Digital Campus

As Dan finally buckles under and joins in the most hyped Web 2.0 site of the moment, Twitter, Tom and Mills join him to debate the merits—and demerits—of the “microblogging” craze. Do services like Twitter merely increase the distractions and noise from the web, or might they be helpful for communication and community building in […]

At a time when everything seems to be trending toward being freely available online, how can education and digital resources and tools for academia, libraries, and museums sustain themselves? Tom, Dan, and Mills discuss models for sustainability in the age of the free in the feature segment of this week’s podcast. In the news roundup, […]

Tom and Dan are joined this week by Bill Turkel and Steve Ramsey, who provide fascinating insights into the nature of computer programming and how those in the humanities, museums, and libraries can get started with this foreign language. Bill and Steve were also kind enough to add their comments to our news roundup discussion […]

In the feature story of this episode, Tom, Mills, and Dan finally get to vent about the increasing annoyances of legal restrictions and threats that face those trying to do digital work in academia, libraries, and museums. Copyright—both in its traditional form and in modern incarnations like the DMCA—has made it more difficult than ever […]

On the first birthday of the podcast, Tom, Mills, and Dan discuss how they produce the podcast and reflect on what they’re doing right, what needs improvement, and what they might do in the coming year—and ask the audience to write in with their own criticisms and suggestions. The news roundup looks at a new […]

Can print on demand shake up academic publishing, book buying, and reading habits? Another terrific guest joins us on the podcast for a feature segment on the promise and perils of print on demand: Yakov Shafranovich, a software developer who specializes in print on demand services including PublicDomainReprints.org, covered in several prior Digital Campus episodes. […]

Is reading declining in the digital age, or is it simply changing? The Digital Campus team is joined by two guests in our feature segment, Sunil Iyengar of the National Endowment for the Arts and Matt Kirschenbaum of the University of Maryland, to debate the future of reading—and its past. The news roundup covers Microsoft’s […]

Are open educational resources such as iTunes U and thought-provoking dot-coms such as BigThink.com a distraction from the mission of professors and universities, or the wave of the future? Tom, Mills, and Dan debate the merits of “open access” intellectual content in the feature story. We also follow up on Dan’s experience with buying a […]

On our first podcast of the new year, we look at the rise of the small, cheap laptop and its significance for education and cultural sites. In addition to a full rundown of the latest news about the One Laptop Per Child project and its $188 XO laptop, we cover the wildly popular Asus Eee […]

The regulars close out the first calendar year of Digital Campus with a countdown of the top stories of 2007. In a year when lines formed for the iPhone, social networking went mainstream, Vista battled with Leopard (and XP), and virtual worlds beckoned, find out which stories made Mills, Tom, and Dan’s top ten list. […]

On this podcast we finally put to rest the Great Facebook Controversy of 2007. We tell listeners how to turn off Facebook’s intrusive Beacon advertising system, and note LinkedIn’s attempt to capitalize on Facebook’s stumble. We also assess the importance of privacy for search engines given Ask.com‘s move to make it easier to search anonymously, […]

Amazon.com‘s release of its new e-book reader the Kindle has set off a frenzy of speculation about the future of books, reading, and publishing. The Digital Campus team debates the promise and problems of the Kindle and e-book readers in general. In the news roundup we express outrage at a possible new U.S. bill that […]

Think Google is scary with all of the information it gathers about you through your web searches? Wait until Facebook starts its advertising platform based on all of the likes and dislikes you’ve given it, and combines that with the power of Microsoft, which just bought a stake in the biggest social network on campus. […]

The second most frequently asked question at museums after “Where are the restrooms?” is “Where is the art?” In this episode we ask whether those artifacts belong on a museum’s website, and if so, how, as we debate the proper relationship between a museum’s virtual and physical manifestations. Our news roundup covers the opening up […]

Is the moderated environment of email discussion lists still the best way for scholars to communicate with others in their field? Or is the time ripe to move those conversations onto blogs and less mediated and more open formats? That’s this week’s debate in the feature segment. In the roundup we cover news about greater […]