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iPhone Stolen Experiment

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The process if you have your iPhone stolen is a messy one. And unfortunately, even though it is extremely common, there are many holes and improvements that could be made. For instance, if your phone is ever recovered by a noble person, and it has a password lock on it, could it ever find its way back to you? Under the current process, I don't believe so. There is no real way to link the stolen iphone back to its owner. Lets try this experiment, if an iphone with serial DNPJFA3KDTTQ is ever recovered, and you find this blogpost by search, please let me know! Idea: there should be a website for owners of lost/stolen iphones to post the serial numbers with an anonymous email address attached so that contact can be made between the people who find the phone and those who lose it. Supposedly with Apple's Activation Lock the phone cannot be activated anyway, so what happens when it is stolen?

Mint.com to Track your Finances, both Personal and Business!

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With so much going on in life it is easy to want to keep doing and not waste time tracking progress and making charts.  And luckily for us, with the use of technology we don't really need to any more! Balancing checkbooks is a thing of the past.  Bank error is a very low percentage (disclaimer:  unfortunately I couldn't find the actual rate). Since I am not a fan of wasting time, and I am more of a big picture person with a knack for visual and searchable data, I strongly recommend the use of https://www.mint.com/ to help keep track of accounts. Lets face it, when was the last time you compiled all of your account statements and graphed all the data yourself?  Probably...never.

$30 off your first ride on Uber (Free ride) - Discount Code Uber

An Entrepreneur's Dream- A Personal Driver! Use this Uber Discount code to get $30 off your first ride!  (You can use them within the city or get them to drive you to the airport!) Use code: sharonm49 Like littleBits? http://curebit.com/x/fbObEd - Save  $10 on a littleBits order $125 or more.

A Case Against Santa

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Santa Claus is a novel idea, a way to promote the belief of something fun and magical with children.  But is it the best thing for kids?  After talking to a friend and hearing his take, it completely altered my perception about Santa Claus. The belief is that if you are good you get on Santa's good list, and if you are bad you get coal.  So lets say a kid who has been perfectly good comes from a less than fortunate family and the parents have recently lost their jobs.  That Christmas the kid may not got very good or any presents at all, while the rich (and not necessarily well mannered) kid next door may get many wonderful presents. From a chid's perspective, if Santa is magic, the grounds should be leveled.  The quality of gifts would be distributed based on the good or bad actions of the individual that year.  Therefore if you are good and receive less than stellar gifts it might leave the impression that the world is even more unfair and biased, ...

The Educational Startups of 2013

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I attended the Imagine K-12 pitches to educators last month.  Imagine K-12 is an incubator for education startups.  It's great to see where entrepreneurs feel like technology can add power to the education space.  Below is a list of those startups who are currently under the wing of Imagine K-12 and that may find their way into your school soon! EDpuzzle Find a video and make it yours www.edpuzzle.com Front Row Differentiated math practice on the iPad www.frontrowed.com DeansList Measure and improve student scharacter and school culture www.deanslistsoftware.com Classwork for iPad Engage with your student's work in the moment www.classword.co edoome Turn the classroom into an online community www.edoome.com ClassroomIQ Grade smart ww.ciqlabs.com Kodable Programming fundamentals for kids 5+ www.surfscore.com netclick Create aha! moments using your existing slides www.netclick.me Cellabus Mobile device managment and application platform for education www.cellabu...

The Maker's Checklist

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This is from an informative handout I received from Maker Faire 2013. The Maker's Checklist K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Silly).  The ideal design has zero parts. Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion (Parkinson's Law).  Don't give yourself too much time for a project or it will never get done. Past experience is good for a reality check.  But too much reality can doom an otherwise worthwhile project. Look at houw everyone else is tacking a problem-- what assumptions are so implicit that they're no longer being questions.  Question them.  Don't listen when people tell you that you can't.  Ignore your critics. Document everything (writing, pics, video), especially on collaborative projects.  The group will forget who did what and it will make going back and chancing things that much harder.  Also, good docs will make it that much easier to port into makeprojects.com you may pick two of the following three...

So, you want to learn to code?

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Here is a list of some of the different resources that you can use to learn how to code, robotics, or just about anything else online.  Keep expanding your knowledge base and there will be no stopping you! Coding: codecademy.com - Learn to code interactively, for free. khanacademy.org -    We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere. coursera.org -  An education company that partners with the top universities and organizations in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Our technology enables our partners to teach millions of students rather than hundreds. code.org - A stockpile of resources to check out iTunes U - Online Courses. thehelloworldprogram.com - A bunch of movies created by hand puppets about programming: skillshare.com - A place where you can take classes from real people. Udemy - For a limitied time Groupon  for $...