At the University of Colorado at Boulder, building "green" has resulted in an unexpected outcome: spotty cellphone reception within the some of the campus's energy-efficient newer buildings.

The issue has irked students, according to Colorado Daily, and it's also a safety concern. Officials quoted in the Daily said that  new and improved insulation and UV-filtering windows could be culprits.

Greg Stauffer, communications manager for the university’s Information Technology Services, said the energy-efficient designs had made it more difficult for some signals to enter some buildings. Technology officials are looking into placing antennas inside academic buildings as a possible way to boost signal strength.

"We don’t believe we have a unique problem, and we are embracing environmentally efficient design," Mr. Stauffer told Wired Campus. "With the heavy reliance on...

Pro: I get to sleep off the hangover.

Con: I already skipped the class twice. 

If you're a student, chances are you've faced a dilemma like this. Well, you no longer have to leave the risks up to chance. That's the idea behind a new online calculator, which purports to help students decide whether skipping class is a smart move, based on their answers to a series of questions.

Since its creation in February, the site has made 18,430 calculations. 

“It started out as a joke between me and some of my friends,” Jim Filbert, its creator, tells the University of Maryland at College Park's student newspaper. “It wasn’t until April that I saw there were more people using the calculator than I thought.”

Does this thing actually work? We have no idea. But check out Campus Overload, where Jenna Johnson gave the site a hypothetical spin on a class called "Zombies in Popular Media." 

Patricia Easteal took a sabbatical in England last year—without ever stepping foot outside her front door in Australia.

The University of Canberra law professor took the digital trip as part of a research project exploring a different take on the hoary academic tradition. She relied on Skype and YouTube to communicate with Durham University students and faculty members.

Could the sabbatical of the future be virtual?

“We did not undertake this project with the intention of advocating it as a replacement,” Dr. Easteal said. “We were simply testing it as an alternative, especially for groups that have difficulty traveling and/or being absent from home for a long time.”

Her one regret? Not having the chance to listen to the grand organ music at the nearby Durham Cathedral, a place BBC reported to be the country’s “most beloved building.”

Though she isn't aware of other universities...

Maybe Mark Zuckerberg doesn't like all those headlines about social-network uprisings among Facebook's old student base. This week Facebook threw a bone to students, in the form of a new "Universities on Facebook" page. The idea is to help students better use the site for campus activities like newspapers, dorm groups, and student government. In an announcement, Facebook called the page an attempt at "reconnecting" with students.

"The very existence of a page like this serves as a reminder of how Facebook has changed—where it was once a site designed by and for universities, they are now a specialized audience with a page catering to their specific needs," blogged VentureBeat.

Still, this project doesn't seem nearly as controversial as the "community pages" that had college marketing types freaking out back in May. By one account, at least, those are "still a big mess."

University libraries nationwide are attempting to make scholarly research easier, whether with browser extensions or iPad applications. For technologies in the testing stages, though, low usage or lack of support can lead to an early demise.

MIT Libraries has created a place to for these tools after they've come face to face with the grim reaper—its Beta Graveyard.

Remlee Green, user-experience librarian at MIT, developed the site to remember search tools that have been discontinued.

“The spirit of experimentation is in trying new things,” Green said. “Even if it wasn’t perfect for us, there are some positives in those tools. We try to find out what works in something that’s broken.”

A headstone-esque screenshot on the site is accompanied by an epitaph commemorating the life of the particular beta.

The resting place is occupied so far by two applications: iGoogle and Facebook...

Josh Weinstein, a 2009 graduate of Princeton University, remembers waiting eagerly for his official college e-mail address the summer before freshman year. An address ending in .edu would give him access to Facebook, an online social network that only college students could join.

Oh, how times have changed.

Everyone and their mothers, and fathers, are on Facebook. But Mr. Weinstein hasn't given up hope: He's created a Web site where students can post messages, pictures, and events away from the prying eyes of parents and professors. The site, CollegeOnly, went up on Wednesday, and right now students from Cornell, Princeton, and Yale Universities can sign up. Those colleges were among the campuses where Mr. Weinstein's other creations—GoodCrush, an online matchmaking service, and RandomDorm, a college-only version of Chatroulette—were especially popular. Mr. Weinstein and his team plan ...

It has taken the University of Colorado two decades to come up with a new student-information system. And one of the first effects has allowed students to bull their way to the head of the line for popular classes, skipping past others already on the course waitlist. But the Boulder Daily Camera reports this week that the university has fixed the $50-million system—for the most part. "We've reduced the chances of this happening," university spokeswoman Malinda Miller-Huey told the paper on August 25. Students interviewed for the article were not so sanguine. "The new system sucks," said one junior.

The problem apparently occurred because the new software, MyCUInfo, held students on class waitlists for long periods, perhaps while checking their eligibility, officials said. Meanwhile, new students could log in and enroll.

Now waitlist status is being reviewed by the software every seven ...

Code is not something most reporters learn in j-school. But as media and technology converge online, a group called Hacks/Hackers is trying to bring together journalists (those would be the hacks) and programmers (hackers). Their agenda? To geek out, drink some beer, and maybe figure out the future of media.

Now the group and several other collaborators are expanding that dialogue into a new open online course that kicks off September 15. The idea is that media types and programmers will teach each other about their respective crafts. The class and its materials will be available free through P2P University, an experiment in open peer-to-peer teaching.

"There’s a big hunger in the media community to learn more from technology," says Burt Herman, a former Associated Press correspondent who founded Hacks/Hackers. "I think technologists realize, too, that they need great content."

The...

By Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem—A judge in Tel Aviv's small-claims court has fined Tel Aviv University because the institution refused to stop sending a student unsolicited promotional e-mails.

Judge Ronen Ilan fined the university 2,000 shekels (approximately $525) plus 300 shekels ($79) in costs for violating an Israeli law that forbids sending promotional e-mails against the wishes of the recipient.

The university had argued that it supplied and owned the e-mail service, and that students checked off a box when they opened their e-mail accounts that said they agreed to receive commercial messages at the discretion of the university. The judge said the agreement was too general and must be reversible.

Guy Mor, a second-year law student and a member of the editorial board of the Tel Aviv University Law Review, received an e-mail in February promoting a course in English...

E-textbooks are not forever. Most publishers make their academic titles available for only a semester, or a year, after which time, the digital files self-destruct.

Now the University of Michigan Press is trying an even shorter rental period for its e-books. Customers have the option of renting 261 of the press's most popular scholarly texts for either 40 percent or 75 percent of list price, for a rental period of either 30 days or 180 days. Essentially Michigan is combining two emerging trends in the textbook industry: rentals and e-books.

A digital book from the University of Michigan Press that originally cost $22.95 could be rented at $10 for 30 days, or $18 for 180 days. The clock starts ticking when the book is opened, and the digital file can be viewed on up to six devices—whether it be a PC, a Mac, or an e-reader.

Heather Newman, the press’s trade marketing manager, hopes the ...