The high-tech gear for climbing Mount Everest

In 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach Mount Everest’s summit. According to National Geographic “the expedition had climbers carrying loads approaching 44 pounds apiece. Today, ultralight gear cuts significant weight from a climber’s load—often half the weight, or less, of Hillary’s pack load.” Here are the high-tech pieces that …

iTunes University – free online education – is booming with 100s of millions of downloads

This month both Stanford and Open University reached 50 million downloads of their iTunes U content, a major milestone for online education. Altogether, the service from Apple reached 700 million downloads in January 2012.   Stanford News: In subjects ranging from human behavior to linguistics, Stanford lectures…have been downloaded a whopping 50 million times. The …

1:1 cost comparison of a tablet and textbook for elementary school children

  From a report by the FCC that included the technology companies and textbook publishers. More details at AllThingsD

The new $180 million game – Play Pictionary with your friends, called Draw Something

The game is super fun and addictive. The first time I opened the iPhone app I played for an hour and a half. I drew all sorts of ridiculous things with my finger, which made them horribly bad, but also over-the-top funny. The game has become so popular in the last 6 weeks that Zynga …

iPad vs Kindle Fire – how many apps for each after one-year?

After one year, Amazon’s Kindle Fire has 31,000 apps: March 15, 2012 – Amazon Appstore for Android, which helped lay the foundation for a big Kindle Fire launch, is celebrating its one-year anniversary and has now eclipsed 31,000 apps, up from 4,000 at launch. That’s a strong first year for an app store that began …

So Dad, how do you like the iPad we got you?

“Yeah, it’s good.” He then proceeds to cut some vegetables on the iPad, use it to scrape clean his knife, rinse in water, and stick in the dishwasher! The video is super funny, you have to watch it (German, 40 seconds).

Review of the reviews – Apple’s new iPad

A review of the reviews from Om Malik. The new iPad reviews are out and here is my summary of those reviews:  LTE is fast, the retina display is stunning and immersive, the new processor is speedy, the camera takes great pictures now, and the more (1 GB) memory makes the iPad awesome. In short, it is …

iPads for every kindergartener – early results show a positive trend

This is the nation’s first public school district to give every kindergartener an iPad. And the implementation was done very carefully, with the research component built in from the start, not added as an after-thought. — This fall, the district randomly selected 8 of its 16 kindergarten classes to receive iPads. There’s been ongoing professional …

Will Apple's iBooks Author open the door for a new form of journalism?

As a journalism instructor, it’s iBooks Author that has me most intrigued…because it’s not just for textbooks, and not just for textbook publishers. It is a fantastic tool for communications professionals, including journalists. Let me cut to the chase: I think iBooks Author could be the platform for a whole new form of rich-media, long-form journalism. …