While I was away: new Chronicle blog, Facebook/Beacon woes, fastest growing search terms, Courtney Love is still around (who knew?), and more

While I was busy conferencing, a few blogworthy items have come in over the virtual transom. Time to play catch up.

  • Brainstorm is the latest blog offering from The Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s an offshoot from The Chronicle Review, the collection of thoughtful essays that is branded online as “the magazine of ideas.” I doubt I’ll follow this one; it’s a bit too far to the highbrow end for my middlebrow tastes.
  • Another interesting find: Communicators Anonymous, a blog by Lauren Vargas, a marketing professor at Northwood University. This one’s going into my RSS feeds.
  • All your face are belong to us? Facebook has been catching it lately since the news broke that its Beacon advertising program collects data on people who aren’t even part of the Facebook network. A smattering:
  • txting relevant 2 educ’n? “Text2Teach was launched in 2002, and has since managed to serve 900,000 students from 204 public elementary schools” in the Philippines.
  • iPhone rising: Google announces fastest growing search terms. iPhone tops the list, followed by webkinz. But of course. And Britney Spears doesn’t even make the top 10.
  • Calling all ‘webiste’ designers: Courtney Love wants you. Or so she says in a recent, typo-ridden MySpace blog post.
  • There’s more stuff from the past few days in my shared RSS items.