Going to College in a 3D Online World

Ruiz, a private-school teacher in Puebla, is attending ASU's Reich College of Education through a 3-D online world called Applied Education Technology Zone, or AET Zone. Through the Zone, hundreds of students in the college's instructional technology programs communicate, socialize and learn. Many of the students live miles from the actual campus, and there is a growing number from other countries, including Mexico and Finland...
(Read the entire article below).

A stroll across campus without leaving home - Network World

Can SpiralFrog Take Share From iTunes?

There's a new challenger to iTunes who want's to give away free music using an ad-supported model. Will this models succeed?

"A relatively new outfit, called SpiralFrog, has decided to skip the paid part of the downloading game all together and instead use an advertising-supported model. Pretty aggressive and pretty risky."

GenDigital: Can SpiralFrog Take Share From iTunes?

Free Software Offer : A Better Finder Rename

Here's a wonderful file renaming tool for Mac (and Windows) which is available free for Webmasters and Bloggers.

A Better Finder Rename, a file renaming utility with Finder integration.Check out Better File Rename for Windows!

publicspace.net - quality shareware for Macintosh and Windows

Google unveils Office rival

Although this announcement doesn't contain Writely and Google Spreadsheets, looks like the big G is slowly but surely making its moves against M$ known.

With Microsoft Office clearly in its long-range sites, Google today launched a package of Web-based productivity apps.

Macworld: News: Google unveils Office rival

Life After Layoffs: Discarded and Demoralized

A bit off-topic for this blog, nonetheless this is a good article on "Life After Layoffs." Having been a part of the dot-com boom and bust myself, I can sympathize with many of the interviewed subjects in this story and can say from personal experience that it is right-on-point.

"What it comes down to is that we're all temps; there are no permanent employees,"... "One of the fallacies of laying people off is that 'it's not personal,it's just business,'" he says. "That's a lie. It's always personal."

Life After Layoffs: Discarded and Demoralized

Complete Podcast Studio Using Your Telephone

We're going to show you how to do anything you've ever wanted to do with podcasts using your plain old telephone.

Nerd Vittles » Introducing a Complete Podcast Studio for Everyman: Your Telephone

Vivendi's Universal backs free rival to iTunes

Universal Music is backing a competitor to Apple Computer iTunes, according to a Financial Times report. The report said that the service, called SpiralFrog, will rely on advertising rather than charging customers to download a song.

Vivendi's Universal backs free rival to iTunes: report - MarketWatch

Analyst paints dim picture for mobile video

Consumers are unlikely to warm to 'long-form' mobile video content before 2008... Market demand will be higher in 2008 because there will be 50 million portable media players in use by that time, according to the analyst. These could be mobile phones with a video capability, or dedicated media player devices like the iPod.

Analyst paints dim picture for mobile video - vnunet.com

Writely: Google's Free Word Processor

If you've never tried one of the online office applications, now is the time and Writely (from Google) may be the one to get you started.

There are may other similar options available (check my previous entry). They all have their own pluses and minuses, but here's a good overview of Writely, one of the first ones to arrive on the scene.

Free yourself from the M$ monopoly!

Sony Pictures buys video-sharing site

Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired online video-sharing site Grouper Networks Inc. for $65 million, giving the movie studio a foothold in the fast-growing world of user-generated video.

Sony Pictures buys video-sharing site - Yahoo! News

Is Network TV Relevant?

The Dallas Morning News has an article on YouTube and its impact on Network TV.

"The most persuasive evidence that YouTube is rewriting TV rules emerged last month when Nobody's Watching, a sitcom pilot pronounced dead after failing to find a broadcast home, found a warm reception on YouTube (where it logged a half-million viewings). With that sort of cyberspace validation, it was resurrected by NBC as a prospect for the 2006-07 schedule...

NBC is learning one of the new rules YouTube has showcased with its free-for-all policy: Exposure, not payment, is what counts. Spreading it around is key."

Read the entire article.

Make your dreams come true

If you've ever wished for an ideal applications with just the features that you liked, here's your chance. My Dream App is giving everyone an opportunity to submit ideas for a new application.

"The initial entries will be narrowed down to 24 innovative ideas by the My Dream App development team. Visitors of the site will then vote to decide which app ideas stay in competition and which get eliminated until three winning ideas remain. Constant feedback from guest judges and users will enable finalists to improve upon their original idea. Each finalist will maintain a blog on the My Dream App website to document progress."

Read more here.

Is Virtual Life Better Than Reality?

"Our goal with second life is to make it better than real life in a lot of ways," says Phillip Rosedale, Linden Lab's CEO and founder."

Is Virtual Life Better Than Reality?, Living Online — With Dream House, Job, Friends — May Be Preferable For Some - CBS News

Thanks to my friend Calvin for bringing this article to my attention.

TV On The Web

"The future of television is slowly being defined online, where the big internet portals are finding ways to blend professional video with their high-touch services that follow consumers from screen to screen during the course of a typical day." Read more on Vnunet.com.