If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address?

Probably not.

Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like Facebook,Twitter and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae — birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched.

Read more at The New York Times

When Kevin Jenkins wanted to teach his fourth-grade students at Spangler Elementary here how to use the Internet, he created a site where they could post photographs, drawings and surveys.

And they did. But to his dismay, some of his students posted surveys like “Who’s the most popular classmate?” and “Who’s the best-liked?”

Mr. Jenkins’s students “liked being able to express themselves in a place where they’re basically by themselves at a computer,” he said. “They’re not thinking that everyone’s going to see it.”

Read more at the New York Times

“Many of Todd McCann’s students suffer from a chronic disease.

Call it CRS: Can’t Remember Squat.

Now they have no excuse.

Mr. McCann, an English instructor at Bay College, in Michigan, is deploying students’ own favorite technology to burn away the memory fog. He blasts his classes text-message reminders using Broadtexter, a free software program used by bands to create mobile fan clubs. Rather than texting tour dates, he keeps the phones in students’ pockets buzzing with regular reminders like ‘Paper 4 is due tomorrow.’”

Read more at The Chronicle

I, too, was on the fence with this but it is another tool that some students will find beneficial, especially, if they are prone to forgetting things. In today’s hectic life of multitasking, having this option could save you from a lot of stress.

…except that now you’ll know the deadline is tomorrow.

When it first came out, I remember my friend telling me,

“It’s so fast… I had to stop using it so much because I’m afraid of running out of ‘the fast’.”

He was right. Google Chrome is fast, compared to Firefox’s memory-hogging standards. With that, I made the jump and was pleasantly please by “the fast” that I had gained in web browsing. However, when I first opened it, I noticed something-

“Hey! That’s Opera’s Speed-Dial!”

Even though it doesn’t exactly mimic Speed-Dial to the letter, it does look very similar. I guess it’s a new browser “standard”, just like Mozilla’s tabbed browsing. In honesty, it took some getting use to. The part that took time to get use to- as my sister also echoed- is the stalker-ish feeling that it emits. Yes, we had History, but this is technology in your face. Next thing you know, it’ll start making recommendations. You know it’s coming.

With all the simplicity and “fast” that was evident in Google’s Chrome browser, you knew that something was bound to pop up and bite at your ankles like an angry chinchilla. Here it is, folks; the bane of my existence.

It’s not as cute as when Dan Forden [Updated with thanks to MK_Fan] does it in Mortal Kombat.

When Dan Forden comes out in Mortal Kombat, it’s funny. When Google Chrome does it sporadically- and frequently- when you type in a valid web address, it’s irritating. The simple solution is to hit Refresh in the browser, and your website shows up.

As a result, I’ve gone back to Opera. But then I used docs.google.com to edit a spreadsheet and Google Docs was just not as friendly in that enviornment.

Now… I switch between Chrome and Opera.

There’s just no winning this.