every day i write the book

Two articles (quoted in their entireity below) in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus Blog reinforce the notion that campus communications have evolved with the times. The first, regarding live online broadcasts of athletic events, is happening parallel to Cal’s own efforts to bring live streaming athletic events to the web beginning this fall. The second, using text messaging to push news to students, is an intriguing idea.

August 16, 2006
Small-Conference Football Hits the Computer Screen

Fans of the Oklahoma Sooners or the Auburn Tigers may never have to travel farther than a local sports bar to see their favorite college football teams in action. But supporters of the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks have no such luck: Small-conference teams virtually never show up on television.

So instead of trying, futilely, to negotiate TV contracts, the lesser conferences are taking their games straight to the Web. This season the Big Sky Conference, which features Northern Arizona, will broadcast all its football games (as well as its basketball and volleyball matches) online, according to the Associated Press. And the commissioner of the Ivy League predicts that almost all the league’s sporting events will air on the Web — for the benefit of alumni and proud parents — within seven years. –Brock Read

August 16, 2006
Campus News, on Your Cellphone

Pennsylvania State University will start using text messages to send news bulletins to cellphones and PDA’s, campus officials announced today. The text-messaging service, which starts Friday, is the latest high-tech expansion of Penn State Live, the university’s popular online news network.

Penn State Live already boasts 360,000 subscribers, and it recently added an RSS subscription service to its e-mail offerings. But more students are turning to text messaging, and university officials decided it was time to try out the technology.

Cellphone users can subscribe to receive information on three different topics, according to CNET News: campus emergencies, sports, and concerts. —Brock Read