Hypercrit

Michael Becker writes about journalism, new media and digital culture in general.

Month: May, 2008

Online study kits irk one Florida professor

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus Blog reported today on a professor at the University of Florida who is upset that an online company, Einstein’s Notes, is selling notes and quiz answers from his wildlife ecology classes. The professor, Michael Moulton, and his textbook’s publisher have sued Einsten’s Notes, claiming that the company is […]

Paper Money Discriminates

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ruled 2-1 that paper money discriminates against the blind, the AP reported this morning.
The ruling upholds a district court ruling from November 2006. That case, American Council of the Blind v. Paulson, was criticized by various journalists and even by the National Federation of […]

Microsoft and Yahoo may yet do business

A new transaction may soon be on the table between Microsoft and Yahoo, one that does not involve Microsoft acquiring all of Yahoo, the companies announced Sunday.
In a written statement, Yahoo said that Microsoft “is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo! at this time.” At the same time, Yahoo is still open […]

‘Baby Mama’ suffers from overwriting

So, we saw the movie Baby Mama this afternoon. It’s not often that I sit down to write reviews, but the more I think about the movie, the more I think it deserves… something.
The film stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, both Saturday Night Live stars, but of course you knew that those ladies were in […]

Wikipedia may soon be more useful for students

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported today that Wikipedia’s staff will soon decide whether to add a feature that would make the publicly-editable encyclopedia more useful to students and scholars.
The new feature would allow versions of the encyclopedia’s articles to be frozen so that experts could the verify the information contained on them. The resulting articles, […]