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A growing number of colleges and universities around the country are distributing classroom lectures and campus speeches to the outside world via the downloadable audio and video programs known as podcasts.

Most college podcasts are probably meant for students and faculty, but schools from Carnegie Mellon to Stanford are finding that podcasts are a good way to spread knowledge, build goodwill and recruit a student or two.

The University of California-Berkeley has just posted classroom lectures on iTunes, the most popular place to get podcasts.

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The number of U.S. adults who use the Internet levelled off for a short period, but it's climbing again. Pew Internet says 73% of us are now online. Pew Researcher Mary Madden says it seems many of the new users came from the 50-and-over crowd.

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Two stories on the radio today. First, we hear from the co-founder of CustomFlix Labs, a subsidiary of Amazon, about plans to sell on-demand TV shows on DVD. Customers order shows on Amazon, then CustomFlix makes 'em and ships 'em. No messy inventory to manage.

Also today, we air a short interview with Regina Corso of Harris Interactive about a new poll that shows the tech sector is keeping customers (mostly) satisfied.

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A report this month from Earthworks gives mobile phone companies a failing grade in recycling. Earthworks says less than two percent of the 130 million cell phones discarded each year are being recycled. Cell phones can contain lead, mercury and arsenic. The major carriers all have takeback programs, but Kimberlee Dinn of Earthworks says the industry is not doing enough.

The cell phone industry trade group, CTIA, did not return our phone calls, but earlier told the Associated Press that the industry should be praised for its voluntary efforts to promote cell phone recycling.

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On Future Tense today: The current issue of PC Magazine names the top ten most technologically advanced cars. Editors judged cars on criteria such as entertainment and navigation systems, and environmentally-friendly technology. Topping the list is the Infiniti M45, which warns drivers when they are about to unwittingly change lanes.

Elsewhere...

BBC.co.uk has a remarkable tale of a homeless woman who blogs about the experience of living in her car in London.

It's a tale of our time - about being cut off from everything around you but still connected to people thousands of miles away.

A woman becomes homeless, so she gets into her car and drives. Except she has nowhere to go - so she stays in the car, with all her possessions heaped in the back, sleeping in the front seats, parking in secluded streets.

For eight months, no one notices her, because she makes sure she looks respectable, taking showers and even ironing her clothes in public places like hospitals. She has made herself invisible, out of touch from anyone she used to know - and keeping separate from other homeless people.

But this is the information age. And even though she doesn't speak to anyone, she can go into a library where she can access the internet and write an online journal - a homelessness blog - which she uses to describe all her unspoken experiences and feelings.

Looking for advice on how to set up a Webcam? David Einstein has some tips in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Can city workers be fired for Web surfing on the job? A judge in New York City says no. The AP has the story.

Saying surfing the web is equivalent to reading a newspaper or talking on the phone, an administrative law judge has suggested that only a reprimand is appropriate as punishment for a city worker accused of failing to heed warnings to stay off the Internet.

Administrative Law Judge John Spooner reached his decision in the case of Toquir Choudhri, a 14-year veteran of the Department of Education who had been accused of ignoring supervisors who told him to stop browsing the Internet at work.

The ruling came after Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired a worker in the city's legislative office in Albany earlier this year after he saw the man playing a game of solitaire on his computer.

In his decision, Spooner wrote: "It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work."

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David Rejeski believes we should apply the public television model to computer and video games. The way he sees it, there aren't enough serious games -- games that teach children about math and science, for example. Rejeski is director of the Foresight and Governance Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He's suggesting the government create an agency to encourage the development of games with social value.

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Recent research from the University of Maryland shows that consumers are more attracted to feature-packed digital products when they're shopping, but many become frustrated and dissatisfied with complicated digital cameras, cell phones and other gadgets after they bring them home.

The University of Maryland's Roland Rust calls this Feature Fatigue, and he wrote about it in a recent edition of the Harvard Business Review.

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Technorati says it is now tracking more than 35 million blogs. That's 60 times as many as just three years ago. But nearly half of those blogs have not beed updated in the past three months. Still, Technorati's David Sifry says the size of the blogosphere is doubling every six months.

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Some stores are expected to begin selling the first High Definition DVD player this week. The launch of the the Toshiba HD-DVD A1 marks the beginning of a format war for next-generation DVD players. Machines made with the competing Blu-Ray format are expected to hit the market later this year. But for now there is one choice, the Toshiba player that will run you about $500. But CNET editor-at-large Brian Cooley says this is probably not the time to buy.

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Offices of 12 U.S. Senators are in receipt of shiny new iPods. They're courtesy of a an advocacy group called IPac, which opposes tightening of copyright laws in the U.S.

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Google has just released a free Web-based calendar service for consumers, who can schedule events and share their comings and goings with others. Perhaps the most interesting feature lets users input natural language, like "city council meeting, next wednesday at 8" to schedule events.

Charlene Li is an analyst at Forrester Research and a heavy online calendar user. She likes Google Calendar so far.

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A new service called Webaroo allows you to download entire chunks of the Web to your laptop computer or mobile device so you can search for and browse Web sites when you don't have a live Internet connection. Webaroo captures and compresses Web content, and delivers to users a much smaller list of hits on search terms than they'd typically get searching Google or Yahoo.

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Back in 2002, Time Magazine wrote about a fabulous new invention, one of the best of the year, it said. It was supposed to turn a human tooth into a mobile phone of sorts. Time and many other media outlets reported that a couple of students from the Royal College of Art in London had devised an implantable dental chip that would receive radio signals and transmit the sound to a person's inner ear via the jawbone. But it turns out the art students never really built anything, and were mostly just trying to be provocative. Wired News reporter Rachel Metz got the "inventors" to fess up when she called them recently for an update on the tooth phone.

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Google's plan to provide free wireless Internet access throughout San Francisco is raising concerns among privacy advocates worried about the loss of privacy and anonymity of users.

Google has proposed to track users' locations and use that data to match them with advertising from neighborhood businesses. Google said it would keep the information for up to 180 days before deleting it.

But privacy advocates are worried the information Google collects on wireless Internet surfers could be used by law enforcement agencies and private litigators to place users under surveillance.

Google told the New York Times that it intends to work closely with the city of San Francisco and Wi-fi partner EarthLink to address any privacy concerns.

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A new report from the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet finds that the Internet fueled a dramatic increase in the number of Americans who contributed to candidates in 2004, and the number of small donations overall.

The report, co-authored by the Campaign Finance Institute, says three or four times as many people made contributions in 2004 than in 2000.

Prinicipal author Joe Graf says the ease of giving to candidates over the Internet is largely responsible for this new level of civic engagement.

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A hip-hop duo called Gnarls Barkley has risen to the top of United Kingdom music charts without selling a single disc. "Crazy" went to number one with 31,000 download sales, before the song became available on a physical medium.

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Looking to register a nice new ".com" address for your business, family or personal affairs? Good luck. Software developer Dennis Forbes of Toronto, Ontario has just completed an analysis of the dotcom registry, and found out just how picked over it really is.

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There are dozens of language-learning podcasts available for download on the Internet. You can practice your French, Italian, German, Japanse, Spanish and English by downloading the free audio and video shows. Most lack the professional quality you might get from commercial products, but they make up for it in authenticity and earnestness.

Most of the podcasts are audio only. An exception is Rolling Rs, a Spanish language video podcast taught by Larry Keim, a middle school Spanish teacher in Mesa, Arizona. Keim has produced 15 episodes since January. Each one has been downloaded about 10 to 12 thousand times.

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A small but growing number of K-12 schools across the country are experimenting with student podcasting. Students are podcasting reports, interviews, school news, and lots more. Teachers say students benefit by exposing their work to the world through the 'Net.

Links:

Room 208

Radio WillowWeb

Educational Podcast Network