Before I give you the weekly links, I would like to encourage everyone to head on over to alumni futures and participate in their Alumni futures Innovation Award. I know the contest is a week old but it’s not to late to get the word out. There is still plenty of time to participate. The contest doesn’t end until Feb. 14th. All that you have to do is go get your random word and writeup a brief way to use your word to challenge or innovate higher education administration. That’s it! There are even great prizes for Higher Education Gurus!

Here you go with the collection of links for the week.

• ARM Google phone platform demo due Monday - British chip designer ARM will demonstrate a prototype of Google Inc’s Android mobile phone platform in action next week at the world’s biggest wireless fair, a source close to the company said.
• ChangeWave survey shows consumers abandoning basic models for advanced RIM and Apple phones - Record numbers of consumers are abandoning their basic cell phones for more-advanced models, according to the latest ChangeWave consumer cell phone survey.
• College Football Recruiting Prediction Model - Yes this is exactly what the title says it is… You just have to see it to believe it.
• Calls To Action - Click Here! - As we go about our online lives we are all exposed to “Calls To Action” on a day by day, and sometimes minute to minute, basis . This article examines what a Call To Action is and how you can make yours stronger than the competition.
• comScore 2008 Super Bowl Post-Game Survey Shows Anheuser-Busch Scores as the King of Ads - Hyundai Does Most to Improve Brand Image; SalesGenie.com Incurs Most Brand Damage
• Google Steady, MSN Down in January - Hitwise, today announced that Google accounted for 65.98 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending January 26, 2008.
• Wired Campus: Tech Therapy: Do College Presidents Give Enough Attention to Campus Technology? - “It seems to me that when the focus is on technology and not the problem or the issue that is trying to be solved, it becomes almost a barrier in terms of effecting solutions,”
• A Guide to Billionaire Bloggers - And Some We’d Like to See - With the news today that billionaire investor Carl Icahn is getting ready to start blogging, we started to wonder what other billionaires blog.
• Union University Emergency Communications Plan - After 2 dorms were destroyed by a tornado and its website went down, Union University relies a blog and its Facebook page for its online emergency communications
• Social Media - How to Measure Marketing Effectiveness - What a Business Should Measure to Understand the Marketing Effectiveness of Social Media
• India’s IT market to reach $24 billion by 2011 - Despite fears of a global recession India is showing rapid growth, with Indian firms increasing their IT budgets an average of 13 percent this year
• Try It First in Web 2.0 - Web 2.0 can and does allow pathways and capabilities for learning that weren’t there before the Web, but for the moment we see faculty and administrators using Web 2.0 to augment existing functions and learning practices.
• Using Mashups to Teach IT Concepts at Bentley College - Interesting article about using Web 2.0 Mashup technology for Education
• 5000+ Resources to Do Just About Anything Online - Wow… I had to share this with you guys!
• Project DIY Niche Site - Domain Acquired - I’ve got to share this post. The Blog Entrepreneur is going to be developing a Niche site and walking the readers through all the headache and victories. Go read the post and subscribe to the feed. This should be a great ride.
• 5 Worst Practices in Web Analytics - There’s a lot of talk in the measurement community about best practices–accepted methods to measure and optimize a website. Of course, if you’re not following these, chances are you’re operating with one or all of the 5 worst practices in web analytics.
• What Benjamin Franklin Knew About Social Media - Benjamin Franklin was a blogger - without a doubt. This is a MUST READ
• 15 Principles of Internet Marketing - I think this is a great list that anyone who markets online should hold close.
• FCC approves sale of nationwide spectrum to AT&T - AT&T’s deal with Aloha Spectrum to buy 12MHz of wireless spectrum that covers 60 percent of the U.S. gets the FCC’s go-ahead
• Nature Giving Way to Virtual Reality - As people spend more time communing with their televisions and computers, the impact is not just on their health, researchers say. Less time spent outdoors means less contact with nature and, eventually, less interest in conservation and parks.
• MySpace Platform Aims to Pick Up Where Facebook Left Off - MySpace is launching its developer platform tomorrow and is going great lengths to highlight the ways it’s different from the Facebook Platform. That’s ironic given that the dominant reaction to the Facebook Platform, from users at least if not the press
• Consumer group slams RealPlayer as ‘badware’ - A consumer advocacy group is blasting RealNetworks for installing adware and other software without properly notifying its users.
• The real reason Google’s feeling queasy - A nice look into Google’s fears of Microsoft’s buyout of Yahoo.
• 2008 Superbowl Commercials from Super Bowl XLII: Vote for Favorite Ad Videos - Here is a site put together on MySpace of all the Super Bowl ads. If you missed anything here’s your chance to watch it.
• Ten Reasons Why my University Job is Better Than Your Corporate Job: - This is a great post looking at why working in higher education isn’t that bad after all.
• This Month In SEO - 1/08 - Wow what a large list of resources from January!
• Intel, Micron Claim To Boost Solid-State Drive Speeds By 500% - The NAND flash memory chips can reach speeds of up to 200 MB per second for reading data and 100 MB per second for writing data, the partners said.
• The real reason Microsoft wants Yahoo - Yahoo’s server farm horsepower and development expertise will help Microsoft deliver new Web business apps
• It’s ‘Open’ Season - From a financial standpoint, open source applications offer reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), but they offer even greater intrinsic value.

This weekend I plan to spend some time working on updating the blog so maybe I’ll get a post in describing what I’ve done and why. I’ve found some really interesting information about Digg this week, unfortunately very little of value to higher education marketing. None the less it should be an interested post on Monday.

Have a great weekend!