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"If Google+ were a social network, you'd have to say that for one with more than 500 million members - that's about half the size of Facebook, which is colossal - it's having next to no wider impact. You don't hear about outrage over hate speech on Google+, or violent videos not getting banned, or men posing as 14-year-old girls in order to befriend real 14-year-old girls. Do people send Google+ links all over the place, in the way that people do from LinkedIn, or Twitter, or Facebook? Not really, no. There's a simple reason for this. Google+ isn't a social network. It's The Matrix."

"The implementation of an effective national broadband network is critical to economic development and the federal opposition must not fear it, the founder of a high-profile "intelligent community" think tank has told IT Pro."

"Not that long ago, there was only the television, which theoretically could be kept in the parents' bedroom or locked behind a cabinet. Now there are smartphones and iPads, which wash up in the domestic clutter alongside keys and gum and stray hair ties. "Mom, everyone has technology but me!" my 4-year-old son sometimes wails. And why shouldn't he feel entitled? In the same span of time it took him to learn how to say that sentence, thousands of kids' apps have been developed-the majority aimed at preschoolers like him. To us (his parents, I mean), American childhood has undergone a somewhat alarming transformation in a very short time. But to him, it has always been possible to do so many things with the swipe of a finger, to have hundreds of games packed into a gadget the same size as Goodnight Moon."

"Ever needed to know the age of a Web page only to discover that it lacks a time stamp saying when it was published? If so, then the work of Hany SalahEldeen and Michael Nelson at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, may be of interest. These guys have created a Web application called Carbon Date that works out the creation date of a page by searching for the earliest evidence of its existence."

"One of the best services Google+  provides to its users is called " communities ". Any Google Plus user can easily create and host his/her community on the cloud and in a matter of few clicks.For us in education  we can use this service to create a community for our class. In this virtual space, you will get to share with your students resources, links, and also get them to participate and contribute in it. You can also create class events with dates, location, and more details and share them with your students and their parents as well. Needless to say that you can use Google Hangout right from your community to hold video conferences with your students."

"The ongoing copyright arms race between content owners and internet users has taken a new turn. Israeli firm Hola! has recently launched a suite of products that are variously designed to bypass geoblocking and accelerate internet-access speeds."

"12 educators, many of them well known in online-education circles, did manage to draft a document that they hope will serve as a philosophical framework for protecting the interests of students as online education. Called "A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age," the document proposes a set of "inalienable rights" that the authors say students and their advocates should demand from institutions and companies that offer online courses and technology tools."

CrowdSpot is a practical and inclusive web-based tool designed to complement the planning process for public space improvements. CrowdSpot is also great for research and knowledge sharing projects. Let's say a Council is interested in finding out which of 10 possible bicycle infrastructure projects the public values most. CrowdSpot is able to highlight a map of the municipality, with the projects identified. Members of the public simply vote on the project/s they value most. The CrowdSpot team provide a detailed analysis of the data, including visualisations, to assist Council make the best decision possible.

"Since I started this Experiment to use Evernote in every aspect of my classroom, I wasn't really sure what I was going to discover. I was sure there would be some way that Evernote was not going to meet my needs and I would be forced to add another tool to my chest while I continue the experiment for the school year. One way I was weary of was lesson planning. I have used the the traditional planner book for years and it has always been very good to me. I could easily flip back and see what I what I did the year before as I planned the upcoming school year. I'm not a big fan of trying to fix things that are not broken, but I figured I needed to give it a try in the name of the Experiment. Needless to say, I was not disappointed."

"Mr. Porterfield says schools, no matter their vigilance, should be transparent with parents about the potential risks of online learning networks."

Nokia 8 and also it is says that it could be a true flagship device and it could be announced on 26th Fab at MWC 2017

Alex Hern unpacks the irony encoded within Facebook's ever evolving privacy settings. Another reminder why we need to be ever so vigilant about Facebook and every social media platform for that matter. Facebook can truthfully say that it does what it promises, and even offers settings that let people lock-down their own accounts, while designing the site so even internet-savvy users like me will end up exposing information we never intended to make public.

"Use pngWriter when you have more to say than will fit in a tweet, without making it hard on your readers (or you). It's better and easier for everyone."

We tapped Twitter to learn what educators say are the downsides to implementing the Flipped Learning method, and we have provided our opinions that address the five major criticisms.

Thanks to technologies like GPS and QR codes, these games combine real-world experiences with virtual information. The games can capture geo-tagged audio recordings, for example, or photos and videos that student players can view when they reach a particular place or meet a particular character. Characters can talk with students, provide information, exchange items or respond to tasks. Authors can also create virtual items that players can retrieve and exchange. The key is the ARIS platform, which enables teachers, designers, artists, and students to create place-based narratives. Game designers say the open-source platform is easy to use; educators don't need a programming background to get started because the work is done with an online authoring tool.

The Internet is becoming our main source of memory instead of our own brains, a study has concluded. In the age of Google, our minds are adapting so that we are experts at knowing where to find information even though we don't recall what it is. The researchers found that when we want to know something we use the Internet as an 'external memory' just as computers use an external hard drive. Nowadays we are so reliant on our smart phones and laptops that we go into 'withdrawal when we can't find out something immediately'. And such is our dependence that having our Internet connection severed is growing 'more and more like losing a friend'.

The title says it all!

"LIKE it or not, your relationship with Google is becoming a lot more intimate. The company recently expanded its ability to combine data from its various services to create a highly detailed profile on you. Google says it's doing that to simplify its privacy policy and improve your experience on sites such as Gmail, Picasa, Google Plus and YouTube. But there's a business reason, too. Google gets a chance to use the data it collects to tailor ads that align more precisely with your interests, and those personalised ads are among the most lucrative for the company. Before getting too worked up, it's important to understand what's happening.

Every once and a while something comes along that causes me to wonder: Why isn't everyone using this (or something like it)? I look around college classrooms and libraries I find people using the usual suspects of programs:  MS Word and Pages.  I use Pages too, but it's only really good for the final composition of a paper, and it's a terrible research and note taking tool (it's a word processor, not a note taking tool). I've come to the point where nearly all my studies are done with Evernote.  I know there are are a ton of other programs out there (like Zotero, Scrivener, OneNote etc...) and this is not to say that those aren't good programs (I use Zotero with Amazon.com to make bibliographies super easy - but Zotero's note taking tool feels tacked on), but I just happen to use Evernote, heavily.  If you're a student and you are not using something like Evernote, you are probably missing out on being more productive and doing better work.