Apple Eyes HTC in Latest Patent Lawsuit

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 9:59 am

Social Networks Play a Major Part in How We Get News [STATS]

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 1:23 pm

How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 1:14 pm

Professors who wish to engage students during large lectures face an uphill battle. Not only is it a logistical impossibility for 200+ students to actively participate in a 90 minute lecture, but the downward sloping cone-shape of a lecture hall induces a one-to-many conversation. This problem is compounded by the recent budget cuts that have squeezed ever more students into each room.

Fortunately, educators (including myself) have found thatTwitter is an effective way to broaden participation in lecture. Additionally, the ubiquity of laptops and smartphones have made the integration of Twitter a virtually bureaucracy-free endeavor. This post describes the two main benefits professors find when using Twitter in lecture.

Increased Participation

---

Classroom shyness is like a blackhole: Once silence takes over, it never lets go. In my own experience, in a class of hundreds, the fraction of students who speak up is small, and a still tinier fraction contribute regularly.

That’s why, Dr. Monica Rankin of the University of Texas at Dallas was pleasantly surprised when her experiment with Twitter began pulling more students into discussion. “It’s been really exciting because, in classes like this, you’ll have three people who talk about the discussion material, and so to actually have 30 or 40 people at the same time talking about it is really interesting,” said Megan Malone, Teaching Assistant to Dr. Monica Rankin’s United States history course, in the video below.

During lecture, students tweet comments or questions via laptop or cell phone, while the TA and Dr. Rankin respond to a real-time feed displayed prominently in front of the room. Students who manage to live off the grid for 50 minutes can still pass in hand-written notes for the TA to tweet after class.

Students in another Twitter-friendly classroom at Purdue University agree that digital communication helps overcome the shyness barrier. “It’s just an easy way to answer questions in class without embarrassing yourself and raising your hand in a big lecture hall,” said one student. Studies frequently discover that greater participation translates into better academic performance, motivation, and a likelihood of adopting different points of view, which is why it is so striking that Twitter can foster that type of communication.

A Community of Learners

---

The dynamic of an intellectual ecosystem, where students dive deep into class readings and argue contentious issues outside of class, is difficult to create if discussion ends when class is over. Fortunately, Twitter has no time limit. In fact, Dr. Rankin’s colleague David Parry, Professor of Emerging Media at the University of Texas, found that Twitter chatter during class spilled over into the students’ free time.

“The first thing I noticed when the class started using Twitter was how conversations continued inside and outside of class,” Parry wrote. “Once students started Twittering I think they developed a sense of each other as people beyond the classroom space, rather than just students they saw twice a week for an hour and a half.” As a result, classroom conversation became more productive as “people were more willing to talk, and [be] more respectful of others.”

Parry’s experience is in line with results of one of the first education studies of Twitter, which found that students do indeed carry on discussion outside of the classroom.

In part, students find themselves checking the feed after hours because the public trail of Twitter chatter doubles as an excellent study aid. As one student from Rankin’s class put it, “The significant terms that we’ve talked about in discussions, we’ll tweet that, and you can [go] back [to] that, and it’s a pretty good study aid.” This, in turn, keeps Twitter on their minds, fueling the cycle of involvement.

Conclusion

---

For schools hit hard by the recession, Twitter is an inexpensive solution to the growing problem of increasing class sizes. It is a tried-and-true platform to let conversations flourish. Indeed, Dr. Parry declared that “it was the single thing that changed the classroom dynamics more than anything I’ve ever done teaching.”

Remarkable Stats on the State of the Internet [VIDEO]

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 10:46 am

Facebook Friending Made Simple: Just Shake Your iPhone

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 9:09 am

Ever wanted to Facebook friend someone you just met right on the spot? Until today, that wasn’t easy. But now, if you have an iPhone, all it takes is a single bump, courtesy of the Bump iPhone app.

For those of you unfamiliar with the app, Bump allows you to share contact information with friends simply by bumping your phone once with another friend’s phone (note: they much touch to work, you can’t just shake it in the air). The app then connects your iPhones and transfer contact information like phone numbers and addresses (for more, read our original review).

Now a new update to the app has brought it a couple of new features, but the one people will be talking about though is the Facebook integration. If you link your Facebook account to Bump and swap contact information with another person who has done the same, you can choose right then and there to initiate a friend request. Once done, a prompt will appear where the other party can accept or deny the friend request.

Jake Mintz, Co-Founder of Bump Technologies, told me that he and his team worked closely with Facebook to make this happen. He’s “pretty sure” that Bump’s the first app that can initiate and accept friend requests; we can’t think of any mobile apps off the top of our heads that do, so we think it’s likely Bump is the first.

Along with the Facebook integration, Bump now boasts custom profiles, which gives users more control over the contact information they share when “bumping” or create frequently-used share settings such as “work,” “personal,” or “fake” (just in case you can’t shake off that persistent and annoying guy/girl at the bar).

Jake says that this is the first of many social media integrations that will come to Bump. So yes, you can expect the ability to follow the people you meet via Twitter just by bumping iPhones in the near future.

Google Buzz: 5 Opportunities for Small Businesses

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 9:06 am

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Just when you thought you had social media figured out,Google has shaken things up with a new entrant into the market: Google Buzz. It’s integrated into Gmail, which means right out of the gate it potentially has an audience of tens of millions of people. As such, it could eventually prove as important to your business as the other services we’ve seen prosper in the past few years.

If you’ve spent much time on social media sites, many of the features will look familiar, as Buzz combines elements of Twitter, Facebook, and the quickly rising Foursquare. But there are some subtleties that make Buzz unique, and in turn create opportunities that you should familiarize yourself with –- if not start to take advantage of –- as soon as possible.

1. Gathering Customer Feedback

---

Like Twitter, Buzz lets you post a message to a group of “followers” that subscribe to your updates. However, there are a few differences, namely that messages can be longer than 140 characters (and include supporting images and links) and that replies are all grouped under the original message. This makes conversations easier to track and follow up on. There are also built-in features to reply in a one-on-one way, via either e-mail or Google Talk.

2. Engaging With Others

---

If you use Gmail, there’s a good chance you already have a built-in network on Google Buzz. The service helps you get started by letting you connect with those you e-mail or chat with frequently. Once you’re following some people, clicking the “Buzz” link from Gmail’s main navigation will let you see their most recent updates. You can comment on them, “like” them, or follow up personally with an e-mail or chat message.

3. Collaboration

---

Buzz can be used both for broadcasting a message to all of your followers and to select groups of them. If you’ve already set up Groups in Gmail, they’re already available in Buzz. If not, you can create new ones on-the-fly. Posting a private message on Buzz works exactly the same as posting a public one – you just select the Group you want to be able to see it, and then only those people will be able to view and comment on it. It’s instant, private collaboration.

4. Marketing

---

It’s too soon to tell whether Buzz will have the type of impact for brick-and-mortar businesses that services like Yelp and increasingly Foursquare have had, but it has a very similar feature set. Users can “check in” at business locations, in turn notifying their followers of their whereabouts. Thus, encouraging your customers to check in on Buzz (and other location-based services) can be a way to drive free word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

5. Sharing Content

---

Just like Twitter and Facebook, Buzz has the potential to be a powerful medium for sharing content. You can use it to share blog posts, special deals, or interesting links related to your niche. Just like other social media services, you shouldn’t overdo it though – you want to mix promotional messages with a balance of other useful information and conversation for your followers.

So is it time to jump head first into Buzz? At this point, the right answer is probably “not so fast.” While Buzz clearly has some promising use cases, it’s also not yet ideally designed for businesses. There are no business accounts, no multi-user support, and a host of privacy issues that nearly derailed the service in its first couple weeks (though Google has been quick to address them).

Buzz will likely become more viable for businesses when a Google Apps version is offered, as well as a standalone service that can be accessed by anyone outside of Gmail – both of which are reportedly in the works. Nonetheless, familiarizing yourself with Buzz’s features and opportunities now could be immensely valuable in the future, while at the present, it can provide some useful additional functionality for Gmail users and their contacts.

Google Adds Facebook Pages to Real-time Search

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 1:04 pm

Social Media: Party Like It’s 1999 | CTO Edge

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 7:58 am

Social Media: Party Like It’s 1999

Milestone: iTunes Breaks 10 Billion Song Downloads

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 4:10 pm

Web Faceoff: Adobe Flash vs. HTML5

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 1:18 pm