The blueprint reflects the government’s view that broadband Internet is becoming the common medium of the United States, gradually displacing the telephone and broadcast television industries.

Here’s a (possibly tremendously important) thought: the iPad is a portrait-oriented personal computer. Everyone has been so caught up with the touchscreen, whiz-bang look, and thinness (of Jobs and iPad both) that they’ve failed to be properly stunned at the realization that Apple is about to release the first natively portrait-oriented personal computer to hit the market in decades.

Another thought: The New York Times viewed on an iPad is arguably closer to print design than web design.

Landscape (widescreen) is good for video, and that’s a major reason why displays have gotten wider over the past several years. But portrait is good for text – that’s why most books are portrait-oriented. The iPad’s ability to handle – and seamlessly switch between – both modes is one of the most important design considerations that pushes it ahead of the status quo.

(Via Daring Fireball)

Kim Smith, a graduate student in emerging media and communication at UT Dallas, produced this case study of Twitter use in Dr. Monica Rankin’s US history course:

Students find themselves checking the feed after hours because the public trail of Twitter chatter doubles as an excellent study aid. As one student from Rankin’s class put it, “The significant terms that we’ve talked about in discussions, we’ll tweet that, and you can [go] back [to] that, and it’s a pretty good study aid.” This, in turn, keeps Twitter on their minds, fueling the cycle of involvement.

In Some General Comments on the Twitter Experiment, Dr. Rankin offers her thoughts on the project.

Pace of comments and juggling multiple topics:

By the time a comment was posted and students had a chance to respond to it, several other tweets had gone up and new ideas had been introduced. I suspect that this bothered me more than it bothered the students. I tend to think and process information in a much more structural manner. Most of the students (in their world of intense multi-tasking) seemed completely capable of following several streams of thought at one time.

Increasing student engagement:

Overall, I think the twitter experiment was successful primarily because it encouraged students to engage who otherwise would not. Even in smaller classes, only a small number of students actively participate in class discussions. Students knew that their class participation grade would be partially determined by their involvement in these discussions and most of them seemed comfortable with using the technology to engage with the reading materials.

(Via Natalie Petouhoff)

Some argue that nothing that happens in Iraq will ever justify the costs. Historians will sort that out. Personally, at this stage, I only care about one thing: that the outcome in Iraq be positive enough and forward-looking enough that those who have actually paid the price — in lost loved ones or injured bodies, in broken homes or broken lives, be they Iraqis or Americans or Brits — see Iraq evolve into something that will enable them to say that whatever the cost, it has given freedom and decent government to people who had none.

Would you say to someone, “Wow, you must hate dogs. You only have one. You enjoy his company and playing with him, but seriously, only one? What do you have against dogs?”.

The shallow assumption of Apple’s buttons is they hate buttons, the deeper conclusion is they love the shit out of a few important buttons. I bet they obsess over the placement, color, label, push-back and feel of every single button on every Apple device.

(The full stand-up routine runs 7:19, and the Blackberry portion starts at 5:03. To start the video right at this point, I used a fine tool called Splicd.com.)

Today is International Women’s Day, an event celebrated for the first time on March 19, 1911:

More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination.

However less than a week later on 25 March, the tragic ‘Triangle Fire’ in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This disastrous event drew significant attention to working conditions and labour legislation in the United States that became a focus of subsequent International Women’s Day events.

International Women’s Day is widely-celebrated around the world, and a national holiday in a number of countries, including Bulgaria, China, Russia, Ukraine, and Vietnam. But women’s rights are still hard-won in many places, and I thought I’d share this article on the challenges and hopes of female candidates in Iraq’s parliamentary elections. Jenan Mubarak, on the right in the photo above, campaigning in Baghdad, is one of those candidates:

Ms. Mubark manages a construction company and runs the Iraqi Center for Women’s Rehabilitation and Employment, a nongovernmental organization that she said gave her a base of support, both male and female. In her walkup office in central Baghdad, she described her agenda in language that has become familiar to political campaigns around the world. “This,” she said, “is the first step for change in our country.”

Photo credit: AP Photo/ Karim Kadim

Courtesy Erin Scime, DopeData.com.

(Via Predicate, LLC)

At its best, the social medium is a perpetual, personalized news service about topics of your choosing — whether health care reform, tech news or the latest episode of “Gossip Girl” — filtered and served to you by people who care a lot about what you care a lot about.

The other examples – a place to ask questions, organize the people you follow by topical lists, monitor the output of conferences, and get local updates, like a bridge closing or traffic delay – burst the tired stereotype of Twitter as a TMI-laden place to tell everyone the most mundane details of your daily life.