Catch-up Date with Karine: YouTube Contest, Twitter, Web Style Guide, Cloud Computing Use & Homepage Data

Here’s the third edition of this series “Catch up-Date with Karine” aiming at fighting the information overload. Please let me know if you find it useful by leaving a comment or sending an email at karine@collegewebeditor.com.

Looking for some YouTube Love? Why not suggest to your community members to take part in YouTube’s first journalism contest in partnership with the Pulitzer Center, Project: Report?

This 3-round contest is open to non-professional aspiring journalists to tell stories not covered by traditional media. The first assignment is to profile a community member in 3 minutes or less. The video must be submitted by midnight EST on Sunday October 5.

Don’t know how to (or if you should) use Twitter? Check out Wayne State University’s Twitter Initiative

A few days ago, I wrote about Colgate’s Twitter initiative, but I’ve also read about another interesting one.

Wayne State University has been doing something really smart with Twitter, using it to monitor the conversations about the institution first, then trying to get in touch with interested Twitterers interested and finally addressing their questions. Read Nick DeNardis’ blog post about how they did it.

And speaking about Twitter, CNN has just launched a show based on instant feedback via Twitter and has been using the microblogging application more and more to interact with its viewers in its other shows.

Last thing about Twitter, if you haven’t read “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy,” an article written by Clive Thompson and published in the NYT Magazine on September 5, take the time to do it. Very, very interesting piece.

Do you have a Web Style Guide? Take this short online survey!

Jesse Racine, Web Content Specialist at McHenry County College, is collecting information on the status of web style guides in higher education for a presentation he will give at HighEdWeb 2008.

Want to help? Take this 10-question survey.

Cloud computing might be in your institution’s future and is already in 69% of Americans’ life

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has released a new research memo about the use of cloud computing technologies.

69% of online Americans use webmail services, store data online, or use software programs such as word processing applications whose functionality is located on the web.

• 51% of internet users who have done a cloud computing activity say a major reason
  they do this is that it is easy and convenient.
• 41% of cloud users say a major reason they use these applications is that they like
  being able to access their data from whatever computer they are using.
• 39% cite the ease of sharing information as a major reason they use applications in
  cyberspace or store data there.

This 9-page report including some background information about cloud computing is available as a free PDF file.

Looking from some benchmarking data on the technologies used by institutions on their homepages?

Matt Pasiewicz, Manager of Web Development at EDUCAUSE has been busy working on a tech pet project of his own as he explained in a blog post published this Saturday:

Ever wonder if any other universities are using jquery or or scriptaculous? Ever wanted to get a feel for how many universities mention blogs or podcasts on their home page? Ever wanted easy access to the home pages of 1,831 universities[i.e. the institution members of EDUCAUSE]? I’ve been working on a pet project and wanted to share what I’ve worked up this far.

This little application searches the source code of these homepages for “word strings” (or regular expressions for you, inner geeks), a good way to find the type of technologies used by these institutions.

Here’s an example with a search on “blog:”

Higher Ed Web Reference

And here’s something the writers, editors and marketing folks will like, a snapshot by Wordle of the words used on these homepages.

Tag Cloud of University Home Pages | EDUCAUSE CONNECT