Teenagers use MySpace to save their local bubble tea hangout

A very cool story about a group of teenage customers who used social networking sites to save their local bubble tea hangout in Greenville. A tea tale

O-CHA!

Inspired Beemer Ad

From Cool Ads, issue 5 (cont.)

A clever and powerful image

From Cool Ads, issue 5

Give the bank credit for honesty :)

Courtesy of The Long Tail

Are historically Black colleges good for Black students?

A provocative article from the authors of Freakonomics:

Are historically Black colleges good for Black students?

A shift from aging, top-down classroom technologies to mashup space, mashup spaces comprising del.icio.us feeds, blog posts, podcast widgets

Maybe there is a glimmer of hope.

Elgg, open-source social networking software developed at the University of Brighton, has been designed specifically with academic uses in mind.

Students, tutors and researchers each get a profile page, a blog, photo sharing and friends lists, and they can create and join on-site discussion communities. Some of these features might cause tutors to balk, but Elgg's creators say the collaborative, conversational exchanges in which today's students have become so fluent outside class are the best way to deliver learning inside it.

"The virtual learning environment model used by nearly all universities these days is based on the traditional tutor-led, course-structured mode of learning and doesn't easily allow for significant participation by students or for crossing course boundaries," said Stan Stanier, the school's learning technologies manager, who oversees a 33,000-member Elgg installation. "Higher education is meant to be an environment for student-centered and collaborative learning."

Broadly, Elgg represents a shift from aging, top-down classroom technologies like Blackboard to what e-learning practitioners call personal learning environments -- mashup spaces comprising del.icio.us feeds, blog posts, podcast widgets -- whatever resources students need to document, consume or communicate their learning across disciplines.

Rev. Charles B. Jackson, Sr. on Parent Involvement at Brookland - A New Carolina Manifesto # 4

A special delivery to you from New Carolina: Our fourth Manifesto – another in a series of writings and conversations from South Carolina's thought leaders.

This one is from Reverend Charles B. Jackson, Sr., pastor of Brookland Baptist Church in West Columbia, on how the faith-based community at Brookland is supporting parent involvement in education.

Follow this link to read the Manifesto:
http://newcarolina.org/manifestos/manifestos.php?id=4

Help us get a conversation started around change that will create new energy, new ideas, new action, and new jobs in South Carolina.

Visit us at http://newcarolina.org/

Powered by SC's Council on Competitiveness: Working with partners to drive a movement toward a New Carolina – a South Carolina with a brighter future, and a competitive, winning economy.

Another barbarian at the gate

Zillow, the real estate informational site, is facing some trouble in Arizona... Zillow has been growing since its onset, and they’ve recently added some social networking components to help users further understand the market from first hand accounts of other users. More gory details.

Barbarians are at the gate, and they don't like it

Below is an announcement on the Converse College website of the presentation last week by Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia.org. This is the typical reaction of those who control the status quo when faced with a discontinuous innovation. What really struck me was this sentence:

While Wikipedia's supporters often portray the site as a brave new world in which scholars can rub elbows with the general public, doubters say Wikipedia devalues the notion of expertise itself.

Scholars can rub elbows with the general public? They completely don't get this wisdom of the crowd thing, do they?

Wikipedia Founder Discusses Controversial Web Encyclopedia

March 2007

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales, creator and founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, spoke about the controversial site in Twichell Auditorium at Converse April 10. The event, which was free and open to the public, drew an estimated audience of 700 people.

Wales discussed the world of peer-reviewed open content Internet media and the founding of Wikipedia. The event was an offering of the Friends of the Spartanburg County Public Libraries Dennis L. Bruce Author Series, and was sponsored by Spartanburg County Public Libraries and Converse.

Launched in 2001, Wikipedia currently ranks among the top ten most-visited Web sites worldwide. Today, Wikipedia has nearly 5 million articles in many languages, including more than 1.3 million in the English-language version. There are 229 language editions of Wikipedia.

Despite its growth and popularity, critics have questioned Wikipedia's reliability and accuracy because anyone can edit and upload content. While Wikipedia's supporters often portray the site as a brave new world in which scholars can rub elbows with the general public, doubters say Wikipedia devalues the notion of expertise itself.

In the current issue of TIME magazine, Wales says in response to a question about growing concerns of the validity of Wikipedia entries that “The key is to look at the quality of articles. The quality of Wikipedia today compared with three years ago is a dramatic improvement. But people do need to be aware of how it is created and edited so they can treat it with the appropriate caution. The site is a wonderful starting point for research. But it's only a starting point because there's always a chance that there's something wrong, and you should check your sources.”

In 2006, TIME magazine named the 40-year-old Wales as one of America's 100 most influential people. The former options trader is the founder and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit corporation that operates the Wikipedia website and several other wiki projects. Wakes is also founder of the for-profit company Wikia, Inc.

Is Columbia Cool?

Very good article on cool things happening in Columbia, SC.

Is Columbia Cool?

What’s cool about Columbia is people don’t know how cool it is, how cool it’s become. We’re diverse with the university and the fort bringing in a lot of people from across the country, there’s plenty of things to do, from sports to the outdoors to going out, and there’s really something cool to do most any night of the week, especially during the spring and summer with things like Five Points after Five and the Vista concert series along with great local music like jazz at the Hunter-Gatherer and bluegrass at El Burrito on Thursdays.

It’s kind of a hidden cool, whether anyone else recognizes it or not. I think in the end, that’s the best kind of cool of all.

Thanks for Jim Roberts at TIP Strategies for the heads up.

We're just like wildebeests on an open plan

We like to think of ourselves as rational beings, but the reality is that there is only a very thin layer of civilization on the cortex of our brains. Most of the time, we're just like wildebeests on a open plain, following the stampeding from one place to another.

Here's the latest intersting example.

Things rise to the top not because they are better quality than the alternatives, but because people copy what their friends do.

Tap into this, and you might make a lot of money as a result.

John Warner on Public Schools for Poor Children - A New Carolina Manifesto #3

Another special delivery to you from New Carolina: Number three in a series of writings and conversations from South Carolina's thought leaders. We call this series New Carolina Manifestos.

Follow this link to read John Warner's idea for a public school model that would serve poor children.

John Warner is President of SwampFox, LLC.

Help us get a conversation started around change that will create new energy, new ideas, new action, and new jobs in South Carolina.

Powered by SC's Council on Competitiveness: Working with partners to drive a movement toward a New Carolina – a South Carolina with a brighter future, and a competitive, winning economy.

Visit us at http://www.newcarolina.org

Study: There Is No Shortage of U.S. Engineers

A friend at Clemson sent me a link to this article about a new study from Duke University stating that there is no shortage of engineers in the United States. It's interesting to consider with the Swamp Fox Feature Article that Tom Rogers wrote this week.

One things for certain. The competition is increasingly global, and the stakes are getting higher.

How to Get the Attention of a Venture Capitalist

Short, sweet, too the point... and in my experience pretty accurate.

How to Get the Attention of a Venture Capitalist

Supermarket 2.0 :)

Pretty funny. Look carefully at all the details contrasting the online with the physical world.

Actually it's pretty thought provoking. What's the problem customers have that they are willing to pay to solve?

Word cloud of benefits of InnoVenture 2007

A word cloud is a very effective way to highlight what's important in a text.

In a recent survey, we asked attendees, "How did you benefit from your participation in InnoVenture 2007?"

Here's a word cloud of the answers we got. Notice how you can mouse over the words and see specific phrases used. Very cool, and very powerful.