What it does

CreativeCitizen is a “how to” site that solicits users opinions and suggestions on ways to lessen day-to-day environmental impact. The site weans out bad user suggestions through user voting allowing the cream to rise to the top. The basic idea is to provide a space where people can submit easy-to-implement ways of becoming greener. Alongside each suggestion is a global impact rating which currently includes five different categories: Water, Waste, Money, Electricity and Emissions. Perhaps the best part about the site is that it shows people how making simple choices can have a real impact like for example that using reusable grocery bags will save approximately 24 pounds of waste per year.

In their own words

"Creative Citizen™ is a mental shift: humans don't always have to be users and abusers, they can also be creators. Instead of continuing down the same path of global unawareness and consumption, a Creative Citizen™ reduces worldwide problems to daily, personal solutions. Our goal here is to help each person see how little acts have truly big effects."

Why it might be a killer

This site has a great deal of potential due to the fact that it will be more appealing to the average person that the majority of the “carbon counting” sites. By including money saved as one of the categories, many people who wouldn’t generally consider themselves to be environmentalists might jump on board to save money.

Some questions

Have they considered running a competition to see who can save the most in each category over a year? They could donate to the charity of the winners’ choice.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

According to the Boy Genius, it's not just iPhone users that will be getting / not getting the telco's WiFi on the house -- the company has plans to offer use of its hotspots for free to Laptop Connect and smartphone users. An internal memo from the provider appears to state that effective May 20th, anyone with a $60 or higher Laptop Connect plan will be able to take a ride on AT&T's networks in 17,000 locations, and the service will be extended to smartphone users later in the year. Of course, the company hasn't exactly wowed us with its rollout of this service for iPhone customers, so don't be surprised if nothing goes the way it's planned.

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B&H Photo has something called the Flip Minos in their latest catalog, apparently a smaller version of the Flip camera so popular with teens who smoke the bud. This new version will cost $179.99 and should be released June 4.

Cheers to you, AT&T. Within a month’s time, AT&T will have fully deployed HSPA within its 3G network. That means we’ll be getting 1.4Mbps down and 800Kbps up. Full release after the jump.

AT&T Nears Completion of 3G Wireless Technology Deployment That Delivers Broadband Wireless Speeds - for Downloads and Uploads

AT&T Will Be First in U.S. to Fully Deploy HSPA Technology in Its Wireless Network, Giving Customers Unsurpassed Speeds of up to 1.4 Mbps (Down), 800 Kbps (Up)

HSPA Technology Gives AT&T Competitive Advantage, Clear Path to LTE Standards in Years Ahead

San Antonio, Texas, May 21, 2008

By the end of June, connecting to AT&T’s 3G mobile broadband service will be as speedy as logging onto the high speed Internet service that many consumers enjoy at home.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) today announced that, in the next month, the company will deploy High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) technology in the six remaining markets across AT&T’s entire 3G (third-generation) wireless broadband network. When done, AT&T will have completed its deployment of HSUPA technology, which complements existing HSDPA technology (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), making AT&T the only U.S. carrier to have fully deployed HSPA technology in its 3G network.

Today the superfast AT&T 3G network is available in more than 275 markets. By year-end, the AT&T 3G network will be available in nearly 350 markets.

With the new addition of HSUPA technology, AT&T 3G users can enjoy uplink speeds between 500 and 800 Kbps. The technology is available in all but the few remaining AT&T 3G markets and will be included in all future deployments. The new upload speeds complement AT&T’s 3G download capabilities, which currently offer up to 1.4 Mbps across all markets for customers who have capable devices, such as AT&T’s LaptopConnect wireless modems.

“The ability to quickly upload large files from a laptop is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity,” said Kris Rinne, senior vice president of Architecture and Planning for AT&T’s wireless operations. “By fully deploying HSUPA across our 3G footprint, we not only meet the current needs of our customers but also lay the path for our continued evolution to even faster wireless broadband capabilities.”

Between 2005 and 2008, AT&T will have invested more than $20 billion in network improvements and upgrades — an average of $5 billion a year. AT&T recently turned down its older TDMA network, and that will allow the company to reuse valuable 850 MHz spectrum to expand and enhance 3G markets.

The company’s HSPA network is the best-positioned among American carriers to grow in line with customer demand, evolving to HSPA+ and providing next-generation speeds without costly investments. AT&T plans to adopt LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology to reach even higher speeds in the long term.

AT&T has the largest digital voice and data network in the U.S. In addition, only AT&T can offer 3G roaming in 60 countries, including Japan and South Korea, and voice calling in more than 200 countries.

Equally as important as the network is the device through which a customer experiences it. AT&T’s handset portfolio in company-owned stores is more than 75 percent 3G-capable — and will be even more enticing with the addition of more 3G-enabled smartphones in the summer and fall of 2008. Additionally, AT&T also has the most compelling set of 3G services, such as AT&T Video ShareSM, which allows users to share live video over wireless phones while on a voice call.

I've said before that I have trouble understanding what all the fuss is about with media consolidation. At a time when there's an unprecedented explosion of new voices on the Internet, it's difficult to get worked up about rule changes that would allow very slight concentration of newspapers and broadcast television, two industries that are declining in importance. Radley Balko notes that the ACLU is jumping into the debate. I don't understand how lobbying for more restrictive media regulations promotes civil liberties. Even worse, the organization -- whose work I normally support and admire -- seems really clueless about the state of the media marketplace. For example, their Washington legislative director says: "Six major companies control most of the media in the country, including the most popular sites on the Internet."

She doesn't say who the six companies are, but I'm going to guess it's the "big six" of Viacom, Disney, Time Warner, GE, Bertelsman, and News Corp. There's just no way you can argue that these six companies own "the most popular sites on the Internet." According to Alexa, most of the top 10 sites are owned by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, all independent companies. Only MySpace, recently acquired by News Corp., is in the top 10. But maybe she meant the top 10 media companies? Well, a good source for the sites most discussed in the blogosphere is the Memeorandum Leaderboard. Three of the top 10 are controlled by the "Big Six": CNN at #3, the Wall Street Journal at #9 and MSNBC at #10. Four others -- the Associated Press, New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic, -- are mainstream media outlets not controlled by the "Big Six." The final three slots are held by the Huffington Post and the Politico (twice), pure Internet publications not owned by the "Big Six."

Indeed, the whole idea that "six major companies" are gaining monopolistic control over the media marketplace doesn't make sense. There are, in fact, a ton of independent media companies. In addition to the New York Times and Washington Post companies, there are other big, independent newspaper chains like the Tribune Company (owner of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune) and Gannett (owner of USA Today and numerous other papers). There are foreign outlets like the BBC and the Guardian. There are magazine publishers like Conde Nast, book publishers like Pearson, and music publishers like EMI. The "Big Six" own a lot of media outlets, to be sure, but it's a big world, and there is no shortage of prominent media outlets that aren't controlled by these major players. And as media critic Ben Compaine has documented, the media marketplace has barely gotten more concentrated at all in the last couple of decades. For example, between the mid-1980s and the late 1990s, the market share of the top ten media companies increased from 38 percent to just 41 percent. More importantly, there's been a lot of turnover. The list of top media companies in 1988 would look very different from today's top ten list. In short, there's no real problem here. Given how many actual civil liberties problems there are in the US, I wish the ACLU would stick to what it knows best.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Social media. Web 2.0. You know what these things are and you take advantage of them every day on the net. Whether you're socializing on Facebook, updating Twitter, or just adding a new bookmark to Ma.gnolia, social media has become an integral part of our daily lives. However, that doesn't mean that it's something that everyone innately understands or knows how to use - especially when it comes to using it for marketing, PR, or other business-related purposes. That's why many of today's colleges and universities are now offering "social media" classes as an option for their students.

Welcome to Social Media U

For those of us who missed this boat during our college days, maybe because we majored in some other area, or because people still took notes with pen and paper during our university years (cough, cough), or maybe some of us didn't go the college route, there are some interesting things going on in universities today when it comes to learning the ins and outs of social media.

Today, you will find Communications and Marketing majors heavily involved in learning to use new media to their advantage. The end result of these classes is going to be a wide range of young professionals entering the business world with tricks up their sleeve that some of the the old pros have no idea (or only a vague idea) about.

So, what's on the curriculum? To get a feel for what students are studying in Social Media U, you only need to do a web search because many of the students aren't just learning how to, they're blogging about it too.

Of course, the entirety of social media can't be summed up in one blog post, so these are just a handful of subjects listed below. 

Lesson # 1 Personal Branding

Dan Schawbel, EMC's first social media specialist, returned to Bentley College to do a presentation about personal branding and social media. This is a concept that is a direct result of the internet age we live in today. Among other things, personal branding involves an understanding that you have a public image (whether you want to or not). If you're googleable, you have a brand, so you should learn to control it.

Branding is a result of many things including your blog, your social network profile, your online resume, and  how good you are at reputation management, to name a few.

Advice for students: buy yourname.com to secure your brand, make a video resume, start a Wordpress blog, use Google Reader, participate (comment on blogs and link to them), get on Facebook and LinkedIn, network, and more (see slideshow below):

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Lesson # 2 Know What Web 2.0 Is And How To Use It

Dean Whitney, an executive with global digital marketing agency Digitas, also taught a class at Bentley (a hip school?) on the subject of understanding Web 2.0. One of the interesting things they did in this lesson was to learn about tagging and how other people's opinion can shape our perception of both individuals and brands. In the PowerPoint shown during the class, Whitney also took on the big task of defining Web 2.0:

Lesson # 3 : Learn To Use YouTube To Convey a Message

Michael Wesch, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University is best known on the net for that video, The Machine is Us/ing Us, which is a great example of how to use the medium to convey a message that's more than just scripted rhetoric, but that has meaning. (Side note: great interview with Wesch here).

What you may not have seen, though, is the video his students made: A Vision of Students Today, a video which summarizes how students learn today. (I think they've got it!)

Lesson #4: Learn to Blog

What better way to learn to blog than to begin with blogs in the classroom? You can find numerous examples of this on the net, like the What is Fair Use? blog, maintained by Peter Friedman and the students in his Legal Analysis & Writing classes at Case Western Reserve University of Law.

Soon-to-be sophomore and official Yale blogger, Sam Jackson, puts this concept to work on his own site, where he blogs about higher education marketing trends. He points us to a useful resource called The College Blog Network, where college students can blog. Think of it as Facebook for bloggers (well, before Facebook was for everyone.) Speaking of Facebook, the site makes it easy to be private - you must have a .edu email address to blog here. And they mean it, too, saying "At TCBN we respect your privacy. No jumping through hoops to keep your information private. Thanks Facebook." Another resource for finding student blogs is at StudentBloggers.org.

Lesson # 5 Use Social Networks

Be it MySpace or Facebook or whatever network works for your target demographic, companies and individuals interested in maintaining their personal brand need to establish and maintain a presence on social networks - especially if you're looking to connect with the younger crowd. For old-school businesses, this may seem like a mysterious world, but not learning to navigate it will be at their own expense.

In fact, social network use is so ubiquitous these days that students are even using them to apply to colleges via a Facebook app called The College Planner. Talk about College 2.0.

Lesson #6 Master Wikis

Bentley is just all over the web when it comes to social media tools because they're not shy to put their knowledge into action for their own use. Take for example, their WetPaint wiki for marketing students looking for career guidance.

Like Marshall recently mentioned in his post Wikis Are Now Serious Business, Wikis are not just for internal use, but can be used for many things...things like teaching, for example. He pointed to Liz B. Davis's wiki called Integrating 21st Century Tools into Your Teaching, which shows you how to use Del.icio.us, GMail, Ning, Google Docs and more.

Lesson #7 Learn to Twitter

For the Twitter holdouts, take heed: As far away as Singapore, where Daryl Tay attends Singapore Management University, social media classes are being held. Here they learn about social media tools like RSS, Delicious, podcasting, videocasting, blogs, wikis, and yes, even Twitter.

He recently told me that every week they have a mini-presentation on one aspect of social media (past topics included ethics, social networks, and social bookmarking). One of the topics was microblogging, and Twitter was discussed. Since then, the students have formed their own vibrant community on Twitter. (Now if it could only stay up, we would be in business).

Lesson # 8 Learn To Podcast

Panela Seiple, about to graduate from Boston University this month, learned how to make a podcast in her New Media and PR class. Her tools? Audacity and Utterz. Her subject? The Social Media Release.

Conclusion

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, one blog post can't possibly cover all that is social media. Other topics (or "lessons") could include the following: RSS, flickr, Wikipedia, social bookmarking, search engines/blog search engines, virtual worlds, VoIP/Skype, mobile media, interactive gaming, and other tools that can be found on this nice list on the Teaching PR blog.

Extra Credit: OPML for Social Media U

For those of you interested in continuing to follow the subject of "Social Media U," we've compiled an OPML file that contains most of the sites mentioned in this post.

You can download it from here. Alternately, you can just subscribe to a "best of" RSS feed here.

Congratulations! You graduated!

Filed under: Displays, Laptops

Word on the street -- and by "street" we mean "the internet" -- is that Apple will begin exclusive use of BLU LED displays in all of its MacBooks come 2009. According to the Chinese-language paper Economic Daily News, the computer-maker's Taiwanese supplier of LED backlight units, Kenmos, will increase shipments in the coming year of the brighter, longer-lasting, better dressed components. Of course, the paper could be making this all up to toy with our emotions and break our little hearts... but why would they do that?

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I have no idea what either of these blokes are saying, but they’re using Sony’s Go! Messenger feature to do whatever it is that they’re doing. Seriously, I have no idea what Keith Lemon is even saying.

I don’t want to offend anybody’s sensibilities, but I’m of the opinion that most Treo devices kind of look like toys. That’s just me, though. I’m wearing red pants (RED! WTF?!) with tan shoes right now, so what the hell do I know about what looks good?

Anyway, these leaked shots of the Treo 850 from our friends over at the Boy Genius Report portray a more grown-up side of the Treo family. It looks like a phone you could bring home to meet your parents and then take out for a wild night of Twittering.

Not many details except that it’ll have a 400 MHz processor and 100MB of RAM, according to BGR. The above photo is the 850 on top of a BlackBerry 8800, too.

What it does

If you’re in Barcelona and want to learn a second language, try out TalkConMigo. This website is Barcelona’s online forum for meeting people in the city for language exchange. Site users search through the list of eleven languages, choose their own, and then select what language they would like to learn. Then they choose which gender, if either they prefer, as well as the range, from sixteen to forty-plus. Once the search information is added, site users are directed to the profiles of registered users who fit the criteria. From there, it’s up to the users to strike up conversation! Furthermore, information and ads for Barcelona events, nightlife, and restaurants is available on the site.

In their own words

“TalkConmigo brings together people from Barcelona who share the common goal of learning a second language. If you have never tried learning a language through language exchange (or intercambios), why not give it a go now ? It can be both a fun and rewarding experience!”

Why it might be a killer

Travelers, students, and people who simply want to learn another language will undoubtedly be interested in TalkConMigo. However, the site is very basic. A little website development would offer users a better experience.

Some questions

How can the website be bettert presented? What information can be added on Barcelona life? What links can be put up that travelers will find useful?

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