Social Blogging

Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and co-founder of Netscape Communications, which popularized the Mosaic browser, has joined Palo Alto tech giant Hewlett-Packard’s board of directors.

A group of prison guards dubbed the Facebook Five has gone to an Australian court to fight for the right to complain about their boss on the Internet.

Natural gas distributor Oneok Inc. has sued social networking site Twitter for trademark infringement.

Remember Pogoplug? That brilliant little gadget that networks any USB hard drive and makes it internet accessible in practically zero steps? We’re not the only ones who thought it was an especially good idea, and Seagate has licensed the technology and incorporated it into a dock for portable hard drives.

Jessica Simpson has posted a message on Twitter, urging anyone with information about her missing dog to come forward.

Jay Leno launched his NBC prime-time TV talk show - a venture whose success or failure is being closely watched by the industry - with familiar offerings including a topical monologue and chats with fellow comedian Jerry Seinfeld and a repentant Kanye West.

Everywhere you look these days people and businesses are using social networking sites.

If you’re finding that Facebook is a little too - in your face’ these days try switching to the new Facebook Lite service unboxed over the weekend at lite.facebook.com . Facebook Lite is a fast-loading, simplified alternative view of Facebook.com that loads a specific set of features quickly and efficiently, the company says.

A teenager saved from a sex attack by her “nosey” mother after she was groomed online has warned others about the dangers of the web.

Sean Conway was steamed at a Fort Lauderdale judge, so he did what millions of angry people do these days: he blogged about her, saying she was an “Evil, Unfair Witch.” Judge Susan Criss said a Facebook page said a lawyer was drinking, not grieving, after a funeral.

People around the world interact with Alecia Dantico all day. Usually, though, they don’t know whether she’s young or old, male or female.

Friday, September 11, 2009 3:50 AM PDT Ning, which offers a platform for creating a customized social network, is now offering applications for users’ sites that add new capabilities in areas such as communication, e-commerce and collaboration.

In this weekly Media Literacy Digest, open education advocate George Siemens, reports on emergent media and technology issues and on the future impact that these new technologies may have on the way you work, learn and interact with others.

Photo credit: Cyprien Lomas

Inside this Media Literacy Digest:

• Reorganizing For The Online Environment - Many institutions are slow to react to technology. Systemic inefficiencies trail new opportunities and technological affordances.
• Google Internet Stats - Once data has been sucked into Google Giant Vacuum Cache, it is ripe for analysis. After a decade of collecting (and digitizing) Google has created an astonishing resource that is ripe for value exploitation.
• Passionate Creatives -
  John Hagel talks about Passionate Creatives. For a growing segment of society, geography no longer restricts opportunity.
• Frequent Releases Change Software Engineering - Design of software and design of learning share similar attributes. I would go so far as to say that instructional design would benefit from considering how software design has changed over the last decade.
• The Cloud and Collaboration - Stephen Downes (in addition to hurling the odd grenade my way) consistently demonstrates the ability to provide innovative and critical commentary on concepts that many people accept on the surface.
• Virtual Learning Reports of The Demise of The VLE / LMS Are Greatly Exaggerated - The challenge with personal learning environments is most notable in how they fail to align with existing learning structures in schools and universities.
• Wiki Growth - How do you evaluate the impact of wikis on learning? Or, how do you research the contributions that wikis make to information creation and sharing?

Here all the details:

Sinead Carew and Ritsuko Ando Friday, September 11, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO, US: Motorola unveiled on Thursday the first of many cellphones to be developed in partnership with Google , but analysts questioned if it could revive the once-dominant handset maker’s fortunes.

Twitter, the fast-growing microblogging site now seeking ways to make money, expanded its terms for users on Thursday to allow advertisers to reach the Internet site’s more than 45 million monthly visitors.