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Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit
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information technologies.
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TOP STORIES for May 31, 2000
Web Bookseller Plans to Offer Free College Courses
Special Interests Chip Away at Online Gambling Bill
Women Top Shoppers Online, Study Finds
Move Over, Dan Rather
ALSO
Canada Scraps Citizen Database
The Right Medicine
Computers Not Made for Kids
Cyber Forensic Lab Proposed for New England
WEB BOOKSELLER PLANS TO OFFER FREE COLLEGE COURSES
Barnes & Noble.com is developing an online college campus with free
distance-learning courses. To spur the venture, the giant bookseller is
purchasing a minority stake in notHarvard.com, which provides e-commerce
sites with distance-learning software packages. Although most courses will
be based on books offered at Barnes & Noble.com, purchasing Barnes & Noble
books will not be required. Barnes & Noble University will provide students
with an online mailbox, a notebook, and a calendar. Some classes will be
seminars lasting a single day, while others could last up to 12 weeks.
Courses will not be held at pre-determined times. Instead, students will
contact their professors by e-mail and access coursework or readings online
at any time. (Wall Street Journal, 30 May 2000)
SPECIAL INTERESTS CHIP AWAY AT ONLINE GAMBLING BILL
Online gambling special interest groups have chipped away at the Internet
Gambling Prohibition bill so much it is in danger of collapsing. The bill,
originally intended to place limits on Internet gambling, now contains
exceptions for parimutuel horse racing, for dog racing, and jai lai. Other
groups, including Native Americans with lotteries, also are seeking
exemptions. One congressional aide says the bill is "in trouble." Several
religious and conservative groups, including the Christian Coalition and the Traditional
Values Coalition, have decided to pull their support for the
legislation because so many exceptions have been added to the bill. The
casino industry, fearing greater competition from Internet gambling, remains
in support of it. (Washington Post, 31 May 2000)
WOMEN TOP SHOPPERS ONLINE, STUDY FINDS
As the percentage of women using the Internet has increased from 15 to 50
over the last five years, women have become the dominate purchasing force in
e-commerce. Women shoppers make up 63 percent of all online shoppers,
according to a survey of more than 2,000 Internet users by online study
group PeopleSupport. Style.com, Oxygen.com, and other e-commerce sites
oriented toward women continue to appear on the Internet at a steady clip.
The PeopleSupport study finds that the lack of online customer service is
one of the biggest complaints women have with e-commerce sites. Most women
who shop on the Internet more than once a week are between 45 and 54, white, have
children, and makeat least $75,000 a year, according to the study. A study by CommerceNet
Nielsen Media Research in April concluded that women in the U.S. and Canada
account for 38 percent of online buyers. (Cnet, 26 May 2000)
MOVE OVER, DAN RATHER
Ananova, a virtual newscaster created by the British Press
Association, debuted on the Web last month and ranked among the
most popular news sites with 1.6 million visitors. To make
Ananova appear human, her creators used advanced speech
recognition technology and other tools that give the newscaster
not only a face, but also a personality. The stories Ananova
reads are coded so she will use an appropriate tone and facial
expressions. Other organizations are also creating digital
characters, or avatars, believing the technology will succeed
because Web surfers prefer to feel as though they are interacting
with a human rather than a machine. Motorola next month will
launch a "cyber-assistant" named Mya, who will read e-mail
messages, stock quotes, and other online information using
wireless or traditional phone connections. Meanwhile, MIT's
MediaLab is working on a real-estate agent avatar who will read
information from a housing database in real time. The University
of Southern California's Integrated Systems Center is developing
"immersive environments," in which users create avatars of
themselves that interact with other users' avatars. Using
immersive environments, people could send lifelike
representations of themselves into chat rooms or online shopping
sites, says the center's director Max Nikias. (Washington Post, 31 May 2000)
===========================================
CANADA SCRAPS CITIZEN DATABASE
The Canadian government announced earlier this week that it would
abandon plans to continue building its controversial Longitudinal
Labor Force File database, which contains personal data on every
Canadian citizen. The database includes information gleaned from
tax returns, welfare files, federal job programs, and employment
insurance files. Just a couple of weeks ago the database was
criticized due to privacy concerns by Canada's privacy
commissioner, Bruce Phillips. Canada's Ministry of Human
Resources Development, charged with managing the database,
decided on Monday to dismantle the project and institute policies
that would protect the privacy of any remaining data. (Wired News, 30 May
2000)
THE RIGHT MEDICINE
In an initiative to spread up-to-date information to doctors and
clinicians, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in
Baltimore is developing a Web-based portal to store cutting-edge
medical data. The portal will feature information on new discoveries,
practical advice such as whether a patient should be admitted to
the hospital, and an interactive segment in which clinicians
facing a difficult situation can consult the experts in the
hospital's infectious disease division. Once the portal is
completed, Johns Hopkins hopes to enhance it by adding wireless
capabilities. The wireless functionality is expected to condense
the information even further, as well as provide greater
convenience to users. Johns Hopkins predicts the portal will strengthen the
relationship between researchers
and clinicians. (Knowledge Management, June 2000)
COMPUTERS NOT MADE FOR KIDS
A Baltimore-based study has found that computers are not child-friendly. The
study, by Context-Based Research Group, points out that young children do
not have the typing skills to make using computers an enjoyable experience
and keyboards just for children are not yet mainstream products. The study
also says computers are asocial by design, and the only time family members
are likely to gather around a computer is when something is wrong with it.
Moreover, computers are unlike video games, which tend to offer more than
one control pad.
The lack of reliable information on the Internet also was cited as a barrier
to children, who do not always have the ability to discern what is and is
not true. Titled GenWired, the study is being expanded into a one-year
project that will include purchasing decisions, product
design, and the digital divide. (Baltimore Sun, 28 May 2000)
CYBER FORENSICS LAB PROPOSED FOR NEW ENGLAND
Worried that New England's burgeoning wired economy could soon
prove too tempting a target to computer hackers, U.S. Attorney
Donald K. Stern and Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly are
calling for Washington's help in developing what would likely be
the nation's first regional cyber-forensics lab. Attorney
General Janet Reno is said to support the idea for a lab that
would help manage an overflow of computer cases from the FBI's
Washington, D.C.-based high-tech crime lab. By handling forensic
evidence that would normally be shipped to the FBI lab, the
regional lab would quicken the pace of cybercrime investigations,
Stern said. Stern places the set-up costs of the lab at roughly
$1 million. (BostonHerald.com, 26 May 2000)
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UPCOMING EDUCAUSE CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS:
AACC-EDUCAUSE
Presidents Academy Taming Technology Institute
June 11-13, 2000, Dallas, Texas
<
http://www.aacc.nche.edu/conf/taming2000/taming.htm>
The Center for Academic Transformation
The Learning Marketplace: New Resources for Teaching and Learning
June 15, 2000, Chicago, Illinois
<
http://www.center.rpi.edu/LForum/LMWkshp.html>
Seminars on Academic Computing
e-Everything: Pipe Dreams to Harsh Realities
August 4-9, 2000, Snowmass Village, Colorado
<
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For additional information on all EDUCAUSE conferences see
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For information on other technology-related
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Edupage Copyright 2000, EDUCAUSE
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EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association dedicated to
transforming education through information technologies