For those of you interested in the latest developments on UMR's name change discussion, we offer you the name change conversations blog. It's a blog designed to offer the big UMR community -- not just students, faculty, staff and alumni, but the wide-open frontier of blogworld -- a chance to discuss the issues surrounding the name change. It's also the source for all the latest information about the name change discussion. So drop by, add it to your RSS feed, and become part of the conversation.
January 2007 Archives
Ben Roodman and Rana Basheer, two students at the University of Missouri-Rolla, have a serious case of the entrepreneurial bug.
It shouldn't be a surprise if their names sound familiar. They've created two unique social networking services (ImThere and GuruLib). TechnoFiles sat down with the two students to get the scoop behind their success. Dowload the mp3 or make it simple on yourself and subscribe to the podcast, already.
It's time once again for UMR undergraduate researchers to show their stuff in our annual Undergraduate Research Conference. Students have until March 16 to register. The top researchers can win cash prizes.
Last year's winners (PDF) included students researching medical biosensors, quantum dots, robotic swarms, elephant migration patterns, IEDs, editorial cartoons and more. It's all part of UMR's effort to give undergraduates "experiential learning opportunities" -- i.e., hands-on research.
Blogworld has been buzzing about ImThere, an innovative mobile social networking service. Now the service has caught the attention of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, snagging a spotlight in a recent Random Play feature.
UMR student-entrepreneur Benjamin Roodman is CEO of this new networking service that connects subscribers to information about events -- such as concerts, CD launch parties or indie film festivals -- via text messages over their cell phones.
Here's how it works: Users log on to the website and create profiles based on their musical tastes and other interests. Users can post photos in real time taken with cell phones from concerts, write reviews of events and get a text message with a list of events happening in the area, based on their interests.
It's a handy little service to use when you're in the St. Louis area but I'm looking forward to early April, which is when Ben tells me Ramped Media will launch ImThere nationwide. When that happens, I'm so there.
Mindy, Mark and Kevin wowed 'em (or maybe flipped 'em is the better phrase) with their presentation at the CASE District VI Conference on Monday. Today, we're all on the road again, heading back to Rolla. We return with a slew of awards in hand, renewed energy, and a renewed sense that we're on the right track with this blogging thing and some of our other social networking endeavors (such as online video). We welcome our new readers and new acquaintances from CASE and hope you'll enter this grand, interconnected conversation with us. We hate talking to ourselves. (Most of the time.)
On Monday, Visions' very own Mindy Limback hits the lecture circuit, along with two of her compadres from UMR's electronic marketing communications staff (techno-whiz Mark Remer and our resident usability expert, Kevin Tharp). The three will talk about this blog -- and make a case for other colleges and universities to follow our example -- at the District VI meeting of CASE (the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) in Kansas City, Mo. Many lucrative speaking opportunities will no doubt follow.
(Cartoon courtesy of gapingvoid, under these terms.)
The future of Rolla's economic vitality hinges on the development of a technology park at UMR.
That was the message Elizabeth Bax, executive director of the Rolla Regional Economic Commission, presented to community leaders on Tuesday, Jan. 15, as part of an annual report to the community. Bax, who is beginning her second year as RREC's executive director, also pointed out that new commercial development in Rolla and the expansion of Hypoint Industrial Park east of Rolla were also crucial to the community's economic future.
But central to her theme was the development of a UMR tech park and the need "to pin our economic strategy to the university."
Full story at TheRollaDailyNews.com.
A better way to keep track of our books, CDs, DVDs and video games, that is.
GuruLib.com is the brainchild of Rana Basheer, a UMR graduate (2003 MS in computer engineering) who recently returned to get his Ph.D. and conduct research in wireless networking. This website allows users to organize their personal libraries by retrieving information about their books, CDs, DVDs, video games or software from some 530 public and university libraries around the world as well as six Amazon.com servers. All you have to do is type in the name of your book, CD, DVD, etc. -- or use a UPC scanner if you have one handy -- and voila!, the Internet fetches all the info you need to know about it, including ISBN, used and new pricing information, author/performer, copyright information, etc. I spent the icy weekend cataloging my music and book libraries for insurance purposes. GuruLib has now become my latest online obsession.
Read more about how GuruLib.com works on our research news site.
According to the collective hive that is the blogosphere, we're approaching the tail end of (Inter)National Delurking Week, a worldwide push to get blog readers to turn off their cloaking devices and post comments on the weblogs they read. We know you're out there, so please, give us a shout out. Today. or this weekend.
Show us some comment love.
Anyone? Bueller?
I would just like to say that I am personally contributing to UMR's grand research tradition -- even though my contribution isn't in a scientific field. Today, in the English class I teach, I made my students research the history of spam (both the meat and the email). I think I can say that my students, and possibly the people of the world, are better off now than they were before I came up with this brilliant idea for a research assignment.
Jerrod Bouchard and Craig George will be in Boston this weekend to put the finishing touches on their assisted HPV vehicle, a recumbant bike that runs on pedaling power or solar power. The UMR students started working on the project last summer at the MIT Design Summit. Now, their vehicle -- which is capable of doing 70 mph -- will be showcased at the SolidWorks World Conference coming up in February.
Meanwhile, a mini-documentary on the Design Summit will be rebroadcast Jan. 10 on Discovery HD. Oh yeah, and Jerrod and Craig are also making plans to break the collegiate HPV speed record this year. To do that, they are building a separate vehicle that will need to be capable of going 62 mph with only human power.
In addition to the bike built for record breaking, the UMR HPV team -- which is only about the best HPV team ever -- is building a yet another bike for this year's competitions against other college teams.
While the so-called old media has been slow to pick up on our recent news item about student-entrepreneur Benjamin Roodman's cool mobile social networking service (ImThere), the blogosphere is all over it. Which should come as no surprise, since it involves techie gadgety and connects Internet and cell phone technology. That's the sort of thing bloggers jump on. The mainstream media? Not so much, apparently. Or not as quickly. We think they're missing out on a great story. ImThere could be the next YouTube.
Here's a roundup of blog coverage from the past couple of days:
- A MySpace for the mobile generation, from Smart Mobs, the blog of Virtual Community author Howard Rheingold.
- Tracking friends around music venues, from Wired's blog for music fans, Listening Post.
- Missouri student goes mobile..., from Textually.org.
- One of Ypulse's two mobile social networks to watch. We think it's really the only one to watch, but we admit a slight bias.
Years ago, those groovy mod rockers the Who sang about "going mobile." These days, UMR student Ben Roodman is putting a new spin on the idea with the launch of ImThere, a social networking service that integrates the Internet with cellular telephone technology.
Roodman, a senior computer engineering major from Chesterfield, Mo., is the the CEO of ImThere, which could become the MySpace of the mobile world. It's a social networking
service that connects subscribers to information about events -- such as concerts, CD launch parties or indie film festivals -- via text messages over their cell phones.
ImThere is the first service launched by Ramped Media, a company Roodman co-founded in 2006. He describes ImThere as "a user-driven site that allows people to find things to do, by using either their cell phone or the website."
"We want to be on the forefront of mobile Internet technology,” Roodman says. “Text messaging is the medium that’s going to allow us to get to that point.”
Roodman and company -- which includes some fellow UMR students and one recent grad -- are piloting ImThere in St. Louis with plans to expand it to other markets later this year. Keep tabs on how things progress for this budding entrepreneur at the Ramped Media blog.
