August 25th, 2010
CNN Money
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Philadelphia bloggers were abuzz this week about a citywide move to crack down on citizens running a business without a license — which includes any local bloggers running ads on their sites.
The weekly Philadelphia City Paper kicked off the kerfuffle with an article spotlighting several small-scale bloggers who were startled to receive letters from the city demanding that they shell out up to $300 for a license allowing them to operate a local business. One of the recipients had raked in a whopping profit of $11 over two years from his blog. MORE
August 24th, 2010
FORTUNE — Sal Khan, you can count Bill Gates as your newest fan. Gates is a voracious consumer of online education. This past spring a colleague at his small think tank, bgC3, e-mailed him about the nonprofit khanacademy.org, a vast digital trove of free mini-lectures all narrated by Khan, an ebullient, articulate Harvard MBA and former hedge fund manager. Gates replied within minutes. “This guy is amazing,” he wrote. “It is awesome how much he has done with very little in the way of resources.” Gates and his 11-year-old son, Rory, began soaking up videos, from algebra to biology. Then, several weeks ago, at the Aspen Ideas Festival in front of 2,000 people, Gates gave the 33-year-old Khan a shout-out that any entrepreneur would kill for. Ruminating on what he called the “mind-blowing misallocation” of resources away from education, Gates touted the “unbelievable” 10- to 15-minute Khan Academy tutorials “I’ve been using with my kids.” With admiration and surprise, the world’s second-richest person noted that Khan “was a hedge fund guy making lots of money.” Now, Gates said, “I’d say we’ve moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-many-people-in-a-leveraged-way category. It was a good day his wife let him quit his job.” Khan wasn’t even there — he learned of Gates’ praise through a YouTube video. “It was really cool,” Khan says.
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August 23rd, 2010
To boldly use what no artist has used before.* Artist Faith Pearson took these empty ink cartridges and turned them into awesome scenes from sci-fi movies and tv shows.

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August 21st, 2010
If you find yourself worrying about this country’s educational system, this blog will send you over the edge. Detention Slip bills itself as “your daily cheat sheet for education news,” but almost all of the news is bad in a really big way.
Consider these recent entries: “Second grader brings heroin to school,” “Texas schools allow teachers to carry guns,” and “Student Banned After Setting Teen’s Turban on Fire.” The blog solicits juicy tips from readers, and it’s clear the site has a strong following among teachers who enjoy reading about students worse than their own. There’s also a contest that asks teachers to submit their most outrageous or ridiculous detention slips.
Telling tales out of school has seldom been this entertaining.
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August 20th, 2010
Yahoo / SHINE
Whether you are headed to your first day of elementary school or contemplating going back for a graduate level degree, the App Store is filled with iPhone apps to help navigate your way through almost any subject at any level and come out ahead of the game. Here are nine recommended back to school iPhone apps for students of all ages and levels.
Check em’ out
August 18th, 2010
SHINE / YAHOO.COM

Former identity thieves confess the tactics they use to scam you.
1. Watch your back. In line at the grocery store, I’ll hold my phone like I’m looking at the screen and snap your card as you’re using it. Next thing you know, I’m ordering things online—on your dime.
2. That red flag tells the mail carrier—and me—that you have outgoing mail. And that can mean credit card numbers and checks I can reproduce.
3. Check your bank and credit card balances at least once a week. I can do a lot of damage in the 30 days between statements.
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August 17th, 2010

CNN
Whatever you may think about Apple, there is no denying that it continues to set new standards for its craft. Craft? Yes, that seemingly old-fashioned word that many confine to quilting, scrap-booking, and other pursuits often disparagingly categorized as women’s activities. My alma mater, the California College of the Arts, dropped the word craft from its name years ago, feeling that it was dragging the image of the school down. But craft as a concept has made something of a comeback in recent years, and no company in the mass-production realm is doing it better than Apple. MORE
August 17th, 2010

Do you recognize the symbol here? It lights up in your instrument panel and looks like a U-shaped pictograph with treads and an exclamation point in the middle.
Do you understand what it means now?
If you guessed a low tire-pressure warning, you are right. If you didn’t recognize the symbol, that’s also understandable because one out of three drivers do not, according to Schrader, a company that makes tire pressure monitoring systems.
» Kicking Tires, the blog for car buyers
» Car questions answered by the experts
The warning for the TPMS lights up when one or more of your vehicle’s tires is 25% below the manufacturer’s recommended pressure. The system is now required on all vehicles starting with the 2008 model year.
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August 16th, 2010
(CNN) — Lots of people think the Internet is a bit too chipper — so much so that they’ve clamored for a “dislike” button on Facebook, which, to date, only officially allows people to “like” content on its site.

Now, some social-media spoilers are trying to turn the public’s desire for that dislike button into a scam, according to a security researcher.
Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at the British security firm Sophos, wrote in a blog post on Monday that fake dislike buttons are going viral on Facebook MORE
August 11th, 2010
TIME MAGAZINE
Here’s an idea: How about creating an Internet kill switch, so the government can shut off the Internet when it decides it is necessary?
That may sound absurd, but a lot of people are convinced this is already in the works. How many? Google the words “Internet kill switch” and you will soon find out.
What has them worried is the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, sponsored by independent Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware. The bill aims to make it easier for the government to respond to Internet-based attacks that threaten national security.
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