By Kristin Vorce

It’s finals week. Plopping down at her desk to check her e-mail, anthropology professor Karen Rosenberg scans her messages, opening one from a student. The student sent the e-mail to the entire class, and unknowingly, to Rosenberg.

“The student said: ‘You know it’s kind of a waste of time to study for the final knowing she can only test us on part of the material. Well, there’s no way I’m studying. I’m going to Mug Night.’ ” she says.

Rosenberg sent an e-mail back to the student saying, “Well, I guess it’s your call.”

Oops.

It may not be a term paper, but an e-mail makes an impression.

In the age of e-mail, students often view professors as accessible around the clock. While some professors have expressed a frustration with the volume and informality of student e-mails, others enjoy the increased communication.

History professor Owen White says he is most irritated by e-mails from students who have conveniently lost assignment sheets the day before the assignment is due.

“On these occasions I usually grit my teeth and give the student what they want, but at the very least you feel the person asking a favor of you could have done you the honor of using capital letters and punctuation,” White says.

Rosenberg says she really does not see a downside to student e-mails.

“Mostly I love e-mailing students,” she says, “A student will send me an e-mail in the middle of the night and I get up at six in the morning and answer it. It’s a great non-intrusive way to be in touch.”

Astronomy professor Stan Owocki says he has received approximately 100 e-mails so far this semester — four or five of which have been about science.

“I actually don’t mind that because students need their problems solved somehow,” Owocki says. “Most of the time when you get an e-mail from a person they’re pretty apologetic.”

He says after a lecture about the Big Bang and the cosmos, one student sent an e-mail asking if he believed in God. Owocki grins, knowing the student would never have the nerve to ask a question about faith in a class of 70 people.

On the other hand, he’s had a student who abused the e-mail system.

“He sent really flaming emails,” Owocki says. “He wrote this long diatribe about how the TA didn’t know anything and then he went on about how he was very protective of his GPA and he didn’t want to ruin it.”

The ordeal ended in a face-to-face confrontation, but if the student had sent a complaint to the department, Owocki would have been able to report the exact number and content of the e-mails. Owocki says he tracks all student e-mails, filing them on his computer. This allows him to find the students who need extra help as well as those who are flagrantly disrespectful.

Junior Margaret Hitscherich says professors send just as many irrelevant e-mails as students.

“I have one professor who will send us like four e-mails a day just because he thinks it’s interesting, but it’s really not,” Hischerich says.

She also complains about some students who ask questions like, “What’s going to be on the next exam?” and professors who send a reply to the entire class.

“Then they clog my inbox with these people’s stupid questions,” Hitscherich says. “I mean, if you looked on the syllabus you’d know the answer. Get the picture. You’re in college, have some common sense.”

Junior Sarah Robinson says some classmates worry they will fall behind if they are not in constant contact with the professor. Their persistent nagging is enough to make someone feel a bit sorry for the professor, Robinson says.

“You have to be careful because I think some people can get a little stalkerish about e-mail,” she says. “Its not that they’re trying to be overbearing, but some students are just so conscientious that they cross the line without realizing it.”

Sociology professor Gerald Turkel says students are too informal in their e-mails, often addressing a professor as if they are old buddy rather than a respected colleague.

“They may not fully understand how things come across,” he says. “It’s like, ‘Hi professor’ or ‘Hi doc.’ ”

Turkel says he finds it amusing when students send him messages saying they cannot come to class because they are leaving early for Spring Break.

“I think they are sending me things that they’d never tell me face-to-face,” he says.

Another annoyance for Turkel is when students ask complicated questions through e-mail.

“Like when somebody who has added the class late e-mails me and says, ‘What have we done over the past two weeks?’ ” he says. “How can you possibly answer that over e-mail?”

History professor John Hurt says he doesn’t have any horror stories about student e-mails. They generally ask legitimate questions about the readings and the course, he says. Hurt recalls only one example of an unprofessional e-mail.

“I had one student who just addressed me as John,” he says. “He didn’t even say ‘Dear John,’ just ‘John.’ I’m old enough to be his grandfather, so I thought it was rather odd, but I didn’t chastise him or anything.”

He chuckles at the situation, saying the student was probably a freshman.

Senior Joseph Feng says it took him 30 minutes to write a five-sentence e-mail last night.

“I just make sure it’s perfect,” Feng says. “I look at it from different angles to make sure they won’t see anything as offensive.”

Feng says sometimes he will send an e-mail asking for approval of a topic presentation and will never receive a response.

He shrugs and says, “I guess I didn’t read it enough times.”

By Adam Asher

Back in the 1960s if young people were angry, they were not quiet about it. Students would pick up their signs, strum their guitars and start a protest. Today, they have traded in their guitars for a mouse, their songs for computers, and their protests for the Internet. In only a few short days, you can raise hundreds of dollars, spread awareness to thousands, or start a virtual riot and you only have eight letters to type: F-A-C-E-B-O-O-K.

“It’s a great way for people to feel like they’re helping out without actually going out of their way to do anything,” says Beth Mason, an eighteen-year-old industrial design major at Auburn University. Mason is currently raising money for Alzheimer’s via her facebook group, “for every 10 people I will donate $1 to the Alzheimer’s Association.”

“Things like that persuade others to jump on the bandwagon,” she said.

Facebook has been around for years, but its powers of expansion seem to grow every day. Recently facebook groups expanded so they were no longer specific by school, opening people’s eyes to the many opinions, inside jokes, and nonsensical ramblings of students throughout the country who choose to express themselves through facebook.

It didn’t take long for Brody Ruckus to get over 400,000 people show their support for his group. There are enough students on facebook to achieve his goal; all he had to do was find a cause people could rally behind. His cause was a threesome.

Unfortunately, the members of his group were not members for very long. The mass numbers of facebook users who were excited enough about Brody’s threesome to double click their mouse in support of him were just as quickly kicked out of the group when facebook removed his account.

As it turns out, Brody Ruckus was not going to have a threesome; he was not even a real person. Brody Ruckus was no more than a marketing ploy by Ruckus music, a free downloading service for college students.

While Brody Ruckus no longer exists on facebook, his group did prove one very important thing. Facebook has an uncanny ability to unite college students over a common interest. After the death of the Ruckus group, facebook users took a hint and began to come together for more charitable purposes.

Beth is one of many facebook users who have taken Ruckus Music’s idea and turned it into a humanitarian crusade. She has over 500 members in her group and claims that many people have taken an interest and given donations directly to her, or asked where else they can send them. There are more and more groups popping up every day promising to donate money to a certain cause.

The humanitarian crisis in Darfur is one of the most popular reasons to start a facebook group. The group “for every 1,000 people that join this group, I will donate $1 to Darfur” has over 460,000 members. There are also groups for raising awareness as well as groups full of people who pledge to donate money to the cause.

But as with any trend there has to be a backlash.

“I was inspired by the very large Darfur group,” said Jon Lynn, a law student at the University of Minnesota. “Specifically, I wanted to make a group that more or less poked fun at a couple problems I had with the Darfur group”

Lynn is the creator of one of many parody groups. “For every 100,000 people in this group, I will donate $1 to the human fund,” according to Lynn, raises no money and advertises a fictional group taken from the hit television show “Seinfeld.”

The human fund group takes a subtle approach to the art of parody facebook groups, targeting a certain audience that understands the reference. Others are a bit more blunt with their parodies.

Groups that claim if enough people join the creator will kick himself in the crotch a number of times or shave his head are a common sight in one’s facebook profile. One group has a picture of Paris Hilton representing it and claims “if 1,000 people join this group, I will re-lose my faith in humanity.”

Its creator, Allison Reddy, a senior at Wellesley College, claims the group is just a joke to make fun of other groups, but it makes a pretty clear statement about a generation that is too lazy to get out of their computer chairs, yet likes to appear to be helping.

There are no laws that bind creators of facebook groups to their pledges, but Lynn thinks there is certainly the potential for something good in facebook’s modern-day approach to politics.

“To what extent people will use facebook to get involved in certain political issues I think remains to be seen, but if there is any kind of interest, facebook has a great potential to involve people in the political process,” he says.

Whether facebook is the next big political propaganda machine remains yet to be seen. But one thing is for sure, a total stranger’s adventurous sex life is a cause over 400,000 college students think is worth joining a group for.

By Jena Levy

Recall the scene from The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy asks which way to the Wizard, and the Scarecrow points to the left. And then to the right. And everyone is extremely confused.

Remember those days when one had to depend on others for directions to get places? Or wait, insert big gasp here, use a large, fold-out map of the entire state?

Those are days no more. GPS navigation devices have become the technology of choice when needing to get from one place to another. Whether it’s from here to the supermarket, or here all the way to California, a soothing British voice can tell you how to do so.

GPS navigation stands for Global Positioning System navigation. It is satellite-based navigation. Satellites determine your vehicle’s position, and determine how to get to your destination, based on that location’s satellite position.

Navigation devices come three ways: built into your car, an external system, or through your cell phone, a service offered by Verizon Wireless.

A built-in navigation system is still an optional feature in cars. Whether you are purchasing a high-end car, like a Lexus or a BMW, or a low-end car, like a Honda or a Toyota, the navigation system option is readily available. “A navigation systems adds about $2,400 to the price of a Lexus,” said Lance Bartel, a car salesman at the Lexus of Wilmington.

Systems that are external, which also makes them portable, are significantly cheaper. A review of GPS systems conducted by CNET.com, reported the range of prices of these systems from $235-$825. Though cheaper, this does not mean that these systems are any less effective than those built into your car.

There are certain features of a built-in system that differentiate it from the external systems. All systems that are built-in have a much larger screen than their external counterparts. The average size screen in an external system is only four inches, according to CNET Reviews.

Technology is advancing so much that “many navigation systems also provide a very nice Bluetooth interface with many Bluetooth-capable cell phones. This provides hands-free use of the cell phone,” Bartel said. This is a feature that is not available in all external systems, because the phone call comes through the computer technology of the navigation system connected with the audio system.

All navigation systems can provide you with directions. Even if you do not have all the pertinent information, your GPS system can find it. If you do not have or know the address of your destination, you can search for it by typing in just the name of the place you’re going, the street it is on, or the city alone. You will scroll through a list, and find the location that suits your needs. And in the worst-case scenario that you get lost, your navigation system can locate where you are at that moment and provide you with directions to get home, or wherever you need to be.

No matter what type of system you have, all provide colorful maps with the directions, while simultaneously reading them to you. It will tell you where to turn, when to turn, and how far up ahead a turn is. This prevents the driver from being distracted by looking at the screen. The driver is able to pay attention to the road, while still being given directions.

The navigation service available on Verizon cell phones has the same capabilities as those internal and external systems. For a monthly subscription of $9.99, you are given directions as to how to get somewhere through the speakerphone of your cell phone. Maps of these directions are shown on the screen as well. Because the screens of cell phones are so small, and the driver would have to hold the phone in his or her hands, it is safer to listen the directions.

“My father made me get this cell phone so I won’t get lost when I drive home from school,” said Laura Ziff, a sophomore who subscribes to this monthly service.

When purchasing a navigation service, the benefits can outweigh the costs. With a navigation system, there is no longer a risk of getting lost and people feel ready to take on the open road.

“The navigation system will prevent us from getting lost to Penn State this year,” said Julie Lukoff, who has fallen victim to getting lost while driving to the school with her friends every year.

The days of paper maps and directions written on napkins no longer exist. The days of faceless voices in your car, and touch screen maps are taking us to new destinations. So the next time you ask, “can you tell me how to get…?”, direct your question to the British lady built into the navigation system that resides in your car.

By Becky Polini

In a two-page photo spread, 11 Pakistani children are captured on film being pushed on a dilapidated Ferris wheel anchored in a pile of trash. Their toy is surrounded by the slums they live in, but the smiles on their faces reflect an undeniable charisma.

Flip a bit further for another two-page photo spread, this one showcasing a timeline of the tragic decline of Tara Reid’s looks and her addiction to bad plastic surgery.

From national tragedies to juiced-up celebrities, the pages of monthly Shock Magazine deliver uncensored, unapologetic photographs with brief captions describing the contents of the pictures.

No 1,000-word articles here — Editor-in-Chief Mike Hammer says the primary focus of Shock is to deliver the news visually to a generation of fast-paced students who don’t necessarily have the time to sit down and read a huge piece on the war in Iraq.

“A lot of people think the magazine is upsetting and takes advantage of imagery,” Hammer says. “News isn’t pretty. I mean look at Star Jones.”

The idea of a magazine based primarily on pictures started in France with a publication called Choc. Hammer says their content is a bit more edgy because of the European audience, whereas Shock, launched in May 2006 and located in New York City, stays away from pictures of blood and gore.

“We reflect the news,” he says. “We don’t create it.”

The target demographic of Shock is the average 18-34 year-old, with the primary buyers being 24-year-olds. Hammer says the magazine, which houses pages that are refreshingly advertisement-free, doesn’t rely on ads or subscriptions. He says he wanted to create a magazine that has a connection with readers at the newsstand.

Hammer started his career as a freelance journalist in Staten Island. Before he moved on to launch Shock, Hammer was the executive editor of Maxim and then the editor-in-chief of Stuff magazine.

Hammer says the main difference between news magazines and Shock is that publications such as Newsweek write the stories and then find the images to coincide with them. Shock finds incredible pictures and then finds the stories behind them.

“Shock is edgy, but it doesn’t have an agenda,” he says. “After you’ve been drawn in by the images, the captions tell the story.”

To obtain its content, employees of Shock go to different photo agencies from all over the globe, everywhere from China to Australia, looking for great pictures.

“Everyone here is a veteran journalist,” Hammer says. “They’re reporters, fact-checkers, copy-editors — everyone knows what they’re doing.”

Inside Shock’s pages are pictures of everyone from George Bush holding a crying baby to veiled Iranian women, from Carrot Top on steroids to famished Congolese children. This magazine tries to capture an audience of elliptical-machine riding grade-driven students through fantastic imagery.

“We do deep, deep, deep photo research,” Hammer says. “We know our main audience is going to be among college students, and we score well with people who are visually oriented. These kids have a lot on their plate and can’t take the time to read a 7,000 word article on what’s going on in Darfur.”

While Shock relies heavily on images from professional photo agencies, readers are always encouraged to submit their own pictures. If a picture gets published on the website or in the magazine, Hammer says the photographers are given digital cameras or other such prizes.

Hammer also says there’s a college ambassador program within Shock aimed at raising awareness on college campuses about the magazine.

Mr. Youth, a program created approximately four years ago, is a marketing agency focused on the college demographic. Clients include Dell, Gateway and Neutrogena.

Eric Schoenberg, account supervisor, brand engagement for Mr. Youth, says he chooses students to be representatives based on people he finds on MySpace, Facebook and through school career centers.

Students from 100 universities across the country are chosen to represent Shock on their campuses and encourage peers to submit their photos.

Junior and business major Taylor Strong got a head-start on his career when he was chosen by Mr. Youth to promote Shock Magazine on campus. He is solely responsible for handing out copies of the magazine to students and raise awareness of the contests the publication has.

Strong says students from participating universities can submit crazy photos to Shock’s website — if a student’s picture is voted as the best, they’ll win a $250 American Express gift check.

“Taylor is an extension on campus for Shock Magazine,” Schoenberg says. “We want him to create a buzz. And the opportunity to be published is very appealing.”

Aside from his duties as a representative, Strong says it’s been a gratifying experience to work for a real magazine.

“It’s a great way to get involved around campus,” he says. “You meet good people, get exposed to different situations, learn marketing strategies — I’m figuring out where to capture people.”

Shock picks images based on their ability to tell a story and tries to offer readers uncensored photography that gives a true glimpse of news, sports and celebrities. Hammer says they use the photos to create news based on the extraordinary.

“You’re being brought up to date on the latest information, but you’re not drowning in it,” he says. “It’s like CliffsNotes for grown-ups.”

By Maria Michelli

In a post-Facebook and Myspace world, it should not be surprising to college students, like myself, that many Web-based social networks exist on the Internet.

However, even as a pet owner of about 15 years, the idea of an online community for pets seems surprising, dare I say, absurd.

After checking out a few of these Web sites — Catster, Dogster, Hamsterster, and Petster.com — I quickly realized I was getting in over my head. I bit the bullet, and created a page for Patch, my 15-year-old feline, on Catster.com.

According to their Web site, the creators of Dogster and Catster are self-proclaimed “dog freaks and computer geeks” who saw a need for people to share their pets on the Internet.

More than 300,000 pets on Dogster and Catster combined as well as hundreds of new daily additions support their claim that “Dogster has become more contagious than kennel cough.”

After browsing Catster for about 30 minutes, I was shocked at the number of features Patch and I could participate in. Patch could now make friends, post pictures of himself, join groups and best of all, write his own daily diary entries.

Once I started reading the “most pawpular” diaries, I realized more than 52,000 dogs and cats have their own journals, written in first person.

One entry, from “Maria Magdalena (Maggie)’s Catster Diary,” describes how Maggie is in denial about her catnip addiction. She goes as far as insisting her “human brother” thinks she should attend catnip-anonymous meetings.

“He thinks the idea of me standing up in the midst of a group of felines and saying, ‘Hello, my name is Maggie and I’m addicted to catnip’ is hilarious,” Maggie writes. “I think it’s absurd.”

Well that makes two of us, Maggie. I shuddered and had to step away from the computer.

I felt as if I had walked into an alternate universe, where cats could not only speak in complete sentences, but also have learned how to navigate the Internet.

After recovering from my pet-obsession-induced shock, I returned to my computer to check my “kitty inbox.” In the span of two hours, three feline “families” had “shown up in [my] mailbox, seeking [my] paws in friendship.”

Now that I had some friends, it was time to send them some paw mail, so I could ask them about their experiences with the site. However, in order to respect the Web site and my new friends, I was forced to speak as though I was Patch, telling Ruben the cat,  “my mom is a journalism student at UD, and she was wondering if she could ask your mom about Catster.”

Luckily for me, Ruben found some time to reply, even though he has 12,453 other feline friends to attend to. His owner, Sarah, of Maplewood, Minn., says she logs on to Catster at least twice a day.

“It is definitely addicting and I just can’t get enough,” Sarah states in a Catster message.

Sarah says she thinks people use sites like Catster for social networking. She says people like to talk about the things they love, and Catster allows them to do that.

“I wanted to share my love of cats with other people and show off my baby,” Sarah says. “I have met a lot of people, but I don’t know their names or what they look like because it’s all about the cats.  They even send Christmas cards and gifts that come in Ruben’s name.”

Sarah says she uses Catster so often because it has benefits both for her and Ruben. She says although there are no medical professionals on Catster, there are sure to be cats who have had similar problems, who are willing to give advice.

“Everyone is very friendly and easy to talk to,” she says. “It’s easy to find help and info too. Everyone is always willing to Purr (pray) for a sick kitty.”

Scott Caplan, a university communications professor, does not feel so strongly about pet web communities. When asked what value for pets this form of communication has, Caplan says these sites are most likely developed for the pet owner’s amusement.

Louise Harb, vice president of operations for Petster.com — an open-pet society site that is not breed-specific — says Petster was created because the enthusiasm for online pet communities is huge. Harb says Petster offers pet owners a place to share their pets and express themselves in a unique way.

“The beauty of Petster is that we live in a crazy world,” Harb says. “It’s fun to talk to other pet owners, and it’s a way of expression that people are finding fun and easy. It is easy to talk without worrying or dealing with work or family.”

Harb says the site was not originally designed for pets to speak in the first person, but over time, it became that way.

“It’s funny, it is amazing how fast people pop into their pet’s mindset,” Harb says. “There is an interesting psychological connection between pet and owner.”

Harb says even though it is hard to keep up, she pays attention to all customer feedback, both positive and negative.

“We get positive feedback mainly just because of the fact that Petster is open to all kinds of animals, and we do a good job getting rid of the troublemakers,” she says. “We go through and take care of the people who are harassing others or creating nonsense.”

Harb says she thinks Petster’s growth rate is so high because it provides members with a new community to participate in, outside the stress of the real world.

“I think they love it because it’s a break from reality,” she says. “This world leaves something to be desired and Petster is a safe haven for the user to slip away in, like a great book or a good movie. People trade positive information and life-affirming experiences. You’re not looking at negative news or politics, or reaching into your wallet — it’s just an easy, fun moment in the day.”

So after seven days of Catster.com, Patch and I both think it is time to retire. I prefer both of my feet planted firmly on planet Earth, and Patch is content staring out the dining room window.

By Dane Secor

There is a new addiction spreading across the globe. It can cause sleep deprivation and loss of appetite and lead to negligence of work, school, families and loved ones. The addiction has already been a reported cause of death in South Korea.

The addiction is World of Warcraft.
When junior Annie Rizzuto created the Facebook group, “World of Warcraft Has Stolen Away My Friends and Significant Other,” it was a joke between her and a few friends. It grew to include people she hasn’t met, and she says through the group she has heard many stories of addiction.

“You hear things like, ‘My boyfriend turned down sex because he wants to play World of Warcraft for eight hours because he’s level 60 now,’ ” Rizzuto says.

Although she says she hasn’t personally tried Warcraft, she has felt the effects.

“With one guy, we had to actually do an intervention because he played so much that he wasn’t going to class,” Rizutto says. “We actually had to physically drag him out and someone had to go to class with him to get him to go.”

She says Warcraft damaged the social lives of students in her freshman year residence hall and even ruined relationships. Rizzuto knew a couple freshman year who were so into the game their relationship fell apart.

Psychologist Hillarie Cash, who the Washington-based Internet/Computer Addiction Services, says video game addiction isn’t a new phenomenon. She says she was first alerted to the potential addiction when she treated a client in 1994.

“I had a young man come to me because he was depressed and his marriage was falling apart,” Cash says. “He had lost jobs.”

After working with him, she found out he couldn’t stop himself from gaming. At the time, Cash says, very few people noticed the problem of video game addiction and she started to develop it into a specialty.

The addiction to video games has an effect on the brain that is similar to drug use, she says. Playing games can elevate dopamine levels and stimulate the pleasure pathway, which leads to addiction.

“Video game playing, particularly World of Warcraft, in terms of the high people get and the withdrawal they go through, does look similar to someone who is hooked on speed or amphetamines,” Cash says.

The self-esteem boost people get from games is also a strong addictive factor, she says, but players gain a false self-esteem.

“You can level up and become a fabulous, powerful wizard in the game, but it doesn’t translate to real life,” Cash says.

World of Warcraft is especially addictive because of something gaming companies refer to as “the stickiness factor,” a rating of how long people will stay with a certain game. Cash says she believes psychologists are being hired by manufacturers to maximize this factor.

Senior Jessa Trapp says she has been playing World of Warcraft since November 2004 and although she has heard stories, she doesn’t think video game addiction is a large problem.

“Most people realize there is a real world and they have responsibilities separate from the game that they have to take care of,” Trapp says. “People know that you need to get your homework done, you need to study. If you have an exam the next day you should probably take a day off.”

She says Warcraft took a lot of the elements that are popular in other games and put them into one, which makes it especially appealing.

People also pay real-world money for items in the game, Trapp says.

“I had a guy friend who sold his character about a month ago for $650,” she says.

Trapp also says she knows people who have trouble managing their time and have missed class to play. One person got so involved in the game he dropped out of college.

“He met a girl through World of Warcraft and this was combined with the fact that he was raiding every day and he was the leader of a large guild,” she says.

Cash says college offers a particularly tempting environment for people to start problematic using.

“So many students are vulnerable because they are out from under the control of their parents,” she says. “They’re enjoying their freedom and they have complete access to the Internet.”

One college student Cash treated became psychotic due to a lack of sleep.

“Over Thanksgiving break, he actually played for 36 hours straight, became psychotic, violent and ended up in a psychiatric ward,” she says.

The student was eventually able to recover with sleep and medication, but he had a profound addiction.

Cash says people need to engage in more real-life social activities to prevent addiction, restrict their computer use to two hours per day and set limits on themselves.

“We have to have people tell each other, ‘I don’t want to get lost in this World of Warcraft,’” she says.

By Sonia Dasgupta

Lost. Great. The nearest sign of life was about 20 miles back. Even better.

In situations like this, Betty may become your best friend. She a character voice available through Tom Tom One’s automotive navigation system.

Navigation systems became a popular feature in vehicles in the last five years. Now they can be found in cell phones as well. Verizon, Sprint and Nextel have all released phones with navigation capability. Most navigation systems like Tom Tom are costly, ranging anywhere from $250 to more than $1,000, depending on the performance and features available. So is it more valuable to get the navigation feature put on your cell phone for about $2.99 per month?

The new LG Chocolate phone released by Verizon not only is VZ Navigator capable, but can play music, take pictures and be used to communicate with or without Blue Tooth Wireless. It’s like four gadgets in one. For about $400 or $180 and a two-year contract, people can pay to carry less.

Chris, a salesperson at the local Verizon store, says that the LG Chocolate is a good phone for music.

“It’s great for tunes, but if you want text messaging, the keypad is small, “ says Chris. “I would go for the V phone if you text message a lot.”

The V phone is like the Sidekick. When asked about the navigation system, he claims it’s good.

“It works well,” says Chris, “gets you where you need to go.”

Navigation systems work in cell phones, but some people want them installed in their cars.

Senior Katie Rhoads has a Tom Tom One in her Jeep. She says she uses it often, even if she wants to go somewhere close by.

“I’ve been waiting two years for this thing,” she says as she plays with the screen. “I’m gonna use it.”

Katie says she wanted the navigation system to help her travel between states and around unfamiliar areas.

“My dad lives in Connecticut and I don’t really know the roads,” she says. “It’s nice to have something that helps you when you’re lost or prevents you from getting into that situation.”

She says her favorite feature is that you can look through a list of local restaurants and stores and know where they are located.

“I also like that it tells you how long it will take to get to the destination and it recalculates it constantly depending on your speed,” Katie says.

She says that although the navigation systems in the cell phones may seem innovative, the screen is small and the search options are hard to use.

“It’s not distracting,” Katie says of her Tom Tom. “There’s a special light at night.”

Although it can help immensely when travelling through unknown territory, automotive navigation systems may be another safety issue on the road. Whether the driver is paying attention to the road or to the screen is a question many automotive researchers have wondered.

Research on the safety of navigation systems in vehicles is basically non-existent. Most research deals with aviation and other forms of navigation. However, in 1997, Paul Green of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute proposed methods to test automotive navigation safety and what possible situations could occur with navigation systems as a cause of an accident. He sets up scenarios where drivers are looking at their navigation screen and not at the road or when the instructions of the system fail causing drivers to make rash decisions. His research could be a basis to a technological mean to test navigation safety, but for now there is no mean to test navigation systems.

By Stefanie Gordon

While walking in the mall, you notice the usual retail gimmicks. Giant signs in bright colors, trendy music blasting from inside stores…and different scents grabbing your nose’s attention in every direction?

Advertisers have recently turned their attention to a new field apart from sight and sound: smell.

Stores have begun to place strategically engineered scents into their stores to attract customers, and hopefully increase sales.

Jeffrey Rosen, university professor of neurobiology of emotion, believes the sense of smell has a profound effect on humans, a source that has recently been tapped by advertisers.

He said that aromas affect us on a very high emotional level, and that cultural factors play a big role in what we find pleasing and displeasing in scents.

He has also done research with scents and the effect they have on rats.

“The odor alone of a predator activated areas in their brains that have to do with fear and anxiety,” he said. “You could visibly see differences in them. They appeared afraid of these odors, like they wanted to run away from them.”

Some retailers are taking advantage of the newfound power of scent and paying companies to develop aromas unique to their stores. Brian Meszaros, founder and chief operating officer of OpenEye, has developed one device which is a scented billboard.

“Next month, we’re doing a pilot in Regency Duty Free stores for Absolut Peach Vodka,” he said. “When a customer passes by the display, they’ll see a sign for the vodka and a device will unleash a peach aroma into the air.”

Meszaros thinks that smells and brand association will eventually go hand-in-hand.

“The sense of smell evokes emotions that we remember,” he said. “It’s the same thing with a new car smell. You always remember it and associate things with it.”

ScentAir is another such company, developing either signature aromas, or working with retailers and allowing them to pick from stock fragrances.

President David VanEpps said that he’s seen some bizarre orders.

“We’re had requests for everything from the fragrance of a deli sandwich, to the smell of a dank swamp, to burning hair, to dinosaur dung,” he said.

The most popular scents at the moment include pomegranate and green tea.

The idea of having a fragrance in a store isn’t as simple as arbitrarily spraying it at different times. VanEpps and his group have turned scent exposure in stores into a science, carefully controlling how and when a scent is released.

“The fragrance needs to be imprinted on you,” VanEpps said. “Like a radio ad that you hear over and over again, the scent needs to be smelled various times. The brain starts to tune out a fragrance anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes.”

VanEpps said that recognizing the importance of appealing to the customer’s sense of smell is vital, since more than 80 percent of marketing is focused on our eyes, but scent is second only to sight in how we view the world.

Could any legal issues arise from having scents in stores, such as customers who may not enjoy breathing in engineered odors in public areas?

Barbara Gadbois, director of consumer protection in the Delaware State Department of Justice, doesn’t believe so.

Gadbois believes that it would only be a problem if the store exuding the aroma was misrepresenting something to the public through the scent.

Junior Colleen O’Brien said she doubts a smell from a store would influence how much she bought or what she thought of a store’s merchandise.

“What the store is selling is exactly the same, no matter what it smells like,” she said. “ I wish they would focus more on improving their products then just trying to make the packaging better.”

By Kaitlyn DeRoy

By Lori Goldson

Released in October 2001, iPods have transformed from minuscule music mechanisms to full-force media machines. The constant revisions of iPods have relieved commuters, students and other users of portable CD and tape players after enabling the small device to carry thousands of songs and videos.

Podcasting was created in 2003, allowing consumers more flexibility than simply watching visual media and listening to music. In three short years, the podcasting phenomenon has become an essential tool for mass marketing and advertisement. In 2006, Pixar Studios director John Lasseter used the medium to promote Cars.

Aside from promotion, the revolution has altered learning experiences as well. Since its release, multiple universities across the country have adopted the new technology, including the University of Delaware.

Initiated in December 2005, the university’s podcasting system has allowed video and audio files to be transported through the internet for later listening on mobile devices and personal computers, says Media Services manager of Digital Media Operations Paul Rickards.

“The podcasting site and services was created out of need to compile media from numerous places,” he says. “It also created an effort in IT-media services to offer a podcast recording service from campus events such as guest lecturers and speakers and special events.”

While podcasting has been used for videos and television programs, the university has allowed the streaming of lectures such as the April 4, 2006, conference introducing new basketball head coach Monté Ross.

Other files that have been popular on university podcasting include 2006 Winter commencement, “Global Agenda” lectures and last spring’s 10-year anniversary celebration of Trabant University Center.

Aside from allowing students and professors to review different lectures and forums, podcasts have become popular throughout campus because of their ability to deliver media automatically to anyone who has subscribed to the university’s podcast feed, using free iTunes software.

“When new podcasts are available, your computer will download any new content that is available in the feed,” Rickards says. “This allows you to aggregate many different feeds together in one place. What was once scattered in many places is now in one place on your computer.”

According to Detroitfreepress.com, podcasting has been beneficial for elementary school students, too. In the article “Fifth Graders Learn Computing Skills through Podcasting,” Lori Higgins writes, “It’s part of a new project that has fifth graders at Quarton Elementary School in Birmingham, Mich., taking their lessons in such subjects as math, social studies, science and Spanish and creating podcasts about what they’ve learned.”

With the students’ podcasts soon to be available on iTunes, podcasting has rejuvenated learning for younger children as well as the college crowd.

Although podcasting has been helpful, it can be just as problematic as it is reliable.

Senior Perri McLoughlin says podcasting is a good idea, but tends to be a distraction for her with her online class.

“I’m usually doing laundry or something while listening, so for me it doesn’t help,” she said. “Sophomore year when I took Philosophy, I kept more up to date with it because I needed the class more, but I didn’t take notes.”

However, podcasts can be useful because of their advantage over traditional forms of online media. The university’s IT-user services has contributed a series of podcasts called “Consulting on Demand,” allowing podcast users to view and deliver a bevy of seminars, lectures, forums, meetings and training materials.

McLoughlin says she would recommend podcasting for anyone taking major courses.

“It’s good to have for people who can’t sit still or whose class doesn’t fit with their schedule,” she said. “If a person is using it, it’s easier to catch up and plan out where they want to listen.”

Since adopting podcasting, the university has developed 30 podcasting services throughout the campus, distributing events quickly after they are held.

The precise and rapid service of podcasting has received positive feedback from professors and students who use the entity.

“Many people have said they enjoy having the choice and freedom of downloading the content to their computer and their portable device, such as an iPod,” Rickards says. “It really removes the restrictions on where and how you can use media to your advantage.”