| Weekly Wrap-up: What Tech Obstacles Do Kids Face? Twitter Brand Pages, An iPhone User's First Days on Android and More... Our top story this week was Audrey Watters' report on a survey that asked students how they use technology in the classroom. Almost 300,000 students from kindergarden through 12th grade - along with 43,000 parents, 35,000 teachers, 2,000 librarians, 3,500 administrators - took part in the study. The results show that parents and teachers' desire to either provide or improve access to digital tools in the classroom is strong. And teachers and administrators are confident they're doing a good job using technology to enhance how students learn. But fewer than half the kids agreed. And it's no wonder: The majority of administrators surveyed have no interest in incorporating one of the most common computing devices in the world - the cell phone - into their schools this year. After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key trends that are shaping the Web - mobile, location, Internet of Things - plus highlights from our six channels. Read on for more.
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Commodore 64 Rises from the Dead "Donkey Kong through every difficult juicer." - B. Folder Commodore 64 was a milestone in personal computing. For one thing, it enabled a global Donkey Konging that gave birth to the world as we know it. Now, Commodore USA, the group of folks who bought the Commodore brand, are bringing it back, but with a significantly updated engine. The original 64 had got its name from its 64 kilobytes of memory. From its debut in 1982 until the original product stopped being produced it sold as many as 17 million units. The Commodore was the market dominant PC in the mid-80s and influenced the expectations and sense of possibilities for an entire generation of computer customers and creators.
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Google Brings Hotpot Recommendations to Places, Almost Reinvents Yelp Google announced this morning that it would be "graduating" Hotpot, the restaurant recommendation engine that it launched last November. By "graduating," the company means that the once stand-alone product would become an integrated part of Google Places. What will become of Hotpot? Aside from the name disappearing and its merging into Google Places, the company offers little in the way of details. If you look at the past day's developments, however, it sure looks like Google is reinventing the wheel...or wheels, as it may be.
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Google, ITA & The Future of DIY Data Mining Tools The US Department of Justice appears to have made a deal with Google that would allow it to acquire ITA Software, a company that provides airline data to travel search engines, for $700 million with a list of conditions. One of my favorite websites in the world is now in Google's hands. Built as a side-project by ITA engineers, Needlebase is a point-and-click data extraction tool that recommends merges and allows for data to be visualized in multiple ways including as maps. I am not a technology blogger because I am moved by news that air travelers may have to pay a few hundred dollars more per year. I'm moved by technology that puts formerly inaccessible skills into the hands of everyday people to create beautiful things, like Needlebase. Needlebase is the WordPress or YouTube of data extraction and manipulation and if Google kills it I'm going to be very upset.
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YouTube Finally Launches Live Streaming Portal to Select Partners Things keep changing at YouTube and today the site announced the launch of YouTube Live, a portal to highlight the live video streams of trusted user accounts. "The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead," the company said today. "In order to ensure a great live stream viewing experience, we'll roll this offering out incrementally over time." It's not a surprise to see YouTube go live, it's just a surprise to see it happen so soon. We've spoken with participants who have been testing the program for months and we'd heard that it wasn't going to launch for some time. We've also heard that the technology and user experience for publishers is excellent.
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Weekend Project: Make Your Own NFC Tags NFC, or near field communication, is an emerging technology that will power mobile payment systems and mobile wallet solutions, like those in development by Apple, Google, RIM, mobile operators, banks and others. But NFC itself is just a way to send data wirelessly between devices, meaning it can be used for far more than mobile payments alone. One way to take advantage of a phone's NFC capabilities is to make your own NFC tags. These tags, when read by your phone, can perform a number of actions, like open a map, launch a website, change your phone's settings and configurations, plus dozens of other tasks. Wouldn't it be fun to make tags like that? Well, now you can. Here's how.
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Google Survey Reveals How We Use Our iPads Google has released results of a survey (PDF) on user behavior with regard to tablet computers, the vast majority of which are iPads. Responses indicate that tablet ownership significantly changes our media consumption habits and computer use. As one of the fastest-selling consumer technology products of all time, the iPad is an important technology to study the use of. There's something really futuristic and joyful feeling about it, at least in my experience. Given how much other people apparently use theirs, it seems I'm not alone in that feeling.
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