The council that administers the Law School Admission Test has agreed to make its entire Web site accessible to blind law-school applicants who use screen-reader software, the association announced on Monday. That move is part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed in 2009 by the National Federation of the Blind. Three blind students also joined in suing the association and four law schools that either encouraged or required applicants to apply through the admission council’s Web site. The council says its technology updates should help resolve those lawsuits as well.
Students at the Technical University of Munich are turning to DNA to improve people’s dating lives.
A new dating site, Gmatch.org, uses DNA taken from the cheek swabs of users to suggest other users with whom they might have good chemistry, according to the site’s founder, Sarah A. Port. The service costs approximately $ 200 per use, according to The Telegraph.
The student-run site isn’t the first DNA-based dating service. Boston-based ScientificMatch.com began offering similar services in 2007 for about $ 2,000 per year, according to CNET News.
Desire2Learn has purchased a lecture-capture company, Captual Technologies Inc., the course-management software company announced on Wednesday. Captual offers hardware, software, and hosting services that colleges and other business use to broadcast lectures. The platform, previously called ePresence, is now called Desire2Learn Capture. The sale price was not disclosed.
Blackboard Inc., the course-management software company, announced on Tuesday that it was considering proposals to acquire the company. It did not disclose the source of the proposals. Blackboard’s stock jumped by nearly 30 percent early on Tuesday afternoon to its highest point since 2007.
Organizers of Internet2, the high-speed research network that connects more than 150 colleges, blew out virtual candles and celebrated their 15th birthday this week, leading Network World to reflect on whether the superfast system has lived up to its promise. It has, the magazine concludes, noting such achievements as linking researchers in the United States to the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, which requires quicker connections than the standard Internet can provide. The new leader of Internet2 outlined his vision for the organization’s future recently on The Chronicle‘s Tech Therapy podcast. Meanwhile a project called Global Environment for Network Innovations, or GENI, hopes to come up with the next generation of networking technology for researchers.
A video game that encouraged users to kill unarmed students and teachers has been pulled by the Web site that was hosting it. Kotaku, a Web site for gamers, reports that ModDB, which had hosted School Shooter: North American Tour 2012, pulled the game because of negative publicity.
Desire2Learn released a mobile application on Tuesday that promises to help students find campus news, events, and directory information on their smartphones. The application, called Campus Life, is built to compete with existing frameworks that help colleges offer mobile services, including Blackboard Mobile and MIT Mobile Web, an open-source project developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.