Monday, October 26, 2009

2009 ECAR Study of Undergrads and Technology

Educause has published the annual ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology for 2009. Some of their key findings include:

  • Desktop computer ownership has decreased 27% while laptop ownership increased nearly 23%.
  • Despite the state of the economy 8 out of 10 freshman entered school with a laptop which was one year old or less.
  • 9 out of 10 students use the college & university library website.
  • Over 44% of students have contributed content to video websites, over 41% to wikis, and over 37% have contributed to blogs. 35% of students use podcasts.
  • Social networking websites and text messaging were used by 9 out of 10 respondents.

Global Trends

These National Intelligence Council reports are worth a read. I particularly enjoyed the report on 2010 Trends that was written in 1996 and then revised in late 1997. I find that it is nteresting to see what they get right and what they get wrong.

The others are more up to date in a Dr. Who kind of sense.


Global Trends 2025

Mapping the Global Future 2020

Global Trends 2015

Global Trends 2010

New Pew Report on Twitter

The Pew Internet Project just released a new report on Twitter (and other status update services) at 4pm Eastern today. Their September 2009 survey shows that three groups are driving the growth of this activity: younger internet users, mobile users, and those who are already using social network websites. They like to share, they have the means to do so, and Twitter makes it easy.

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It is interesting that Twitter did have more older users but that youth are coming on board later.

I suspect that bigger growth will happen in the coming quarters with the real time search capabilities added to Twitter by Bing (and probably Google later).

"Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service.

Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users – those under age 44.

In addition, the more devices someone owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter or another service to update their status. Fully 39% of internet users with four or more internet-connected devices (such as a laptop, cell phone, game console, or Kindle) use Twitter, compared to 28% of internet users with three devices, 19% of internet users with two devices, and 10% of internet users with one device.

The median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year. The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.

It will probably become more difficult to track status updating as an independent activity as social network updates feed into Twitter and vice versa. For now, it is clear that a “social segment” of internet users is flocking to both social network sites and status update services. This segment is likely to grow as ever more internet users adopt mobile devices as a primary means of going online."

Ten Technologies You Can't Afford to Ignore

Does the Brain Like E-Books?

The Room for Debate feature of the NYT has an interesting series of articles:

Does the Brain Like E-Books?

Library Use of eBooks

Some useful reports on the data in ths review. It appears to be a useful book too.

Library Use of E-books: 2008-2009 Edition Reviewed in Learned Publishing

"The PDF file available here is of a book review (really a “report” review) from the October, 2009 issue of Learned Publishing. The report being reviewed, Library Use of E-books: 2008-2009 Edition, was published by Primary Research."

Friday, October 9, 2009

Barnes & Noble rep outs company’s plans for color e-book reader

Barnes & Noble will offer a color e-book reader next Spring, according to a company representative at the ongoing CTIA show. Few details were discussed, and the news isn’t necessarily “official,” but the rep did indicate that B&N fully intends to compete with the Kindle and will focus on the obvious hue-oriented difference.

Related posts:

  1. iRiver outs new e-book reader Photos and
  2. Barnes and Noble adds ebook reader for iPhone The brick-
  3. Fujitsu shows off FLEPia color e-book reader Fujitsu is