April 2012

Mobile App Lets Parents Instantly Know About Student Absences

New York City schools may pilot a new mobile app this summer that provides parents with nearly instantaneous notifications if their students are tardy or absent from class.

Founders of Kinvolved, the company behind the app, say it's intended to encourage parents to become more engaged in their children's academic lives. In New York City, nearly a quarter of students miss a month of school each year. Students with high absentee rates are less likely to graduate, and Kinvolved founders note that students whose parents are involved have higher attendance rates. Their expectation is that the program can help increase graduating rates by helping parents make sure their children are in school.

Digital Preservation Is Cultural Literacy

[Commentary] On April 23 the Library of Congress kicked off its third annual Preservation Week (April 23 to 28), a joint venture designed to engage the public on issues related to the preservation of digital memories.

In addition to talks and demonstrations on organizing and saving family records, videos, and digital photographs, the library is also reaching out to kids with its events programming. While digital preservation might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about K-12 curricula, in fact teaching kids about Web archiving, digitization, media storage, and collection building can foster long-term thinking and serve as a gateway to hands-on learning in science and technology. In the more than five years I've been involved as a researcher with video game preservation, I've witnessed firsthand the indispensable role younger generations play in developing new tools and resources -- such as emulators and crowd-sourced databases -- to ensure ongoing access to our cultural past. With various institutions increasingly recognizing the importance of data curation and management as part of a core set of K-12 literacies, Preservation Week offers an ideal opportunity to get students involved.

Why Netflix can still win

Here are few key edges working in Netflix’s favor:

Device penetration: Even without the recent addition of the Netflix player app on Sony Bravia Blu-ray players, Netflix has the most proliferated brand of any over-the-top programming supplier.
Early entry into foreign markets
The content situation is better than it looks: Key to the souring of Netflix’s investor honeymoon has been the notion that, in order to keep up with the escalating prices program suppliers charge Netflix to stream their movies and TV shows, the service must add a corresponding amount of revenue through subscriber growth to keep up.

How tech’s giants want to re-invent journalism

Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology companies reject suggestions they are now news organizations. But they nevertheless think they have the prescription for what news media must do next. 1) Kill the article. 2) Context is king. 3) Structured Query Language at Journalism School. 4) Less is more. 5) Nevermind the homepage. 6) Find the niche in the haystack.

Battle over TV political ads: Broadcasters fight disclosure at FCC

There’s a behind-the-scenes political battle in North Carolina this year, but chances are you will not hear about it on TV. That’s because this fight is about TV. It pits broadcasters, the people who operate television stations, against public interest groups. The forum: The Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, the people who license broadcasters. At issue: Whether television stations should be required to post ad contracts online that show how much candidates and political committees including the new so-called “superPAC’s” are spending on TV ads. Most television newsrooms avoid the issue. It certainly hits close to home and poses an inherent conflict of interest. Political advertisers help to pay the salaries of the employees of television newsrooms. And broadcast operators have hired lobbyists to fight proposed new regulation pending before the FCC which would force broadcasters to take their political ad costs out of paper files and make them available on the internet for the world to see.

Make them public: Put broadcasters’ files online

[Commentary] You do your taxes online. You get driving directions online. You’re likely reading this article online. But if you want to see the “public file” every broadcaster is required to maintain, you have to drive down to the TV station and dig through filing cabinets. It’s hard to believe such an antiquated system exists in 2012.

But a Federal Communications Commission vote on Friday may finally push broadcasters into the 21st century. After a decade of dragging its feet, the FCC seems poised to force stations to put this public information online — where the public can actually find it. This move is especially important now because the files are supposed to include information on who’s buying political ads and how much they’re paying. These political files provide information you can’t find anywhere else about the super PACs and front groups already clogging the airwaves with attack ads.

Google rebuffs FCC over 'Wi-Spy' flap

Google rejected the Federal Communications Commission’s argument that the company obstructed an investigation of the so-called Wi-Spy privacy flap — blaming the FCC in part for the delay — in a stinging rebuke filed with the agency.

At the same time, Google acknowledged for the first time in its formal response to the FCC that the Justice Department had already reviewed the case, and "concluded that it would not pursue a case for violation of the Wiretap Act." Google filed its 17-page response to the FCC after the agency concluded it lacked evidence to determine whether the company broke federal anti-wiretapping laws. The inquiry stemmed from a 2010 incident in which Google's cars, dispatched to map neighborhoods, intercepted private emails, Web pages and other documents sent over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. As part of the FCC's scathing order, issued in early April, the agency accused the company of having "deliberately impeded and delayed" its probe." It slapped Google with a proposed $25,000 fine, which Google noted Thursday it would not appeal. But Google turned the tables and struck back, criticizing the regulatory agency for its conduct in the probe.

Bloggers Speculate on Google Innovations

New developments from Internet giant Google ignited the blogosphere last week, making the company the No. 1 topic for the week of April 16-20, 2012, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The New Media Index has repeatedly found that bloggers tend to be excited by tech news, much of which is generated by the industry leaders. And last week marks the seventh time in 16 weeks this year that Google has registered among the top five stories for bloggers. The upcoming release of Google Drive, a cloud drive like the popular Dropbox, became the primary focus of conversation last week. Google Drive will provide users of Mac, Windows, Android and iOS with 5GB of space for free. Bloggers also responded to design changes coming to Google+. Most of the comments about Google Drive greeted that news warmly, although some bloggers cautioned about overly high expectations. A smaller number of bloggers wrote about Google+ and many of those were pleased with the expected changes. Most of the top stories on blogs last week were technology-related including: the upcoming release of a new Samsung Galaxy cell phone; a website for Harry Potter fans; a controversial comment about the photo app Instagram; and an IPO (initial public offering) date for Facebook.

Something Is Rotten In The State Of E-Book Publishing

[Commentary] The publishing industry has a problem. The old guard haven't innovated. And neither their business models nor their products embrace the digital books revolution. And what do we, the book-buying public, want? Cheaper prices, as ever, but we're also all expecting books to move beyond dead text and into something much more dynamic, something loaded with rich media, something that makes use of the color and graphics of our tablet screens, and perhaps the social networking powers they also sport as apps. Because those kinds of books sure as heck aren't in Amazon's top-selling Kindle list right now.

California to Develop Mobile Privacy Guidelines

The state of California will issue a set of best practices for mobile app developers this summer, responding to concerns that have emerged nationwide about smartphone use and privacy.

The California Office of Privacy Protection will likely release guidelines in July to advise technology companies about data collection, data sharing and written privacy policies, Joanne McNabb, chief of the office, said at an app developers' privacy summit. Mobile apps can access the personal data stored on smartphones, including a user's physical location and personal contacts, spurring discomfort among some users and privacy advocates.

Benton

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