Chris Crowell is a veteran kindergarten teacher and contributing editor to Children's Technology Review, a web-based archive of articles and reviews on apps, technology toys and video games. Download a free issue of CTR here. [nggallery id=7875] Ever wanted to explore NASA's Curiosity rover? Want to customize a a book to help your early reader? Maybe you just want to sing along with your child in

Media & Entertainment How Technology Is Empowering Teachers, Minting Millionaires, And Improving Education Thanks to the rise of in-classroom technology, the focus in education tends to be on student engagement and how to improve learning. It becomes easy to forget the importance of great teachers. Startups, entrepreneurs, businesses (and the rest) need to remember that technology doesn’t have to

Italians Take Up The Torch To Ignite Their Own Tech Startup Scene Last year, Italy’s official statistics bureau, ISTAT, produced a report on the state of the Internet in Italy. It found that in world terms, Italy was below average in terms of Internet usage. The European average is 73 percent usage by population, and Italians were hovering around the 63 percent mark. But official statistics can be

Editor’s note: Alex Cornell is co-founder and creative director at Firespotter Labs, makers of ÜberConference, NoshList, Nosh, and Jotly. Firespotter is backed by Andressen Horowitz and Google Ventures. Follow him on his website and on Twitter. I’ve always found it interesting when the non-creatives in a company estimate how long it will take the creative team to accomplish something. What’s often

Editor’s note: Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind, a 30-city event series hosted in 15-countries that educates, inspires, and connects entrepreneurs. He’s ex-Electronic Arts and the founder of Commonred. A few years ago I asked a successful entrepreneur for advice on what I should do with my latest product idea. His reply was simple. “Trust your gut. What does your gut tell you?” I con

Along with trolls and Rickrolls, bots are the scourge of the Internet. Automated clicks on ads and other web content drive down value, diminish investments and hurt integrity. And the bot problem only seems to be getting worse as technology advances. This summer, for example, a Long Island startup gained widespread attention after claiming that 80% of the clicks it paid for in Facebook ads came fr

Let’s put it out there right now: I am personally not a fan of Klout, which ranks people based on their Internet interactions and engagement on services like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. I have nothing against the company whatsoever, and this is a vertical that someone was going to get into sooner or later. However, I still feel like the whole concept is bunk. I came across a tweet by Klout CEO

Editor’s note: Sergio Monsalve is a Partner at Norwest Venture Partners where he is focused on early and growth investments in the digital media, mobile, and social areas. Follow him on Twitter. E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing sectors in technology and is poised to get even hotter, with sales expected to double between 2010 and 2015, according to eMarketer. So how can discerning investors

Some developers are complaining that since the introduction of the Chomp-inspired App Store redesign in iOS 6, sales have noticeably dropped. Others say the changes are good for indie developers. Is the new iOS App Store a step forward or step back for mobile app developers, users, and the app economy? Whichever side you’re on, there are a number of reasons why developers are feeling the effects.

Canadian Internet Provider Rogers Experiencing Major, Prolonged Outage [Update: It’s Back!] Canadian wireless and internet provider Rogers is currently experiencing a widespread, continued outage of services on both its cellular and cable home internet data networks, according to various user reports. Rogers is the second-largest internet provider in Canada by subscriber count, and the largest cel

[nggallery id=7919] Every weekend, we keep you updated on the latest and greatest apps released each week by creating a roundup of our favorites -- both new and updated. This week, we found an app that helps you discover new places nearby, and another that helps you find a parking space after arriving at your destination. If you're looking for a way to pass the time, a new game from Rovio is bound

Venture The Search For Minority Entrepreneurs Is Over — Now They Need To Be Ready For Investors Editor’s note: Wayne Sutton is the founder and CEO of PitchTo, a mobile development lab that builds tools for investors to make smarter decisions and help entrepreneurs deliver exceptional pitches. This article is inspired by Dave McClure’s “Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.” post. Foll

The other big improvements are the ability to see your full contact list by swiping left and the option to push your most-messaged friends to the top of the list. The iOS version, which offers full support for iOS 6, went live on Friday about a week after the Android version hit. For Facebook, which has been under the gun by investors to monetize its mobile users, this is the latest upgrade to one

Another day, another iOS-based telepresence rig. The Helios is a tiny little two-wheeled car that drives around with your iPhone or Touch in the passenger seat, allowing you to move around a scene and interact with remote subjects through the magic of telepresence. They are raising money through Kickstarter. Telepresence is a hard nut to crack. People just aren’t that comfortable having a robotic

This was a big week for mobile and downloadable game releases. With so many options, you might be wondering what to play this weekend. Don't worry! Mashable has a list of the must fun and challenging titles that came out this week. There's something for everyone -- whether you are a mobile or console gamer. Best of all, none of the games on this list cost more than $15, so you can game on and stil

Bootstrap’s Maintainers Leave Twitter For GitHub And Obvious Corp., Will Move It Into Its Own Organization Twitter’s Bootstrap, an open-source framework for quickly building web sites and apps, has been a massive success. It’s even starting to spawn its own ecosystem of related services now. Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton, the two developers behind the project, however, have now decided to leave the

PSA For Win8 Devs: The Only Way To Distribute Your Metro Apps Is Through The Windows Store Here is a reminder for developers who want to write apps for Windows 8’s Metro mode (or whatever Microsoft prefers to call it these days): the only way to distribute your apps to consumers is through the Windows Store. This isn’t actually a new policy but one that Microsoft announced a year ago. Judging from

CruxSkunk iPad Keyboard Exposes the Mirage of Kickstarter [REVIEW] Microsoft's Surface tablet has yet to prove itself, but it won a lot of goodwill with its novel keyboard cover, betraying a weakness in the iPad camp: Although there are many keyboard accessories for Apple's tablet, none has really emerged as the one that rises above the pack. That's exactly what the CruxSkunk wants to be. A Kickst

The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — watched in amazement as Twitter made good on its promise to hobble the core of its viral power adopter developers and users. By shutting down third party clients to focus monetization on its core clients and the Web, Twitter leaves itself exposed to its challengers for control of the realtime wave. To s