Facebook gets a a pretty bad reputation when it comes to its affects on students. However, a recent study revealed that Facebook itself really isn’t the problem. Rather, it’s how the person chooses to use it. And more often than not, a student’s use of Facebook really doesn’t have much of an impact on their academic life.

This great graphic by Online Education takes a closer look at this recent study and reveals some pretty interesting stats about Facebook’s actual effects on students and their studying habits. In conclusion, it really isn’t all that evil as the media makes it out to be.

Via: OnlineEducation.net

The human population has reached a record 7 billion people. Every second, 5 new humans enter the planet and 2 more leave it. In addition, humans account for 350M extra tons exerted on the planet.

Check out this cool graphic by Masters Degree Online and take a closer look at how else the growing population is affecting our planet:

Created by: Masters Degree Online

Researching on Google is a lot more efficient than you might assume. A lot of folks out there still don’t know how to use Google effectively, including students.

Luckily, this graphic by Hack College provides some useful Google tips and tricks for students conducting online research. It lays out in detail how to use certain operators to narrow down search results, as well as some pretty handy keyboard shortcuts. Check out the full graphic below:

Created by: HackCollege

I’m sure we can all agree that Facebook has literally changed the college experience for students around the world. It’s become an integral part of how student’s socialize, network, date, share pictures/stories, and even study.

This cool graphic by Online PhD illustrates just how big of an impact Facebook has on today’s college students and how students (and educators) are using it in their day-to-day lives.

Created by: Online PhD

The world currently holds 4.2 billion texters – just to put that into perspective, that’s five times more than the number of Facebook users. There’s no question that texting has become an integral part of how we communicate with one another, but we rarely think about it’s contributions beyond how we converse with friends or acquaintances.

This graphic by MBA Online gives a better perspective on how the power of texting has literally changed the world. Just as an example, in places like Ghana and Nigeria, where counterfeit pills flourish, citizen can now text codes (with the help of HP) from their medicine wrapper to a database that lets them know if their pills are real or not.

Check out the rest of the graphic below to see how else texting is changing how we live today:

Created by: MBA Online

We all know that using social media to increase your web presence is huge. Colleges are starting to notice this as well. Many are jumping on board, and some have been pretty successful at creating a strong social media presence. But which ones are ruling the web?

According to this graphic by Best Ed Sites there’s a handful of them (including Harvard and MIT). View the full graphic below to see which colleges are having the most success on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and etc.

Created by: Best Education Sites

Patents are supposed to protect innovation. Unfortunately, with the help of ‘patent trolls’ and powerful tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, they’re now doing the exact opposite.

This graphic by MBA Online illustrates how patents are now being utilized entirely for profit rather than to protect or inspire innovative creation.

Created by: MBA Online

1 in 4 professionals want a job at Google, but less than 1 out of 250 applicants will ever see that dream come true.

Luckily, this infographic by Masters Degree illustrates some skills that may make landing that dream tech job at Google, Apple, or even Facebook, a possible reality.

Created by: Masters Degree

The one big advantage online advertising has over billboard ads is: tracking opportunities. Publicis Israel and e-dologic have found away to track billboard advertising and merging billboard with social media.

Through an application users could post their messages to digital billboard. The billboard equipped with a Facebook-ish “Like” Button permitted people to “Like” the post.The persons with the most “Likes” received a load of swag.

This generated interaction between the passengers and the billboard. The digital user had an incentive to spend his time on the application and all in all the billboard ad could be tracked. It would have been great to see the faces of the people who read a message to offer an even higher social experience.

via digitalbuzzblog.com

Low cost, easy installation and low weight equipment. Streaming your event via you iPhone on 3G sounds great. But could we pull it off with todays technology? We made the test using Livestream.com and Ustream.tv

The two big players in the world of live-streaming are ustream.tv and Livestream.com. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

For our ski event-series in Switzerland we were looking for cheap, easy and convenient way to bring the events to television (or in this case computer). For an association with a limited budget this turned out the be quite a challenge. Nevertheless, where there’s a will there’s a way.

Equipment

After some research we decided to take on the project and test different streaming solutions. The one big challenge is to get the signal online when you’re on the top of a mountain. You have three possibilities: Satellite, 3G or wireless. While wireless is limited to a certain distance, satellite is expensive. This leaves you with 3G.

3G requires a connection via computer or smartphone. Dragging three computers up to a hill top, can get a bit annoying.

So, we stuck with the smartphone idea. Hardly any weight, low connection costs, direct connection via iPhone apps that enable you to stream directly to the Internet.

To stabilize the iPhones and enhance the picture quality, we purchased two OLWE Bubo iPhone 4 holders. These devices allowed us to mount the phones to a tripod. Thanks to our sponsor Swisscom we received three iPhone 4′s and free data plans.

Cost

The entire costs for the production material for the streaming is:

2 OWLE Bubo : 340 $

3 iPhone 4: 1’929 $

2 Tripods: 120$

2 2GB Data Plans /Year (25$/month) : 600 $

= 2’989 $

Ustream vs. Livestream

Having the production material together the question remained, “How could we stream the event live”? Currently there are two big players on the livestreaming market. Market leader Livestream.com offers a great solution for producers with Livestream Studio. This tool enables producers to control different cameras (mutiple cameras can be added and the producer can switch between the different cameras as we know it from live television events), insert logos, insert text and fully control every step of the production. It gives you the feeling of real live television without any cutbacks. Further Livestream offers you a very easy solution to implement your livestream with live comments and social media plugins for your blog or website. Integration of your video to your facebook page with comments is a no-brainer. Livestream is a wowing tool and gets me as social media enthusiast more than exited.

But Livestream has some downsides – unfortunately. Compared to Ustream.tv (we’ll come to that later), Livestream.com does not offer an own iPhone application that streams directly into your livestream account. Livestream connects via an app called qik.com (belongs to Skype), which imports the livestream directly into your account. The crucial and most important part with a livestream coming from the iPhone is: the quality. Qik.com can not offer the quality we and our viewers expect from a livestream. In short: The qik.com quality is no good. Hence the entire, massive, brilliant, wowing, exiting set-up Livestream.com offers you, is completely wothless. Sad reality when we realized that fact. Please qik.com get us some better quality and you will rule the streaming world.

We still had Ustream.tv. Other than Livestream.com, Ustream.tv offers an own iPhone application. The app is easy to install, easy to use and free. The crucial part: the quality. The Ustream app offers two different resolution options. The better resolution is what we expect from a livestream. We filmed a night event and even with the dark light, the fast rotations by the arial ski jumpers could be easily identified. This is what we expect from a livestream. This is something we could work with and viewers would say: OK, I’m going to watch the livestream this weekend.

The downsides of Ustream.tv is, that you don’t have the option of a full-on broadcasting studio with multiple camera inputs and you can’t work as flexible. Ustream only allows you to broadcast one stream per account. Hence you need multiple accounts and you will have to embed them simultaneously and won’t be able to cut between different angles. Also, the stream with the high resolution is at the limit of the broadcasting bandwidth of 3G. If your connection is bad or the 3G is intensively used, you will have stagnating pictures.

Nevertheless, Ustream offers a good solution for livestreaming via the iPhone.

Conclusion

Both Livesteam.com and Ustream.tv have their pros and cons. While Livestream.com offers the studio solution with multiple camera angles, text inserts and logo display, the qik.com iPhone app delivers quality that is not fit for a livestream. Ustream.tv is the quality you want, but sadly they do not offer the studio solutions.

A combination of Ustream.tv and Livestream.com would make livestraming via iPhone and 3G perfect. Till someone decides to offer one or the other, you will probably have to use the Ustream.tv application.

Livestream with Ustream.tv

Video streaming by Ustream

Livestream with qik.com/Livestream.com