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This scene from a short '80s film (that once appeared on MTV!) highlights the frustrations of a young girl at the computer lab. She, apparently, is what some bully's Dad calls a "techno-dunce." Obviously this leads to the classroom teacher bringing the boy to the principals office; when she shuts the door behind her, and the kids launch into what's possibly the most ridiculous musical number ever portrayed in film. I'm not sure how the theatrics helped to teach the young lady how to get over her fear of computers — or even use them at all — but I suppose the collective bullying by a classroom of peers through songs is enough to get anything accomplished. More »
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Here's a vintage segment from an episode of Sesame Street in 1984 that shows a teacher sitting down with her class and asking them what they know about computers. Before you laugh at how little the kids know about computers, remember that 1984 was the first year Apple started widely promoting their personal computers through their celebrated television commercials. So try not to giggle at poor little Kim (not to be confused with Lil Kim) when says describes a PC as "something that you write on and press buttons on." My, how the world has changed in such a short amount of time! More »
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A new study shows computer use may affect the way we remember things. But don't freak out just yet. More »
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Odds are you haven't heard of Jean Jennings Bartik, who died recently at age 86. More »
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The $70 ScentScape is a new device that can emit various scents when connected via USB to a computer. It also accepts customized scent cartridges sold with games and movies, so prepare to experience the scent of World of Warcraft. More »
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• Precocious-in-the-bad-way tween "designer" Cecilia Cassini, who sells $500 dresses, says she took "like, three" sewing classes, but quit because her teacher was "like, rude." We have a feeling one day soon Cassini will be horribly embarrassed of all this.

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Everybody's saying shit these days: my dad, my gf, my bf, even my vagina. Now add kitties to the club: Damian Chadwick has both a Tumblr and a Twitter for his two typing felines. A quote: "lopppppppju." [Image dougwoods/via Flickr.] More »
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Before Tom Forrister transitioned to male, no one asked him to fix a broken car or a jammed printer. Now he's the go-to guy. More »
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Says Consumerist, a CA woman "not only watched as a Dell tech support worker downloaded nude pics of her remotely...he also set up a website featuring the photos...then used her Dell credit card to buy stuff for another woman:" More »
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According to the Times, voice recognition is the next frontier in technology. As a five-year veteran of voice rec software, I'm extremely skeptical. More »
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As someone who has been moderating comments for over two years (and using the internet for about 17), I've seen a lot of internet slang fads come and go. But there are some phrases, it seems, that just won't die: More »
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Over-sharing on Facebook is nothing new; there are several sites devoted to highlighting the worst offenders. But now that Facebook's privacy settings are changing, even those who don't fit the typical Facebook over-sharing mode are scaling back their online presence. More »
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Apple's marketers have suggested that the iPad is great for the elderly (in addition to anyone fascinated by "magical" devices). Now here's the evidence: Video of 100-year-old Virginia Campbell learning to use the iPad, her first computer. [Buzzfeed] More »
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Students in Pennsylvania were thrilled to receive laptops free of charge from their school district to create a "seamless" way to collaborate on projects and access school materials. What they didn't expect was school officials activating the laptop webcams remotely. More »
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Writes Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams, "Smart people, nay, brilliant ones use emoticons. Articulate, bright, funny people. Yet when I see a smiley, my first thought is, 'What are you, 12 years old?'" :-< More »
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The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, claims that "transient relationships" on sites like Facebook and MySpace are detrimental to teenagers and society in general. But is he right? More »
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Have you heard of these things called blogs? Well the New York Times certainly has, and they're exposing the wacky phenomenon of people starting blogs and then abandoning them. It's all 2001 up in here! More »
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In response to widespread internet backlash, Dell has revised "Della," its website marketing netbooks to women, purging it of references to calorie counting and shopping. More »
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Dell has realized that lady brains can't handle computer shopping, and so they came up with this: the Della. Particularly ugh-worthy: under tech tips they mention cooking, calorie counting, and yoga. [Engadget] More »
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An American teenager alerted her mother and local authorities after a Facebook friend she'd been chatting with, a boy from the UK, indicated during one of their Facebook chats that he intended to kill himself. More »
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Gmail recently unveiled a new email feature, the "undo" button, that allows users to "take back" an email within 10 seconds of sending it, which will surely save millions from the dreaded "reply all" mistake. More »
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Researchers in Japan have developed a way to make computerized 3D models of the women's bodies, which can designers create clothing and lingerie that conforms more accurately to the female form. [EurekAlert] More »
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Geek chic may be in, but nerds are still uncool, says Lori Kendall, researcher from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. More »
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A Washington Post article claims not only that men and women use the Internet differently, but that Internet use may magnify sex differences. More »
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Contradicting the image of the boy computer geek plugged into World of Warcraft, a new study says that girls are more likely to use home technology than boys. More »
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The "bubblegum pink" Keyboard for Blondes actually says things like "duh" and "oops!" if you hit backspace and makes a cash register sound when you hit the dollar sign. Instead of a "caps lock" button, there's a "warning! size xxl letters" button; the F keys are called "useless keys." There's an "SOS" key: Shoes on sale. And, since math is boring, the number keys have musical notes on them. The company calls it the "perfect gift." [NY Daily News] More »
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At 18 years old, the world begins to change. High school ends and the real world begins, and though the strange transition into adulthood and independence happens somewhere around that time, most of us will have some connection with our families, either continuing to live under our parents' roof or maintaining a relationship with them through check-in phone calls and emails. But there are some people who disappear completely, disconnecting themselves from the lives they no longer care to live. An 18-year-old named Tom from England left his family in May, using a form letter written up by the leader of group he had joined on the internet. "Dear family," the letter said, "I need to take an indefinite amount of time away from the family, so I've moved in with a friend. Please do not contact me. Tom." The family has not heard from Tom since, and they say the internet is to blame. More »
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Women office workers spend 3x as much time with their computers than their boyfriends or husbands, and they like it that way. Women spend 9.3 hours a day with their computer on average, compared with 3.6 hours with their partners, according to a poll of almost 3,000 Americans by Harris Interactive. Only one in five of the women said she wished she could spend more time with her significant other than her computer. Almost two-thirds of women spent more time on the computer than they did shopping or outside, eight in 10 spent more time with it than exercising, and four in 10 were with it more than their families. Welcome To Our World! [Times of India] More »
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Yesterday, in her Erma Bombeck-meets-"Circuits" New York Times column "Cyberfamilias," Michelle Slatalla takes on the not-so-thorny issue of internet advice sites. Quoth she: "the Internet has evolved into an avuncular, all-knowing presence that offers soothing suggestions from everyone in the world on how to fix anything." So popular an oracle is the internet — or the millions of random know-it-alls who provide answers on these sites — that "comScore Inc., which measures Internet traffic, that the number of visitors at Help.com has increased by 73 percent in the last year, jumping to 316,000 last month, up from 183,000 in July 2007. Or that Yahoo Answers, the category leader, had 34.6 million visitors last month." More »
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Scientists at Tel Aviv University claim to have created a computer program that can recognize human attractiveness. Here's what they did: they had thirty men and women look at 100 images of young, white women and judge the "beauty" of each image. Then, according to EurekAlert, "Based on human preferences, the machine 'learned' the relation between facial features and attractiveness scores and was then put to the test on a fresh set of faces." The computer rankings turned out to be very similar to the rankings people gave, and so the scientists are surmising that the computer is "interpreting" beauty on a human level. On researcher, Amit Kagian, says "I believe that some kind of universal correctness to beauty exists in nature, an aesthetic interpretation of the universal truth. But because each of us is trapped with our own human biases and personalized viewpoints, this may detract us from finding the ultimate formula to a complete understanding of beauty." More »
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When I hear the word "hackers" I usually think of dudes with greasy, lank hair and pot bellies who live in their mom's basement. Hopefully, a documentary about one of the first all-female programming teams being shown next Thursday at Google will change that unfortunate hacker image. Invisible Computers: The Untold Story of the ENIAC Programmers tells the story of "the six-woman team [who] hardwired code for ballistics trajectory calculations, but were overlooked in the previous accounts of the first US large-scale, electronic, digital computer in 1946." The Google screening is also a fund raiser so the documentarians behind Invisible Computers can get enough money together to put the finishing touches on their opus. [BoingBoing, ENIAC Programmers Project] More »
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