Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Infographic: How Mobile Phones Shape the Lives of College Students

Created by: HackCollege

Infographic: If Social Media Were a High School

View LARGE | via itsc.oetc.org

Vodaphone Digital & Social Media Guide for Parents

In this Vodaphone Digital Parenting Guide, you’ll find in-depth information and advice about everything from cyberbullying to mobile costs, your child’s reputation online to Web and mobile security, excessive use of technology to online privacy.

Vodaphone has spoken to digital and parenting experts around the world to bring you the latest advice and information from the people in the know.

Vodaphone's goal is to help parents' make sure they’re up to speed on the very latest issues and challenges, such as location services and sexting.

 

Vodaphone Digital Parenting Guide

So, if you’ve never played a game on yourchild’s Nintendo Wii, signed up to Facebook,checked out Wikipedia, downloaded a ring tone or stayed in a virtual hotel, have a go.

And, if you’ve never sat down with your son or daughter for a chat about the good things and the difficult things they might come across in the digital world, pull up a chair.

Infographic: Social Media Equivalents in China

View Large | via www.thomascrampton.com

Related: Infographic | World Map of Social Networks

Introducing Places: Facebook Embraces GeoSocial

Earlier tonight Facebook ended several weeks of speculation and made it official that they're jumping into the check-in space with a new geolocation feature called Places.

Facebook Places has three key components: Help you share where you are, help you find where your friends are, and discover new places around you.

At the live announcement, Chris Cox (VP Product, Facebook) talked about how technology is encouraging interaction in the real world and forming a living history. Think of Places as a form of digital storytelling.

Imagine getting a push notification: "this is where your parents had their first kiss, here are the photos, this is what their friends said about it" - or something like that. "One day, when it's done, you'll go to a page and on that page will be our collective memory and that's dope."

Facebook also announced that they were partnering with the other leading geolocation services--Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown (with others to soon follow)--and allowing them to integrate their services into Facebook Places.

Watch live streaming video from facebookinnovations at livestream.com

For the most part these geolocation services have only been popular among the early adopter and geek crowd. Now that Facebook has jumped into this space, it will be interesting to see how quickly the 500 million members of Facebook embrace (or don't) this new service.

Avoiding a privacy debacle will be key to making this a successful mainstream service. Right now it looks like Facebook has learned from its previous privacy misteps--the default setting for Places will allow only your friends to "tag" you to a location or see where you've checked in.

Infographic: Social Media Demographics

via www.flowtown.com | View Large

Infographic: The Growth of GeoLocal and Location-based Services

via gigaom.com

Weekly Wrap: iPad Demographics, Geolocation Wars, Twitter + Blackbird Pie, Facebook Privacy Translated, TED TV, Nintendo DS Glucose Meter, iPad Apps for Kids & More!

Apple iPad User Analysis: Just a week after the iPad’s launch, we began to analyze the behavior of the first iPad users on the Yahoo! network. While some of the findings were expected, there were a few surprises that popped. Related: US Twitter Demographics & Stats [Yahoo! Mobile] [Barking Robot]

Facebook Set to Add Geolocation Features: Watch out Foursquare, information has leaked that Facebook is set to roll out location-based features for users and brands as soon as this month. According to Advertising Age, users could see location options any day now. [Mashable]

What is Twitter Really Up to With Blackbird Pie?: Following a bit of online buzz yesterday around embeddable Twitter quotes for online publishers, Twitter Media made it official today by unveiling a new tool dubbed 'Blackbird Pie'. [Social Media Today]

Facebook-to-English Translator: Despite the voluminous buzz, many commentators have missed the most confusing announcement of all — new Facebook jargon. So, in the interests of helping users understand what's going on, we've put together a rough Facebook-to-English translator. Think of it as a handy phrase-book that could help you navigate through the more common situations you'll find yourself in. [Electronic Freedom Foundation]

Kids Blood Glucose Meter Attaches to Nintendo DS: Every time a kid uses Didget to check his blood glucose level, it awards points that can be used to buy items and unravel new game levels within an associated game. The idea behind Didget is to encourage kids manage their diabetes by rewarding them for regular blood glucose testing. [BoingBoing]

Why Does the BBC Want to Send Its Readers Away?: The BBC aims to double the number outbound clicks from its site by 2013. That’s double the number of people sent away from the BBC site — intentionally. [Nieman Journalism Lab]

TED TV: The new initiative will allow television broadcasters around the world to air the talks for free as well as create programming around them. One of the primary goals behind the project is to extend the reach of TED’s idea-spreading mission into the developing world. [JED] 

Millennials Tech-Dependent, But Not Necessarily Tech-Savvy: One of the biggest myths about Millennials is that they are all digital natives, blogging and tweeting their way through life.  The truth is a bit more nuanced. Related: The Myth of the Digital Native [Millennial Marketing] [Barking Robot]

Teenage Homelessness on the Rise: In Minnesota, the number of 18- to 21-year-olds in shelters more than doubled in the past three years. [StarTribune.com]

Top 10 Entertainment iPad Apps for Kids: Sure, the new gadget isn’t perfect, but not to worry—techie geniuses have been up since its release, working through the kinks and quirks. Nothing left to do but the fun stuff; grab your kids and try out some of the latest entertainment apps, adapted or created for the iPad. [Kideos]

2010 Totally Wired Teacher Award: After listening to feedback from our friends in the educator community, we've made some important changes to this year's Totally Wired Teacher Award provided by Dell. Please help us spread the word to any public school teachers you are in contact with. [Ypulse]

Weekly Wrap: Facebook Social Plugins, How to Create Foursquare Events, Apple Shutters Lala, What is Facebook Saying About You, Social Metrics Tools & More!

Facebook’s New Social Plugins: 50,000+ Websites in One Week: Phase one of Facebook’s strategy for world domination: complete. Facebook announced that more than 50,000 websites have integrated Facebook’s new social plugins in just one week. The plugins are a core component of the company’s new Open Graph initiative. [Mashable]

Apple To Shut Down Lala: In a brief message that was just posted on the Lala.com website, Apple has announced that the service will be shut down on May 31st, 2010. Does this mean we can start raising our hopes for iTunes in the cloud? [TechCrunch] 

What is Facebook Saying About You?: Yee’s tool shows you exactly what data a developer would get when it asks Facebook for info via the API, such as your name, birth date, location, etc. and also any public information such as your “likes”, your photos and so on. [GigaOm]

Summer Music Watch: Jennifer Lopez Does a Cover of Donna Summer's "On The Radio" [Ryan Seacrest]

The Future Of The Web is HTML 5: Did we mention that 2010 would be a big year for HTML5? Apple and Google are pushing it big time, and now so is Microsoft. When Internet Explorer 9 comes out, it will support HTML5 and help make it more common across the Web. [TechCrunch]

Millennials: This generation is diverse, educated and plugged-in: Gio Acosta says that on any given day there are only two hours in which he is not texting, doing something on his cell phone, or on Facebook, or playing games on his laptop or PS3. Acosta is exactly what Kaiser Family Foundation recently found in a study: That to say today's young people are wired is an understatement. It’s an integral part of their daily lives. [PennLive.com] [Barking Robot]

Edelman Digital Social Metrics Tools: Last week Suzanne shared a few tools to help you find new folks to follow on Twitter to kick-off a new focus on tools and resources for online engagement. I wanted to continue this trend by introducing you to a few blog analytics tools! [Edelman Digital]

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Teen Driver Program: NHTSA has developed a multi-tiered strategy to prevent motor vehicle-related deaths and injuries among teen drivers: increasing seat belt use, implementing graduated driver licensing, reducing teens' access to alcohol, and parental responsibility. Related: Get the 'No Phone Zone' Lesson Plan [NSTSA] [Barking Robot]

Guide to Creating Foursquare Events: There are some reasonable and relatively simple ways to incorporate Foursquare and encourage audience participation at your next event. [Tradeshow Insight]

Texting Poetry Inspires Kids: Once considered a disturbance in the classroom, cell phones, texting devices and other wireless technology are being embraced by some of the very same people who used to malign them: teachers. [Record Online]

End Bullying Now: Here's the link to the Josh Shipp & Brooks Gibbs 'End Bullying Now' Teleseminar! [Barking Robot]

2010 Totally Wired Teacher Award: After listening to feedback from our friends in the educator community, we've made some important changes to this year's Totally Wired Teacher Award provided by Dell. Please help us spread the word to any public school teachers you are in contact with. [Ypulse]

Weekly Wrap: Oprah's Mobile Apps, Facebook Open Graph 101, Mobile Gaming Soars, Foursquare Marketing, Teen Texting Stats, Youth Media iPad Apps & More!

Oprah Launches Oprah Mobile Apps: The application, available for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Google Android platforms, offers video clips and previews from Winfrey's talk show, ticket alerts, weekly polls, and articles and photos from Oprah.com, The Oprah Magazine and Oprah Radio.

I have no doubt that Oprah's legion of smartphone carrying fans will make this app a hit! [Venture Beat]

Publishers Guide to Facebook Open Graph: Whether we like it (pun intended) or not, we have to understand what this move means. It impacts users, publishers, competitors and, of course, Facebook itself. In this post, we summarize what Facebook announced and ponder the impact this will have on everyone. Related: Facebook Social Plugins [RWW] [Facebook Developers]

Youth Media iPad Apps to Know: With more and more magazine, publishing and TV execs exploring the potential of creating interactive, social apps for the iPad, we thought we'd point to a few of those getting an early start for our latest Ypulse Toolbox. Related: 5 amazing iPad e-books for kids  [Ypulse] [CNET]

Mobile Gaming Soars on Smartphones: Mobile gaming is more than ever a tale of two devices: feature phones and smartphones. The U.S. population playing games on regular mobile phones fell by 35% last year to 29.5 million, while the number of smartphone gamers shot up 60% to 21.4 million, according to a new comScore report. [MediaPost]

7 Quick Steps to Foursquare Marketing: Marketing using Foursquare is beneficial because although a small user base, they are loyal.  It also takes up almost no time, so the ROI can be high. Foursquare marketing is most appropriate for brick and mortar businesses (people physically walk into your store to make purchases), but anyone can be taking advantage of Foursquare. [Real Time Marketer]

Millennials Want Social Sites to Delete User Data: Debunking the oft-repeated assertion that young people don't care about privacy, new research shows that Web users between the ages of 18 and 24 are highly protective of certain information about themselves. [Online Media Daily]

Mom’s Guide to Those Facebook Changes: What do these changes mean? And what should you do if you don’t like the prospect of automatically sharing your activity with everyone you know on Facebook? Related: Facebook Safety Resources for Parents, Teachers & Teens [GigOm] [Barking Robot]

Teen Texting Stats: Anne Collier, author of the must read NetFamilyNews blog and co-founder of ConnectSafely, has a great analysis of the Pew Internet report on teen texting. [NetFamilyNews]

Trend Watch: Foursquare Graffiti

The Chronicle of Higher Education had an interesting piece about a new trend on campus where students are using mobile geosocial networking platforms like Foursquare to "tag" professors, students and campus facilities with "virtual graffiti."

Some universities, like Harvard, are using Foursquare's location-based service as a way to create a "virtual tour" by leaving tips and advice at various locations around campus. This is a brilliant way to use technology to deliver an useful information to the student community.

At North Carolina State University, mobile users are able to view historical pictures of campus buildings based on where users are standing, "including a snapshot of the first freshman class, from 1890, when the agricultural college's hot mobile technology was horses."

The article cites how one student "recently used it to leave some virtual graffiti on the spot of Mr. Kratz's office: Watch out for lame jokes!" Pretty harmless stuff.

But students at other universities are using (or have the potential to use) Foursquare in some, uhm, creative ways:

Since Foursquare's debut last year, students have diligently labeled, praised, and, in some cases, profaned college campuses. Take this note, easily Googled, that somebody calling himself Mock Redneck Jr. left at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte: "The library has Free Wi-Fi, Barely Legal girls and a warm place to drop a deuce."

Now imagine this nightmare scenario: A prospective student's mother goes on a college tour. She pulls out a phone. Her expression screams oh-my-gosh as she reads Mr. Redneck's note. Maybe she goes on to a dorm, and perhaps its residents have left other goodies online. The teacher they loathed. The room they smoked pot in. The couch they had sex on.

Now none of these activities are really out of the ordinary for most college students. What is different is that they are much more public. I'm certain that at some point, some college administrator will overreact and ban Foursquare from campus. Not smart.

Foursquare tagging should be bundled in that digital media mantra from the late 90s: think before you post. Just like Facebook, Twitter and other social networking services, most likely your Foursquare check-ins and tips will follow you for life. And students should just reminded that they are leaving digital crumbs that they may not be able to clean up later in life. And privacy? That's an illusion. Or is it?

But beyond the campus tagging, this article left me wondering what the implications for brands? There's nothing stopping a group of angry environmentalists from standing outside Nestle headquarters and tagging them on Foursquare with negative tips.

For me, this raises a lot of questions. Who owns Foursquare content? Me? Or Foursquare? Will a brand have to sue Foursquare to get negative content removed? If Foursquare removes negative content, how will their community respond?

Imagine another nightmare scenario where high school kids use Foursquare to bully a classmate by tagging their victims physical location with slurs (i.e. slut, fat, stupid, whore, gay). As many of us know, teenage cruelty has no boundaries.

While it seems like social networking has been around for eons, the reality is that for the most part this is still uncharted territory and we are still trying to navigate the pitfalls of this new world.

I'm the first to admit that at this point I don't have all the answers. The one thing I do know is that when these things do happen, and they will, we shouldn't overreact.

 

January 2011 Update: I ran across this example of Foursquare Grafitti for a high school in Australia. I wonder if the school has any idea?

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]

Foursquare Teams With Bravo TV

Bravo TV and Foursquare will announce a new partnership on Monday that will integrate Bravo TV shows with the game aspects of Foursquare, a social networking site that encourages people to interact in the real world.

The partnership hopes to engage viewers long after they turn off the television, close their laptops and stop watching Bravo’s TV shows.

Starting Monday, Bravo will begin offering Foursquare players “badges” and special prizes when viewers visit more than 500 Bravo locations.

The locations will be picked by Bravo to correspond with select Bravo shows including “The Real Housewives,” “The Millionaire Matchmaker,” “Top Chef,” “Kell on Earth,” “Top Chef Masters” and “Shear Genius.”

via bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Weekly Wrap: Privacy is Dead, Guide to Social Media and Kids, Yahoo Music Video Search, Millennial TV Stereotypes & More!

Privacy is Dead: Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Twitter, Fitbit and the SenseCam give us a simple choice: participate or fade into a lonely obscurity. The last method, the SenseCam, can be worn around your neck, and takes a photo of your life every 30 seconds. This post gives an in depth explanation as to how the high price of not capturing and sharing every moment of our lives will soon dwarf the cost to our privacy. [CNN]

Pocket Guide to Social Media & Kids: When is a phone not a phone? In the hands of children and tweens, today’s cell phones are primarily used as text messaging devices, cameras, gaming consoles, video viewers, MP3 players, and incidentally, as mobile phones via the speaker capability so their friends can chime in on the call. Parents are getting dialed in to the social media phenomenon and beginning to understand—and limit—how children use new media. [Nielsen Wire]

Times Publisher Compares Print Media to Iceberg: NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. responds to the question of what advice he has for people going into journalism. His response, comparing to the Titanic, is not what you think. He reminds people that the airplane was actually invented 12 years before the Titanic set sail. See how he compares that to journalism and the future of newspapers. [NY Magazine]

Suicidal Teen Saved by Facebook: A teen who posted a Facebook suicide note was saved after a frantic international race-against-time rescue. [Star]

New Blackberry Bold Targeting Gen Y: The flagship BlackBerry Bold 9700 was today launched in Sydney, with the manufacturer, Research in Motion, targeting the nascent Y Generation as a key new demographic. (Thanks to YPulse for the heads up!) [Current]

Yahoo! Adds Music Video Search: Starting today, you can easily dive into albums and songs by your favorite music artist in Yahoo! Video Search. We have hooked into the “Web of Things” to intelligently extract the most popular albums and songs for artist or band queries. This feature lets you explore music artists intuitively and easily. [Yahoo! Search Blog]

Defying Labels Millennials Are Leaving Their Mark on TV: That simplistic kind of presentation of youth on TV has shown its limits over the decades; easy-to-read stereotypes no longer seem credible. It’s archaic to define young TV characters at a glance, to merely stamp them with shorthand labels such as “popular kid’’ or “jock.’’ [Boston Globe]

Electronic Arts Introduces Flip e-books for DS: Electronic Arts is confident that its new Flips range of e-books for kids can not only be a sales success – but actually widen the audience of Nintendo’s DS. (Thanks Matthew!) [MCV]

Forests Cleared to Make Children's Books: New report reveals that a significant amount of deforestation in Asia's tropical forests is caused by the production of kid's books. (Hat Tip @Michael Pinto) [Mother Nature Network]

Queen Rania|Stop Ignoring the Girls!: Global leaders are overlooking one of their most valuable weapons in the fight against everything from climate change to economic turmoil. [Daily Beast]

Social Web Tips for Teens: Today part of parenting is learning about all the technology our kids are using.  This is not an easy task and for many of us that didn't grow up in "cyberspace" it can be daunting. Related: Amy James on technology and your kids. [Examiner] [Knowledge Essentials]

EA Launches Two New Virtual Worlds, While MTV & CW Pull The Plug

Media Week is reporting that a number of virtual worlds, primarily based on or tied to popular television shows, have been quietly shut down over the summer. Among the virtual worlds getting the axe: MTV's Laguna Beach and The Hills, while the CW shut down it's virtual world based on the series Gossip Girl.

While this may be construed as a "shake out" of the space, and there are certainly are too many virtual worlds out there, I think it's important to realize that virtual worlds geared towards the Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters set are still booming and new virtual worlds are still being launched.

For example Play Label, a division of Electronic Arts, is preparing to launch two new online girl-targeted destinations later this month.

• Hasbro's line of Littlest Pet Shop pets feature a code for the new site sewn into the toy that offers users a 30-day trial premium membership and special in-game rewards. Littlest Pet Shop Online was developed by Electronic Arts with Frima Studios.

• Charm Girls Club is designed to give girls a place to play games, design fashions/accessories, design and collect charms and interact with one another and create their profile page among other things. The site will be integrated with EA's four Charm Girls Club video games for Wii and Nintendo DS set for release in the US on October 20, 2009.

So what happened to older virtual world users? I think they have moved on to casual gaming activities on Facebook (think Mafia Wars or Farmville), playing video games on consoles or computers, mobile, location based &/or social gaming (think FourSquare) or social networking sites that are built around shared interests.

Above all else, it's important to keep in mind that this is a young industry--one that is still evolving and will require us to wait a bit longer for the dust to settle.