Edupage, November 17, 2006

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Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
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TOP STORIES FOR FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006
*** Thanksgiving Break ***
  Loopt Launches Social Mapping Service
  China Unblocks Wikipedia
  Chinese Court Clears Baidu

*** Thanksgiving Break ***  Edupage will not be published during the
week of Thanksgiving, Nov. 20 to 24. Edupage will resume on Monday,
Nov. 27.

LOOPT LAUNCHES SOCIAL MAPPING SERVICE
Start-up company Loopt Inc. is launching a social mapping service in
conjunction with the Boost Mobile brand of Sprint Nextel. With the
service, users can see on a map where other users are and can contact
those people, either by phone or text message. The service, which is
free for the rest of 2006, uses GPS technology in the Boost phones to
locate and track users who have agreed to let their locations be
monitored. Users can include notes that accompany their locations, such
as that they are in class or at the laundry, and they can disable the
feature whenever they want, preventing others from seeing where they
are. Most of the 3.8 million customers of the Boost brand phones are
under 25 years old, and officials from Loopt said this is a key
demographic in such location-based services. CEO Sam Altman noted that
among under-25 cell phone users, one of the most common text messages