Industry News

Higher Education: The Focus is on Technology

Most new jobs will require more than a high school education, yet fewer than half of Americans under 30 have a postsecondary degree of any kind. Recent state budget cuts, education experts agree, promise to make closing that gap even more difficult. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and four nonprofit education organizations are beginning an ambitious initiative to address that challenge by accelerating the development and use of online learning tools.  An initial $20 million will be for postsecondary online courses, particularly ones tailored for community colleges and low-income young people. Another round of grants, for high school programs, is scheduled for next year.  Just how effective technology can be in improving education – by making students more effective, more engaged learners – is a subject of debate.

If technology is well designed, experts say, it can help tailor the learning experience to individual students, facilitate student-teacher collaboration, and assist teachers in monitoring student performance and in quickly fine-tuning lessons.  The potential benefits of technology are greater as students become older, more independent learners. Making that point, Gates said in an interview that for children from kindergarten to about fifth grades “the idea that you stick them in front of a computer is ludicrous.”  But in higher education, there are several promising projects that have used online technology effectively.  Gates’ new initiative, Next Generation Learning Challenges, focuses on the college years. It is looking for innovative tools that can be developed and shared across networks of colleges. The grants, for $250,000 to $750,000 each, are intended to scale up such efforts, so they become self-sustaining. Source: Associated Press

23% of U.S. Internet Users Have Tried Video Calling

For many, the launch of FaceTime, Apple's video calling service for the iPhone and iPod touch, seemed like a gimmick with little practical usage. According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, however, 19% of American adults have tried video calling, video chats, or teleconferences using services like Skype, Google Talk, and Apple's iChat. Looking at the number of total Internet users in the U.S., this means that almost a quarter of them have tried video calling.  Overall, about 4% of Internet users now participate in a video call on any given day. While that is not a huge number yet, it is important to note that this is up from 2% in April 2009.

Sadly, the Pew study did not ask users about their sentiments towards video calling. There is some anecdotal evidence that many people prefer voice calls and don't feel comfortable being on video. Qualcomm's Senior Vice President for Global Marketing, Bill Davidson, said recently that he does not believe that video calling will be a killer feature for the next generation of wireless data networks as users simply aren't that interested in it. It would have been nice to see some data to either back this up or bust this as a myth. Instead, the Pew survey focuses on the demographics of those who use video calls. There are no major surprises there. More affluent and younger users tend to use video calling more than others, for example, and urban users are far more likely to participate in video calls than users in rural regions. Source: The New York Times

Find a Smartphone, Find a Customer

Geolocation services have become an increasingly important marketing tool for small businesses, especially those that depend on customer traffic like restaurants, retailers, and bars. The growing importance of the services, which exploits the ability of communication networks to pinpoint the location of Smartphones and other mobile devices, is underscored by the recent introduction of Facebook Places, which allows users of the Facebook mobile application to check into locations and share their whereabouts with friends.  Location-based services can play many roles. They offer customer-relationship tools, rewards programs, social networks, games, business directories, city guidebooks, and review sites. They help businesses present coupons, reward loyal clientele, and gather valuable data about customers.  Foursquare, which claims about three million users and more than one million check-ins a day, has emerged as the leading geolocation service for business.

Beneath the technology, location-based services are fundamentally social networks. Businesses can link their Foursquare pages to their Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. And they can add buttons so customers can put the venue on their Foursquare to-do list. For more sophisticated users, Foursquare offers an application programming interface that allows developers to build their own applications on top of the Foursquare platform.  The next step is to establish some basic goals. Do you want to attract new customers? Retain existing ones? Obtain better data about your clientele? Do you want to build your own geolocation services and connect them to Foursquare? Do you simply want to establish an online social network? Or do you want to do all of the above? Once you have established your objectives, you can decide which functions are best suited to your business.  These services are free (at least for now). Foursquare remains focused on building its user base and have not revealed a business model for monetizing its traffic.  Source: Reuters

FTC Testifies on Protecting Data

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently testified before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, that "recent security breaches have raised questions about whether sensitive consumer information collected by data brokers may be falling into the wrong hands leading to increased identity theft and other frauds.” The Committee is examining recent developments involving the security of sensitive consumer information. FTC Chairman, Deborah Platt Majoras, said that increased scrutiny about the security of consumer data takes place against the background of the threat of identity theft, a crime that harms both consumers and financial institutions. According to the testimony, there are three laws enforced by the FTC that restrict disclosure of consumer information and require companies to ensure the security and integrity of the data in certain contexts.

Majoras told the Subcommittee that the FTC has implemented a program to help combat identity theft. The agency collects complaints from consumers and provides victim assistance through a telephone hotline and a dedicated Website. The agency also maintains a centralized database of victim complaints that acts as a tool for more than 1,100 law enforcement agencies and provides education tools for consumers, law enforcers, and industry. According to the testimony, the Commission receives between 15,000 and 20,000 contacts a week from victims of identity theft and consumers who want to learn how to avoid becoming a victim. "Victims are advised to: (1) obtain copies of their credit reports and have a fraud alert placed on them; (2) contact each of the creditors or service providers where the identity thief has established or accessed an account, to request that the account be closed and to dispute any associated charges; and (3) report the identity theft to the police, and if possible, obtain a police report." For more information visit: www.consumergov.com. Source: FTC.gov