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TOP STORIES FOR MONDAY, JANUARY 03, 2005 Colleges Expand Recruiting Technology eBay to Discontinue Passport Copyright Levy Attached to German PC Sales Feds Deal with Computer Disposal COLLEGES EXPAND RECRUITING TECHNOLOGY As the effectiveness of e-mail as an admissions tool declines, colleges and universities are beginning to explore alternative recruitment Internet strategies. At the top of the list for many institutions are streaming videos of campus, either on the school's Web page or in the form of video magazines, or Vmags. Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame began testing a Vmag two years ago, sending it to students who had been accepted but had not yet decided to enroll. Saint Mary's Vmag includes four videos, each between one and two minutes, showing various activities on campus. Users who have downloaded the Vmag are prompted when new versions are available. Many believe video is able to persuade in ways that fixed images are not. Westminster College in Salt Lake City has added 136 video clips to its Web site in an effort to appeal to prospective students. Joel Bauman, vice president for enrollment at Westminster, said the videos are fairly inexpensive to produce. Karen Giannino, senior associate dean of admission at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., said the videos added to her institution's Web site help "tell our story in a compelling way" and "differentiate Colgate" from similar schools. New York Times, 30 December 2004 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/technology/circuits/30coll.html EBAY TO DISCONTINUE PASSPORT Online auction site eBay has announced it will discontinue support of Microsoft's Passport service later this month. The service offers registered users a single location to store personal information including names, addresses, and credit card numbers. When shopping at online vendors participating in the service, users can access their profiles for transactions with just a single login. Since its debut in 1999, however, Passport has failed to live up to expectations, in part due to competition as well as to security concerns among consumers. In addition, retailers were slow to sign up for fear that Microsoft might begin charging fees to retailers for the service. A spokesperson from eBay said that the percentage of its customers who regularly signed in using Passport was "very small." Despite losing one of the largest online retailers in eBay, Microsoft said the Passport service will continue. Reuters, 1 January 2005 http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=7217100 COPYRIGHT LEVY ATTACHED TO GERMAN PC SALES A German court has ordered one of the country's largest PC makers to pay a levy for each new computer sold, to compensate copyright holders for royalties lost to copying. Germany has long charged such levies on devices used for copying content, including blank audio and video cassettes. The VG Wort rights society, which represents copyright holders in Germany, had asked the court to charge Fujitsu Siemens Computers 30 euros (US$41) per computer; the court decided on a levy of 12 euros. VG Wort said it will work to make all PC vendors in Germany subject to the same levy. Bernd Bischoff, CEO of Fujitsu Siemens, said the levy is "a de facto tax on PCs," which will tend to decrease sales. Officials from Fujitsu Siemens said they will consider appealing the decision and have asked the German government to review the copyright levies as they apply to digital technologies. ITWorld, 24 December 2004 http://www.itworld.com/Man/2681/041224germanlevy/ FEDS DEAL WITH COMPUTER DISPOSAL The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun a program to dispose of computer hardware in an environmentally friendly manner, initially awarding contracts worth $9 million to eight companies. The government is one of the leading buyers of information technology; according to EPA estimates, IT spending by federal agencies for hardware, software, infrastructure, and services will total close to $60 billion in fiscal 2005. Currently the federal government disposes of about 10,000 computers a week. The new program, called the Government Wide Acquisition Contracts for Recycling Electronics and Asset Disposition, is intended to keep harmful materials in computers, including lead, mercury, and beryllium, out of the air and water. Contractors in the program will also work to improve efforts at recycling computer hardware. Federal Computer Week, 30 December 2004 http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/1227/web-epa-12-30-04.asp ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings, or access the Edupage archive, visit http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639 Or, you can subscribe or unsubscribe by sending e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName To UNSUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SIGNOFF Edupage If you have subscription problems, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***************************************************** OTHER EDUCAUSE RESOURCES The EDUCAUSE Resource Center is a repository for information concerning use and management of IT in higher education. 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