Edmodo Is a Social Network for Teachers and Students [Education]

Edmodo is a social network designed for teacher/student interaction with an emphasis on quick communication, polling, assignment sharing, and more.

Edmodo is a teaching tool modeled after social networks with a focus on communication and not merely distribution of information from the teacher and grade reporting—although you can certainly use those functions easily enough. As an educator you can share files, links, assignments, and grades as well as issue alerts and updates, dialogue with your students on a Facebook-like wall, survey your students, and manage map out your class syllabus on a public calendar. As a student you can contact your instructors directly, message other students, interact in the public discussion spaces, and even access Edmodo from your mobile phone via their mobile-optimized page to check assignments and more.

Edmodo is a free service. Visit the link below to sign up and test it out or read a detailed breakdown of the teacher and student features here.

Edmodo [via MakeUseOf]

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Add Google Docs to the Windows "New" Document Context Menu [Google Docs]

Windows: If you're a heavy Google Docs user this hack will add Google document types as options right in your right-click context menu.

How-to and technology blog How-To Geek has a detailed writeup on adding Google Document types to your "New" right-click context menu. They've prepacked a registry mod (one for installing and uninstalling) and accompanying files like the Google Docs icons. Visit the link below and grab the installation package then follow along with their screenshot-heavy guide to install it.

How to Add Google Documents to the Windows Explorer "New" Menu [How-To Geek]

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Why Did NASA Create a Material Ten Times Blacker than the Blackest Black Paint? [Astronomy]

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientists have created a new material that is ten times blacker than the blackest black paint in the world. It's made of carbon nanotubes grown on titanium. Why does NASA need this material?

Once it goes through some manufacturing fine-tuning, the new material will be used to coat the guts of cameras and telescopes in space. Right now, these instruments use NASA's Z306 paint, a pitch black painting that reduces photon contamination by absorbing errant light. According to NASA, this light "has a funny way of ricocheting off instrument components and contaminating measurements."

But Z306 is not black enough: 40% of the data captured by space cameras is unusable because of light contamination. With the new blacker than black coating, this is what will happen:

The new material absorbs 99.5 of the light in the tiny gaps between the tubes, practically eliminating the problem. The material is close to final production, and NASA is looking into using it in ORCA, "the Ocean Radiometer for Carbon Assessment, a next-generation instrument that is designed to measure marine photosynthesis." [NASA]

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Nexus S shows off its camera, video recording abilities

At this point, there's essentially nothing that we don't already know about the Nexus S... except when it'll be officially revealed, of course. But up until now, we haven't had a good look at what exactly the impending smartphone's camera sensor could do. Thanks to an unsuspecting Picasa stream, we're now being treated to a handful of images captured by a Samsung GT-I9020 -- or in other terms, a Nexus S. Better still, someone uploaded a brief video clip of its HD motion capturing abilities, and that's embedded just past the break (horizontal and portrait versions, to boot). Have a peek yourself and see if you're impressed.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

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Nexus S shows off its camera, video recording abilities originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Dec 2010 12:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FTC says it's talking to Adobe about the problem with 'Flash cookies'

We've already heard that the Federal Trade Commission is pushing for a "do not track" button of sorts to stop cookies from watching your every move, but it looks like it isn't stopping at the usual, non-edible definiton of a "cookie." Speaking at a press conference on Friday, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz also dropped the rather interesting tidbit that it's been talking with Adobe about what it describes as "the Flash problem." As Paid Content reports, newly-appointed FTC Chief Technologist Ed Felten later clarified that the problem in question is actually so-called "Flash cookies," or what Adobe describes as "local shared objects." As Felten explained, those can also be used for tracking purposes, but they usually aren't affected by the privacy controls in web browsers -- Chrome is one notable exception. For it's part, Adobe says that Flash's local shared objects were never designed for tracking purposes, and that it has repeatedly condemned such practices -- the company also added that it would support "any industry initiative to foster clear, meaningful and persistent choice regarding online tracking."

[Image courtesy dopefly dot com]

FTC says it's talking to Adobe about the problem with 'Flash cookies' originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Dec 2010 23:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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