GOOGLE TRENDS NOW SHOWS THE WEB’S OBSESSIONS IN REAL TIME GOOGLE

Wired

GOOGLE TRENDS HAS long been a tool for journalists tracking what people wanted to know about in the recent past. The function hasn’t changed, but the tense has: Trends now tracks stories in real time, giving unfettered access to what the Internet wants to know in the moment.

Trends had been largely unchanged since 2012, a helpful but slightly backdated look at subjects people were searching for over the last day or more. As of today, you can see minute-by-minute information culled from the 100 billion-plus searches that take place on Google at any given month. Not only that, but Trends now pulls in information from Google News and YouTube, for a fuller view of what people want to know.

In many ways, insight into what people are searching for is even more powerful than what they already know, says Steve Grove, head of Google’s News Lab.

“Social media data focuses on what people are talking about publicly. Search data goes a layer deeper than that, in some ways, to what people are really interested in.” Grove tells to WIRED. “When you’re searching, you’re not really editing yourself. You find out what people are really interested in. It’s very real, very raw, very personal.”

It also highlights the distance between what’s being reported and what people want to know; if you already have a good read on the Nest Cam, you’re less likely to use Google to find additional information about it. That in turn helps explains why real-time trends can be so illuminating. There’s a much larger curiosity gap on breaking news—when there are still plenty of unknowns to to the media as well—and, say, the state of the Republican primary race. GOOGLE

While that may appear to make Google Trends a sort of populist news ticker—showing what people are genuinely interested in versus what a newsroom bestows importance on—Trends doesn’t quite work that way. Rather than pure volume, it tracks surges of interest relative to how much those items usually generate. “We’re looking for spikes in particular topic areas that we then normalize,” explains Grove. “You can imagine if it was just volume overall, you’d see the same sort of topics every day.” That’s why headliners like the NBA Finals sit alongside less obvious hits like the Alameda County Fair in the top 10 “trending stories” as of this writing.

The new Google Trends also goes well beyond just headlines, though many of the features are just cleaner, more detailed versions of what was previously available. You can still access handy charts comparing how various search terms have fared over time, just now with minute-by-minute granularity. A “featured stories” section displays search data pre-sorted in a variety of visually grabby ways. A series of regularly updated data sets provide pre-packaged looks at everything from how interest in MERS and Ebola has evolved to which Copa America teams are the most search-engine sought-after. And the whole page has gotten a healthy dollop of material design.

If you’re a journalist or a researcher, the benefits of insight into what people want to know right nowshould be self-evident; you’re probably already tinkering. Even if you’re not, though, it’s worth touring the new Google Trends for the fun visualizations, sure, but also for a look at where the Internet is out of step with the news. Or maybe just a quick rundown of what’s going on in Alameda County; I hear they’ve got a great fair lined up.

How Facebook is teaching computers to see

by
Stacey Higginbotham
@gigastacey JUNE 15, 2015, 1:15 PM EDT  Fortune


Facebook’s Moments feature uses facial recognition, but there’s a lot more Facebook can offer with better computer vision and AI.
Facebook today launched its Moments product, which uses Facebook’s image recognition abilities to scan your photos for your friends and then lets people create private photo albums with a particular group, such as the people in the photo. The idea is to make it easier to share photos from a big event among attendees without the cumbersome process of emailing snapshots to everyone or the awkward end-of-event huddle while six people take the exact same group shot. It’s not a cure for cancer, but behind the scenes of this new feature is an impressive technology that Facebook has been working on for years.

A key element of the Moments feature is the ability for Facebook’s algorithms to recognize people’s faces across different photos, so that Moments knows who was at the event. This requires computer vision expertise that companies such as Google, Microsoft, Baidu, and others are currently researching for everything from self-driving cars to silly web products such as Microsoft’s How Old Do I Look?

In launching the Moments product Facebook is sharing data about its own successes in computer vision research. Namely, that Facebook can recognize faces with a 98% accuracy, and it can do so quickly—the company says it can identify you in one picture out of 800 million in less than 5 seconds. Finally, it can do all of this even if it doesn’t have the full frontal shot of your face (or even if your face isn’t in the photo at all), thanks to a machine learning algorithm that can look at other elements in the picture and associated with the photo’s data.

Facebook
Inside Moments

Fortune spoke with Yann LeCun, Facebook’s director of artificial intelligence research, to understand how his team helped a computer understand who you are, and where Facebook is heading next with its AI research. Perhaps the first thing to understand is that when LeCun discusses computer vision, it’s not the same as how a person sees, although the process of teaching software how to recognize an object has some similarities.

For example, Facebook’s facial recognition, which is the basis of the current efforts, can’t identify you. It only can recognize if a person in one photo is the same as a person in another photo. 

Identification is a completely separate step.
Because Facebook is about connecting people, its computer vision efforts have focused on recognizing faces as opposed to cats, cars, or other non-human subjects. To do this, it uses a database of celebrity and politicians photos called Labeled Faces in the Wild. This collection of images has 13,000 photos of people with different hairdos, different outfits, sometimes wearing glasses and more. Facebook used this collection to train its machine learning algorithms. Other companies have used this data set as well, and some universities have even trained systems with a higher than 98% accuracy rate using Labeled Faces.

So how did Facebook get from giving a machine a picture of Angelina Jolie to somehow using that photo to help identify your sister across different photo albums on Facebook? LeCun is the man to ask. About 20 years ago when he was working at Bell Labs (now AT&T’s Image Processing Research Department), he happened upon a way of thinking about teaching computers to see that wasn’t really used outside of academia until about three years ago.

How computers learn to see

That technique is called convolutional neural networking, and takes its name from both a mathematical operation called a convolution, and inspiration from how the human brain learns. The brain learns by establishing connections between neurons, and the more often a signal is sent over those neurons, the denser those connections get. In a similar vein, when computers establish similarities between two images it assigns a weight to those similarities. In convolutional neural networks, the goal is to train the machine to recognize the changes in weights between those connections so it can tell with increasing accuracy if the image matches.

The process of doing this is incredibly complicated and involves different calculations that work to establish how important certain aspects of the image are to the actual process of recognizing what the image is. For example, if you want to train a computer to recognize faces, the pixels related to the background are less important. The tricky—and frankly amazing— part of this is that the machine learns on its own how to tell what part of the image is most relevant, and then can generalize those relationships going forward. It still takes a lot of human effort to nudge the computer into recognizing the right way to weight the similarities, but once the model is built, it can generalize going forward.

The process can take a few days on a powerful computer.

Convolutional neural networks have become the basis for almost all of the computer vision research done today, after a team of researchers led by Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto, used that technique to win a competition where image recognition algorithms vie to be most accurate. Hinton, whose team and startup were lateracquired by Google, won the competition with a test error rate of 15.3%, compared to 26.2% for the second-place winner.

Don’t post that photo!

As research continues, the opportunities for use in our day-to-day life are significant. Yes, there is the ability to match people’s faces in a crowd that might lead to greater government surveillance, but there is also an opportunity to use better facial recognition to manage your privacy. For example, with automatic facial recognition at scale, any picture of you uploaded to Facebook (or perhaps even the web) could result in a notification.

For example, if you are somehow captured in the background of a tourist shot of Times Square, you could get a notification and the option to blur your face. Applied to children, the blurring or removal could be automated. LeCun notes that Facebook is interested in such tools, but also stresses that Facebook’s interest in machine learning goes far beyond image recognition.

Facebook’s goal is to get a computer to understand empathy. Obviously, it won’t be able to feel what humans do, but it can be trained to recognize what emotions are and how people will react. With that level of understanding, Facebook could, say, offer a warning when you are about to post a photo of you drunk and ask if you really want to do that.

“This would not be face recognition,” said LeCun. “We don’t care who is in the picture. We would use other types of image recognition and train them differently to say that this looks embarrassing and then tap you on the shoulder to make sure you want to post this publicly.”

This isn’t something Facebook can do today, but LeCun offered these concepts as a thought experiment to show where Facebook could head with its AI research. Of course, this sort of expertise informed by an algorithm can make people deeply uncomfortable. Today Facebook doesn’t turn on its auto tagging features in countries like Canada and the EU because of privacy concerns, and there’s a certain creep factor in having a computer second guess your photo-sharing choices or having software trying to parse your jokes to try to understand what you find funny.

“What we’d like to do is make machines more intelligent, understanding text, images, videos and posts,” LeCun said. “Anything that can happen in the digital world we want to understand the context.” Because there is so much digital content people could easily become overwhelmed by the information flooding their feeds. The efforts of LeCun’s team will help connect people with the content that is most relevant to their interests and priorities. It’s a complex solution to a simple goal: to make sure that you see what you want to see on Facebook.

“That’s the big mission that we at Facebook are trying to fulfill,” LeCun said. “Machines that understand people.”

Linked-In Acquires Lynda.com and Offers Free Trial

Linked-In, the professional social networking site, has acquired Lynda.com, the online education experts.  For a limited time, Linked-In members can use Lynda.com free.

Boost your LinkedIn profile by highlighting your CompTIA certifications

CompTIA has teamed up with LinkedIn to make it even easier for certification holders to highlight their skills. Whether it's A+, Security+ or one of CompTIA's numerous other vendor-neutral credentials, with just a few simple steps, anyone with an active CompTIA certification can show his or her credentials on LinkedIn. Add more power to your profile! See how to add CompTIA certifications on LinkedIn today.

Now you can download your entire search history from Google

ZDNet

Summary:Earlier this year, Google quietly rolled out a new feature that lets users download their search history.


By Liam Tung | April 21, 2015 -- 09:02 GMT (02:02 PDT)

With just a few clicks, anyone can now download their entire Google search history - that's every query ever made while the user was signed in.

To download the archive, Google Search users need to sign in and go to their Google Account History page, then click on the gear icon and select Download.

As the file is potentially sensitive, Google urges users to read its warnings, which are "not the usual yada yada". Google advises that the archive shouldn't be downloaded on a public computer and, if it is to be exported to another cloud storage service, that the user reads their export policy in the event they want to take their files elsewhere in future.

Google will send an email to notify a user when the download is complete, with a link to the data, which will be transferred to a Takeout folder in Google Drive. The user will find a .ZIP archive folder containing a series of .JSON files containing searches over quarterly periods.

Takeout is the feature that lets Google users download archives of multiple products, such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Photos, +1s, Hangouts, Calendars, and more. The featurelaunched in 2011 under its Data Liberation Front initiative, but it historically didn't include Search and still doesn't include Google Wallet.

The new capability was first spotted by the Google System blog, which noted that Google started testing the archive download feature for Search last year.

Google's product forums show that people have been using the feature, with mixed success, to download their history since at least February. Google toldVenture Beat that it released the feature in January.

Other companies that allow users to download and store an archive of their activities include Facebook and Twitter.

Two things worth noting are that downloading search history only gives the user a copy of their archive held by Google and doesn't delete the history from the users Web & App Activity page. Google provides instructions how to do that here.



About Liam Tung

Liam Tung is an Australian business technology journalist living a few too many Swedish miles north of Stockholm for his liking. He gained a bachelors degree in economics and arts (cultural studies) at Sydney's Macquarie University, but hacked (without Norse or malicious code for that matter) his way into a career as an enterprise tech, s... Full Bio

Social Media Strategies to Grow Your College Program

Free webinar! Gain insights into social media tools and strategic planning 

to build your recruitment and promote your college or program.
Ask questions! ​Share your own strategies! 

When: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015 | 3:00 - 4:00 ET

Presenters: Social Media experts:

·        Mike Qaissanuee (Brookdale Community College, ICT Center Co-lead)

·        Gordon Snyder (Social Media Consultant, formerly ICT Center Co-lead,
Springfield Technical Community College)

Register here: http://go.edc.org/STEPWebinarRegistration  

More info: https://sites.google.com/site/edcsteppublic/home/events

Hosted by: Social Technology Enabled Professional (STEP)

Hope to see you there! Heidi Larson, hlarson@edc.org

BBC: US privacy confidence at new low, survey indicates

By Jane WakefieldTechnology reporter BBC

The vast majority - 91% - of Americans believe that consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies, according to a survey.
A further 80% also felt that Americans should be concerned about government surveillance, Pew Research suggested.

It looked at attitudes to privacy and data in the wake of Edward Snowden's allegations about government snooping.

One expert described the findings as "unsurprising".

The high level of media attention given both to the Snowden allegations and to large-scale data breaches among well-known US brands means concerns about privacy are at an all-time high, according to report author Mary Madden.

"There is both widespread concern about government surveillance among the American public and a lack of confidence in the security of core communications channels," she said.

"At the same time, there's an overwhelming sense that consumers have lost control over the way their personal information is collected and used by companies."

Since contractor Edward Snowden began leaking details of the surveillance programs used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the British intelligence agency GCHQ, firms have sought to reassure customers that their personal data is safe.

Some, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and Google, have promised higher levels of encryption for personal data to make it harder for governments to snoop.

Delicate balance

There is very low confidence in the way firms handle data, according to the survey
The survey suggested that most customers remained suspicious of how companies used their data.

Some 80% of respondents who use social networking sites said that they were concerned about third parties such as advertisers or businesses accessing their online data.

Fewer, although still a significant number - 70% - were concerned about the government accessing the information they shared on these sites.

Large numbers - 64% - said that it was up to government to regulate the way advertisers accessed data.

Consumers indicated that they were pretty savvy about the delicate balance between privacy and access to services.

More than half (55%) agreed that they needed to share information about themselves in order to have free use of online services.

But the majority (61%) were not buying the idea that online services were made more efficient because of the increased access they had to personal data.

When asked what communication medium respondents felt was the most secure, the winner was the landline phone - although only 16% said they felt "very secure" using it to share private information with another trusted person or organisation.

Social media sites were regarded as the least secure, with only 2% saying they felt "very secure" using such services.

"People's perceptions of privacy are varied but there are universally low levels of confidence in the security of communication channels," said Ms Madden.

The survey, which recorded responses from more than 600 people, is taking place over the course of a year to chart changing attitudes to privacy.

The next survey, due next month, will look specifically at attitudes to how information is stored and secured and the following one will focus on behavioural changes in the post-Snowden world.

There is already evidence that people are considering changing the way they secure their personal information, with 61% claiming they would want higher levels of protection for their data.

"People aspire to do more - to use encryption or other tools to secure their information," said Ms Madden.

Security expert Bruce Schneier said that the survey results were "unsurprising".

"We know that people are concerned about privacy but we also know that they don't think about it when they are sharing data on Facebook because we have to socialise," he said.

"People give Google their data and share on Facebook. Surveillance is the business model of the internet. Google knows more about what you think about than any other company on Earth."

He is also sceptical that people will turn to technology to solve the problem.

"People want legislative change rather than technology tools. People tend to do what is easy."

CyberWatch: Securing the Internet of Things Twitter Chat

October 16th, 3p.m. EDT


INTERNET of THINGS: the ability of objects and devices to transfer data

Just as critical infrastructure is essential to helping Americans live their everyday lives, a growing Internet of Things is changing the way we use technology and helping people live more efficiently. The Internet of Things encompasses the devices that are embedded with computers and, through a combination of sensors, connectivity to the Internet, and human activity, work to connect our lives to the digital world. Simply put, we are connected and online 24/7 even when we're not at a computer.

Join in a Twitter Chat:

Securing the Internet of Things

October 16, 2014, 3p.m. EDT

Host: Stop.Think.Connect. (@STOPTHINKCONNECT)

Use #ChatSTC and #NCSAM to join

www.cyberwatchcenter.org

RHT: 7 Reasons Why Coders Should Understand Design

by Monica Nakamine  Robert Half Technology
August 15, 2014


Coders who understand design are even more valuable in the current job market.

As coders, designers come to you to turn their wireframes into websites, storyboards into video games, UI specs into apps. They provide the visual; you provide the functional.
But who’s to say that never the twain shall meet? In fact, becoming familiar with design will ultimately make you a better coder — giving you a distinct edge in today’s job market.

To make their teams as lean and mean as possible, companies are hiring multifaceted coders; people who have the core competency, but can also parlay with designers because, after all, design is the other half of the coin. While coders are already in high demand, hiring managers are being selective as they consider the dynamics of the team as a whole. If you’re able to speak the designer’s language and facilitate discussion, the team is more fluid, efficient and productive. You’re not only valuable to the team, but you become a hot commodity in the grander scheme of things.

Granted, we’re not suggesting you need to enroll yourself in design school. A Photoshop class or Illustrator tutorial might be helpful. Or simply ask your design counterpart to give you a crash course.

While some coders are well-versed in design and may even have a design background (front-end web developers, for example), other types of coders may not see the significance in learning the language of design. While designers are perceived as more artistic and creative, HTML developersor computer programmers, for example, might consider themselves more technical. But there are technical and creative elements to both skillsets. Identifying common ground might help to break barriers and work together more cohesively.
Get Over It

If you can get over this mental block, becoming familiar with the basics of design is in your best interest as a coder – in your current position and in future ones. It will enable you to:

(1) Add to your skill set and boost your marketability. Your coding skills are undoubtedly solid. But if you can combine them with design knowledge – or any other discipline that you interact with frequently – your marketability just went through the roof.

(2) Stretch your definition of creativity. As a coder, you might not consider yourself creative, but think of what you’re capable of producing: beautiful websites, complex gaming worlds, smartphone apps– the list is seemingly endless. Here’s a good analogy: Think of code like music. Both require knowledge of a specific language: Java for coders and musical notes for musicians. Creativity comes into play when that knowledge is applied — when you’re able to string together notes or pieces of code to create something complex, intriguing and beautiful, like Beethoven’s 5thSymphony… or Grand Theft Auto V. In that same vein, approaching creativity through coding may help you relate to the designers that you work with.

(3) Send hiring managers a message. Even if employers are not specifically seeking a coder who understands the design process, the fact that you can speak the language tells them that you’re versatile and willing to learn new things.

(4) Be an invaluable liaison. Knowing how to code and understanding the design process puts you in the unique position of translating between two languages – design-speak and code-talk. If you’ve ever worked with designers, sometimes the jargon they use makes absolutely no sense to you. Knowing a bit of their lingo can also help fill the gap.

(5) Contribute to the design process. When you understand a thing or two about design, you can provide valuable feedback to the designer, particularly from a coder’s perspective.

(6) Feel the designer’s pain. Despite your sincerest efforts, you’ve come to realize that design just isn’t your thing. But having gone through the motions should give you some idea of what designers have to go through to produce quality work. In coding as well as design, even the slightest tweak can throw everything surrounding it out of whack. Many people don’t understand these nuances and complain when their “simple” adjustments take hours. Don’t be that person for designers!

An understanding in design basics will give you another perspective to consider in your coding, help you empathize with designers and, ultimately, strengthen your team. Coding will always be your core competency, but combining it with an understanding for design will make you more desirable to hiring managers.

What about the designers, you ask? Well, designers who can code are also in-demand today. Read the 7 Reasons Designers Should Learn Code on The Creative Group blog.

Are you coder with design skills? How did you stumble into design? What other benefits would you add to this list?

— Monica Nakamine

Monica Nakamine is the Online Content Marketing Manager for Robert Half Technology and The Creative Group. After earning a master’s degree in journalism, she realized that marketing is more her thing and continued to apply her writing skills to a variety of industries – from higher education to high-tech. Beyond work, she’s a devoted dog-owner, aunt and Game of Thrones fan. Follow her on Twitter @latoboston.

The 17 most important things Google announced at I/O

From a brand-new visual design to wearables, this is Google's vision for 2014 and beyond

By Verge Staff on June 25, 2014 03:07 pm  The Verge

Google’s main event of the year, I/O 2014, was chock-full of news: some expected, some decidedly not. The company showed off a colorful and playful new design style for all of its products, as well as a new version of Android, codenamed “L,” that won’t arrive until later this year. Google debuted a cheap but elegant Android One phone to court buyers on a budget. Android was everywhere at the developer conference: on smartwatches, in car dashboards, and even on your body with Android Fit, a new platform for fitness wearables and apps designed to rival Apple’s HealthKit.

But the carefully planned announcements may have all been upstaged by two vocal protesters: one calling Google to task for San Francisco housing evictions and the other warning about killer robots. Both were quickly escorted from the scene. The developer conference continues through the week, but it’s hard to imagine any bigger news coming after day one’s lively keynote.

Read more

BBC: Social media 'at least half' of calls passed to front-line police

24 June 2014 Last updated at 06:47 ET  BBC

By Keith Moore BBC Radio 4's Law in Action

Continue reading the main story

Complaints originating from social media make up "at least half" of calls passed on to front-line officers, a senior officer has told the BBC.
Chief Constable Alex Marshall, head of the College of Policing, said the number of crimes arising from social media represented "a real problem".

He said it was a particular problem for officers who deal with low-level crimes.

About 6,000 officers were being trained to deal with online offences, he said.

He said the police and public were still trying to understand when online insults became a crime.

Mr Marshall told BBC Radio 4's Law in Action: "As people have moved their shopping online and their communications online, they've also moved their insults, their abuse and their threats online, so I see that it won't be long before pretty much every investigation that the police conduct will have an online element to it.

"It's a real problem for people working on the front line of policing, and they deal with this every day.

"So in a typical day where perhaps they deal with a dozen calls, they might expect that at least half of them, whether around antisocial behaviour or abuse or threats of assault may well relate to social media, Facebook, Twitter or other forms."

Mr Marshall said police were being trained to deal with online crime
'There's a line'
A number of front-line police officers from different parts of the country spoken to by the BBC agreed with Mr Marshall's assertion that a significant amount of the calls they were asked to respond to were now related to social media, including death threats, bullying and harassment.

Det Con Roger Pegram, from Greater Manchester Police, said the way offences were committed had changed a lot since he joined the force 14 years ago.

"These are traditional offences," he said.

"You don't need to actually front someone up face-to-face in the street to threaten them.

"This can all be done from the comfort of your own home, a coffee shop with wi-fi, and these people can commit crime anywhere to anybody."

One officer, who did not wish to be named, said while there were serious complaints worthy of further investigation, many related incidents not considered crimes in the era before social media.

You can listen to the full report on BBC Radio 4's Law in Action on Tuesday, 24 June at 16:00 and Thursday, 26 June at 20:00.
Listen again via iPlayer
Download the Law in Action podcast
He said: "A lot of the time.. it's that whole attitude of, 'I don't know what to do, I'll call the police, they'll sort it out for me.'

"It should be a case of let's be sensible, let's not be friends with that person on Facebook, perhaps contact Facebook first or don't use Facebook. It's common-sense stuff."

Mr Marshall agreed that the police "couldn't possibly deal with every bit of nonsense and disagreement that occurs in social media".

"People throughout history have shouted abuse at each other and had disagreements and arguments and possibly said things that they regret later and the police have never investigated every disagreement between everyone," he said.

"So we have to be careful here that there's a line that needs to be drawn and if something is serious and it's a crime and someone is genuinely threatened or in the case of domestic abuse - maybe they're being coerced and treated deliberately in this way as a sort of punishment by a partner - that's a serious issue that we need to take on."

Public education required
Mr Marshall said a combination of police training, public education and enforcement by social media companies was required to combat the problem.

Although the director of public prosecutions's guidance was a "good starting point", Mr Marshall said, 6,000 officers were being trained over the next few months by the College of Policing - which sets all police standards in England and Wales - to make judgments about when a complaint identified a pattern of behaviour that required further investigation.

And while anecdotal evidence from officers indicates that dealing with complaints arising from social media now absorbed a significant amount of their time, it is not yet borne out in the figures.

Currently, online crimes are recorded under traditional headings such as harassment or threats to kill and not as a cybercrime, so each record is required to be read individually to ascertain if the crime originated on social media.

Mr Marshall said because of that, the force was missing out on information.

The College of Policing was currently carrying out research to quantify how many crimes actually originate on social media, he said, and was expecting the results in the next couple of months.

The Home Office said that it had introduced a voluntary "flag" this year that would enable forces to highlight online crime "to further improve our understanding of where crime occurs".

This is expected to become mandatory by 2015/16.

Hear the full report on Law in Action on Tuesday, 24 June at 16:00 and Thursday, 26 June at 20:00. You can listen again via the BBC Radio 4 website or by downloading the free Law in Action podcast.

NYT: Didn’t Read Those Terms of Service? Here’s What You Agreed to Give Up

By NATASHA SINGER APRIL 28, 2014, 1:33 PM New York Times

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesResearchers at Georgia Institute of Technology reviewed 30 popular websites, including Facebook, that encourage people to share material, examining the rights to use work that were claimed in the sites’ terms of service agreements.
On Twitter, Facebook and other sites that promote sharing of content, users can typically choose whether they want to post their updates publicly to everyone or carefully select their audience.

But even careful users may not be aware that sites where they post their status updates, photos, videos, fiction or digital art may be able to repurpose that content, using it for marketing or remixing it with other people’s submissions and republishing it.

In fact, the terms of service on many sites are so wordy and so legalistic that users may not understand — or even be aware of — the intellectual property rights that they cede when they check the “agree” box to set up an account, according to a new study from researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Take Craigslist, where, the researchers reported, people who wanted to post were obliged to give the site license “to copy, perform, display, distribute, prepare derivative works from (including, without limitation, incorporating into other works) and otherwise use any content that you post.”

Or Asianfanfics, a small fan fiction site, whose terms of service provisions, the researchers wrote, allowed “for the site to essentially do whatever they like with whatever is posted there without any notice or attribution to the creator.”

The Georgia Tech study reviewed 30 popular social networking and creative community sites that encourage people to share material, examining the rights to use work that were claimed in the sites’ terms of service agreements.

Sites examined in the study included: Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Flickr, IMDB, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Remix64 and Fanfiction.net.

Of course, people who wish to see their creative work published need to permit certain uses — like authorizing a site to publicly post their content. But users may be surprised to learn about other permission they must grant in order to use a site. For instance, the study reported that 11 of the sites required users to agree that the sites could license their content to a third party.

Yet users are unlikely to understand what they are agreeing to because terms of service agreements tend to be daunting in length and readability. The Georgia Tech researchers calculated that it would take someone nearly eight hours to read the agreements on the 30 sites in the study, at an average adult pace of 250 words per minute.

THE NUMBER OF WORDS IN A SITE’S TERMS OF SERVICE:

• 4,477   FACEBOOK
• 7,294   LINKEDIN
• 2,219   PINTEREST
• 5,486   MYSPACE
• 1,691   GOOGLE
• 5,773   WIKIPEDIA
• 3,486   TWITTER
• 3,764   YOUTUBE
• 7,961   SOUNDCLOUD
• 5,763   FLICKR

Source: Georgia Institute of Technology
Some agreements, they noted, were more opaque than others. The researchers cited a Facebook license provision as an example of a string of legalese that users might have difficulty parsing: “You grant us a nonexclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.”

By contrast, they said, a license provision on Pinterest offered some plain speaking: “More simply put, if you post your content on Pinterest, it still belongs to you but we can show it to people and others can re-pin it.”

Pinterest’s forthright explanation was a rare occurrence, the study said.

85,000 Rare Videos Archived on YouTube

Published on April 17th, 2014 | by Travis Korte Center for Data Innovation

UK film archive British Pathé released its entire collection, numbering over 85,000 rare videos from the 20th century, on YouTube this week. The 3,500 hours of video document historical events, including both World Wars and the sinking of the Titanic, and will likely be a trove for historians and other scholars to mine. YouTube data sets have also been employed in computer vision and other machine learning applications. The archive was previously available on the British Pathé website, but the company hopes making it accessible for browsing and sharing will encourage broader viewership.

Get the data.

About the Author


Travis Korte is a research analyst at the Center for Data Innovation specializing in data science applications and open data. He has a background in journalism, computer science and statistics. Prior to joining the Center for Data Innovation, he launched the Science vertical of The Huffington Post and served as its Associate Editor, covering a wide range of science and technology topics. He has worked on data science projects with HuffPost and other organizations. Before this, he graduated with highest honors from the University of California, Berkeley, having studied critical theory and completed coursework in computer science and economics. His research interests are in computational social science and using data to engage with complex social systems. You can follow him on Twitter @traviskorte.

BBC: Tencent and Alibaba battle for internet dominance in China

18 March 2014 Last updated at 20:01  BBC
By Kim Gittleson BBC business reporter, Singapore

Jack Ma (left) and Huateng "Pony" Ma founded Alibaba and Tencent, respectively, within months of each other

It's been called "the most expensive competition in online history" - but it's one you might not have heard about.

More than 15 years ago, two firms launched in China within months of each other, looking to take advantage of the growing numbers of internet users in the country.

Alibaba, founded at the start of 1999 by former school teacher Jack Ma, was a platform created to help businesses sell products to each other.

It quickly grew into a marketplace where not only firms did business, but consumers as well.

In 2003 Alibaba launched Taobao, essentially China's eBay. This was followed a year later by Alipay, a Paypal clone.

But the internet, of course, is not just about selling things, it is about people connecting with each other via social media.

Biggest internet companies

The top five biggest publicly traded internet companies by revenue are:

Amazon

Google

eBay

Facebook

Tencent

Huateng Ma - known as "Pony" - founded Tencent just a few months before Alibaba in 1998 as a place to connect the growing number of young users on the web.

QQ - the company's instant messenger platform - quickly became the world's largest, with more than a billion accounts. The company then launched a variety of social platforms before going public in 2004, and quickly becoming the fifth largest internet company in the world - currently valued at over $140bn (£84.1bn).

So far, so fine.

But as China's internet usage has grown - the country has 618 million internet customers - so have the two firms.

And now, as the Western saying goes, this town - or this country - isn't big enough for the both of them.

No challengers

"Alibaba is the largest e-commerce company in China - it's been the market leader for the past 10 years, and nobody has been able to challenge that position," explains Forrester Research's Bryan Wang.

Alibaba launched Laiwang, a competitor to Tencent's WeChat and Facebook's WhatsApp, in 2013

Alibaba is essentially Amazon, eBay and Paypal in one. It had an estimated 1.1 trillion yuan (£107bn; $178bn) of sales in 2012, more than eBay and Amazon combined, and it accounts for 60% of all parcels delivered in China.

I think Alibaba is running scared - Jack Ma looks desperate right now”

Shaun ReinChina Market Research Group

The firm just announced plans for an initial share flotation in the US, which many analysts believe could be the largest ever for an internet firm.

But recently, something has shifted - of the 618 million internet users in China, more than 500 million of them access the internet via their mobile phone, according to China Internet Network Information Centre, a Chinese government agency.

"Around 85% of Chinese are now interested in buying goods and services through their mobile phone - three or four years ago, it was 30%," says Andrew Pitcher, a senior vice-president with SAP Asia Pacific Japan, a software firm.

"It's moving very quickly."

Alibaba's shopping list

Here's a list of the firms Alibaba has bought or invested in during the past year:

Sina Weibo (China's Twitter) - $586m for 18% stake

Retail website Shoprunner -$206m investment

Cloud storage firm Kanbox - acquired (price not known)

Search engine Quixey - $50m investment

Map firm AutoNavi - $1.6bn to buy (still to be confirmed); follows $294m investment for 28% stake

Financial management firm Tianhong -$193m for 51% stake

Pinterest-type site Mogujie - $200m acquisition

Luxury e-commerce site 1stdibs -$15m investment

TV and movie studio ChinaVision -$800m for 60% stake

Travel provider ByeCity - $20m investment

Surprise contender

That quick shift to mobile has benefited Tencent, China's largest internet firm, the most.

That's because Tencent's WeChat - a mobile messaging service estimated to be worth $64bn, three times the price Facebook paid for similar product WhatsApp - has more than 270 million users who use the platform to do everything from book a table at a restaurant to order a taxi.

Crucially, those users have linked up their debit and credit cards as well as bank accounts in order to make these transactions.

This year, when Tencent launched a mobile payment service during Chinese New Year to allow users to send and receive traditional "red packets" of money, more than 200 million users signed up for the service in 15 days.

"That was more than what Alibaba has tried to do - and it was a clear sign that Tencent has the foundation because of its user base, so it's actually able to challenge Alibaba's leadership in China," says Mr Wang.

He adds that in China, being able to see what others have bought - in essence, a mix of social and e-commerce - is very valuable.

"China purchasers are very likely to seek advice from their friends and peers - in that sense, Tencent has an edge."

'Looks desperate'

Needless to say, Tencent's ascendance hasn't been a welcome distraction to Alibaba's share sale plans.

In an effort to stave off competition, Alibaba has attempted to launch new products, including WeChat competitor Laiwang in 2013, and acquire firms, including an 18% stake in Sina's Weibo - essentially China's Twitter - which recently announced an initial public offering (IPO) share floatation of its own.

Tencent acquisitions

Not to be outdone, Tencent has also been on a shopping spree. Purchases and investments include:

E-commerce site JD.Com - $214m for 15% stake

Dianping, China's Yelp - $400m for 20% stake

Travel service 17u.cn - $82m investment

Map firm Linktech Navi - $9.9m acquisition

Logistics firm China South City Holdings - $195m for 10% stake

Search engine Sogou - $448m for 36.5% stake

"I think Alibaba is running scared - as they're about to IPO, it's really damaging for them," says Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group.

"Jack Ma looks desperate right now."

And Tencent hasn't been intimidated by Alibaba's big spends, as it has deep pockets of its own.

The firm recently bought a large stake in JD.com, the second-biggest e-commerce site in China behind Alibaba, for $215m.

Alibaba's Tmall, which allows business to sell to consumers, has about a 50% market share, followed by JD.com with 19%, and Tencent's own platform with 7%, according to research firm Analysys.

"The two giants are competing with each other, making acquisitions in very similar areas - travel, online lifestyle websites, shopping - it's head-to-head competition," says Mr Wang.

"I believe it will be one of the most expensive competitions in online history."

And the competition is just heating up. "In the next six to 10 months, you're going to see a lot of consolidation in the mobile start-up space," says Mr Rein.

San Francisco tech job growth leads nation

Sep 30, 2013, 11:03am PDT  San Francisco Business Times


Bloomberg
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.



Patrick Hoge Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

The city of San Francisco led the nation in tech job growth for the last five years, according to a new report released today by the Bloomberg Technology Summit, which San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee is co-sponsoring this year with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

San Francisco’s tech employment rose 51.8 percent over the 2007 to 2012 period, according to the study by South Mountain Economics, which focused particularly on New York, which has also seen significant employment growth in the tech/information sector, including traditional tech companies as well as media and information companies.

“San Francisco comes out number one in terms of growth of the tech/information sector,” said study author Michael Mandel. Brooklyn (Kings County) and Wake County, Fla., came out number two and three, with 21 percent growth and 18.2 percent, respectively, while Santa Clara posted gains of 15.5 percent.

Mayor Lee recently said there are 1,892 tech companies in San Francisco, up 3.6 percent from the prior year, representing 45,493 jobs.

Mandel speculated that one reason why San Francisco and New York City saw such strong gains is because both are centers of media and information companies.

“The way that i think about technology, the current growth wave, is that it’s not pure tech anymore. It’s really pure tech converging with information,” Mandel said. “That may explain why San Francisco has done so well in this round.”

Growth in the tech/information sector enabled New York to increase private sector employment by 4 percent between 2007 and 2012, even as national private sector payrolls fell by 3 percent, Mandel found. In fact, he said because of the growth of the tech/information sector, New York City’s share of the nation’s private sector employment now stands at its highest level since 1992.

California's unemployment rate increased slightly during August to 8.9 percent, up from 8.7 percent in July. Unemployment nationwide, by comparison, was 7.3 percent.

Unemployment in San Francisco, by contrast, fell to 5.6 percent in August from 6 percent in July. Statewide, San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo continue to hold the lowest unemployment rates.

New York City’s tech/information sector grew by 11 percent from 2007 to 2012, adding 26,000 jobs and $5.8 billion in wages to the local economy, which in turn fueled private sector job growth that was four times that of the New York suburbs over the period, the study showed. The Big Apple’s tech/information sector supports 262,000 jobs and contributes nearly $30 billion to payrolls, making it the second largest driver of the New York economy.

Also Monday, the Bloomberg Technology Summit released a companion study by the Boston Consulting Group, which interviewed more than 50 tech executives from New York and San Francisco that showed both cities have fostered tech sector growth by developing five key conditions: growing a strong talent pipeline, supporting a vibrant tech community, leveraging local early stage capital, expanding tech infrastructure and office space, and engaging with existing industries.

In San Francisco, for example, Mayor Lee holds weekly events at local tech companies, and he led the successful effort to eliminate payroll taxes for companies in the central city.

The second annual Bloomberg Technology Summit, which aims to help other cities learn from New York and San Francisco’s successes, is being co-sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology & Innovation (sf.citi), a trade group of San Francisco tech companies.

The first session of the summit is taking place in New York on Monday, while the second will be held in San Francisco next March. A newly announced third session will be held in London next year as well.
Patrick Hoge covers technology for the San Francisco Business Times.

TECNIFÍCATE CONFERENCE: TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION FOR THE LATIN COMMUNITY

Tecnifícate is coming to Riverside City College (RCC) with a FREE one day Spanish language conference geared toward the Latin community. Attendees will be provided with information on how to better leverage technology and the program will cover small business usage of social media, new media, interactive Internet and mobile applications. Parents can also learn how to protect the online security of their family and their children from cyberbullying.

Ariel Coro, Hispanic Tech Expert and founder of Tu Tecnología will lead a group of Latino Leaders as part of the educational program line up of the upcoming event:

When: Saturday, April 27th, 2013

Where: RCC’s Landis Auditorium – 4800 Magnolia Avenue, Riverside, CA 92505

Time: Doors open at 9:30 am and will go through 4:00 pm – with a lunch break in between.

Attendees can reserve their free spots TODAY at:  http://tecnificate.com or by calling 1-888-444-5507

The conference is sponsored by Riverside Community College District, Riverside City College, Tu Tecnología, iima4biz Initiative, CA Community Colleges Economic & Workforce Development Program, Senator Richard D. Roth, District 31 and Assemblymember Jose Medina, 61st District, CHiSPA, Cardenas Markets, City of Riverside Public Utilities, Greater Riverside Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Greater Corona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Leadership Technology Institute and VOXXI.com.

ABOUT TECNIFÍCATE & ARIEL CORO

The Tecnifícate series is targeted at Spanish speaking residents of California to help encourage a better adoption and understanding of technology and educate on the tangible and positive impact it will have on their lives. It is a joint project of Tu Tecnología and the California Community Colleges Economic & Workforce Development Program. Ariel Coro is the most recognized Tech Expert for Hispanics reaching millions of households every month through TV, radio, print, web and social media. Coro is a regular contributor on CNN en Español and Despierta América and is the host of Tu Tecnología, a news segment that educates Hispanic families on the latest tech, gadgets, apps and auto news. His column is featured every Sunday in La Opinion and is syndicated to other Impremedia news properties. He is also the author of the new book, El Salto aprovecha las nuevas tecnologías y alcanza tu potencial, published by Random House Vintage Español.

SOURCE: Tu Tecnología

RELATED LINKS

http://www.tutecnologia.com
http://www.tecnificate.com

On-Line Social Media Management workshop available now for classroom use this fall!

CCC Faculty to participate in development of statewide social media and business internet curriculum

Thousand Oaks, CA – Demand for employees to manage social media and business Internet applications continues to swiftly increase in California leaving those without the knowledge at a disadvantage for promotions or new jobs.  Training workers in social media, new media, interactive internet and mobile applications is the ultimate goal of the Social Media Curriculum Collaborative developed for CCC Faculty by the iima4biz Initiative of the Economic and Workforce Development Program, CCCCO.

“Many colleges are innovating and developing valuable resources.  I felt our initiative could develop a place to share, collaborate and build the components of a basic certificate program that could be utilized by any campus to finish their own approved curriculum,” says Steve Wright Statewide Director iima4biz.

CCC Faculty may join the effort at www.ccc-colab.org.  Links to the initiating webinar and minutes of the work to date are on the site.  This fall a new working group will be formed to identify  the components of a basic certificate program aimed at the business related Internet applications and workforce needed by small and medium businesses throughout the state.

The site also offers links to previously developed curriculum assets like the on-line Social Media Management workshop series available free at www.web4biz.org just released this year.

The workshop consists of 5 to 10 minute videos with discussion and materials covering the following key aspects of social media deployment that can be included as part of any CCC class assignment:

• Understanding the relevant applications to your business, how to assess your identity on the web, how to review your business strategy in light of new social media advantages and risks.
• Overview of new media marketing, customer service, collaboration and contingency (disaster recovery) for small business
• Review of implementation alternatives; i.e. Outsource, Hire or Train, as well as Budget and Metric reviews

Presented by Kerry Rego and Steve Wright, the series is entertaining and engaging. Kerry's years of experience working closely with small businesses and approachable warmth provide a personal touch to the material. Steve's traditional management viewpoint brings out the questions and concerns of business owners.   We have tested and use the material with small businesses.   Users have nothing but praise for the timely and common sense approach that puts businesses in charge of their online identity and strategy.
Please register and enjoy the workshop yourself, it is free for you and your students. If you would like to use it in your class we offer custom registration and reporting for each class you identify. This is a free service to CCC Faculty.  If you would like to have your course added to the drop down menu for registration please register at www.web4biz.org.
The online Social Media Management workshop and Social Media Curriculum Collaborative are funded by a grant from the State of California Economic & Workforce Development Program, iima4biz Initiative and has no commercial sponsor or commercial interest.

About imma4biz

Materials and curriculum were developed by the iima4biz Initiative with a grant from the Economic & Workforce Development Program and Materials are being presented at no cost. There is no commercial interest or product endorsement in the content.  Imma4biz is an initiative of the Economic & Workforce Development Program.

Steve Wright -State Director iima4biz Initiative - Economic & Workforce Development program CCCCO
http://www.linkedin.com/in/1stevewright
Initiative Director
Economic & Workforce Development - California Community Colleges
www.iima4biz.org
805 496 8583

Getting a job in Social Media could start with a Certificate of Completion from this on-line Workshop

Thousand Oaks, CA – Demand for employees who can manage a company’s social media efforts continues to increase in California leaving those without the knowledge at a disadvantage for promotions or new jobs.  Training workers to manage social media, new media, interactive internet and mobile applications is the goal of the just released on-line Social Media Management workshop series developed by the California Community College Economic & Workforce Development Program and available FREE at www.web4biz.org. 

This cutting edge workshop is designed to help individuals understand how Internet technology affects business and how they can develop an effective plan to impact revenue growth and customer retention with interactive internet, social and mobile media.  From their desk at work or at home, on their computer or mobile device, participants waste no time in finding out what is most effective for their markets and their products and learn to apply solid proven successful traditional business practices in the ever changing landscape of current technology and consumer behavior. 

To earn a non-credit Certificate of Completion in the Social Media Management workshop users simply register on-line at www.web4biz.org and complete all the workshops in the program in short segments of 5-10 minute videos, total time two hours. The participants will be exposed to the fundamentals of technology, efficiency, implementation, marketing, reducing operating costs, customer service and disaster recovery.

Participants are asked to apply the strategic planning process to their own business as part of the workshop exercises.  Discussion boards, archive materials, worksheets and links further help in training and understanding the management of social media.

Kerry Rego and Steve Wright present a series of entertaining and engaging workshop videos teaching the fundamentals of Social Media Management.  Kerry's years of experience working closely with small businesses and approachable warmth provide a personal touch to the material.  Steve’s traditional management viewpoint answers the questions and concerns of business owners.

Employees are a fundamental element of small business; they often carry out multiple duties including new media, web site management, clerical, etc.  In order for California to develop economic prosperity and competitive resilience, we must ensure that employees have the opportunity to learn new skills required for the current economic environment.  California’s 740,000 small businesses are the engine of jobs and recovery, and on-line competition for consumers occurs over the internet from every state and country.  The ability of California business to adapt and grow revenue utilizing these tools is essential for economic growth. 

Materials and curriculum were developed by the iima4biz Initiative with a grant from the Economic & Workforce Development Program and materials are being presented at no cost. There is no commercial interest or product endorsement in the content.  iima4biz is an Initiative of the Economic & Workforce Development Program. 

About iima4biz

The Interactive Internet and Mobile Applications for Business Initiative, or iima4biz, is one of several innovative initiatives led by the Economic & Workforce Development program hosted by the California Community Colleges. Iima4biz provides workshops and training for the business community, as well as, curriculum assets for the California Community College system.  Timely social media conferences for government and for Spanish speaking businesspersons can be found at the Economic & Workforce Development  website: www.iima4biz.org.

Successful Spanish Language Technology Conference, Tecnificate, educates Spanish-speaking businesspersons on how to leverage Internet technology - now available online for FREE!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE         Media Contact:

June 18, 2012                                     Steve Wright

                                                            State Initiative Director-Iima4biz Initiative

                                                            Economic & Workforce Development Program

                                                            California Community Colleges

                                                            805 231 8444

                                                            swright@cccewd.net

Successful Spanish Language Technology Conference, Tecnificate, educates Spanish-speaking businesspersons on how to leverage Internet technology - now available online for FREE!

A Unique CA Community College Economic Development Program

What:             Tecnifícate, filmed live May 19 was a conference featuring Spanish speaking business persons who share exciting examples of how to leverage internet technology to grow business.  The day proved to be motivational while focusing on the power of new media technology in personal and professional development.  Speaker presentations were captured on video and are now available online.

Who:            Speakers,

Ariel Coro - TV personality and founder of Tutecnologia.com

Nancy Rosales - Owner of "Neveria Abel 1950" (markets Latin flavored ice-cream online)

Becky Krinsky - Co-Owner and founder of "Recipes for Life ©"

Tayde Aburto - Founder of the Hispanic Chamber of e-Commerce

Diego Cárdenas - Small business owner and Radio/TV personality

Francisco Rojas - Small business consultant and marketing strategist

When:             Available online as of Tuesday June 19, 2012

Where:            Link: http://nsp.performedia.com/tecnificate

Click ‘register’ and then click ‘log in’

Why:               Business growth today is driven by the effective use of the Internet and 20% of adult Californians consider Spanish their primary language, this type of Community College outreach will positively impact the California economy both domestically and internationally where Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world next to Mandarin.

ABOUT

The Tecnifícate series was launched over a year ago and was the brainchild of Ariel Coro, Tu Technologia, and Steve Wright, iima4biz Initiative Director, Economic & Workforce Development Program, CA Community Colleges.  The videos available online are from the third Tecnificate held at Hartnell College in Salinas, CA.  Two prior Tecnificate events were held in the Los Angeles area.  Tecnificate events have drawn hundreds of attendees from hundreds of miles away. Very few events in California serve the need of the ‘Spanish speaking technorati’ who could have a huge impact on the future California economy.

Ariel Coro is the event producer, Technology Expert for the Hispanic community and author of the new book, El Salto – aprovecha las nuevas tecnologías y alcanza tu potencial (The leap – leverage new technologies and reach your potential). Coro is the host of Tu Tecnología, a Spanish language broadcast TV segment that educates Hispanic families on the latest technology and autos. His technology column is featured in La Opinion and El Diario La Prensa and is syndicated nationally.

Steve Wright, MBA, MS Telecommunications is the iima4biz Initiative Director, Economic & Workforce Development Program, California. Community Colleges. With over 15 years developing technology based economic development projects, Steve leads the iima4biz Initiative with a goal to stimulate California small business growth thru advanced utilization of the internet.  A companion program in English, the iima4biz workshop, is now available on line at www.web4biz.org.

AnaLuisa Morales, Regional Director New Media Center, Hartnell Community College, hosted the event on May 19 and worked with Peter Hackes, Performedia, www.performedia.com, to film and provide the online access.

Successful COE-iima4biz webinar on social media jobs and curriculum development…recorded …watch when you please

In case you missed it …

Social Media Curriculum What’s Next?

A CA Jobs and CCC Curriculum Webinar

It was a well received and timely review of the emerging California market for Social Media Jobs and a discussion of an opportunity for CCC instructors to collaborate on Social Media Curriculum.

Log in Through the CCC Confer website:

http://www.cccconfer.org/MyConfer/GoToArchivesAnonymousely.aspx?MeetingID=11088b7c-3ea4-43f5-9fb7-a201837c2ba8&MeetingSeriesID=42395ece-eca2-45d1-bada-0353503c22f2&ScreenName=&Channel=774850&PIN=&Role=Participant

-       Audrey Reille, Director of the Center of Excellence (COE) in LA/Orange, will present the findings of the Statewide Social Media Environmental Scan produced this February 2012 in partnership with Michelle Marquez, COE Director for the Central Valley Region.

o   About the scan: The emergence of social media impacts job functions across multiple industries and occupations, and in particular: (1) public relations (PR); (2) marketing and media communications; (3) business: development, sales, and advertising; and (4) social media management. The COE study included an employer survey, an analysis of online job postings, and secondary research to identify occupational growth, wages, skill set needed for social media jobs, existing community college courses, model programs, and recommendations to colleges to meet new workforce development needs. The full report is available at www.coeccc.net/ict

-       Steve Wright, iima4biz Initiative EWD, will discuss the potential to collaborate and share material on the newly developed CCC Social Media Curriculum Collaboration site ( www.CCC-CoLab.org)

o   About the site:  This site is dedicated and restricted to CA CCC Faculty, instructors and EWD trainers who wish to share ideas, links and curriculum related to Social Media, Interactive Internet and Mobile Applications relevant for instruction at the CCC's or EWD workshops.

o   Joining this exclusive site cohort will provide timely, filtered and relevant information discussed by your peers.  Here, you can enjoy a responsive dialogue about the issues developed on the Discussions, Success stories or News items areas of the site.  This is a ground up collaborative effort with all data supplied by the registered members.

-       For questions please call Steve Wright (805 231 8444) www.iima4biz.org

-        

Stephen Wright

http://www.linkedin.com/in/1stevewright
Initiative Director

Economic & Workforce Development - California Community Colleges