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Adobe responded to Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ attack on Flash yesterday by dropping a fair big (and well-directed) bombshell of its own: A public preview will be given in a few weeks at Google IO (we’ll be there for it), and Flash will see general release for Android in June. Said Adobe CTO Kevin Lunch in his "Moving Forward" post:

We look forward to delivering Flash Player 10.1 for Android smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, and then a general release in June. From that point on, an ever increasing number and variety of powerful, Flash-enabled devices will be arriving which we hope will provide a great landscape of choice.

Now all Adobe has to do is deliver. And it damn well better work well out of the box, or the pitchforks are going to be raised pretty quick. [Adobe] Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

The following resources can help in teaching fractions to elementary students. The books and the other resources are a good way to help make learning math fun.

Give Me Half

by Stuart Murphy

Iillustrated by G. Brian Karas

Splitting things in half may seem like an easy thing to do, but when two siblings and a pizza are involved, things can get messy. Children learn about fractions at school but fractions are also an important part of everyday life outside the classroom.

Fraction Action

by Loreen Liddy

 

This picture book presents math concepts through five brief chapters. Leedy makes it easy for children to visualize what is meant by the various amounts. Subjects tackled include basic fractions, sets, dividing objects into equal parts and subtracting and comparing the value of fractions. With mini math problems and answers and large doses of humor worked into the text, this classroom-oriented book adds up to a lot of instructional fun.

Fraction Fun

By David Adler

Illustrated by Nancy Tobin

This simple, hands-on concept book is clear and concise. The simple definition of a fraction, that it is a part of something, introduces a pizza pie that is divided, studied, compared, and, of course, eaten. Weighing coins determines how many make one ounce, and what the fractional value of each coin is. The cartoon illustrations are colorful, whimsical, and humorous; they also make the concepts clear.

Polar Bear Math

By Ann Whitehead Nagda and Cindy Bickel

In this book children learn about fractions while following the Denver Zoo’s baby polar bears, Klondike and Snow. The right-hand pages tell the story of Snow and Klondike, with full-color photos showing how zoo personnel raised them from newborns until their first birthday. On each left-hand page, a lesson on fractions incorporates data about the animals. The explanations, which combine text with pictographs, are clear and well formulated. The first lesson, for example, defines fractions and their parts, and compares the one-third of polar bear mothers that have twins with the two-thirds that have single births. Other lessons deal with preparing formula for the cubs, milk consumption, hours in a day, and polar bear weight.

The Doorbell Rang

by Pat Hutchins

As Victoria and Sam are sitting down to a plateful of a dozen of Ma’s cookies the doorbell rings, and two of their friends arrive to share. Just as they have the cookies all divided, the doorbell rings again and again and each time the number of cookies per person dwindles until at last there is only one cookie per person and . . . the doorbell rings again! (Luckily, it’s Grandma arriving with reinforcements.)

Web Sites for Kids on Fractions

Fishy Fractions

Just hit “start activity” to begin helping Ulani the hungry pelican. Help her catch some fish by selecting the correct answer and watch her swoop into the water to eat the fish. You have to be careful to make sure Ulani doesn’t fly into one of the obstacles or you will lose points.

Bug Splat

In this game you must add the fractions together, if you get the incorrect answer the bugs will splat on the windshield.

Who Wants Pizza?

This site is a good place to go to refresh your memory on fractions or to learn about them for the first time. After an idea is taught there are a few questions to test your knowledge.

Cool Math 4 Kids

Here you can find 17 different lessons on fractions. Each lesson is full of bright colors and fun ways to learn. Cool Math for kids has pages for all of your math subjects. Don’t forget to move your mouse around and watch the numbers dance.

Math is Fun

Here is a good way to compare unit fractions. You will have a choice to use <=> to finish the problem,

Additional Resources

Teachers’ Domain
Teachers’ Domain is an online library of more than 1,000 free media resources from the best in public television. These classroom resources, featuring media from NOVA, Frontline, Design Squad, American Experience, and other public broadcasting and content partners are easy to use and correlate to state and national standards. Resources include video and audio segments, Flash interactives, images, documents, lesson plans for teachers, and student-oriented activities. Once you register for free, you can personalize the site using “My Folders” and “My Groups” to save your favorite resources into a folder and share them with your colleagues or students.

Math Forum: Elementary School Teachers’ Place

The Math Forum is an online community of teachers, researchers, parents, educators, and citizens at all levels who have an interest in mathematics and math education. The Math Forum provides high quality content and useful features. You will find lesson plans, fun sites for kids, activities and projects, teacher to teacher ideas on how to teach mathematics, and so much more.

Super Teacher Worksheets

FREE Math Worksheets, Grammar Worksheets, Word Problems, Creative Writing Prompts, Holiday Word Search Puzzles, and More! This site has it all. There is also a link to other teacher resources that are wonderful too.

The wait is over Dante’s Inferno fans will be enjoying another bloody dive into the depths of hell. Are you ready to face the Trials of St. Lucia? Today would be a good day to find

Today, April 30, is the last day for the Obama administration’s tax-credit programs for homebuyers. Purchasers need to have signed a binding agreement by the end of the day and have closed on the home by June 30 in order to receive the credits — $8,000 if it is their first home and $6,500 if they are trading up. Reportedly, the sunset of the valuable credit has caused realtors and homebuyers to “go nuts“: many realtors are staying open until midnight, partially vacant housing units are hosting lush open houses and properties are being snatched up in bidding wars.

The question is the extent to which the tax credits are the life in the market. By Feb. 20, $1.8 million people had claimed the credit at a cost of $12.6 billion, the Treasury Department said, but many of those buyers would have purchased a home anyway. But anecdotally, at least, the tax credits have been driving the market over the past 60 days, as it became clear that Congress would not renew the costly program. (“I think that’s pretty much it,” Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said.)

And everyone is holding their breath for a crash — or, really, silence — come Saturday morning. The fundamentals are just not good. Unemployment is high. Foreclosures are peaking. Unemployment benefits for more than a million people might expire, pushing foreclosures even higher. The Obama administration’s housing programs have been broadly ineffective. The amount of shadow inventory is extraordinary. And the amount of governmental intervention was massive.  In many parts of the country, the market seems to have stabilized. In others, the downward pressures seem too great.

On April 1st, Sony’s PS3 3.21 firmware update removed the ability to run other operating systems on the device—most notably Linux. Three weeks later, they’re facing a class action suit. Good. More »

This week has been spent fighting the flu while business in Mobile Tech Manor was conducted as usual. I had the unfortunate opportunity to find out what happens when a cloud service fails, and got to experience good tech support as a result. A new phone hit the Manor and I’m trying a new technology that I’m liking so far. Come on in and I’ll share my week with you.

I have been fighting the flu (and losing) for several days this week. It came on quickly and settled in for the count. It had me waffling between feeling fine and horrible for a full three days. It’s still refusing to go away but I am beginning to feel like a human again as I write this.

Only one gadget

Given my health it’s a good thing only one new gadget appeared at the Manor, and at the end of the week at that. The folks at Verizon sent over a Droid Incredible by HTC on its release day. The Incredible is what you get when you take the Google Nexus One, update the hardware a little and add the HTC Sense interface bits. A very nice update, in other words.

I haven’t gotten into the details of the phone yet but one thing has consistently impressed me about the Droid Incredible — it is so fast. I would go on a limb and state the Incredible is the fastest smartphone I have used, and that covers a lot of ground. I haven’t used a Nexus One, a phone often praised for its responsiveness, but I have played with a few of them. The Incredible is definitely faster that the Nexus One in every way.

I am surprised how light and thin the Incredible is; it is as thin as the iPhone 3G I have, and lighter by far. This is due to the plastic case on the Incredible, and while it feels very well made in the hand, I wonder how rugged it might be over time. I can’t imagine dropping it in a concrete parking lot and having anything good come out of it.

I am impressed with the latest version of Android on the Incredible, and the latest HTC Sense interface. The HTC interface makes Android so much better, and gives them a definite advantage over other Android phone makers IMHO. I’m glad they signed that deal with Microsoft to protect them from any problems a la the Apple suit. I hope that suit gets resolved quickly, I’d hate for HTC to stop making Android phones. The Incredible shows how far HTC can take the platform, and I’d hate for legalities to wreck that.

My next phone?

I believe a phone coming soon from HTC may be the next phone I buy for full-time use. The HTC EVO coming shortly from Sprint is going to be hard for me to resist, given all the features it’s going to be packing. Back when I reviewed the HD2 from HTC, I stated that if I could have that great hardware with Android onboard it would be the near perfect smartphone. That’s the EVO in a nutshell, and I believe it’s going to be a dynamite phone.

The HD2 was saddled with Windows Mobile, a shame as it made that phone unstable. My podcast co-host Matt Miller agrees with that, as he stated on the latest episode we recorded yesterday (recording should be available soon). He bought the HD2 and has become totally frustrated with the instability that Windows Mobile brings to the device. We had a good conversation about that but basically the conclusion reached was Windows Mobile is inherently unstable on smartphones of today. Hopefully this will change when Windows Phone 7 hits late this year. It better.

I cannot remember when a webOS phone, Android phone or my iPhone 3G locked up and had to be rebooted. That just doesn’t happen with phones running those platforms, but the same can’t be said for Windows Mobile in my experience. Every single WinMo phone I’ve tried for years has occasionally locked up, requiring the phone to be either soft or even worse, hard reset. That’s not acceptable in my view, and why WinMo has never done well in the main consumer market.

The Sprint EVO hardware running Android is going to be outstanding, and I admit it’s been a while since a phone has gotten me excited like this one. That giant 4.3-inch screen in a great form factor will be great. Throw in support for Sprint’s 4G network and the EVO is a geek’s dream phone.

Break in the cloud

I have been happily using the SugarSync service to keep my important files backed up to the cloud. It automatically keeps my Mac and Windows system in sync as part of the process. The ability to use the iPad app and access my files on the iPad are a bonus. SugarSync quietly runs in the background on those two systems and when a file is created or modified on either system the update appears in the cloud and on the other system. It has worked flawlessly until this week, when it stopped on the Mac.

I noticed early in the week that the SugarSync icon had disappeared from my MacBook’s system tray. This concerned me as the MacBook can only stay in sync with the cloud if the background app is running. I manually fired up the SugarSync File Manager app and it wouldn’t run — it would start and then disappear. I uninstalled and reinstalled it to see if that would fix it but no dice.

I filed a help ticket online with the SugarSync support team and waited to hear back from them. This is that gray area with a company when you’re not sure what to expect. I am happy to report the tech support experience was outstanding. I received an email a few hours later asking me to send the log files created by SugarSync so the tech support guy could have a look.

I did that and it didn’t shed any light on the problem so he had me uninstall and reinstall the app again. He actually called me and provided one-on-one instructions on the uninstall, as OS X had put some configuration files in different places when the app was installed. I dutifully removed them and reinstalled it and sure enough it worked.

Apparently, the file index stored on the Mac was corrupted, and SugarSync couldn’t handle it. Totally removing all traces of the app from the Mac allowed the reinstall to reindex the files as part of the reinstall and all was soon good again. It’s important to note that my files were safe in the cloud, only the local index was hosed. The tech support for SugarSync was top-notch, and I was duly impressed with the experience.

Instapaper is nice

This week I finally got around to trying something I have put off for a while. I’m finding it pretty useful so I’m glad I got in gear and gave Instapaper a shot. Instapaper is basically a way to easily capture web articles for later reading. I decided to give it a try as the iPad app is a pretty good free way to interact with Instapaper.

I am finding it more useful than I thought I would. It creates a “Read Later” bookmark button in the browser and when I see something I want to read but don’t have time I simply hit the button. That stores the article in my Instapaper account where it’s accessible through any browser and a number of mobile apps (iPad, iPhone, etc.). I use it quite a bit and it’s all free so give it a try if you haven’t.

e-Books this week

This week I finished the long Under the Dome by Stephen King. It was a good story, although not quite as original as I thought going in. I read another book with the same basic premise a while back; I forget which book it was. It was still a good read.

I also read Healer by F. Paul Wilson and I enjoyed it. It’s an interesting sci-fi novel that tells the story of someone who accidentally becomes immortal. It is part of Wilson’s LaNague Federation series and I look forward to reading the other books in the series.

Wrap-up

That’s my week as it went down in Mobile Tech Manor. I enjoyed sharing it with you and hope you enjoyed it too. I know I am more than ready for this flu to leave the Manor, it’s not been fun. Until next week — be safe.

" A melhor prova de que a navegação no tempo não é possível é o fato de ainda não sermos invadidos por hordas de turistas vindos do futuro. "

Stephen Hawking

" Eu sou uma das 78,36% pessoas que não acreditam em estatística. "

Well, that was quick. It was just a couple of days ago that we first heard about the BlackBerry podcast app. It seems like a great way to access the BBGeekcast, coming up this afternoon. There was no real word of release date, and while I thought it would come some time in the near future I didn’t exactly expect this. If you’re a member of BlackBerry Beta Zone, you might be able to get your hands on it right now. It’s not available to everyone, but select users will be able to test it and provide feedback.

(more…)

While you slept, Cyanogen released his Android 2.1 ROM for the HTC Hero Dream and Magic (that’s the G1 and myTouch 3G, respectively). Most of the bells and whistles are there, save for the new launcher (app drawer) and stock live wallpapers. And while his ROMs for the Droid and Nexus One are painless (and pretty damn awesome), this one comes with a tad of caution because you have to load the "DangerSPL" to get it to work. And if an SPL flash goes wrong, your phone is pretty much bricked. Full instructions are here.

Meanwhile, it looks like Best Buy Mobile is gearing up for some sort of official update to the Hero. As for exactly what or when? Check back later.

BusinessWeek has a report on GE’s interest in the smart meter / smart grid market – GE to Tap Demand for Smart Meters in $200 Billion Global Market.

General Electric Co. is poised to tap the $200 billion smart-meter market as nations upgrade more power meters to improve electricity use and lower costs.

More than a billion electricity measuring units may be changed to “smart meters” in the next two decades, said Luke Clemente, general manager for GE Energy’s digital energy business. A smart meter system may cost $100 to $200 a unit, depending on the technology used, and the business may be worth as much as $200 billion excluding add-on systems and devices, based on calculations from GE data. …

The company is targeting U.K., Portugal, Spain, Germany and France as the European Union plans to replace 80 percent of their meters by 2020, the Atlanta-based GE official said. Smart grid installations may grow at “double digits” every year, he said, without giving details.

The U.S., which announced an $8 billion upgrade to the nation’s grid in October, plans to replace about 40 million of its 120 million meters with smart ones over three years. …

China, where GE built a smart grid demonstration center in Yangzhou, plans to replace 400 million meters in five years, Clemente said. South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest energy user, said in January that it may spend about 27.5 trillion won ($24.5 billion) by 2030 building so-called smart power grids.

ABC Family has cancelled 10 Things I Hate About You. On Thursday, the network announced that the original comedy — which premiered to record ratings in 2009 — will end at the end of its current second season.
10 Things was based on the 1999 Shakespeare-inspired teen comedy of the same name, which starred Julia Stiles, Gabrielle Union, and the late Heath Ledger.

You may recall that, at the end of March, the White House’s “IP Czar” (technical “Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator”), Victoria Espinel, had asked for public comments on how best to enforce intellectual property issues. While we were quite concerned that the tone of the request for comments presupposed a lot of questionable things (i.e., more enforcement is automatically “better”), we encouraged people to send in their thoughts. I shared my letter and also pointed people to the fantastic letter sent by the NetCoalition and CCIA — as well as the ridiculous letter sent by the RIAA, MPAA and the Screen Actors guild.

JJ sends over the news that the White House has now made all of the public comments available. There are a lot. I went through the list and opened a bunch at random (as well as picking out some names of people or companies I recognized to see what they had to say). It seems like plenty of people on both sides of the equation weighed in — often in response to calls from organizations. On the “enforce copyright more!” side, there were a bunch of photographers and independent musicians, who showed up via the Copyright Alliance or the Association of Independent Musicians. On the “be careful” side, there were a bunch of people who clearly used Public Knowledge’s example letter (though, many added to it, or explained why they wanted to reinforce what PK said).

I’m not really sure how helpful those letters really were on either side, as they didn’t add too much to the conversation. The folks responding to the call from the Copyright Alliance didn’t really answer any of the questions from Espinel. They often just said “my business is in trouble, you must help me!” which isn’t very convincing. At times, they went to extreme lengths, like this guy, who tried to convince Espinel that having his photographs copied was the same thing as if he had stolen her car. Very convincing. On the flip side, while I like the folks at Public Knowledge, and perhaps there’s value in numbers of people saying the same thing, I think it would have been nicer if more people wrote their own thoughts out.

Anyway, here were a few that caught my eye, good or bad (all links to filings are pdf files):

• The filing from the Center for Democracy and Technology was really fantastic. Almost on the level of the NetCoalition filing. I like how it goes through the long list of technologies that were targeted by the entertainment industry as being potential destroyers of their industry which had to be stopped — including the VCR, the mp3 player, the DVR, search engines and more.
• The filing from the American Library Association is also quite good. It points out that there’s a big difference between “costs to private companies” and “costs to the public good.” And, as for the entertainment industry’s studies on “losses”:
  

  
  The fundamental flaw of these studies is that they beg the question of whether a particular private business interest is entitled to government protection for perpetual, stable profits regardless of changing business conditions. The mere fact of declining profits in one business model does not constitute a cognizable harm that government must step in to remedy. Government intervention in any area has costs for taxpayers, and in this area there are added costs to the public when IP policy becomes further slanted in favor of rightsholders and against public access and use.
  

• I was really disappointed in the filing from Beggars Group, the UK-based record label. While I fully expected most record labels who filed to support stronger enforcement, Beggars has actually shown itself to be more reasonable than others in embracing modern technology — and it’s filing is strange in that it totally attacks the DMCA’s safe harbors as being totally unfair even as it admits that those safe harbors have created huge new businesses that have created massive consumer value. So, I’m at a loss. Is Beggars really suggesting that because others figured out smart businesses, the government should now punish them in favor of Beggars?
• eBay’s filing is basically a big ad for eBay.
• The Mississippi Attorney General, Jim Hood’s filing is so filled with fear mongering as to be laughable. It’s opening sentence — and I am not kidding — compares copyright infringement to the death of a child. It goes on to cite the widely debunked studies that claim copyright infringement supports terrorists and organized crime. This isn’t so much a response to Espinel’s questions as it is a (fictional) horror story to scare little children.
• There’s an awful lot in Intel’s filing — some good and some bad — but I was pretty shocked to see the statement that Intel believes “another threat to the appropriate protection of famous marks in the U.S. is the expansion of parody as a defense….” Really? I recognize that Intel is a pretty big trademark bully, but it’s really claiming that parody as a defense is going too far?
• Google’s filing is pretty good, though I felt it could have been stronger on a few points. Still, it reinforces the point that business models are adapting to the changing technology marketplace, and that we should be quite careful that any enforcement program does not harm freedom of speech or expression.
• Perhaps the input from Ray Charles’ estate isn’t too surprising — in that it talks up the importance of all the royalties they keep collecting for Charles’ music — but given the fact that Charles himself clearly infringed widely on others copyrights to create the very origins of soul music, and talked up the value of “copying” other musicians, it’s pretty disappointing and seems to go against his legacy.
• I have to admit, I was a bit confused as to why the Military Order of Foreign Wars is such a big supporter of stronger IP enforcement.
• Of course, not everyone in the military thinks that way. I thought Steve Cupp’s filing (from a Navy email address) showed that there is quite a lot of concern that copyright law has gone way too far, and is now solely being pushed by lobbyists designed to prop up certain businesses.
• There were some odd ones, like the filing from Om Records that basically says “we don’t know how to compete, please make ISPs pay us.”
• It was nice to see Oxfam America’s filing focus on why the US should stop trying to force every other country to copy US intellectual property laws, noting that (contrary to what you’ll hear some lobbyists say) the TRIPs agreement says that members should be “free to determine the appropriate method” of implementing the agreement.
• I thought Bill Waggoner’s filing was nice in that he called out that not all infringement is equal, and lumping safety issues of counterfeit medicines in with people file sharing video games is pretty ridiculous and unhelpful in crafting reasonable policy.

Anyway, there were a lot more obviously, and beyond some of the organization names, I was basically picking at random. But it might be fun to “crowdsource” reviewing some of the filings. If you have a chance take a look at the list and see if you find any interesting filings, and let us know about them in the comments.

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The poop slinging continues, as Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen accuses Steve Jobs of being a liar. You can see him being grilled and responding to Jobs’ harsh words on Flash in this interview with the Wall Street Journal: More »

We have a winner for tomorrow night’s Dinner Party in Piedmont Park. Thanks to everyone who entered the contest.

Here are the answers to the questions. Query: Would you all like to see more food quizzes on this blog even if they don’t come with a prize?

What is the difference between nuoc cham and nuoc mam?

Nuoc cham is a condiment that combines nuoc mam (fish sauce) with sugar, lime juice, chilies and garlic.

Which now-shuttered restaurant was famous for its fried lobster tails?

Pano’s & Paul’s, though one reader says Papa Pirozki’s also served them.

What is a “glorified steak” at the Varsity?

A hamburger with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise.

Name the last four restaurants at 111 West Paces Ferry Road.

Seeger’s, Posh, Home, Coast Seafood & Raw Bar.

Define umami. Name three foods associated with it.

It is the fifth primary taste after sweet, salty, bitter and sour. Sometimes called “savoriness,” it is all foods high in natural glutamates, such as vine-ripe tomatoes, …

I know you’re peachy-keen to start devving for the new Symbian^3 platform.

“The what?” you ask, as if this is the first you’ve heard of the Symbian^3 Web Development Kit.

You’ve made a website before, haven’t you? Maybe you’re even a web developer? Well, aren’t you glad to know that the dev kit for Nokia’s latest-and-greatest OS uses your favourite languages: HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

You’ll be even happier to know that today Nokia removed that ugly “Beta” tag from the kit.

Yep, this baby is ready to roll. By learning just a few extra Javascript APIs, you’ll soon be able to make Symbian^3 applications that can access contacts, the accelerometer, the camera, and location, among other neat tricks.

If you’re hooked on the high-end features of the new Nokia N8, have been a Symbian follower since way back, or are just a curious fellow with a passion for web development, you should go check out the download page, here.

[via Engadget]

Well Google has put an end to the rumors and gave truth to the reported Flash enabled 2.2 Android OS update.  Not only have they debunked the Flash rumor, it’s now official that the OS update should be coming soon to devices. Flash 10.1 will come stock with the new OS, and is coming fresh off the news of Apple and Adobes public disagreement. Google’s Vice President for Engineering Andy Rubin also took a shot back at Apple saying, “sometimes being open means not being militant about the things consumers are actually enjoying.” Looks like the battle for smart phone supremacy will stay personal as time moves on.  My money is on ANDROID.

It’s that time of the season again when companies start revealing their quarterly financials on today’s spotlight is Gameloft, publisher and developer for games usually found on mobile platforms. They put up quite a solid output

El gobierno ha decidido suprimir la Dirección General para el Desarrollo de la Sociedad de la Información , tal como explica El País. Aún partiendo de que una cosa es eliminar el organismo y otra es cancelar las políticas que este gestionaba y que, particularmente, algunas de las iniciativas de esta dirección dirigida por David Cierco me parecía más que cuestionables, lo cierto es que finiquitar la Dirección General para el Desarrollo de la Sociedad de la Información como medida anti crisis resulta del todo incomprensible: tanto dircurso sobre que la innovación y la tecnología son el futuro, tanta apuesta por modernizar el país y el nuevo modelo económico y lo que se hace es quitar del mapa el instrumento a través del cual se promovía todo.

Mientras tanto, las administraciones públicas siguen pagando el canon a las sociedades gestoras de gestión en un pago vergonzoso que apenas algunos empiezan a cuestionar (Ayuntamiento de Málaga y el de Castellón).