XplanaZine

Here’s our take on news that matters for Tuesday, January 18. Today’s theme is social and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming — One motivation, perhaps, for pushing the concept of online gaming in education is that users seem willing to shell out their disposable income for games. In 1up.com released results from a customer survey yesterday that shows its users plan to spend and average of $245 on games in the next two months.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting — Technorati continues providing useful data related to blogs. Most recently, they’ve updated their chart functionality that provides visual assessment of search term popularity. And, you thought there wasn’t enough hype around podcasting. Wait until May when the ID3 Podcast Magazine launches.

• Handhelds – In our “news of the weird” category, a report surfaced yesterday linking the federal excise tax on cell phones back to the Spanish-American War.
• Social Networks – Is text messaging making our kids illiterate? Ultimately, social networking is about linking people, even those using disparate systems. Google took another step towards connecting different groups yesterday when it announced that it had released GoogleTalk federated. What this means is that now Google Talk’s XMPP servers can talk to other XMPP servers such as Earthlink and Gizmo Project. Essentially, if you have your own Jabber server, you could talk to GoogleTalk. Also, the power of social networking technologies is giving young voters a place to voice their opinions regarding politics, researchers say. Finally, if you haven’t yet checked our 43Things , at least take a look at Alan Levine’s overview. A great look at the fun and potential of social networking on the Web.

Now, here’s a recap of our favorite posts from the edublogging community from the past 48 hours.

• From Alan Levine : Post on the zing in Podzinger.
• From Ben Vershbow : Post on meta-wikipedia or the factions within the organization that make it really interesting.
• From Stephen Downes : Post of his reaction to an article discussing the state of the e-learning market.
• From Anne Davis : Post on blogging at the schools.
• From James Farmer : Post on blog-based communities — explaining the basics.
• From Will Richardson : Post on connective learning.