About this Issue



In this issue of Interface we begin a new phase of our development. For details on the changes we are planning, see "Director's Statement: New Directions at the Berglund Center." <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/02/statement.php> We will soon be announcing a new round of grants as well. Check back for our April-May issue for details. We lead off this issue with another article by one of our Berglund Fellows, Dr Melissa Wall of California State University, Northridge. In her article, "Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news" <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/02/wall.php> Dr. Walls discusses one of the important contemporary impacts of the Internet, "Blogs" and their effect in journalism.

One of our on-line teachers, Dr. Kristina Smolenski-Nelson provides another of her clear and useful articles for other Online Teachers (and for their many students) in "Teaching Online: How NOT to get Overwhelmed" found at: <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/02/smolenski.php>

In a spring-like fling of whimsy, I present an article on the perfect poetic form for the Internet, Haiku, using examples of Haiku written by students in the heat of a mid-term exam. "A Poetic Form for the Internet" is found at: <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/02/haiku.php>

Our book reviews present two very different images of the Internet. The first, a review of Calishain and Dornfest's Google Hacks <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/02/calishain.php> discusses a work which is the definitive study of one of the 'Nets true phenomenon, Google.com, the search engine of choice for the largest number of users. In addition to gaining a better understanding of Google, the reader can also become a power user of this important search engine. The second review is of Nuwere and Chanoff's Hacker Cracker <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/02/nuwere.php>, which details the life and career of a very interesting man whose life was changed by computers and the Internet. In addition, it gives great insight into the lives of hacker/crackers and their impact, for good and ill, on electronic security.

As always, we hope that this article of Interface finds you well and happy, and that you find it useful and enjoyable. We encourage you to submit your own works and all inquiries are welcome at our editor's desk: barlowj@pacificu.edu.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Barlow
Editor, Interface.