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