April 22nd, 2008
Follow up on .edu blogs
Last week, I posted a blog on the Pickering Institute’s efforts to sell blogs with a .edu top level domain (“Shut down pi.edu”). Yesterday, Ars Technica posted a new article with some updates and additional information on the demise of the $50 .edu blogs. As the Ars article asks,
Think back to the time when you filled out university applications. Which of the following might have suggested to you that the educational institution in question was not a great choice?
1. Its web site is the world’s worst-looking Wordpress page
2. It has been sued by the State of Hawaii and ordered not to present itself as an educational institution
3. It is selling .edu blog space for $50 a month
4. You can contact the management through a Hotmail account
5. Its online application asks for your passport number… and whether you are currently “Emoloyed”
6. All of the above
It appears that Google has responded by no longer indexing the site. Now the other major search engines need to follow suit to completely bury Pickering, since Educause, the administrator of the .edu top-level domain, has limited legal options in this matter.
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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