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Applying the Desert Island Discs approach to technology:" If I were to ask you what are the sharpest tools in your box, what would you say? What would be the 8 technologies you couldn't possibly do without?" Love this quote (after mentioning two older, named laptops) "The laptop I now work on most of the time is my Chromebook (which has no name - it would be silly to give a Chromebook a name; they have no memory, they have no soul)."

"Tobii's eye-tracking technology can make using a PC slightly more "natural," reading your eye movements to, say, scroll without needing to move a mouse. But for the disabled, it can be revelatory, allowing people with disabilities to use virtually all the abilities of a computer without ever touching it. The Tobii EyeMobile brings complete eye control to Windows tablets. It's an oblong-shaped sensor called the PCEye Go that attaches underneath the tablet via a bracket. Once it's in place and the eye-tracking software is installed, all the user needs to do is calibrate the sensor (which takes about a minute) and it's eyeball-ready."

"Find out who opens your emails and clicks on your links. Set reminders and never lose track of a prospect again. Eliminate manual data entry into Salesforce. Save time by using email templates to say the right thing"

"Wikipedia can be a nightmare for a teacher, or it can be their best friend. For those teachers that have papers handed to them by students that are clearly copied from another source, Wikipedia tends to turn up early in the search and show that the students have indeed, been checking out what Wikipedia has to say. It's no wonder that teachers often have questions about what is good about the tool and how it might benefit their students. Today, we're taking a look at some more general facts and figures about one of the world's largest free, collaboratively written encyclopedia. Which is a pretty awesome concept, if you ask us. The handy infographic below will let you in on some interesting facts that you probably weren't privy to - and some of the numbers are pretty staggering! Keep reading to learn more!"

"Madeline McSherry of Slate says it best:  "Coding is the hottest skill on the job market, the modern-day language of creativity, and a powerful force in the economy." Here are four reason why I believe students should be coding:"

"Twitter is rolling out an option to ease the use of direct messages. Traditionally, Twitter has allowed users who follow each other to send direct messages back and forth, or for users to send direct messages to accounts that follow them. A new setting, that appears to have been rolling out over the past week, allows Twitter users to receive direct messages from any follower. "If you check this option, any Twitter user that follows you will be able to send you a DM, regardless of whether you decide to follow them back," says a note before the option is turned on."

"Here's what she found: hiding from big data is so inconvenient and expensive that even Vertesi doesn't recommend it as a lifestyle choice. (She presented her findings at the Theorizing the Web conference in New York last week.) So what does that mean for companies who say users can just "opt out" if they aren't happy with (so-called) privacy policies? Can you be a person on the internet without sacrificing all your data to the Google Powers That Be? I talked to Vertesi about her experiment, its implications, and why hiding from big data can make you look like a criminal"

People used to say that Steve Jobs was able to create a Reality Distortion Field when he spoke. He had the ability to convince those around him to believe in just about anything, which was both good (they were motivated to achieve things they thought they couldn't) and bad (Jobs would sometimes recall events differently than others did - some might call that lying).

"Something is wrong on Twitter. And people are noticing. Or, at least, the kind of people we hang around with on Twitter are noticing. And it's maybe not a very important demographic, this very weird and specific kind of user: audience-obsessed, curious, newsy. Twitter's earnings last quarter, after all, were an improvement on the period before, and it added 14 million new users for a total of 255 million. The thing is: Its users are less active than they once were. Twitter says these changes reflect a more streamlined experience, but we have a different theory: Twitter is entering its twilight."

If you enjoy being involved in Twitter chats you may sometimes find it difficult to keep up with the discussions - you might find that running a search for the appropriate hashtag and then refreshing the search just doesn't really cut it for you. If that's the case, you might want to explore TWchat They say of themselves: "Our public service allows you to create realtime chat rooms based on twitter hashtag. Invite users and perform the presentations online without any additional software! Add your friends or colleagues to help you with moderation."

"Forget devices, the future of education technology is all about the cloud and anywhere access. In the future, teaching and learning is going to be social, says Matt Britland"

"We recently came across Pecha Kucha, a method of PowerPoint that has changed the landscape of presentations. It's pronounced pechákcha or pechákǝcha or just the slightly dorkier-sounding pecha KOO-cha. Anyway you say it, it is translated as "chitchat," designed and patented by architects Klein/Dytham in Tokyo in 2003. A Pecha Kucha presentation utilizes imagery and efficient use of spoken word to create a seamless, memorable, meaningful and concise presentation. It's a great method for teaching students how to create their best presentations for class project"

there's an assertion from Anna Richardson, the journalist, that I'd like to challenge. "Attention spans are much shorter" amongst "online audiences", she says. This is a common belief, but I take a different view.

If you go to https://docs.google.com/demo/, you can start editing a document, a spreadsheet or a drawing and share the links with other people, so you can collaborate in real-time. Google says that the documents are only available for 24 hours from the time they are created.

Fast-paced bytes of information gathered from today's social networks and video games are responsible for rewiring kids' brains, says UK neuroscientist Susan Greenfield. Though she doesn't cite any research, she connects these new technological habits to the behaviors of infants and autistic children.

Media multitaskers pay mental price, Stanford study shows Think you can talk on the phone, send an instant message and read your e-mail all at once? Stanford researchers say even trying may impair your cognitive control.

"Scratch is often cited as one of the best introductory languages for teaching kids - or anyone, really - to code. So it's no surprise that a Rutgers University honors class called "Programming for the Masses" would utilize Scratch as part of its goal of making programming a more accessible, everyday skill. What is unique - and if I may say so, pretty fun - is the direction that a research project, an outgrowth of the class, has taken since. The project is called Scratchable Devices, and with it, computer science Professor Michael Littman and some of his students are working to make it easy for anyone to program their household devices by using Scratch."

"Research group Gartner says many vendors have been left battling for survival as the compact digital camera market reaches maturation point in most developed countries .. Driving its downfall is the rise of the mighty smartphone with its inbuilt megapixel camera, hogging space in our pockets and snatching market share."

Interesting shift from compact digital cameras to iPhones and digital SLR cameras.

Huffington Post recently put up a story called You're Out: 20 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade. It's a great retrospective on the technology leaps we've made since the new century began, and it got me thinking about the difference today's technology will make in the lives of tomorrow's