The semester officially begins

So, now it's officially started. Just finished teaching my second class of the day-my T344-programming strategies course. For some reason, afternoon classes this semester don't seem to be filling up as quickly as the morning classes. So there are still openings available. The students seem just as shocked that the summer is over as I am.

In the research methods class (T5 11). Things went pretty well. There is an interesting mix of people in their, including two undergrads. One of the undergrads is Steven, who has done a lot of work in the lab. The other is Jan, someone who someone who says that she has taken a lot of advertising classes in both telecom and the business school and needed one more class in order to graduate in the class will be good for her.

So now I'm in my office hour, which will be every Monday. Right after T344. I'm still using the NaturallySpeaking headphones, and it does seem to be getting a little bit more accurate. This afternoon, I'm going to force myself to use it to work on a manuscript, which is really what I got them for anyway.

Did have a good meeting the other day with Carl Malamud. He's a very interesting guy who's working on lots of cool projects concerning the Web. Some of the things in fact are so new that he told me I couldn't write about them on the blog. It is an interesting question that I've never had to deal with, talking with people, and trying to figure out what it is they're telling me in confidence and what I could put on this blog.

The talk more about Carl later, but for now to things that he mentioned that all just throw out there in case it would spur anyone else's interests:
he said he was very interested in talk radio, and what pod casting will do -- more specifically. I guess what the Internet will do -- to impact broadcast talk radio. He gave this example: a lot of people who call talk radio stations are very passionate about the topic. Where does that passion first get channeled? It goes to the screener -- the guy or gal who first answers the phone and asks what you want to talk about. Then it's the host prerogative, based on what the screener tells him via and IMO or a computer screen of some sort, to choose who he wants to get on the air. Well Carl said "wouldn't it be great to record the first things that passionate callers tell the screener, and then put that over the Internet."

Interesting thought.

And finally, check out Carl's catalog of Greek of the week, Internet talk radio programs. You can find them here

A new toy--does it work on the blog?

So a few days ago, I got a new productivity toy.
After watching colleagues of mine, one by one the come around to using a speech recognition program. I finally succumbed. I bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8, and now going through the process of training the thing. Part of me seems to remember buying an earlier version of the program. I think may be seven or six. But I wasn't really happy with the, perhaps because at the time it was tied to a particular word processing software.

Or at least I thought it was.
Version 8 seem to get great reviews, not only from my colleagues, but also from articles like from the New York Times. So none giving it a try on the blog.

Of course, I meant to write so now I'm giving it a try on the blog.
Heavy sigh.
I do seem to remember some of my colleagues saying that you have to give it about three weeks maybe 2 weeks, in order for it to really get trained. I hope I have the patience to put up with it. When it really gets moving it is faster. There's no doubt about a but right now making corrections sure takes a lot of time.

Through a series of circumstances that would take too long to explain I have a meeting this afternoon with Carl Malamud. Should be interesting. Perhaps more on that later.

But for now, go read the manual on my new toy in trying to get it working better

Heard from a former student

Well, folks around the Dept. are starting to mention this blog, saying they enjoy reading it and such. For some, there is a slight "man are you a geek" tone to their voice that may just be my imagination.

But, I'll keep pluggin' away for now.

Had graduate student orientation this morning. More about that later, I think.

But, for now I wanted to mention that I just heard from Christina Misko, one of our graduates, that she was hired by J. Walter Thompson as an Assistant Account Exec! That is a great thing to hear, although it doesn't surprise me. She was a very good student who is passionate about advertising.

Still, congrats to Christina!

IU Telecomm Experiments w/ Human Cloning

The Dept. of Telecomm has an Administrative Assistant named Reed Nelson. Not only is Reed one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet, but he's also incredible at his job. The department would not be nearly as fun a place to work--or run as efficiently--if Reed were not here.

I've thought this for years, and apparently I'm not alone. Recently, in the secret lab of Radio-Television Services, crack scientists have been working on an attempt to clone Reed.

Here's a picture of their latest trials.

We'll keep working.

The Grad Class Finally Comes Together

I spent today working on the syllabus for T511--A graduate course that I'm teaching with the title "Research Methods in Audience Analysis." It's one of those courses that is great because it's title allows lots of options.

My idea from the beginning was to combine the two types of audience research that our graduate students are interested in and/or should know about. The first is industry-related ratings research. The 'target' for this part of the course is masters students in our MS program who are interested in learning about the industry in more depth and how it operates.

The second is MA/PhD students who are interested in pursuing research of their own, mostly investigating hypotheses and furthering theory in mass comm.

In theory, the idea was that if both student 'audiences' would take the course they would not only learn stuff from their area of interest, but also grow to [at least] respect the inquiry done in the other arena. Great in theory, but as I've struggled with the schedule and cramming it all in it's been quite a challenge. I finally seemed to make some headway on it, though, and think that I'll be able to finalize it tomorrow.

IU Tops the List

Well, first I'd be remiss to not welcome two friends and collaborators to the world of blogging.

Todd Chambers, a co-author on much of the clutter work I've done, has now joined the blogging world. Check him out at Todd and the Blog (great name)!

Also, after much skeptical reluctance about whether it was worthwhile or not, Sam Bradley has also created one. Sam's a newly minted PH.D from Indiana, which is really the reason why I have started this post today.

Newsweek has just posted their annual look at which university of college tops the list in a variety of categories (best university to be turned down from??).

And, Indiana University has been named the Hottest Big State School!

Very cool! A few years ago the same mag named us best University in the Land. Of course, you could still say that, but they probably didn't want to get repetitive.

I-U!

Can it be over so quickly??

I'm actually working on my syllabi for fall!
Ugh.
Although I'm getting progress made, I actually am in an unusually high state of denial for me.

Today, though, I finished most of the syl for Programming Strategies . Plus, since IU's online course support program, previously known as Oncourse, has been going through updates and improvements--and is now to be known as Oncourse CL (woohoo!)--I have no idea now how to import Websites of interest/importance for my programming students into this semester's version.

So, although I in general have enjoyed or been ambivalent about the changes made during the migration to Oncourse CL, I found this so annoying that I finally realized that I should just put together a permanent link to lists of sites Programming students would find interesting. Then, the more I worked on it, the more it became ones that any student in our Industry and Management sequence would/might like. It was a pain in the neck to complete, and it's graphically extremely plain right now (see for yourself), but hopefully I'll be able to use it as a bare canvas to teach myself Dreamweaver and Flash--which I've been hoping to do.

So, like I said, I'm in denial but still moving forward.

On the social/cultural front--was lucky enough to go see the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra at the IU Musical Arts Center Last Night. Incredible!!

Clear Channel Says 'Thanks'

Well, I heard from one of my co-authors today via email. Todd Chambers has worked with me on several radaio ad clutter studies. Apparently he is in San Antonio at the AEJMC conference. Anyway, today he was on a panel and Clear Channel CEO Mark Mays and John Hogan, President of Clear Channel Radio were respondents.

So, according to Todd (forgive me for cutting and pasting here, Todd)
"...mentioned the clutter study in their remarks to the panel that we were on yesterday. And, came up afterward and thanked me for the study in clutter."

Pretty cool. Of course, we're not sure if they've ever actually read the studies, or just been briefed on them.

And, I'm not exactly sure if they will be interested in the latest studies we've been doing which seem to suggest that their move to 30second commercials rather than 60s may be detrimental. More on that later....

Back to Life?

Had my first lab meeting after getting back from the travels today.
While it was good to be back, there is also a part of me that doesn't quite want to get up to speed. Still, I made a decision while I was on the road to take better notes about ALL that is going on in the lab. . .so that I'm better able to understand everyone else's work myself, plus better represent what the ICR is doing.

And, I'm glad to say tha I was successful in doing so. . . .at least today, and hope to make a habit of it in lab meetings to come this year.

In the "jazz station" posting below I mentioned Marvin Smith of Eastern Washington Unversity. I sent him an email linking him to the posting and he sent me a very nice reply saying that IU was doing very good work- which made me happy.

Sorry to read that Peter Jennings died yesterday.
In the 'bad timing' department, my daily briefing-type of email from Broadcasting & Cable today linked to this article under the Headline "Happy 67th Birthday Peter Jennings."