SOPA and the Student

Wikipedia
Several sites went black today in protest of SOPA. The idea is to demonstrate what we could lose if the bill passes.

Tonight, my daughter was working on her art paper. She's writing about a current pop artist, and doing her research on the web. Unfortunately, her Google search pointed towards a page on Wikipedia, and was replaced by the black out page.

It was a perfect example of who will suffer if SOPA passes. The web changed the way people acquire information. When I was in school, if I wanted to write a paper about someone, I'd hit the library and try to find some books about that person. I was limited to what was physically present in the library. Now, a global library is available to anyone who knows how to Google. Granted, it requires a bit more fact checking, (What? You mean the Pacific Tree Octopus isn't real?!) but the information is out there.

Google

Cut the Rope on IE

Shooting_challenge_news_videos

Just saw this IE sponsored ad for the game "Cut the Rope"... Apparently IE users get to play bonus levels. Gotta wonder what was going through the minds of marketing folks over at Microsoft when they thought this would be a good idea.

Seriously, though... Are you still using IE? Why? I was a Firefox fan until it got fat and ugly. Now I'm on Chrome and love it.

Cut the rope on IE forever.


Why Facebook Timeline is fun

One of the entertaining parts of the new Facebook Timeline is how easy it is to go back and re-read status updates from years ago. Even the status updates posted by my daughter when she happened upon a device logged in to my FB account.

For the record, I am still not a pretty prancy pony.

Facebook_hijacking