Surely all college students can relate on some level to the hobby of spending hours on YouTube, watching fail videos, weird cats, baby animals or nothing in particular.

However, the students of BYU have not had the good fortune to be able to enjoy such pastimes ever since the university banned the site on campus in 2006. But no more. The administration lifted the ban on Friday, citing the increasing number of educational materials available on the site.

Luckily, the students of UC Berkeley have never had to endure such a ban, and the minds of our Utah neighbors can now be infiltrated by cat videos … and educational materials, of course.

Image Source: nata2 under Creative Commons
BYU blocks campus access to YouTube [Herald Extra]
Mormon-affiliated university lifts YouTube ban [AP]

We’re afraid to even guesstimate how much time we spend and waste on our computer, but if you need to go fascist on yourself, this might be for you. JournalLive is a free Windows-only download that will monitor your time spent on the computer and show you how much time you take to write your paper in Word versus all that e-stalking on Facebook.

Sure, you could also snoop on your partner’s computer with this, but that’s an added bonus for only the most obsessive. The first step is admitting you have a problem, and it’s hard to hide from your funny cats YouTube obsession when the hours logged are staring at you in the face.

Image Source: dougwoods under Creative Commons
JournalLive Automatically Tracks Your Time [Lifehacker]
Earlier: Find Your Polling Place and Your Personal Ballot

Wi-Fi FreeSpot has a whole list of wireless hotspots for the student on the go, and now finding your favorite local cafe became that much easier. Below, the full list:

A Cup Above Cafe – 2598 Telegraph Avenue
A Cuppa Tea – 3202 College Avenue
Addison Annex Cafe – 2107 Addison Street
Beanery Coffee – 2 hrs free – 2925 College Avenue
Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop – 2130 Oxford Street
Berkeley Espresso – 1900 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley Ironworks – 800 Potter Street
Berkeley Public Libraries
Bobby G’s Pizzeria – 2072 University Avenue
Brewed Awakening – 1807 Euclid Avenue
Cafe Baguette – 2510 Channing Way
Cafe Cacao – 917 Heinz Avenue
Cafe Mediterraneum – 2475 Telegraph Avenue
Capoeira Arts Cafe – 2026 Addison Street
Crixa Cakes – 2748 Adeline Street
Elmwood Laundry – 2887 College Avenue
Espresso Roma Cafe – 1549 Hopkins Street
Fertile Grounds – 1796 Shattuck Avenue
Le Bateau Ivre – 2629 Telegraph Avenue
Looney’s Smokehouse BBQ – 2190 Bancroft Way
Mudrakers Cafe – 2801 Telegraph Avenue
People’s – 2015 Shattuck Avenue
Pyramid Alehouse – 901 Gilman Street
Royal Pizza & Pasta – 2072-74 University Avenue
Spud’s Pizza – 3290 Adeline Street
Steamworks Bath House – 2107 Fourth Street
Sufficient Grounds – 2431-A Durant Avenue
Sweet Adeline Bakeshop – 3350 Adeline Street
Tully’s Coffee – 2150 Shattuck Avenue
Turkish Kitchen – 1984 Shattuck Avenue
Village Grounds – 1797-A Shattuck Avenue
Yangtze River Restaurant – 1688 Shattuck Avenue
Yali’s Cafe – 1920 Oxford Street
Holiday Inn at San Pablo Street and University Avenue

The site lists wi-fi spots by city, so you can even find places to haunt while you’re back at home or floating around the rest of the Bay Area.

Image Source: xiaming under Creative Commons
Directory [Wi-Fi FreeSpot]
Earlier: Buy the Cheapest Books

A group of Cal researchers known as TIER (Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions) managed to do the highly unprofitable—establish over 200 miles of Wi-Fi link in Venezuela. But they did it to break a world record, not to bring internet connectivity to the nation’s netless. Really, though, who cares about motive? We’re sure the Venezuelans don’t.

We applaud TIER’s efforts to get into the record books, especially since some believe world-wide internet access is somewhat essential for humanity’s continued existence. Now all that’s left is to make a bad joke about how some of us are still waiting for ultracheap Wi-Fi.

Image Source: xiaming under Creative Commons
Helping Wi-Fi Reach World’s Poor [Daily Cal]

In the geekiest venture since the invention of fantasy sports, Internet nerds researched and wrote about Internet nerds, and all of them got together and had a party this past week at Stanford University. As far as we can discern from the report, the public forum on “New Media in the Everyday Lives of Youth” has the following to tell us about our screensucking, l33tsp33k-ing ways:

• Mark Twain would make an awesome emo kid.
• We use the Internet to validate our friendships. Also our lives.
• The digitalization of, well, everything has resulted in the rearrangement of domestic space, including a trend towards “media-rich bedrooms”. Code words for GTFO?
• “Marginal” teens like budding hiphop stars from downtown San Francisco can find communities of lifeminded peers online.

Danah Boyd — whups, we meant danah boyd — stars. Remember danah boyd? (For reasons unknown, the Berkeley doctoral candidate’s name appears in lower case in the report, on the SF Chron, on her website and in the Washington Post.) She wrote that one essay equating Facebook with white kids and MySpace with Latinos, art fags, goths and queer teens — an essay that was saved by, count ‘em, 2,221 people on del.icio.us. She regularly attends Burning Man. She looks like this. Oh, that hair! Oh, those glasses! We love it when Ph.D candidates wear black and pink wrist scrunchies and look indietastic.

According to boyd, the typical conversation on Facebook ‘wall’ might look like this:

‘yo, whaz up?’
‘not much. how you?’
‘good’

But actually translates to so much more:

‘I’m thinking of you and want validation that we’re still friends and you’re still thinking of me.’
‘Yes of course I am, silly, and I’ll announce it publicly.’

Well, now. Try as we might, we can’t argue with that.

Image Source: transkamp under Creative Commons
New media and the lives of youth [Berkeley news]
Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace [Danah.org]

We know it’s the new year (happy new year!) and we should be looking forward, but we can’t help but love all the crazy Internet people of the past.

Consider this video a treat–a break from tree people obsessing and a peek inside the mental makeup of a typical blogger. We’re just upset the video missed “2 Girls 1 Cup.”

Internet People [Meth Minute 39]