Smish is a new digital tool that allows people to manage and enjoy the apps they use on their iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries on their computers plus a bunch more designed specifically for the PC, netbooks and tablets.
Team Smish has put together a great video, that does a much better job than me, describing the Smishosphere.
Smish also announced that its software development kit (SDK) will soon be released publicly so third-party developers will be able to migrate mobile apps and create more apps specifically for the desktop.
I'm happy to see that the Smish team is based here in Orange County. Our local tech scene doesn't get as much press as our Silicon Valley peeps, so it's refreshing to see Smish getting some high profile attention and buzz.
You can connect with Smish on Twitter and on Facebook. I highly recommend you at least visit their Facebook page and check out the awesome Smish'd animals. All in all I'm pretty excited to take Smish for a spin and even more excited about the ways that Smish can be used in an educational setting.
So what are you waiting for, go get your Smish on!
Remember textbooks? Yeah. Forget about textbooks. Students at Seton Hill University are all getting iPads and access to all their textbooks on the iBook store. I’d say it’s one of the biggest changes in pedagogy since the move from the one-room schoolhouse.
Check out Seton Hill’s website. It states, in no uncertain terms, that “Beginning in the fall of 2010, all first year undergraduate students at Seton Hill will receive a 13″ MacBook laptop and an iPad.”
Can you imagine? I remember I was about to go to Clarkson University in New York back in 1993 because they were giving out laptops. But a MacBook and an iPad? That’s like getting a pony and a unicorn.
"The problem is that in most companies, the Web is considered a strange and unnatural thing, and the process of designing it is disconnected.
In fact, there's an age gap where many of the very senior people in companies, who are making decisions about these things, aren't online.
So they're approving, looking at, reviewing things that they're never accessing themselves, nor are they part of the culture of how people use the Web." | Bran Ferren
MTV Networks is developing a "co-browsing app meant to be used while watching live TV," said one executive familiar with MTV's iPad plans. "This means the iPad could be the appendage that makes interactive TV a reality."
Kristin Frank, general manager of MTV and VH1 Digital, said MTV is focusing on two approaches to its apps, whether for mobile or the iPad: co-viewing apps that capture the social-media chatter around TV and awards shows and apps for video on the go. IPad apps for "Beavis and Butt-Head," "MTV News" and "VH1 To Go" are all due in April, she said.
"Fifty-nine percent of people are multitasking when watching TV -- that's something we've always known," said Ms. Frank, referring to recent Nielsen data quantifying a longstanding observation. "This is the next evolution."
Sorta Related: tvChatter iPhone App Help TV Get More Social
Weekly Wrap: Foursquare Nabs MTV & VH1, Linguist Urges Kids to Embrace Twitter, Saving the Google Students, COPPA & Youth Marketing, Free iPad eBooks & More!
Six Reasons to be Skeptical of the 'Digital Natives' Discourse: Almost all of the claims of the net gen discourse are in popular media and if they are based on research, it is proprietary and full methodological details are not provided. All of the sound research that refutes the claims is published in scholarly journals and has been subject to peer review. [Net Gen Skeptic]
Saving the Google Students: For the Google generation, closing school libraries could be disastrous. Not teaching kids how to sift through sources is like sending them into the world without knowing how to read. [LA Times]
Weekly Wrap, Foursquare Edition: Meet Gatsby, Fresh off the heels of hooking up with Bravo TV and Harvard Foursquare signs a similar deal with MTV & VH1, Microsoft adds Foursquare data to Bing Maps & a really cool visualization of Foursquare check-ins at SXSW. [Iconoculture] [Mobile Entertainment News] [Mashable] [TechCrunch] [SimpleGeo]
10 Reasons Students Are Tuning Teachers Out: You’re teaching to a generation of students that can access more information more quickly than any other generation. Don’t tell students that you don’t want to figure out how to use the internet or that you don’t answer email. You’re putting yourself into a category you don’t want to be in. [GYJoe]
US Census Bureau Adds Mapping App to Facebook: In an effort to reach out to young people, the U.S. Census Bureau is launching a huge nationwide campaign incorporating social media, broadcast media and print to encourage people to fill out their census forms this year. [Inside Facebook]
Ypulse Interview| Jamie Tworkowski: Jamie is the founder of To Write Love on Her Arms, a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with addiction, depression, self-injury and suicide. Related: MTV Poll: Generation Stress [Ypulse]
Preparing Your Content for iPad: Platform-specific considerations and UX Guidelines for web content in Safari on iPhone OS
devices, with specific information for iPad. Also, iPad to Offer 30,000 free eBooks at launch. [Safari Technical Notes] [Apple Blog] [UX Magazine]
Marketing to Kids | A Time for Playing by the Rules:Whether it’s Quiksilver, Monster Energy Drinks or ESPN X Games, the look and feel of the typical action sports-related website is young, edgy, authentic. Action sports marketers need to be aware, however, of the panoply of laws that regulate marketing to kids, including the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). [GroupY]
Quote O' The Week: “I hate being thought of as a product. I am not a doll, and people want to treat me that way. I’m older now. I have an opinion. I have my own taste.” - Miley Cyrus on why being a Disney pop princess is so difficult. [Gossip Girl] [Barking Robot]
Blogging, academia, and the new public intellectual: John Holbo admits he and his fellow pioneers have lost the “revolutionary fervor” of blogging’s early days. “I’m fortunate to be at the top of the food chain, to have these bully pulpits where I can stand up and know thousands of people will hear me,” he says. “But we all thought blogging was going to transform academic life, and that didn’t really happen.” [Cal Alumni Association]
Linguist Urges Kids to Embrace Twitter: Language is forever changing -- and forms such as tweets and text messages are no less valid than any textbook version, says the linguist David Crystal, whose latest book encourages children to engage with the possibilities of their lingua franca. [The Independent]
More People Are Watching TV While Surfing the Web: This is some decent news for the TV industry, since the fear is that Internet time is eating into boob tube viewing. Overall, TV viewing is up 1%, year over year, according to the report. [Business Insider]
Why Apple’s iPad Can’t
Succeed in Schools (Yet): You see, tablets-as-books is a great idea until the battery dies, and
then the student has no textbook and no computer. She will have
to plug-in to a power outlet if she wants either of those things back. Related: A Kindle in Every Backpack [The Apple Blog] [Barking Robot]
Podcast recorded at Engage! Expo 2010, features Joi Podgorny [Director of Community Engagement, Smart Bomb Interactive], George Zaloom [Founder & CEO, FaceChipz], Pierre Le Lann [Co-CEO, TribalNova] and Tamara Littleton [CEO, eModeration].
This podcast is a must listen for anyone working in the education, youth media, marketing or strategy space. These are the trends that will impact your ability to effectively connect with youth on various levels. Plus it's a great opportunity to hear from some of the leading voices in the youth media space.
The user-generated content phenomenon prevalent on social networks and web sites like MySpace, Second Life, and YouTube hasn't yet trickled down to kids, but that isn’t because they aren't craving it.
From designing clothes and objects, capturing gameplay on video, to designing games inside of virtual worlds, kids and tweens yearn for self-expression and creation the web makes possible – and in many cases are being handed the tools to create.
Primarily, it is concerns of security, safety and COPPA compliance that toy creators going online and virtual world creators must address. This session will look at how virtual world companies and brands can harness the power of user-generated content -- giving kids as much freedom as possible without putting them at risk.
Digital Hollywood has evolved into the definitive technology and brand / advertising conference for the digital era during the past 15 years.
Held bi-annually in the Los Angeles area, Digital Hollywood has become a fixture on everyone’s annual conference schedule in the entertainment industry. The Digital Hollywood Content Summit is the latest addition to the program.
Some additions this
time around include a Filmmakers Lounge for all four days
which means we own our space for the entire conference. There will be a hospitality area that can be used for recruitment and
presentations and some sponsors are very interested to utilize this
space for monitors. You can learn more about the event over on the Digital Hollywood Content Summit website.
Some additions this time around include a Filmmakers Lounge for all four days which means we own our space for the entire conference. There will be a hospitality area that can be used for recruitment and presentations and some sponsors are very interested to utilize this space for monitors.
You can learn more about the event over on the Digital Hollywood Content Summit website.
The average Canadian now spends more time on the Internet than watching television, according to a new survey from Ipsos Reid, a shift in digital habits that reflects the increasing prevalence of computers in our lives.
This survey, its author says, marks a closing of the gap between a younger generation that has always spent a significant amount of their leisure time on computers and an older generation that used to rely on “old” media.
Canadians now spend more than 18 hours a week online,
compared to just under 17 hours watching television.
Sorta Related: Differences Between American and Canadian Youth
This presentation, compiled by Kristen Purcell, from the Pew Internet Project provides a really great breakdown of the findings from their series of reports that explored the behaviors, values and opinions of the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the Millennial Generation.
This slideshare presentation focuses on how teens connect to the Internet, how they share content and also looks at the rate of mobile web access and usage among teens and young adults.
The Totally Wired Teacher Award is inspired by Ypulse.com founder Anastasia Goodstein’s book, Totally Wired: What Teens & Tweens Are Really Doing Online, and the challenges she observed when teachers tried to integrate technology into their public school classrooms.
The goal of the award is to recognize a teacher who has overcome these challenges and is inspiring to both students and other educators. This year Ypulse is asking applicants to upload a 60-second video tip or advice they would like to share with other educators related to integrating technology into the classroom.
Learn more about The Totally Wired Teacher Award and get all the details over on the Ypulse Mashup site!
Weekly Wrap: Fisher-Price Facebook Apps, I Want My Android TV, Justin Bieber for Old People, UK Entertainment Convergence, SXSW Roundup & More!
Fisher-Price App Aims for Moms on Facebook: Targeting the many moms online, Mattel’s Fisher-Price is launching a Facebook app Thursday that allows mothers to be more selective in choosing which of their friends can see photos of their children. Mothers who go online, particularly the influential group of “mommy bloggers,” present an important market for toy makers. [WSJ]
Android TV! | Google, Intel & Sony Join Forces: This trend is potentially much more disruptive than the introduction of 3D displays. Now a secret joint effort by Google, Intel and Sony to enter this field in partnership has been revealed. It will bring Google’s Android operating system and Chrome browser to TVs and set top boxes.
The technology has the potential to be disruptive to traditional TV by making the full range of Internet content available on television. [Collaborative Creativity]
What's TV's Next Business Model: It's hard to find TV content today that does not contain Web site addresses, Twitter mentions, and text-based messages throughout. It's accepted that even with these "light" reference points, as it stands now TV's long-term prospects pale in comparison to those of the Internet, mostly because TV content still has no direct-response mechanism.
Blending Internet elements into TV content makes for a seamless experience - and, in my opinion, is tomorrow's preferred business model. Related: Business Exchange > "Social Television" [MediaPost] [Business Weekly]
US Children get Playboy, not Bugs Bunny in Cable Mix-up: Young viewers of children's television programs in North Carolina got a glimpse of something far more risque than their favorite cartoons, when a cable glitch broadcast two hours of the Playboy channel. (Oooops!) [Yahoo! News]
Entertainment Convergence in the UK Digital Home: The UK is still at a relatively early stage of convergence when it comes to digital entertainment such as TV shows, films, short-form video, games, music and social networking. But momentum is building. [eMarketer]
Vodafone gives $1 million grant to Web Foundation for Web-enabling entrepreneurs in Africa: While only 25 percent of the world population uses the Web today, more than 70 percent of the world’s population has access to mobile or fixed communication devices capable of displaying Web content.
In Africa, where the Internet penetration rate is approximately 6.8 percent, furthering Web access can create learning opportunities for local entrepreneurs and support the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals to end poverty by 2015. [WWW Foundation]
SXSW Video Interview Roundup: SXSW 2010 was a gathering of innovative companies, forward thinking people, and interactive influencers. While I didn’t have a chance to talk to all 15,000 attendees, I was able to speak to a few choice companies that have progressive products in the social media and technology realm. [Edelman]
India's Rural Cell Movement: Just last month, nearly 20 million new mobile accounts were opened. That’s more than double the people than have high speed Internet in the entire country. Even in slums where people live on less than $2 a day, everyone has a phone. If “Slumdog Millionaire” was more accurate, Jamal wouldn’t have had to go on TV to find Latika. He could have just called her, or worst case, called a few friends until he found her number. [TechCrunch] [Yahoo! Movies]
Content Strategy is Much More than Web Copywriting: Where there should be content strategy and SEO strategy, we're often on projects where we're focused much more on target audience personas, design standards and project management charts, instead of content. The web writer is then brought in, given the creative brief, the wireframe and two weeks to "crank out the content." [Ignite Social Media]
The Justin Bieber Guide for Old People: Bad news, Old Person: No matter how much you try to avoid it, you will have to eventually interact with someone to whom Justin Bieber (BEE-BURR) is the sun around which their little life revolves. So we present this Justin Bieber Guide for Old People to help you avoid embarrassing yourself in front of your offspring, students, or patrons of your candy shop. [Gawker]
Flemish Digital Youthwork Practices: On the 8th and 9th of February 2010, Steunpunt Jeugd, Flemish knowledge and expertise center on youth, youthwork and youth policy, organized a big congress (JET) centered around youth, youth work and youth policy. One of these sessions is labeled "the 'e' in youthwork" that collected e-practices in Flemish youthwork. [Youth Work Online]
George said he felt somewhat detached from the world when he stopped visiting blogs and social networks that keep him informed about culture, music and fashion. Social media, he added, is a "gateway that keeps you current." via Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning