Friday, January 1, 1904
THINGS I WISH MY KIDS WOULD ASK ME
Editor's note: Barry Courter has a 22-year-old son who recently graduated from college and a 17-year-old daughter who is a senior in high school.
Q: Dad, my friend drives like an IndyCar driver. What can I do about it?
A: First, avoid being a passenger if you can. This has been a problem since Henry Ford first gave the keys to one of his teenagers. Teens are convinced they know how to drive and that they are invincible. They almost never consider that there are idiots on the road who know less than they do or that a little mistake on the road can be a catastrophe. They also rarely think about hurting someone else and what that might mean to their future. Stay on your friend about driving smarter and staying alive.
-- By Barry Courter
TOP 10 GAMES
Game Informer magazine ranks the top PS3 games for October.
"Rage"
"NBA 2K12"
"FIFA 12"
"NHL 12"
"The ICO/Shadow of the Colossus Collection"
"Deus Ex: Human Revolution"
"Dark Souls"
"God of War Origins Collection"
-- McClatchy Newspapers
SCHOOL APPS
Cricket Communications has compiled a Top 10 list of applications for Android smart phones for students. These apps are among the best for helping kids learn on the go, according to officials with the wireless provider, and all are free. They can be downloaded from Android Market, market.android.com.
Elementary School
Kids Learn To Read: Teaches basic reading skills in preschool or kindergarten.
Kids Numbers and Math: Young kids learn about numbers and develop early math skills.
ABC's Tracing Cursive Letters: Kids trace both upper and lowercase letters directly on the phone's touchscreen.
Middle School
US Presidents: Contains tons of historical data, including years in office, birthplace, trivia, party affiliation and vice president.
50 States: Teaches state names, capitals and flags for all 50 U.S. states.
Hola! Learn Spanish: Helps kids learn basic Spanish words, verbs and igh School
Andie Graph: A great money saver, it replaces expensive graphing calculators.
Periodic Droid: A must for Chemistry 101, it explores 118 elements with 55 properties.
Formulas Lite: An easy-to-use reference of common math formulas.
myHomework: Interactive scheduler to keep student life and assignments organized.
-- Staff report
FACEBOOK FIX
For those of you who would like Facebook to restore your news feed to its chronological-only form, Facebook Classic does just that. The Chrome plug-in rearranges your news feed so the most recent posts are at the top and the older ones are at the bottom. It removes the blue corner triangle and removes the news ticker. It also stops the automatic arrangement of posts into "top news" and "recent news," and lets you see them all in the order they were posted. Facebook Classic is free and works everywhere Chrome does (search for the extension at https://chrome.google.com/webstore). Firefox users can check out some of the add-ons in this roundup e best Facebook customizers (http://lifehacker.com/5843609/five-best-facebook-customizers).
-- www.lifehacker.com
TECH TRICK
To encrypt emails with Web mail, look at the security settings on your Web mail account. Gmail allows you to encrypt all of your mail, but this option is turned off by default. You have to go into "Mail settings," and then "Browser connection" under the General tab. From there, click "Always use https." Hotmail and Yahoo mail don't offer the same kind of encryption for email messages, but they do offer it to encrypt your user name and password. In Hotmail, you need to turn this on: click the button that says "use enhanced security" at login. For Yahoo, this feature is always on.
-- JustAskGemalto.com