Category: Internet and web

Friday Five: higher ed blog roundup

A few notable items from the world of higher ed blogging:

  1. A rankings watchdog. U.S. News blogger and rankings guru Bob Morse points to a newly formed watchdog of college rankings . Called the International Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence, or IREG, the group “will conduct reviews of various ‘academic rankings’ and measures of ‘academic excellence’ to assess how well they serve higher education stakeholders and the general public,” Morse writes. He’s also a member of the executive committee. Morse plans to use his blog to “keep readers informed on the evolution and activities of the IREG-International Observatory and what impact it has on rankings around the world.”
  2. From print to digital. Karine Joly‘s latest column for University Business is all about how college magazines are making the transition from paper to digital. She links to the story in a recent blog post and also shares a nice list of online college magazines.
  3. Blogrolling and its discontents. Karlyn Morissette has a couple of interesting posts lately about her anti-blogroll stance and a why I blog manifesto, in which she also reveals she and Kyle James had a six-hour conversation about blogging. (I assume this was a face-to-face or phone conversation — what I like to term a real conversation [and yes I know my Baby Boomer age is showing] — rather than one of those virtual conversations we like to talk about on our blogs.) Seriously, though. Six hours? About blogging? I don’t think I’ve ever had a six-hour conversation with anyone about anything, not even punk rock or baseball. (Update: Kyle informs me via Twitter that the conversation was via Gtalk.)
  4. A new look for college websites? The eduStyle blog, always a great resource for web ideas, discusses some visual trends and points to refreshing new interfaces from Boston University and Loyola-Marymount. Could these sites and their navigation structures signal the next wave in university web design? Bonus link: the top five websites on eduStyle with zero votes.
  5. Time to unplug for the weekend? I leave you with this provocative post from the Chronicle’s Wired Campus blog:

    A provocative article in the forthcoming issue of Atlantic Monthly argues that Web surfing is rewiring our brains, making us unable to stay focused long enough to make it to the end of a book or long article.

    I would have posted more from that blog post, but I lost interest before I could finish the second paragraph. Seriously, though, that article — Is Google making us stupid? — is worth a read. The references to 2001: A Space Odyssey may be lost on some readers, but there’s a lot to ponder there.

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Now playing: My Morning Jacket – I’m Amazed
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The accidental video sensation: Or, how I learned to quit worrying and love YouTube

Now that Karine Joly has told all her readers about my secret YouTube guerrilla marketing tactic, it’s time I shared the real story of this amazingly popular video. (Popular in terms of hits, that is. The ratings? Not so much.)

That’s not some surrealist short-short art film you’re viewing. It’s actual science. And it’s gotten 82,000 hits over the past year.

Karine included this video in her recent list of five things to do before you post your video on YouTube. It was No. 5 on the list — a surprise that Karine posted as a joke. But hey, I’m from the any-publicity-is-good-publicity school of PR, so I’m okay with it. Linkage is linkage.

“If you’re looking to generate some big numbers in terms of page views,” Karine wrote, “make your video very short and difficult (impossible) to understand at first sight.”

If I had only known back then that this video of a piece of aerogel being struck by a bullet would get so many visits, I would have included some dramatic background music (a la dramatic chipmunk) and promoted it more heavily. But the real reason I posted that video (and the less popular but slightly more comprehensible sequel, Shattered! conventional armor-grade PMMA hit by projectile) was to add some multimedia to a post on our research blog, Visions, about the researcher who won a nanotechnology award for his work with aerogels. The video was provided by the professor. There’s nothing professional about it. It’s just a record of an experiment.

Who knew it would become an accidental YouTube sensation, discovered by none other than Karine Joly? The vid has been played more than 82,000 times this past year. Granted, it isn’t exactly this:

“Dramatic chipmunk” has gotten 8.8 million views and countless 5-star ratings during its time. It’s the pinnacle of short viral videos to which all web 2.0 filmmakers aspire.

But, my aerogel video is not just entertainment. It’s serious science. It’s been discussed and shared on serious science blogs. Still, if it makes people scratch their heads and leave lots of wtf comments, that’s okay by me. As long as they’re watching.

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Now playing: Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Accidents Will Happen
via FoxyTunes