This Year In Tech

In honor of the end of the year, I am taking a break from the usual analysis I present in this column to present you with my second annual list of top college technology stories from around the nation.

• Never doubt America's capitalist spirit. While most across the country saw the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech as a tragedy, a few cynically used it as an opportunity. One coder created a Web site claiming to contain camera phone footage of the attack. When users visited the site, a Trojan horse program automatically downloaded, broadcasting their user names and passwords. Security companies began calling colleges, offering students services that would blast text messages to students in times of emergency, charging 250 percent what they had the previous week. The tragedy also brought out the best in technology, as millions checked Facebook and blogs for updates on their friends and watched as the latest coverage came in from Virginia Tech's daily paper, the Collegiate Times.

• In an attempt to make testing seem hip, the Educational Testing Service announced that they were changing the name of their "Information and Communication Technology test" to the "iSkills assessment."

• Students at a Virginia high school are suing anti-plagiarism Web site turnitin.com. The site, to which Barnard subscribes, uses a database of previously submitted papers to search for instances of plagiarism. All papers which are checked are automatically added to the database. The students contend that use of their work without providing compensation or requesting permission is illegal.

• Proof that Duke is a great American university: One grad student there has created a mini-fridge that will catapult a cold beer to a lounging couch potato with the push of a button.

• The Washington Post reported in February that students are using abbreviations created for use in short-form text messages and instant messages in academic papers. The report came shortly after the University of Toronto released a study saying that writers who frequently use instant messages have clearer, more concise prose.

• Echoing a similar incident at Columbia four years ago, hackers rerouted the Web pages of Arizona State University's philosophy department and Large Binocular Telescope to send users to a porn site

• NYTimes.com began offering all those with educational e-mail addresses free access to their exclusive, subscription-based "Times Select" coverage.

• Finally, here in Morningside, Free Culture at Columbia has created CU-LATOR, a University-based program that encrypts Web activity by masking users' IP addresses. Beyond that, after more than a year of student council discussion about launching a Columbia-centric wiki, a non-affiliated entity launched wikicu.com. [Full disclosure: While not a part of its development, Spectator is contributing to the wiki by hosting it on the newspaper's servers.] And in April, Columbia unveiled a podcast tour giving an architectural history of the University delivered by Andrew Dolkart, James Marston Fitch Associate Professor of Historic Preservation and author of Morningside Heights.