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I attended the University of Georgia, so I know that Georgia has more than a few folks who need some exercise. Google’s Atlanta office is a founding sponsor for Get Outdoors Georgia, a state program that encourages people to get off their seats and exercise in a park. Google is donating a branded YouTube channel, advertising services, maps and other features to support the effort.

If Google ever opens an Oahu office, I hope they will support a similar program for the island. A recent Federal study concluded that 8% of all Americans are diabetic. That’s 24 million people, with another 54 million who are on the verge of looking like the humans in WALL-E. Once someone, especially a child, gets fat, he tends to stay fat. This Motley Fool article, This Drug Market is Booming, discusses how pharmaceutical companies and investors are trying to profit from the diabetes epidemic.

See Get Outdoors with GO Georgia! for more details.

Forbes has posted its annual of the most-wired cities in the USA. Atlanta is number one for the second consecutive year. As DSL Reports points out, the Forbes list uses data that tell just part of the story.

Forbes presents the list in an obnoxious slide show format, so I haven’t determined if Honolulu made it yet.

The New York Times has published an article on doctoral education, with a long discussion on shortening the process:

The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33…

It took me 48 months to complete my Ph.D. at the University of Georgia as a full-time student. I earned my MBA at Rollins College in 21 months as a full-time student. An MBA was not a requirement in UGA’s business administration program, but I couldn’t have done my doctoral coursework without some solid MBA experience.

Is doctoral education supposed to be a career?

Four years was an average time to completion for business doctorates, as I recall. I spent almost 3 years taking doctoral courses and seminars. I proposed, wrote and defended my dissertation during my final year.

While I was classified as a full-time student at UGA, I also had a job. I taught at least one undergraduate management course for the management department each quarter. The college used doctoral teaching assistants as instructors, so I designed and taught my management courses, based on the college’s model syllabi and required textboks. The professors gave the doctoral students a great deal of flexibility, as long as we taught all our classes, and produced reasonable student evaluations and average grades.

It seems like a different world back then. We weren’t really on the Internet at the Terry College of Business. We used a service called BITNET to send emails within the college. BITNET used a store-and-forward approach to move emails and files aong the network.

I knew a few students who did their dissertations from a distance. Theirs was a difficult road. Manuscripts had to be mailed in paper form or on diskettes. Phone calls replaced conferences.

I have a box of paper notes in my office that I consult every now and then. Several students and I cobbled these together from our own files, as well as files donated to us by previous students. One of these days I should spend an afternoon and scan them into my digital archives.

EarthLink, the primary contractor for Honolulu’s municipal WiFi project in Chinatown, is laying off more than 900 employees and closing 4 offices, according to news reports. This is a massive cut that affects almost half of the company and several business units.

In one of yesterday’s posts, I discussed some of the changes in the wireless Internet industry. EarthLink’s retrenchment in municipal WiFi was announced earlier this year, when the company said it wouldn’t pursue new contracts until it had a better idea of the financial returns on current projects. Sprint’s recent alliance with ClearWire, Google’s continued efforts in mobile applications and wireless access, and the stagnating economy are other factors that have affected EarthLink’s competitive position.

Helio hath no fury… or market share

It isn’t the WiFi market that’s hurting EarthLink, though. The company’s investment in Helio has not worked out well. I mentioned Helio on June 17 and April 17. The iPhone and the industry’s various responses to that service have put Helio in a lousy position for a startup company. According to The Register, Verizon is moving fast with its new offerings, with some help from Samsung.

I just opened up my June 2007 copy of the University of Georgia alumni magazine and, on page 34, I received a pleasant surprise: Danger Mouse, otherwise known as Brian Burton or one half of Gnarls Barkley, earned his undergraduate degree in music at UGA in 2000. Wikipedia confirms this.

The Grey Album was one of my favorite downloads of 2005, and I do enjoy Gnarls Barkley’s music a lot.

On Sunday, Boing Boing posted a link to Bad Copy, Good Copy, a Danish documentary about copyright law and the media. It features an interview with Danger Mouse, along with snippets of his music. The video can be viewed for free at the web site, or downloaded for free in XviD format via BitTorrent. It’s a fun hour of viewing pleasure.