Free CompSci 101 finally launches April 23rd
A free Computer Science 101 course that planned to launch in February 2012 will now launch on April 23rd.
Stanford Lecturer Nick Parlante announced the class in late 2011 and explained, in this video, that it would include some rudimentary coding.
Intentionally or not, the course inadvertently taught what happens to any coding project: deadlines will be missed. Would-be students first learned that lesson on February 18th, when Parlante mailed to say “... we've had some unexpected administrative hurdles … so we expect the course should now start in the second half of March.” Read more...
Tracking your kids for safety — and for health
Technology makes it possible to keep tabs on our kids in a way our parents couldn’t. We can put GPS trackers on them and in the vehicles they drive, get text messages automatically when they return home from school, get an audible alert when a toddler strays, and soon, even updates on whether or not they’ve brushed their teeth.
Each act of tracking has its health and/or safety benefits and it’s easy to see why parents would want to use these helpful products. Their use, though, raises questions. Are we using technology in instances when we should be parenting? And, are we raising a generation whose expectation of privacy that’s very different from ours? Read more...
New NASA program offers mentorship for girls
Does your little girl dream of one day reaching the stars? If so, this new NASA program is definitely for her. It's called G.I.R.L.S. (Giving Initiative and Relevance to Learning Science), a five-week summer mentorship program aimed at school aged girls with an interest in science, technology, engineering, and math. Read more...
Origami comes to life with reaDIYmate wifi toys
If you've ever tried your hand at creating an intricate animal or other sculpture out of paper, you know just how challenging origami can be. A new project called reaDIYmate aims to take all the challenge out of papercraft while allowing you to build customizable characters that not only look cool, but also connect to your digital life. Read more...
FreedomPop offering 1GB of free wireless data, hopes you’ll pay for more
Sick of paying out the nose for wireless data? Well, one enterprising startup may have an option for you: FreedomPop, a wireless service set to roll out in July and September, wants to offer you 1GB worth of 4G WiMAX and LTE wireless data service absolutely free.
The service operates on a "freemium" basis — certain aspects, like the 1GB of data, are free. If you go over the 1GB allotment, you will be charged a fee estimated to be in the range of 1 cent per megabyte. You can also pay for more data in advance, and features will exist where you can share some free data with other users. Read more...
Extreme mobility: Tools and tips for smartphone-only travel
After more than 20 years of dragging a notebook computer around whenever I traveled, I finally told myself that enough is enough. On two recent business trips, I joined the small but growing number of travelers who eschew a laptop in favor of a smaller, lighter device.
I could have opted for an iPad or an Android tablet, which would have lightened my load somewhat while providing a 7-to-10-in. screen. But that's an intermediary approach that would still require carrying a phone in addition to the tablet, probably shaving only a few pounds off my travel weight. I decided to go all the way to the light side and see if I could travel with just a smartphone. Call it extreme mobility. Read more...
Dead Stars: GPS for future astronauts?
Navigating through the stars is a pain. There's no Google Maps, and GPS is worthless once you've left the Earth's atmosphere. But some clever scientists may have found a solution to allow a spacecraft to pinpoint its location with stunning accuracy... by using dead stars.
These dead stars aren't totally inactive — they give off steady X-ray pulses (hence their name, pulsars). The pulses are so steady, in fact, that they're as reliable as an atomic clock. By comparing the pulses received by a detector at a given position, a spacecraft could easily determine its location in space with pinpoint accuracy, possibly down to just 5 km. Read more...
The Internet Has Killed April Fools’
It’s hard to tell if the Wikipedia article on April Fools’ Day is itself an April Fools’ prank. Tidbits of the ubiquitous holiday’s history seem like jokes in and of themselves;
“”In France and Italy, children and adults traditionally tack paper fish on each other’s back as a trick and shout “april fish!” in their local language (“poisson d’avril!” and “pesce d’aprile!” in French and Italian respectively).”
And this brings me to my point; The Internet has killed April Fools’. Back in the day you used to be able to tell your friends you were engaged, pregnant or had Cancer without them gushing all over your Facebook page or Twitter and immediately freaking out people who you didn’t want to prank, like your family. Read more...
Facebook’s Mobile Viral Channels Are Working For Wooga, Europe’s Biggest Social Gaming Company
Viral channels are slowly and inevitably starting to matter for mobile game developers. For ages, many top developers would try and climb up the charts through a combination of mobile advertising, offer walls, free app promotions or more nefariously, download bots.
But as the charts have been become crowded with north of a half-million apps and as Apple has clamped down on less savory means of acquiring users like bots, other ways of getting users are becoming more important. Read more...
Mac owners 3X more likely to preview next OS than Windows users
Mac users are nearly three times more likely to be running an early version of the OS X Mountain Lion operating system than PC owners testing Microsoft's Windows 8, the Chitika online ad network said today.
During a week following Mountain Lion's release, its share of the Macs that accessed Chitika's network was a puny 0.06%, or six out of every 10,000 Macs.
But that was nearly three times the percentage of Windows users running Windows 8 who were served an ad in the early days of that operating system's availability. In the same period following the release last September of Windows 8 Developer Preview, just 0.021% of all Windows PCs were powered by that sneak peek. (The number represented 2.1 PCs out of every 10,000 running one Windows flavor or another.) Read more...
Internet Explorer’s market share recovery continues
Internet Explorer appears to have found new footing in the browser market, picking up market share in March, strengthening the notion that Microsoft is at last turning around its fortunes in the software niche.
The company could not be more proud. Trumpeting the news, Microsoft claimed late last night that “March was a great month for the IE team.” That’s mostly correct.
Internet Explorer has two things going for it at the moment, from a market share perspective. The first is that in the United States, it’s approaching 50% market share on computers running Windows 7. This means that Microsoft is making progress in its project of phasing out Internet Explorer 8, an application that is quite outdated and unfit for the modern Web. Read more...