Techization

A research report from eMarketer proves 2009 to be the year that Baby Boomers jumped on the social media train.  2009 saw an explosion of growth with the older folks and consistent and steady growth for us young guns.   Check out the graphs below.

You can read a bit more on this newly release report  at Mahable.

A recent article on Mashable reported that Google’s Chrome web browser has overtaken the 3rd spot in browser popularity.  This pushes Apple’s Safari back to 4th place.  Take a look at this graphic depicting market share between Safari and Chrome:

[image courtesy TheAppleBlog]

Some say it was a matter of time and I agree with them.  Google’s products are often raved over.  Most Google products are compatible with both PC’s and Macs.   This is because they are web-based apps like Google Docs, Google Voice etc.

Apple’s Safari browser is strongly associated with Apple and the Mac, for good reason.  That’s their browser, much like Microsoft’s Explorer.

Explorer has been tarnished with laggy performance and security holes all of which has been well publicized.  The public has lost trust in the pre-loaded browser, not to mention it has been stalled in innovation and keeping up with web standards.  What are PC users suppose to do?  Download the ‘arch-rival’ browser to the nemesis known as Apple?  Of course not!  It probably doesn’t even cross their mind as an option.  That leaves the highly popular Mozilla Firefox as the ‘fallback’ browser.  Firefox has become a huge success since its release in 2004.

There are two things users care about from their browser: speed and security.  This is something Firefox delivers on both fronts, but now they have new competition on their heels with Google Chrome.  Chrome is simple to use, the fastest browser confirmed in independent tests and also the most secure.  What could be causing this rapid gain in market share for the new browser?

Netbooks, plain and simple.  Anyone with half a brain will not use IE on their new netbook.  So they then consider Mozilla Firefox.  There is a problem; Firefox is very harsh on resources and doesn’t run the best on netbooks.  Where does that leave you?  Google Chrome!  It’s lightweight on resources and ultra-fast and secure.  The netbook explosion has definitely helped Chrome become a major player in the browser market.  With no end in sight to the netbook craze, Chrome will continue its upward swing in market share.

2009 is coming to a close and the web went through radical transformation and progression as it always does.  Lots of buzz words we’re thrown around like cloud computing, real-time, geo-locate and streaming video. These changes have been occurring under our noses for the past 12 months and their evolution will continue.  Let’s first examine the issue of real-time.

Twitter and Facebook dueled for social supremacy in 2009 with Facebook the obvious front-runner.  Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, stole some special sauce from Twitter by adding some more real-time interactivity with content and user status updates.  Users at first bucked at this change but is now becoming socially accepted among users.

Twitter had changes of its own by re-working their re-tweet system and adding server stability to their infrastructure.  Twitter often crippled as breaking news occurred around the world.

Twitter wasn’t the only big real-time dog hitting the interwebs hard in 2009.  Services like Brightkite, Foursquare and Latitude really took off as users need for ‘real-time geo awareness’ increased.  The ability to track your friends every movement and make stalking easier than ever before really is becoming more accepted in our society.  Perhaps the largest use of geo-location services is finding restaurants using services like Yelp.

Augmented realities are really taking off and will continue to do so in 2010.  Many iPhone applications are taking advantage of extremely accurate cell-phone GPS and built-in accelerometer technology, your phone not only knows where you are, but where your looking.  As you move down the street reviews and content pops up about restaurant reviews, in-store sales, lunch specials etc.

If there is one sure bet in 2010 it has to be mobile phone technology.  Mobile platforms are the future of personal computing and mobile technology will continue to advance into 2010 and well beyond.

I know it has been awhile everyone!  I have been super busy here at UW-Stout with classes and work.  Here is a nice in-depth entry I prepared for UW-Stout administrators on the use of Facebook in their crisis management plan.  Enjoy!

Facebook Overview

Facebook is the Internet’s phone book.  It is way to connect with friends, find old classmates and stay in touch with loved ones who live far away.  Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg at the age of 19 while attending Harvard University.  It was originally founded to be used at Harvard by students only. Facebook spread like wildfire on-campus and soon Zuckerberg and his co-founders distributed the service to forty-five schools and had hundreds of thousands of users within 6 months.   They were onto something.  It was at this point Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to pursue Facebook as a full-time venture in the summer of 2004.  Zuckerberg is still the CEO of Facebook to this day and has a net worth of over 2 billion.  Facebook has been estimated at a staggering $15 billion dollars by Microsoft Corp.  (Wikipedia, 2009)  In 2008, more than 93% of UW-Stout students had an active Facebook account.  (Kaskavitch, 2009)

Facebook User Count:  Over 310 million active users

Facebook Behavior during Crises

Virginia Tech, I35 bridge collapse, US Airways 1549 all have one thing in common.  Each event spurred dozens if not hundreds of Facebook groups often within an hour of the actual even occurring.  These groups on the network provided an open platform to share information at a very fast pace.  Facebook groups were setup during the Virginia Tech tragedy within 15 minutes of the news breaking on what was occurring.  News and information spreads faster than ever before.  So fast sometimes it can cause information overload.  A study published in New Scientist magazine in 2008 found that social network sites like Facebook, instant messengers, blogs and micro-blogging sites like Twitter spread warnings and information more efficiently than traditional communication channels.  (Catone, 2008)

How to utilize Facebook for crisis management

The big question:  How does UW-Stout utilize this tool in its campus crisis management planning?

The answer to this question is by creating “dark groups” on Facebook.  Dark groups are groups that are only visible to the creator and those whom the creator selects to invite, these are known as “secret” on Facebook.  These dark groups can then be pre-loaded with crisis plans and content that students, faculty and staff will need to know in the event of a campus crisis.

These groups will need to be altered and information about the actual incident will need to be added to the group description because of the fluidity of emergencies, but that should only be a paragraph or two.

Once a crisis occurs, you simply make the group public and invite the first ten or fifteen students.  With that small starting cluster of users, the group should grow exponentially will little administration effort.  It would also be worthwhile to put it on the UW-Stout home page to align it with other official channels of communication like news releases, blogs and messages from Chancellor Sorensen.  The power of viral spread via Facebook was demonstrated when students organized the Westboro Baptist Church counter-protest in under 36 hours.  All this organization and information exchange was done with a simple Facebook event.

You will need to consider a few things before considering yourself prepared to use Facebook as a platform in crisis management

• Will you include photos and videos in the group?  If so, will only administrators be allowed to upload media or will everyone be allowed to contribute?
• Do you want to enable the ‘wall’ to allow open conversation?
• Do you want the discussion board enabled?
• Who will manage it in the event of a crisis?

Organizations want very tight control on the messages being delivered and content being passed between users, especially during something as serious as a campus emergency.  Locking down the group and making it a billboard inside a walled-garden is not effective.  You have to be willing to open up and let information flow across the channel in an unfiltered manner.  The speed at which is can go back and forth across this medium could be incredibly useful during an emergency.  You want your message to get out, and you should want feedback from your receiving audience as well.

Creating dark groups on Facebook will not stop other groups from forming.  Having the official group will bolster much more credibility than groups created by students.  You will not be able to censor these groups and the information exchanged on them.  Having the official group and positioning/advertising it as an official channel of communication will make it more relevant and more likely ‘the place to be’ for your target audience to gather and exchange information.  You will be able to:

• Censor information (only if absolutely necessary)
• Direct message all members of your group instantly.
• Control the message and information presented within the group.

All these become possible only if you have administrator privileges in the group.  You would not be able to do the above points if you simply joined a student’s group and tried to calm the flames or correct information as a regular member.

There is one ‘issue’ with pre-creating these groups ahead of time.  You will need to name them right away and you cannot change them later on.  Therefore, you won’t be able to put actual situation specific information in the group name.  Some advocate practice setting up these groups, know the setting’s you want and have the information ready to paste into the group.  You would actually create the group once the emergency or crisis occurs allowing for a detailed group name.

New technologies and communication platforms like Twitter and Facebook connect large clusters of students like never before.  Information is exchanged at light speed and exchanged more efficiently than more traditional channels of communication.

Securing wireless networks has been a headache for broadband users for years now.  I wanted to write a short blog on how the average home user or small business can secure their wireless network and keep moochers and even more malicious users at bay.

Your Not Secure Out Of The Gate

Most users think just having a router is an automatic shield after listening to various media stories praise routers for their firewall abilities.  This is not the case.  Most routers you purchase at your local electronics store (Best Buy, Wal-Mart etc.) is not secure when you first plug it in. Routers are normally pre-configured to be open wireless access points.  This means anyone within its range will be able to use your connection, no questions asked.  This is done to make setup easy and compatible with most operating systems.  The only problem is it leaves your network open to attack.

The very first thing you’ll want to is login to your router’s administration panel.  This is done by typing in a 192.168.x.x address into your browsers address bar.  The actual number varies by router manufacturer, look in your user guide or online to find the local IP address for your router.  Linksys for example is 192.168.1.1.  The manufacturer sets very easy non-secure passwords.  These are easily found online as well as in your user guide and if left unchanged will make your network exceptionally vulnerable.  You’ll want to change the password to your router right away.  Make sure it is a secure password of at least six characters and preferably with upper and lowercase letters and numbers.

Bad Advice From GeekSquad

Local sales associates at places like Best Buy are often clueless on network security and sometimes offer up misleading advice.  Here are some steps that aren’t harmful, but mostly just a waste of time because they don’t secure your network.

• Turning off your SSID broadcast. - The SSID (Service Set Identifier) is an identifier broadcast by a wireless router.  You might know this as your network name.  Most routers default SSID broadcast is the manufacturers name (linksys, netgear etc.)  Turning this off does nothing to protect your network.  With the proper software, a malicious user could easily spot your networks presence even with the SSID off.  It is a false sense of security.   Changing the network name won’t make you more secure either, though I would recommend doing it.  Just make sure you SSID isn’t identifiable making it easy for outside users to know where the network is located (i.e. last name, home address are all no no’s)
• Turning DHCP Off - This in theory is a good idea but really doesn’t make you more secure.  It is easy to detect the method in which ip addresses are being assigned and make a request matching that method.
• Filtering MAC Addresses – Filtering MAC addresses is a good practice to get into, but for most households and businesses it causes more headache than what it’s worth.  For homes with many devices on the network like game systems, multiple computers and cell phones, filtering MAC addresses simply isn’t practical.  That being said, a malicious user with easily attainable monitoring software can replicate a MAC address and still penetrate your network.  This method has some value for keeping the average user off the network but will crumble with ease against advanced computer users.

What You Should Do

The easiest thing you can do to secure your network is protect your wireless access point with encryption.  There are two different kinds of encryption you can use.  One is known as Wired Equivalent Privacy or WEP. This encryption is better than nothing but it does have a huge problem.

Beginning in 2001, several serious weaknesses were identified by cryptanalysts with the result that today a WEP connection can be cracked with readily available software found online within minutes. — Source:  Wikipedia

WEP can be easily cracked within minutes therefore it should not be your first choice, though it is better than having no encryption at all.  It will keep your pesky neighbors with no computer skills from using your bandwidth, but even the most novice 13 year-old could brute force their way into your network.  You want something with a little more ‘umph’.

You will want to use Wifi Protected Access, otherwise known as WPA,  for your wireless encryption.  WPA was designed after flaws were discovered in WEP that led to its demise.  Recently, researchers have found a way to crack WPA-TKIP connections, though it is still tougher than cracking WEP.  Since this has happened, you’ll want to make sure your using WPA-AES encryption to remain secure.  AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard and the encryption contains three block ciphers.  It has been adopted by the U.S. government as their standard for encrypting sensitive networks and has yet to be cracked.

WPA2 is an even newer advance in WiFi network security.  If you have an older router or a computer older than 3 years old you may have compatibility issues.  For less headaches and still secure network, stick with WPA-AES unless you have all ‘newer’ hardware.

Conclusion

The simplest thing you can do to protect your wireless network is still encrypting it.  There is no need to cause yourself more trouble by turning off DHCP or hiding the SSID identifier. It will only give you headaches and nightmares down the road.  Most need for securing your WiFi comes from nosey neighbors or passer-by’s looking to score free Internet.  They don’t want to steal your credit card info or read your e-mails bur just score free interwebs. However, there are individuals who go around looking for easy targets to steal sensitive information from.

I found this from my girl Julia Roy.  I love these videos because they are so mind provoking and really make you think on a macro level.

I found these particuarly interesting:

By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers.
This illustrates the shift occuring in our society right now in the U.S.  —  The older generations are falling out of power in business and society and Gen Y is taking over!

Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web.
Didn’t think I’d ever see this happen!

1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum.
I am included in this 1 in 6 students.  UW-Stout is a leader in online curriculum.  In fact, most classes I take in a year are online.

Before I dived into the iPhone pool, I was a customer of Cellular One here in Wisconsin. I was a very happy customer.  Good coverage within the state, $49.99 got me unlimited everything and I never had any mishaps with my billing.  Cellular One was bought out by AT&T and then re-sold to Trilogy Partners.  During the time that AT&T owned Cellular One, I had to re-sign which then put me under an AT&T contract, not by choice.  In my area, AT&T has good overall geographic coverage.  Sprint is a joke here though Verizon may be a contender in coverage now.  My only gripe is CDMA, really Verizon?  CDMA is great for rural areas which we have plenty of, but GSM is the system of the future and CDMA is a dinosaur.

The list of why AT&T is the worst cellular provider in the history of telecommunications is long.  We won’t even begin to list the reasons.  However yet another failure has occurred this month that left many of their customers extremely upset.

If your an AT&T customer I suggest reading this article from TechCrunch and really consider jumping ship from AT&T as soon as you can.

I have spent the last week in the Chicago metro area.  From the northwest suburbs of Schaumburg and Elk Grove Village to Grant Park on the Lake Michigan shoreline downtown.  This urban immersion has provided some valuable lessons.

• iPhone battery life is kind of bad!

Living in the isolated and desolate state known as Wisconsin, it is not often my iPhone use is ‘heavy’.  I know most places I go so I don’t use battery-sucking GPS Google maps, I know the good places to eat so no need for Yelp. No long commutes to listen to my iPod.  I thought my iPhone battery life was ‘okay’ but certainly could be better.  I would plug it in nightly with 30%-40% of battery life remaining after light to moderate use.  Being in Chicago I had to consciously think, ‘do I really need to look this up or should I save my battery?’  Leaving for downtown in late morning my battery would dead by 6 or 7 p.m.  Between Twitter, Google Maps (w/ GPS), Yelp! (to eat), Photos (snap, snap!) and iPod (1 hr commute in downtown via train), my battery was taking a real pounding.

• The AT&T network really does suck!

You’ve read all the grumblings from other metros, New York, San Fran, L.A. and Miami.  AT&T’s network is terrible.  Do we need to rehash the SXSW incident where all the tech geeks converging caused the AT&T network to crash with the convention in town?  I think not.  I use the SpeedTest.net app on my iPhone to measure bandwidth.  I only got one good result of 2.3 mbps down and 280 kbps up.  That was in the fringe suburbs of the metro though.  When downtown I was getting varying results between 250kbps-700kbps down and 40kbps-170kbps up.  Needless to say I wasn’t very impressed.  Yes the speed varied with the time of day, but overall I was unimpressed with the networks ability to handle the data. That is a teaser for my next point!

• Digital spread is thick in metropolitan areas.

I had a realization moment while riding the Metra train back to Elk Grove Village this afternoon during rush hour.  I was crammed like sardines with business professionals commuting home from work.  Everyone around me had ear phones in and either an iPhone or MP3 player in their hands.  With about 50-60 people in my car, well over 75% were holding a portable media device.  The other 25% were reading the paper, book or using their laptop.  During down time, consumers of digital media simply ‘graze’ news, tweets, music, podcasts etc. as they cruise their way to home or work.  Many companies want to know how to reach a large mass on social media platforms like Twitter.  The truth is because so much information fly’s through our networks, we can’t take it all in.  If you tried, you’d burn out before you knew what hit you.  Many are ‘grazing’.  During proper times they digest what is active in their network at that time and simply turn it off when they need to.  I would argue some of the best times to reach those in your network is commute times and lunch.  However, peak times to reach your network varies with your networks ‘lifestyle’.

Touring college campuses can be painstaking and even sometimes boring.  I’ve been through my share of campus tours around the upper-midwest and have found some very interesting and others are down right boring.  I’ve often found that tour guides ‘go through the motions’ and say things like, ‘This is our commons area, we serve pizza and pasta and it is open till midnight.’  On the tour I’m likely to deduce that we’re in a commons type setting and the hours are likely posted on the door we came in and I’d assume they would be serving carb food like pizza and pasta!  There is no substance to tour guides that give you the very basics and sometimes bluntly obvious.  Now you can supplement your universities tour program with digital podcast tours while adding some consistency, engaging content and even a helpful training aid for campus tour-guides!

Getting the family together can be tough for some which can make scheduling a personal campus tour a real hassle.  By offering an audio podcast you can allow potential students and their families to tour the campus on their own time, even on weekends!  Not only do you give the freedom back to touring families, you also can control the presentation of the content within the tour and make it very consistent and engaging.  Ideally you would offer these mp3′s both on your university domain and on iTunes.  Why iTunes you ask?  Arguably iTunes is the most used platform to transfer digital media onto portable platforms, especially now with the iPhone.  Sorry Zune fans!  You can either create one large podcast and have listeners pause the mp3 while they walk to a new location, or splice up the tour into multiple audio files.  With the podcast tour you would offer a downloadable PDF with a map of your tour route.  A map and the directions you give in the podcast will be crucial to making it successful and easy to follow along. Many families will appreciate this offering from your university and it will increase your digital footprint, a key as we move further into this transforming digital world.

Podcast tours can also serve as a training mechanisms for your ‘in-person’ student tour-guides.  I have found great variability in campus tour-guides, not saying it’s a completely bad thing but using podcast’s to train will educate existing and new tour guides with little known information often found by researching your universities archives.  Fun facts that make you go, hummmmm, neat!  Information that is more engaging than, “Here is Johnson hall built in 1899, it has lots of math classes.”  That is the beauty of the podcast, you can re-do and re-do and tweak and perfect the tour until your completely satisfied with its presentation of your campus.

I have pitched this idea to administrators and media professors at the University of Wisconsin – Stout.  I hope there will be a ground swell acceptance for this new media idea.  One of the best parts about it is the investment cost is very low; quite important in this tough economic times.

Is your university doing something with digital media for campus tours?  I want to hear about it!  Comment below and tell me your thoughts and experiences.