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Kelly Truong at The Chronicle of Higher Ed’s Wired Campus blog reports on a new study which shows that Student Smartphone Use Doubles; Instant Messaging Loses Favor. The study was conducted by a researcher at Ball State University who found that:
Ninety-seven percent of students use text messages as their main form of communication, as opposed to 30 percent for e-mail and 25 percent for instant messaging.
Approximately 90 percent of smartphone owners use their phones to access the Internet.
99.8 percent of students own cell phones and …Of those phone-owning students, 49 percent now have smartphones, compared with 38 percent last October and 27 percent in February 2009.
Matt Silverman at Mashable reviews 5 Terrific Tools for Keeping Tabs on Twitter Trends. If you want to keep up with trends on Twitter, monitor your brand, or just find out what’s popular right now, check out this quick post for a feature rundown of these applications:
The Official YouTube blog has announced that the massive video-sharing site has just launched an online video editing tool. It’s now available on their Test Tube, ideas incubator page. This new application enables you to:
Combine multiple videos you’ve uploaded to create a new longer video
Trim the beginning and/or ending of your videos
Add soundtracks from the AudioSwap library of tens of thousands of songs
Create new videos without worrying about file formats and publish them to YouTube with one click — no upload necessary
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has issued a new report concerning The Future of Cloud Computing. Here’s a quick overview:
“Technology experts and stakeholders say they expect they will ‘live mostly in the cloud’ in 2020 and not on the desktop, working mostly through cyberspace-based applications accessed through networked devices. This will substantially advance mobile connectivity through smartphones and other internet appliances. Many say there will be a cloud-desktop hybrid. Still, cloud computing has many difficult hurdles to overcome, including concerns tied to the availability of broadband spectrum, the ability of diverse systems to work together, security, privacy, and quality of service.”
Brenna Ehrlich at Mashable discusses a new Neilsen study which shows that the world’s Web users spend 22% of their time engaged with social media in How the World Is Spending Its Time Online. Here are a few other highlights from the report:
Three quarters of Internet users worldwide visit a social network or blog when they go online — that’s a 24% increase over last year.
Joe Average (the international version) spends 66% more time on these sites than he did a year ago — for example, your average user spent 6 hours on these sites in April 2010, while last year he spent 3 hours, 31 minutes.
Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia make an appearance among the world’s most popular brands.
Denise Wakeman at the Social Media Examiner suggests 6 Ways to Constantly Produce Quality Blog Content. In this article Wakeman discusses the “I Have No Time to Blog” myth and makes six solid recommendations for maintaining a quality blog:
#1: Create an Editorial Calendar
#2: Plug in the Types of Posts and Topics You’re Going to Write About
#3: Keep a Running List of Blog Topics
#4: Write Several Blog Posts at One Time
#5: Find Guest Bloggers to Help You Out With Content
Veezzle is a new search engine which finds free stock photos by crawling dozens of websites. If you’re looking for high-quality images, but don’t want to pay for them, check out this new search tool.
Christopher Ryan at the Apple Blog gathers up 25 Safari Extensions You Can Install Now. The new Safari 5 browser offers support for browser extensions, so check out this post to find 25 useful plugins in the following categories:
Nick Shin at the Social Media Examiner blogs about How to Customize Your Facebook Page Using Static FBML. This is an A-Z primer on Facebook Markup Language, which is a subset of HTML. I have found FBML to be very useful on my FB Page, so this is a must-read if you’re not yet familiar with this. Here are the main sections of this quick guide:
What Is Static FBML?
Adding Static FBML to Your Facebook Page
Setting Up Static FBML as a Tab
Setting Up Static FBML to Your Left Column Wall
Adding Content to Your Static FBML Box
How to Add a Clickable Image in Static FBML
How to Embed a YouTube Video in Static FBML
How to Set the FBML Box as the Default Landing Tab
Pam Dyer at SocialMediaToday gathers a list of the Top 10 Twitter Tutorials on YouTube. These useful videos will fill you in on how to make the best of Twitter whether you’re a beginner or an advanced user. Here are five of the ten tutorials, be sure and check out the full article for more.
Amy Porterfield at the Social Media Examiner explains How to Make Twitter More Useful for Your Business. According to a recent Burson-Marsteller study, 65 of the largest 100 international companies have active accounts on Twitter, making it the #1 social media choice for professionals. So, if you’d like to learn how to better leverage this platform, you’ll want to read this article which discusses a new Twitter portal called oneforty with nearly 3,000 applications and services.
The folks at Mr. Manager have put together a list of the Top 25 Open Source Project Management Apps. If you’re looking to streamline your project and keep on track and within budget, you’ll want to check out this helpful annotated list. One that I didn’t see on the list that I’ve found very useful is OpenProj, a free open source alternative to MS Project.
Jason Fitzpatrick presents a list of the Five Best Web-Based Conferencing Tools. Each list entry includes cost, if any, a discussion of major features, and a video tutorial for getting started. Here’s the list, be sure and check out the full article for reviews and videos:
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