Game by 14-year-old outsoars Angry Birds — from CNET
While Angry Birds is still the top paid iPhone game, a game written by an eighth-grader has spent the last few days atop Apple’s free charts. Bubble Ball, a physics simulator, was coded by Robert Nay, a 14-year-old from Spanish Fork, Utah. The game challenges players to use objects and gravity to guide a ball to its destination.
The Ultimate Study Guide: Wolfram Alpha Launches “Course Assistant” Apps — from ReadWriteWeb by Audrey Watters
The computational knowledge engine Wolfram|Alpha is launching the first three of a series of new “course assistant” apps today. These apps, available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, are designed to take advantage of the Wolfram|Alpha technology in the service of supporting some of the most popular courses in high school and college.
The idea is to be able to quickly access the pertinent capabilities of Wolfram|Alpha relevant for specific subject areas. Currently, these subject areas are Algebra, Calculus, and Music Theory. But the company says it plans to add apps for other subjects – “for every major course, from elementary school to graduate school,” – including those fields outside math and science.
From DSC:
Notice the term engine (in bold maroon above). This is the type of sophisticated programming that will increasingly be baked into future learning products — as the software seeks to learn more about each learner while providing each learner with a more customized learning experience…pushing them, but aiming to encourage — not discourage — them. I can see an opt-in program where each of us can build a cloud/web-based learner profile — and allow such an engine to be “fed” that data.
Apple launches Mac App Store today — from Apple.com; also see this article at FastCompany.com
Excerpt from the FastCompany.com article:
The arrival of the App Store is causing much debate online about the changing nature of PC software. Much as the iOS App Store is the key to the iPhone and iPad’s success, and beats its competitors app store efforts, the Mac App Store has massive potential to upend the PC software vending market. Early indications suggest Mac Apps will sell for less than the traditional price brackets Mac software’s been sold at for decades. This could revolutionize the Mac market, turning it into something that could really allow Macs to challenge the traditional Windows market dominance in enterprise or at home–particularly as it’s a one-stop-shop for games, utilities and so on, and even handles updates in a way Windows can’t challenge.
Also see:
How the Mac App Store Changes Everything — from Mashable.com
1,000 core CPU achieved: Your future desktop will be a supercomputer — from FastCompany.com by Kit Eaton
10 predictions for web development in 2011 — from Mashable.com by Jolie O’Dell
Note some of the topics in the call for papers/proposals:
Six Hot Workplace Trends for 2011 from cio.com by Shane O’Neill
Running On Empty: The Failure to Teach K–12 Computer Science in the Digital Age
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Executive Summary
Computer science and the technologies it enables now lie at the heart of our economy, our daily lives, and scientific enterprise. As the digital age has transformed the world and workforce, U.S. K–12 education has fallen woefully behind in preparing students with the fundamental computer science knowledge and skills they need for future success. To be a well-educated citizen as we move toward an ever-more computing-intensive world and to be prepared for the jobs of the 21st Century, students must have a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of computer science.
The report finds that roughly two-thirds of the country have few computer science education standards for secondary school education, and most states treat high school computer science courses as simply an elective and not part of a student’s core education. 
Executive Summary Full Report
Also see:
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“Surviving the future is an unsettling glimpse into the human psyche right now, as our culture staggers between a fervent belief in futuristic utopian technologies on the one hand, and dreams of apocalyptic planetary payback on the other. Thought provoking and visually stunning, Surviving the Future looks at the stark and extreme choices facing our species as we prepare ourselves for the most challenging and consequential period in our history.”
— from http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/2010/survivingthefuture/
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As seen as CBC-TV on Thursday Oct-21-2010
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— originally from http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/11/surviving-future.html
From DSC:
Although I don’t agree with many things in this piece, it’s important to reflect upon some of the sometimes exciting and sometimes disturbing things in this piece. Looking at some of the enormous challenges and potential directions ahead of us this century, it’s all the more important that our hearts are hearts of flesh, not hearts of stone!
Google rolls out Chrome app store, other updates — from CNN.com by Doug Gross
Michigan Universities Pool Funds To Buy More Cores — from CampusTechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser
UMC packs 3-D visuals into cutting-edge research lab — from grandforksherald.com by Ryan Johnson
$145,000 virtual immersion lab creates realistic 3-D simulations
Think virtual reality, only more realistic. Add to that cutting edge-technology and the ability to interact with and walk around 3-D holograms and you get the newest addition to the University of Minnesota-Crookston, complete with special effects impressive enough to put the 2009 blockbuster film “Avatar” to shame
— Dr. Adel Ali from grandforksherald.com
The incredible growth of supercomputing performance, 1995 – 2010 — from Royal Pingdom
Computer hardware has become infinitely more powerful through the years, a trend that has allowed computer makers to push the performance to levels we almost thought were impossible just a decade earlier. The exponential growth of computing performance is very noticeable when you examine how the performance of the world’s most powerful computer systems, the supercomputers, has changed over time.
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Here is the performance of the fastest supercomputer in the world, the past 15 years:
If we set the fastest supercomputer in 1995 as the baseline:
Or, illustrated with a chart:
Also see:
Rewriting Moores Law with faster improvement in computer speed using IBM silicon photonics
Mobile App Review – mBook — from moodlenews.com by Joseph Thibault
mBook is the 2nd app for Mobile Moodle developed by MassMedia (MassMedia.hk) from Hong Kong. This is an expanded version of mPage specifically tailored for use on the iPad (the app is not available on any other OS). This app is also a hybrid, requiring a purchase from the Apple App Store as well as installed files on your Moodle server (server side installation files are available from http://mbooks.hk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2). NOTE: the same files for mPage are required for mBook (so installing for one of the apps makes your site ready for the other, which is a plus).
mBook is listed at $3.99 in the Apple App Store.
