing their jobs.

One such student was Andrew Woo, 19, a Junior at Adelphi University. Woo's friends initially had to encourage him to join the site. They went so far as to make an account for him, giving him the details when they created his page. Once he received the account information he, not taking the page seriously, put offensive sentences where information like his name and description should be.

"I never used facebook to begin with, but because all of my friends were on it they wanted me to be on it too. They ended up creating a page for me and then gave me the username and password after," said Woo. "I didn't really take the whole idea seriously, so when I logged in I decided to joke around by putting some pretty bad words where my regular information should have been."

For Woo, what seemed like a light and funny matter turned into a very serious one when his supervisor found his account when trying to friend him.

"I left my page like that and didn't really use it much, so when my supervisor came to me about my facebook page I was really shocked," explained Woo. "That shock pretty much became horror when I saw that he was visibly upset with me and explained that I could lose my job over this because I should represent my employer."

Ever since then, Woo, who is now known as "Andover Bandover" on the site, took out the majority of the offensive information and stopped using the site altogether.

The debate erupting from situations like Woo's is whether employers should be able to look at information posted on Facebook and use it against employees. Should posting pictures or videos of inappropriate activities effect one's job?

Picture from: Amherst Bulletin

Facebook Poke Lands Woman In Jail

Here's an interesting article I found by the Tennessean about a woman getting arrested for a poke on the Facebook social networking website. The woman, Shannon D. Jackson, was arrested after poking another woman on the website. As the article points out, the virtual poke violated the terms of an order of protection the woman had on Jackson because it was used as a means of contacting her.

From the article:

According to the affidavit filed in Sumner County General Sessions Court, Jackson is accused of using the “poke” option on Facebook to contact a Hendersonville woman, thus violating the terms of the order of protection, which stipulates “no telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner.”

Now, I haven't really met any college student with an order of protection against them, but they, along with millions of others, use Facebook. College students have probably heard not to post anything they wouldn't want their bosses or other authority figure seeing or knowing on the website, but here's another reminder about that from another angle.

(Picture from justgiving.wordpress.com)

Blackberry Widgetizes Its Smartphones

While the Blackberry smart phone is mostly popular in the business world, I've noticed a pretty big trend on campus: mostly everyone has them! If it's not a Blackberry than it's definitely an iPhone, the touch screen phone by Apple that's proven to be one of their biggest mobile competitors.

The mobile war between the two phones might be getting a little bit more heated up after a recent announcement that is sure to affect Adelphi's students.

Research in Motion, the company behind the popular Blackberry smart phone recently announced that it would be developing a Widget platform for their phones. Widgets are applications that look and feel like a regular application. The only difference is that Widgets use browsers and web technology rather than being downloaded. Likewise, this new platform will use the existing Blackberry browser to render these applications.

Now, that doesn't mean too much just yet, but the possibilities are pretty much endless. Think of it like the iPhone. It has applications you download onto the phone, but it also has an amazing amount of web applications ran through its browser. And, that's exactly what RIM seems to be aiming for.

Now all Adelphi students will have to do to get access to crazy chat or video applications is run these widgets. The idea is basically to be able to do everything the Blackberry hardware permits you to do, but a little bit more like the iPhone.