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<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   Related Stories • Finally, GPS for college students 12/9/07   CONTACT THE HERALD Mike Benbow, Business Editor benbow@heraldnet.com   Published: Sunday, December 9, 2007 Technology notebook University to use Second Life as a learning tool It's tough to teach a college class when your students are constantly flying around the room. Just ask any professor who has opened a classroom in the online world of Second Life. Soon, though, college faculty members needing help with the Internet universe of more than 10 million registered users can tap a Second Life "island" Georgia State University is starting. The island -- a plot of land like others available in Second Life -- will offer free instruction on setting up a classroom and will showcase best practices and offer tips on other ways to use Second Life. For example, architecture students can build a virtual house instead of simply designing one on paper. Clothing design students can hold a virtual fashion show. Business students can start a company and see how it does without risking startup capital. And other students can see the impact of a tsunami or hurricane coming ashore. "By teaching in Second Life, you're able to give your students an experience that might be too expensive or dangerous in the real world," said Paula Christopher, a technology project manager at Georgia State. The island should be open by summer, Christopher said. Be wary of "phishers": Online shopping scams could become a major security threat in the weeks leading up to Christmas as consumers eagerly type in credit card numbers, click on discount coupons and participate in online promotions, security experts say. Instead of moneysaving deals, e-mailed coupons could lead recipients into "phishing" schemes where the consumer is redirected to a copycat site, whose real purpose is to siphon the user's credit card information, passwords and other financial data, IBM Corp. security executive Christopher Rouland said. "That 50-percent-off, one-use coupon could go to a compromised computer in Kazakhstan," said Rouland, chief technology officer for Internet security systems at Big Blue, which controls more than 1 million "phish trap" e-mail addresses that discovered 867,000 scams recently. IBM is urging online shoppers not to click on links within e-mails that appear to come from an online retailer. Instead, open a new Web browser, go to the retailer's site, navigate to special coupons or promotions and see if it's there. Google gets back to its AOL project: AOL is providing the newest communications channel on Google. Fulfilling a pledge made two years ago, Google Inc. this week unveiled a feature that enables people to chat on AOL's messaging service through Gmail, Google's free e-mail service. Not all Gmail users can get at the instant message service yet because Mountain View-based Google is still rolling out the coding that includes the settings to log on to AOL instant messaging, or AIM. Google officials didn't set a timetable for making AIM available to all its Gmail users. It took a long time to get this far. Google first disclosed its plans to open its doors to AIM in December 2005 when it paid $1 billion for a 5 percent stake in Time Warner Inc.'s AOL. But the plan went on the back burner while Google engineers worked on myriad other projects, said Mike Jazayeri, a senior product manager for Google. Meanwhile, rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. last year cross-pollinated their instant messaging services. Adding access to AOL's instant messaging service may help Google attract more people to its e-mail service, which has been gaining ground on its larger rivals. Beliefnet acquired by Fox: News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group has acquired Beliefnet, a Web site catering to faith communities, in a move designed to boost online marketing and distribution of Fox's film and TV programs. Financial terms of the deal, which closed Tuesday, were not disclosed. Beliefnet boasts of being the largest online community for "spirituality and inspiration," offering social-networking tools, articles, photo galleries and religious reference material. Not affiliated with a particular religion, its content addresses religion and politics, family life and many other aspects of modern culture. The site receives about 3 million unique visitors a month, according to Fox's statement. Beliefnet will fold into the Fox Digital Media division, which markets and distributes Fox broadcast content online. Technology endangers privacy, author contends: If privacy is based on the idea of controlling information about yourself, technology has made that impossible, David Holtzman says The author of "Privacy Lost: How Technology Is Endangering Your Privacy," gave two lectures recently on how privacy and technology intersect in today's society. The founders of this country did not put a reference to a right to privacy in the Constitution because privacy at that time was simple, he said. You just shut a window. Holtzman said the best thing that could happen would be a policy defining some privacy rights and punitive fees for when those rights are violated. From Herald news services

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