The Conversation launches US service
The acclaimed Australian news analysis website The Conversation launched its US service last week – following the UK launch last year. “The 3 newsrooms will work as one, sharing content and ideas from 14 000 academics. Australian academics and institutions will benefit from the increased global audience and opportunity for collaboration” – and readers will have increased access to quality information on current topics.
https://theconversation.com/us
Technology improves higher learning – it doesn’t kill it
Gavin Moodie (RMIT) believes that MOOCs are unlikely to “disrupt” universities any more than print books did in early universities. Rather – “informal, open and online learning will be absorbed within exisiting universities to augment and improve their practices”. Interesting info about libraries and how they were changed by print…early libraries were closed to undergraduates – at Cambridge they were fined for entering them in the early 17th century! In the 18th century books were so numerous that a pedagogical role emerged for libraries, helping students navigate texts.
http://theconversation.com/technology-improves-higher-learning-it-doesnt-kill-it-29657
Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report 2014
The tech analyst’s influential report comes out annually mid year. She notes the biggest trend is towards mobile devices with sensors that enable users to share a huge range of information. This big data can in turn be used to solve problems and create new products, but privacy and other rights could be compromised.
http://torquemag.io/mobile-devices-are-the-big-story-in-mary-meekers-2014-internet-trends-report/
Interesting insights:
* Internet users globally growing at less than 10% a year, but initiatives like Google’s Project Loon and Facebook’s Internet.org hope to increase this
* Mobile usage continues to grow strongly – 25% of all web usage
* 30% of all mobile users are now smartphone users
* Tablets are growing faster than PCs ever did
* Unbundling of web and mobile apps – users now want simple apps that do one thing well
* New smartphone sensors (eg. accelerometers, compasses, barometers, heart rate sensors, GPS etc) are fueling the Big Data Age; it is hard to analyse all this Big Data
* 34% of the digital universe is useful but only 7% is tagged
* Cybersecurity is getting harder
* Mobile interfaces are changing everything – transport (Uber), restaurants (Yelp), accommodation (Airbnb), music consumption (Spotify)
* Many developing countries leapfrogged the laptop/PC era and went straight to mobile
* Social networking is changing from broadcast to private sharing – rather than sharing a little with a lot of people, we are sharing a lot with a few close friends. Giant international messaging apps have risen (Snapchat, WhatsApp etc)
* Music streaming up, digital song sales down for the first time (files are a nuisance; streaming is easier)
* Huge interest in cryptocurrencies (eg. bitcoin)
* Photo sharing is huge – we also upload fitness, events and computer code
* Decreasing cost of digital storage
* 84% of mobile owners use devices while watching TV
* Viewers are ditching traditional TV for online video content
* TV channels growing fast as mobile apps
* YouTube channels have huge reach and growth; YouTube stars are the new movie stars
* Rise of BuzzFeed (top Facebook news publisher)
* New genre of video – “Spectator gaming” – watch others playing – Twitch is top video streaming site
* Top 5 internet properties are from the US – Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Wikipedia – but majority of their users are from abroad
* Top public tech market leaders – Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tencent (China)
* China is becoming a tech superpower with many innovations eg. WeChat
Summary of slides (54 slides): http://techcrunch.com/gallery/mary-meeker-internet-trends/
Full report (164 slides): http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends