Friday, December 31, 2004

Academic Computing 2004 : Trends

The end of a year is the time for making lists; starting a new blog is also a time for making lists. So here's a list of the "top 10" (more or less) trends. 1. blog. Based on the number of on-line look-ups, Merriam-Webster Online ranked "blog" as the word of year for 2004. 2. google. Google IPO, google mail, google (desktop) search, google scholar. 3. ipod. The iPod University (Duke University's iPod Projectdistributed an iPod to every entering first-year student) has been followed by the iPod High School (Brearley School in Manhattan, where the devices are required in grades 7 through 12.) Interest in the ipod is followed by speculation in the possible existence of an "ipod economy", an "ipod effect", "ipod killer", etc. 4. facebook. Aka Thefacebook. Mark Zuckerman's Harvard student project has grown from a handful of colleges and universities to well over 300, incluging UVM, Middlebury, and Vermont Tech. Thefacebook connects students at a particular college with each other; each college being a separate domain. Students connect to each other by searching Thefacebook and by building (sometimes very long) lists of friends. 5. mozilla. Mozilla, and it's FireFox and Thunderbird variants, are slowly gaining "market share" ("desktop share") from Internet Explorer. 6. keitai. the always-on generation. 7. this space for hire. 8. bioinformatics. 9. grid computing. Acacdemic supercomputing is led by Virginia Tech's Terascale Computing Facility which ranks as the 7th fastest computer on the planet. It is probably the best example of a "build it yourself" supercomputer using "grid" technologies. 10. bit torrent. The "bit torrent" peer-to-peer network is flying just beneath the radar.

Academic Computing 2005 : Google Vaulting

After "blogging", "googlization" (sp?) is the leading phenomenon of 2004. Google Ads, Google Mail, Google Scholar, Google Search, all joined Google News and Google Blogging (Blogger, Blogspot, ...). So, as part of the googlization of everything, here's a claim-staking, google based blog created with google tools. The focus will be on "academic computing" ... computing in the service of learning, research, scholarship, teaching, and university life in general.