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The reviews from people testing the Nexus 7 for an extended period have been almost unanimously positive. However, while many have rightly compared the Nexus 7 to the Kindle Fire, and stated that Google's effort blows Amazon's out of the water, few would even mention the Nexus 7 in the same breath as the Apple iPad. I disagree with this inherent refusal to put the two on a par. I believe the Nexus 7 is competition for the iPad and I feel competition to Apple's stranglehold on the tablet market is exactly what's needed at this juncture

The Federal Government has released a smartphone application to provide quick and easy access to information about emergencies and disasters across the country. The DisasterWatch app can be downloaded for free and contains the latest public information via a direct feed from emergency response teams in each state and territory.

Easy way to get a hold of a Google Music account (up to 20,000 songs in the cloud).  I went through all the steps and it worked a treat. Grabbed the Google Music App for Android off the XDA website just searched for google music apk and downloaded it to a dropbox folder and installed. Make sure you sign up for google music first before installing the App. Let you know in 20 days how I go uploading my entire library.

FYI XDA Developers link http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1072655

On June 21 2012, the Government released a discussion paper which states its vision for the improvement of the teaching profession. The 'New Directions for School Leadership and the Teaching Profession,' aims to stimulate and inform discussion on the future of the teaching profession and school leadership.  As a collective of grass roots teachers, who are not currently being asked to participate in educational debates and discussion, we see this as an opportunity to enable teachers' voice.   Teachers: A great, yet untapped, source for policy makers.

The battle for supremacy in the app store ecosystem between Apple and Google rages on, and we've decided to give you an update on the state of affairs between the two dominant app stores. Keep reading to see where the battles are being fought. Android's proliferation as a platform is widespread news, but has Google Play been able to gain ground on iOS as the main source of commerce for app publishers?

"I've been support educators to integrate technology since 2008. I've been fortunate to do this at school, region, state and online situations. In that time I have seen those I now consider friends go through a bit of a continuum in 'online content integration'. It believe it goes something like this."

"At this stage it's going to be incredibly hard for Android or even Microsoft/Windows tablets to break into the market. Apple are stated to have 94% of the educational market in the US and whilst the craze hasn't dominated Australian schools yet, the future is not far off. This means it is incredibly unlikely that Australia will reverse an already popular choice in America. Combined with a lack of development for other formats this means the iPad will soon be the tablet parents HAVE to buy."

"State education departments are unlikely to roll out iPads as part of the federal government's digital education revolution program because of the device's technical shortcomings."

"Would any of my students turn down a 1:1 MacBook Pro? Of course not. Still, I believe there is great value in the limitations of resources. When we engage in Device Wars on twitter and the blogosphere, we all seem to exercise significant bias in equating the best classroom tool with the one that we find most productive in our personal or professional lives (I touched upon that in disagreeing with folks who contend that the iPad is not a creation tool). Do I have a vision of what technology I'd like in my class in the perfect scenario? Sure I do. Do my students and I really need that state of shiny utopia, especially when it is (in my view) impossible to achieve in an equitable fashion? I don't think so."

"Our first phone app, Below the Belt: Sex, Selfies and Cyberbullying, was launched in November 2013 on Google Play. Below the Belt has information on sex and consent, sexting and cyberbullying for young people in Australia, including victims of sexting or cyberbullying and friends who want to support them. As well as providing information about the law in every state, Below the Belt has interactive features young people can use to help navigate the issues."

"YOUR search history contains some of the most personal information you will ever reveal online: your health, mental state, interests, travel locations, fears and shopping habits. And that is information most people would want to keep private. Unfortunately, your web searches are carefully tracked and saved in databases, where the information can be used for almost anything, including highly targeted advertising and price discrimination based on your data profile."

Manipulation by Zuckerberg

"Students at Westall Secondary College will soon be using revolutionary Apple iPads as part of an Australian-first trial of the technology at seven Victorian Government schools. The Member for Clayton Hong Lim MP said Westall Secondary College was among the first in the state to participate in the trial."

Just thought that you would like to know that we are part of this iPad trial :-)

The graphic below pits our social network usage against the huge adoption of mobile phones - currently at 4.6 billion worldwide. Facebook, with over 500 million users, is still around 10 times smaller than the worldwide mobile market. Even web-based e-mail, which accounts for over 800 million users collectively, barely holds a candle to the mobile juggernaut. The key here is convergence. Where do all these social platforms intersect with mobile, thus becoming "GeoSocial?"

"Fraser Speirs is a busy man. Having convinced Cedars School of Excellence in Greenock, Scotland to buy more than 100 iPads and distribute them to all its students (age 5-17) earlier this year for class and homework, the private school's head of IT is traveling around the United States to talk about his school's experience with the Apple tablet."

1:1 school with a tablet computer, it is happening already now.

Semantic Web technologies have immense potential to transform the Internet into a distributed reasoning machine that will not only execute extremely precise searches, but will also have the ability to analyze the data it finds to create new knowledge. This paper examines the state of Semantic Web (also known as Linked Data) tools and infrastructure to determine whether semantic technologies are sufficiently mature for non-expert use, and to identify some of the obstacles to global Linked Data implementation.

A fantastic website updated regularly with great new web tools / sites. This is created by State Libraries Association. Loads of great resources.