links for 2010-03-02

In response to a request on Wed., Feb. 24, 2010, from the chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Higher Education Subcommittees, today University System of Georgia (USG) Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr. submitted documents detailing how the USG and its 35 colleges and universities would manage an additional $300 million in reductions to state appropriations in the upcoming Fiscal Year 2011 budget.

Media traditionally has gained its profits by owning distribution. Cable carriage, network airwaves, newsstand distribution and printing presses... The web changed all that and promised that economics in the media business would be driven by content and intent: the best content will win, driven by the declared intent of consumers who find it and share it. Search+Social was the biggest wave to hit media since the printing press. And the open technology to make better and better experiences has been on a ten year tear: blogging software, Flash, Ajax, HTML 5, Android, and more and more coming... But the iPad, just like the iPhone, is designed for vertical integration and distribution lock in... It's an old school, locked in distribution channel that doesn't want to play by the new rules of search+social.

Nora interviewed danah boyd and William Deresiewicz about the nature of friendship online — whether social networking has changed what we mean when we say ‘friend,’ and how digital tools like Facebook and MySpace ask us to define, categorize, and list our friends.