Posts from — September 2010

From mashable.com.

With 500 million people using Facebook and Twitter seeing more than two billion tweets per month, one would assume that social media usage is skyrocketing. New research from Forrester suggests that while participation is on the rise, actual content creation may not be.  Well, ya know what they say; never mistake knowledge for wisdom.

These are probably the same guys who said everything that can be discovered has been discovered and everything that can be written has been written.  These are also the people who said corporations should not use Foursquare in their marketing efforts because not enough people use Foursquare. http://bit.ly/bU6SRm.   Gotta love their take on wisdom.

Forrester’s Social Technographics Profile analyzes consumer social behaviors and trends on an annual basis. Forrester classifies social network users by type: Creators, Conversationalists, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives. In the past year, their research shows no measurable growth in the Creators category — the audience that creates social content. [Read more →]

David Hiscoe, NCSU Libraries,  (919) 513-3425

(Raleigh, N.C.)—To salute the bedrock American freedom to read what we choose, the North Carolina State University Libraries today released “Banned Books SoundWave”—a website filled with selections from banned books read by a broad spectrum of members of the university community.  The site is being launched in conjunction with the American Library Association’s (ALA) traditional “Banned Books Week,” an annual event celebrating the open access to information and the importance of the First Amendment in our society.

Running the last week in September, the ALA program is designed to remind us all of the benefits of intellectual freedom and to highlight the dangers of censorship by spotlighting the history of actual or attempted book bannings across the United States.  To support this nationwide celebration of the free access to information, the NCSU Libraries has recorded a range of campus champions reading from books that have been suppressed in the sometimes troubled history of protecting the fundamental right to read what we please. [Read more →]

RALEIGH The state’s battered manufacturing sector went on the offensive this week with a show-and-tell on wheels.

About 250 manufacturers from North Carolina have donated their products for statewide tour, not to mention some hard-to-pass-up free publicity. The weeklong tour, organized by N.C. State University’s Industrial Extension Service, is designed to promote the state’s products and encourage careers in manufacturing.

I was stunned to hear that Jim Heselden had been killed while riding his Segway.  Heselden was one of the early adapters in Europe and a real believer that the Segway transporter could transform the way people travel short distances.

Heselden purchased the company from Dean Kamen and a group of investors late last year and was continuing efforts to introduce the machine to the general public.

Heselden was riding a Segway X2, an off-road version of the machine.  The X2 has knobby tires and is higher off the ground than the standard model.  I’ve got hundreds of miles on the machines and the X2-model was always my favorite.

My condolences go out to Heselden’s family and those involved with Segway.  It is a marvelous machine, but perhaps, years ahead of its time.  Here’s the story from BBC.

I’ve been advocating for circus dogs for the past year and now the internet is all a buzz about circus dogs as well.

1 of Many

Passion (and Circus Dogs) Rule!

Getty Images OK Go‘s latest music video managed to rack up over one million views in just one day.

The band, who are famed for their innovative music videos, released the clip for their latest single ‘White Knuckles’ on Monday (Sept. 20) and it’s already proved to be a massive hit, reports NME.

They say never work with animals on television, but the band have used trained dogs to great effect in the fast paced, one-take video, which has now reached over two million views on YouTube.

Talking to NME, frontman Damian Kulash revealed that it took over a hundred takes to get right. He said, “There were many more starts and stops but we actually have slates for 124 full takes. The video you see is one whole take and what you see is all take 72.”

Speaking of the hits, he added, “It’s mind boggling. I don’t think the brain is wired for comprehending those kind of numbers. Last night it was 100,000 hits and I woke up this morning with it being like over one million.”

Another tough day in the newspaper business.  The Charlotte Observer is cutting staff and the News & Observer is not replacing staff who have left the paper recently.  That means much less coverage of higher education.  Boo.  Hiss.

By Kirsten Valle
kvalle@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Wednesday, Sep. 22, 2010

The Charlotte Observer will eliminate 20 positions through a combination of buyouts, layoffs and frozen job openings, part of an effort to reduce costs in a sluggish economy, the company announced Wednesday.

The paper is also implementing weeklong furloughs in the fourth quarter for full-time staff.

Despite improving ad revenue in the first half of the year, the economy is recovering more slowly than expected, Publisher Ann Caulkins told employees.

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/09/22/1710534/observer-to-cut-jobs-implement.html#ixzz10HRkLI8f

From CASE.com:  http://www.case.org/x31454.xml

Circus Dogs perform.  Now that’s what I’m talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHlJODYBLKs&feature=player_embedded#!

Passion Rules!

One

1 of Many

Passion Rules!

Author: Dave Pond | Web Communications

NC State and other large state universities scored highest with job recruiters looking to hire the best trained and well prepared graduates to fill vacancies in today’s improving job market, say respondents to a recent survey by The Wall Street Journal.

“This story is a testimony to the real-world learning that takes place at great universities like NC State,” said NC State chancellor Randy Woodson. “Our students learn practical skills while maintaining a well-rounded approach to serving their state, their country, and the world, placing them among the nation’s most prepared university graduates.”

NC State ranked 19^th overall (15^th in engineering) by recruiters for some of the largest public and private corporations, non-profits and federal agencies in the nation. Schools had to have a minimum of 60 companies who recruited at the institution to be considered for inclusion – in the final rankings, NC State finished ahead of UNC, Duke, Notre Dame and MIT, among others.

“NC State is consistently ranked as one of the nation’s best values in higher education, but this ranking is different,” said Dr. Louis Hunt, vice provost and university registrar at NC State. “This ranking encompasses the entire educational process – it acknowledges the quality of our faculty and students as well as the excellence and appropriateness of our curriculum.”

The university’s reputation in the workplace is no surprise to Morgan Donnelly (‘10), who graduated in May and now works as a digital journalist/reporter with NBC affiliate WSLS 10 in Roanoke, Virginia.

After being told by a number of future broadcast colleagues that it could take up to a year to land a solid position, Donnelly was offered two jobs on the same day less than a month after graduation – a credit not only to her efforts, but also those of NC State faculty and staff in helping Donnelly prepare to succeed beyond the borders of campus. [Read more →]