Why Content Curation Should be in Your Skillset

Reposted from the Internet Time Blog:

Curation can boost your profit and help your people grow. It can save millions, reduce frustration, and boost the velocity of information in your organization. It starts in a gallery.

You expect the curator of an art gallery to know the collection and to:

• search out the best items
• select for the collection
• authenticate and preserve items
• add interpretation, descriptions, and meaning
• publicize viewings

Curating these items — selecting, organizing, evaluating, and sharing them widely — multiplies an organization’s return on information many times over. It makes sense to recruit curators from within; the primary job prerequisite is a burning curiosity. Instead of satisfying art lovers, corporate curation saves enormous amounts of time, keeps teams on the same page, and equips everyone with the latest insights. In a minute I’ll give you the story of a company that saved over fifty million dollars with a low-budget curation program. And, as Clay Shirky has said: “Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.

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Wi-Fi Enabled School Buses: Providing A Basic Human Right?

Reposted from Edudemic:

Internet access was once thought of as a privilege. According to a 24-country survey by CIGI-Ipsos Global Survey on Internet Security and Trust, it is now a basic human right, as it helps us achieve socially, economically, and academically in ways we never could before. Like hundreds of other school districts across the nation, California’s Coachella Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) provides an iPad to each student for school and home use. In 2009, the district shelled out $3 million to update its connectivity.

Students at CVUSD’s West Shores High School, however, did not receive the same high-quality Internet connection that other schools did. According to a publication by the Riverside County Office of Education, the high school is in such a remote location that it was hard for technicians to figure out a way to bring the technology to the school. To remedy this situation, CVUSD provided one of its two Wi-Fi buses to service West Shores. So far, the results have been positive. With commutes as long as one hour or more each way, the routers allow students to complete homework and other enrichment activities on their tablets as they ride. What’s more, the district authorized these two school buses to park at designated trailer parks overnight, providing more Internet access after the ride home.

CVUSD administrators would like to outfit all 90 of their school buses with routers, but that would cost about $290,000. At this time, the district could only afford to pay for two. Because the routers run on battery power, they last only about an hour after each bus parks at its location for the night. The idea has merit, but it will take more money — and more battery power — to make it work for the 20,000 kids that fill the seats of the CVUSD.

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Parenting in the Social Age [INFOGRAPHIC]

Did you know that over 50% of parents felt that their children know more about the internet than they do? That can put parents in a precarious position. Just like putting restrictions on TV, chores, bedtimes, parents should be in control of what our child is and isn’t seeing on the internet. From checking parental controls to keeping up with the latest tech, this infographic from TeenSafe is a great place to start in helping parents become more actively engaged with their children online.

Obama Will Urge F.C.C. to Expand Local Broadband

Reposted from the New York Times:

President Obama on Wednesday will ask the Federal Communications Commission to pre-empt state laws that restrict communities’ ability to expand high-speed Internet access to underserved areas. He will make the announcement in Cedar Falls, Iowa, which has its own cable and high-speed data networks, including a one-gigabit broadband network that is 100 times as fast as the national average.

The initiative includes an effort by the Commerce Department to help communities with broadband infrastructure as well as loans and grants from the Agriculture Department to Internet providers in rural areas and the creation of an interagency council to speed up broadband deployment, White House officials said. The administration has also scheduled a meeting on broadband efforts for mayors and other local officials in June.

The moves are crucial to Mr. Obama’s plan to nurture innovation, the president’s advisers said, and keep the United States competitive with other nations that have faster and more widespread Internet connections. “Clearly, Americans want and need better, faster broadband because so much of our day-to-day lives and so many of the jobs we want to create depend on access,” said Jeffrey D. Zients, director of the National Economic Council. “High-speed broadband is central to maintaining our global advantage.”

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Take the Pew Web IQ Quiz!

Test your knowledge of technology and the web by taking our short 12-question quiz. When you finish, you will be able to compare your “Web IQ” with the average online American based on the results of our nationally representative survey of 1,066 adult internet users conducted September 12-18. You can also see how your results compare to online Americans based on age, gender and education.

Begin the quiz here.

7 Colorado Communities To Build Their Own Broadband

Reposted from the Washington Post:

Voters in seven cities and counties in Colorado voted Tuesday to free their local governments to offer Internet service. The votes marked a defeat for big, traditional Internet service providers such as Comcast that have successfully maneuvered to inject limits on municipal broadband into state regulations over the last decade. Now cities are figuring out ways to push back, including wiggling out from under laws the industry helped put in place.

In Boulder, locals voted on whether the city should be “authorized to provide high-speed Internet services (advanced services), telecommunications services, and/or cable television services to residents, businesses, schools, libraries, nonprofit entities and other users of such services.” As of late Tuesday night, the city of 100,000 people, which already owns miles of unused fiber, had approved the measure with 84 percent of the vote. Similar overrides also passed by large margins in the towns of Yuma, Wray, Cherry Hills Village and Red Cliff and in  Rio Blanco and Yuma counties, according to KUNC, a public radio station in northern Colorado.

The local popularity of municipal broadband puts traditional Internet service providers in a tough spot. There’s a debate taking place on the national level over whether the federal government should step in to overturn laws like Colorado’s, which prohibit municipal broadband. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler recently signaled that he might be willing to do so.

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More Than 60% of the World Remains Offline

Reposted from McKinsey Insights:

In a little more than a generation, the Internet has grown from a nascent technology to a tool that is transforming how people, businesses, and governments communicate and engage. The Internet’s economic impact has been massive, making significant contributions to nations’ gross domestic product (GDP) and fueling new, innovative industries. It has also generated societal change by connecting individuals and communities, providing access to information and education, and promoting greater transparency.

However, not all countries have harnessed the Internet’s benefits to the same degree. In a new report, we examine the evolution of Internet adoption around the world, the factors that enable the development of a vibrant Internet ecosystem, and the barriers that are impeding more than 60 percent of the global population from getting online.

Going forward, sustained, inclusive Internet user growth will require a multipronged strategy—one that will depend on close collaboration among players across the ecosystem, including governments, policy makers, nongovernmental organizations, network operators, device manufacturers, content and service providers, and brands.

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Download the full report here.

Here’s How We Take Back the Internet: A Recent Interview with Edward Snowden [VIDEO 35:17]

Appearing by telepresence robot, Edward Snowden speaks at TED2014 about surveillance and Internet freedom. The right to data privacy, he suggests, is not a partisan issue, but requires a fundamental rethink of the role of the internet in our lives — and the laws that protect it. “Your rights matter,” he say, “because you never know when you’re going to need them.”

Data Never Sleeps: 2014 [INFOGRAPHIC]

A few years ago, Domo created a wildly-popular infographic that illustrated how much data is created every minute by popular web services. Since the web continues to evolve and morph so quickly, they thought it would be interesting to revisit the topic in 2014 and see what’s changed, using the same metrics. Take a look and fathom the immensity of the ongoing proliferation of data happening right before our eyes!