Most teenagers will find any reason under the sun not to do their homework. But 16-year-old South Londoner Nick D'Aloisio's excuse is better than most - he has been busy developing an app which has made international headlines and attracted a big investment from a Hong Kong-based billionaire.
The governor of Kansas has apologised for his office's over-reaction to a disparaging tweet from a teenager sent during a visit to the state capitol. Emma Sullivan, 18, tweeted last week that Governor Sam Brownback "sucked" and "#heblowsalot". But after the governor's office saw the tweet and complained, she was told by her school to write an apology.
British households download about 17 gigabytes of data on average every month over their home broadband connections, suggests a report. Regulator Ofcom's study takes a high level look at the state of the UK's digital communications. The monthly data diet is equivalent to streaming 11 movies or 12 hours of BBC programmes via iPlayer.
Criminals are targeting internet users with a new gift certificate scam, according to security experts. Users receive an email that claims to be from Apple's iTunes store, warns the Eleven security blog. The ZIP file attached contains malware that may allow hackers to gain access to the recipient's computer.
Trust in information on the web is being damaged by the huge numbers of people paid by companies to post comments online, say researchers. Fake posters can "poison" debate and make people unsure about who they can trust, the study suggests. Some firms have created tens of thousands of fake accounts to flood chat forums and skew debate.
Google has announced that it is dropping seven more products in an effort to simplify its range of services. The out-of-season "spring clean" brings an end to services including Google Wave, Knol and Google Gears. It is the third time that the US firm has announced a cull of several of its products at the same time after they had failed to take off.
Russian computer programmers have created an industry supplying criminals with easy-to-use automated hacking software which can take control of a home PC in seconds. This type of software, called an exploit pack, takes advantage of known flaws in commonly used programs, such as Adobe Reader and Internet Explorer, to hack computers without the need for human intervention.
The headlines were unequivocal - Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had announced that email is dead. The truth however was a little more prosaic. At the launch of the social network's new messaging platform, he had said "we don't think a modern messaging system is going to be email", and that the new system was "not email".
When I teach GoogleMail to year 7s, it's really obvious that the only reason they use email is to allow them to sign up to online accounts for games and stuff. And I reckon that 90% of UCTC year 7s have a Facebook account. Is that "normal" or "worrying"?