Yesterday, Google Blogoscoped picked up on Picasa’s new CC feature: Search! In case it weren’t clear, we get really excited when platforms like Picasa enable CC content exploration. Its one thing to enable your community to select a CC license for their work, but its another thing entirely to help the rest of the web discover that content. Picasa’s commons community will surely benefit from this kind of exposure, so thanks to Picasa for enabling such a valuable feature.

The one thing you can say for certain about Twitter is that it makes a terrible first impression. You hear about this new service that lets you send 140-character updates to your "followers," and you think, Why does the world need this, exactly? It's not as if we were all sitting around four years ago scratching our heads and saying, "If only there were a technology that would allow me to send a message to my 50 friends, alerting them in real time about my choice of breakfast cereal.

This is an interesting article from TIME magazine well worth a read.

We recently had the opportunity to test the new Microsoft Office plugin from OffiSync, which integrates Google Docs and Office. We can sum up our findings with one word: WOW. Although still in beta format, the plugin worked extremely well, providing that one missing aspect to the Microsoft Office software suite - an online component for storage, sharing, and collaboration.

The ongoing debate on the effectiveness of technology use for student learning outcomes still seems to have no clear answers. Recently, some institutions have decided to end their laptop programs for students because of the economic challenges facing those institutions. But there is no consistent response as to the effect on students. Some say it has been highly effective for students, and others say that it has not had any significant impact in how students learn.

What is interesting is that there is also no real agreement as to what should be measured or even whether it can be measured in order to quantify success in this regard. Institutions--whether K-12 or higher education--that have adopted technology for instruction often have little or no systematic methodology in place for instructional technology use or how its success can or should be measured. Rather, the technology use has typically relied upon individual teachers and faculty who have given up time to learn and use new technology and who are always underfunded and unable, as a result, to expand their use to other programs and other instructors for ongoing research.

Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine. Perhaps it will one day become one, but currently it’s exactly what its tagline says: a computational knowledge engine. However, it looks like Google, it provides you with answers and therefore most users will try to use it as a search engine, which doesn’t always yield good results. Once you start asking it the right questions, it’ll give you better answers.

I’ve spent a couple of days with Wolfram Alpha, and I’ve learned to love it for all the ways it’s different than search engines such as Google. Here are some guidelines which will help you shake off that “search engine” frame of mind and perhaps help you start using Wolfram Alpha to its full potential.

If you've casually been using Wolfram Alpha, but don't want to give up your Google addiction reliance, there's hope for you yet. A new Firefox extension lets you keep using Google, while showing Wolfram Alpha results on the side of the page.

Google has announced the release of a slew of new search options. One of the most promising features for students is Wonder Wheel. Wonder Wheel graphically displays search terms related to your original search. This is not a new concept, Eyeplorer employs a similar concept, but it is new to Google search.

Another new option from Google is the timeline option. Using the timeline option, you can narrow your search results by dates referenced in the content. For example, using the timeline option if I'm researching "steroids in baseball" I can narrow my results to articles published in the last month or find articles written during the 2005 Congressional hearings on steroids in baseball.

Nielsen released some interesting numbers today that show that Web and mobile video watching are experiencing skyrocketing growth. The bottom line: we seem to just love our YouTube and Hulu videos.

Nielsen’s Three Screen Report, which measures the viewing habits of Americans in terms of TV, the Internet, and mobile phones, shows that while TV viewing might still be dominant, online video usage is up by 53 percent since this time last year, and the number of people watching video via cell phones is also up by an impressive 52 percent.

Some interesting stats and graphs on the uptake of online video. The traditional television stations should be starting to squirm a little.

Google has unveiled a new range of tools that will allow web users to dig deeper in to their search results. Here, we take a closer look at two of the new services on offer, and how they can help you find what you’re looking for.

This article from the UL Telegraph looks at a couple of new search options in light of the new Wolfram Alpha engine.

I joined Twitter about five weeks ago (you can find me at LarryFerlazzo) and I thought it would be a good time to reflect on my experience so far.

It’s been a good one.

Larry Ferlazzo has written this really interesting post on his first five weeks experience with Twitter. The links at the end of the post are also of great value.