Tag: Internet

News Technology

Microsoft Launches New Tablet To Compete With iPad

When Apple introduced the iPad tablet, it was unique.

It had a large flat glass viewing screen which you touched to move and open files, it was extremely light and thin, and it had a magnetic cover that not only protected it but it shut it down as well.

When new technology comes along–and proves to be popular and successful–it’s not long before other companies try to duplicate it. They try to improve on the other company’s product if they can.

That’s the case with Microsoft’s new tablet called Surface.

Lighter News Technology

UK Insurance Company Has An Email Accident

Lots of companies use email to communicate with their employees.

Most companies create email “distribution lists.” A distribution list is a group email, that lets a company send a message to many employees at once, with just one email.

Aviva is an insurance company in the United Kingdom.

Recently, someone in the company sent an email to one of Aviva’s employees who was being let go, or fired. The email gave instructions to the employee about what they needed to do, now that he’d been fired.

However, the email was accidentally sent to everyone in the company.

Aviva has 1,300 employees around the world.

That means that 1,300 people who work at Aviva were all sent an email that implied they had been fired.

Everyone.

But it wasn’t true.

News Politics

Mulcair Elected As Leader Of NDP, Official Opposition

Thomas Mulcair is the new leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP).

Mulcair was elected, after a gruelling 12 hours of voting, at the NDP’s convention on the weekend.

The NDP is the political party that is Canada’s “official opposition” to the country’s governing party, the Conservatives.

As leader of the federal NDP, Mulcair will also become the leader of the Official Opposition.

The NDP had to elect a new leader after their last leader, Jack Layton, passed away from cancer in August 2011.

Breaking News Kids News

Toronto Librarians On Strike But Kids’ Website Stays Open

Toronto’s 98 libraries are temporarily closed after talks between representatives for the City of Toronto and the library workers’ union broke down last Sunday.

Last Monday, 2,300 library workers set up picket lines at libraries. A picket line, in this case, is where the library workers march with signs that tell the public what they want from the City of Toronto, which pays their salary. Picketing is a way of letting people know that a deal needs to be made before they will go back to work.

What do both sides want?
Library workers are looking for job security*, especially for part-time workers. Part-timers want the city to let them work more hours during the week, says Maureen O’Reilly, president of the Toronto Library Workers Union. The City wants workers to be part-time because it cannot pay full-time salaries.

The deadline for a deal has come and gone four times but the two parties cannot agree on how to settle their differences. The library workers decided that a strike was the only option left for them.

Kids News Technology

New Video Game Helps Kids With Autism

An amazing new “video game” is helping kids with autism show their emotions in their facial expressions.

Autism affects the brain’s development of social and communication skills.

People with autism typically have difficulty recognizing facial expressions and emotions.

The new video game, called FaceMaze, was developed to help kids with autism recognize what certain emotions look like, and what they mean—for instance, smiling, frowning or looking sad.

The video game looks and plays a lot like Pac-Man, a popular video game from the 1980s.

Breaking News News Politics

Two Canadian Political Parties In Hot Water Over Use Of Technology

During elections, people often get a recorded message on their telephone that reminds them to vote and tells them where to go, to vote.

These messages, which use pre-recorded voices, are known as robo-calls.

Canada’s federal Conservative party is being accused of using robo-calls to mislead the public, during last year’s election.

The RCMP and Elections Canada (the group that makes the rules for elections), are looking into accusations that some robo-calls steered voters to the wrong polling station, or to polling stations that didn’t even exist, which would be illegal.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he doesn’t know anything about the illegal robo-calls.

Breaking News News Technology

Do You Want to Buy A Piece Of Facebook?

Facebook is the most popular “social networking” website in the world and it may be for sale soon. Or at least part of it.

A “social networking” website is one that lets people meet and chat with each other—not face-to-face, but over the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are two popular social networking websites.

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook with some university friends in 2004. Recently, he decided to “go public” with Facebook. In this case, that means people he doesn’t even know will be allowed to buy a share (part) of the company.

Right now, Facebook is privately owned by some individuals and companies. Zuckerberg himself owns 24 per cent or almost one-quarter of Facebook–the largest portion.

When a company “goes public,” it is given a value (for instance, Facebook is said to be worth $100-billion) and that value is divided into “shares.” Those shares, which each represent a tiny piece of the value of the company, are then offered for sale.

Entertainment Kids

Justin Bieber Is Home For The Holidays

Justin Bieber came home for the holidays on Wednesday night – to Canada.

The Stratford, Ont.-born teen idol spread plenty of good cheer while visiting Toronto.

One of the first things he did on arriving in the country was to hold a benefit concert and raise $500,000 for Bieber’s Believe charity, for the Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada, Sunnybrook Foundation and Project Medishare.

The concert, held at Toronto’s historic Massey Hall, was taped for a TV special that aired on MuchMusic and CTV last night. It was called Justin Bieber: Home for the Holidays.

Lighter Technology

Google Offers Holiday Easter Eggs

If you type the words “let it snow” (without the quotation marks) into the search engine Google.com or Google.ca*, you probably won’t be surprised when Google gives you back a list of links to the classic Christmas song.

What might surprise you, however, is that it will also start snowing on your computer screen!

Eventually, so much “snow” will fall that your screen will fog up. But don’t worry, you can click on Google’s “defrost” button to clear it again. You can also use your mouse to “wipe” the screen clean.

Lighter Technology

World’s Worst Password? “Password”

There are good passwords, and then there are passwords that are easy for hackers to crack.

But the worst password to use on the Internet is: “password.”

Many websites on the Internet require users to enter a password in order to use them. A password is a secret combination of letters, numbers and symbols.

“Hackers” are people who try to break into websites, in order to steal information or vandalize the site.

Hackers don’t guess at passwords. They use special computer programs that try tens of thousands of letter combinations very quickly to uncode a password.

When a person uses a simple password, the hacker can figure it out very quickly.