Podcast Roundup

Today and tomorrow I am participating in VASS AP training. the best part is having time away from the hubbub of the classroom to reflect and plan a bit. On the way there and back today I caught up on podcasts. It was a nice break, the kids have been listening to Harry Potter audio books, so some grown-up listening was much appreciated. The September 21st episode of the NYT Tech Talk was especially good. It covered:

• New Google Wallet. This would be good for classroom discussion about security. They also mention an article about hacking that says it wold take a hacker less then 18 minutes to hack a 4 digit pin. (Will your Google Wallet be stolen in 18 minutes? (PCMag.com) )
• They talked about the online game Fold It - recently online players helped crack some of the Aids mystery.
  BBC Article
  FoldIt
• They did an interview with the founder of Dot Com. This service lets you test and receive information back from a website...even if you are not using a smart-phone. Dot Com
  
  The thing I love about this is they use their own markup language to embed the information. I think it would be interesting to contrast that to HTML...just to get across what a markup language is.

If there is an app for that...

"writing that software will be somebody's job." Great piece on NPR tonight about the job market for software developers. Might use this in the Back to School newsletter for parents.

Star Trek Stops Women from Going Into Computer Science

Interesting article from Wired. It covers research from Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The article says:

and colleagues tested this idea by alternately decorating a computer science classroom with objects that earlier surveys pegged as stereotypically geeky—Star Trek posters, videogames and comic books — or with objects that the surveys found to be neutral— coffee mugs, plants and art posters. Thirty-nine college students spent a few minutes in the room, then filled out a questionnaire on their attitudes toward computer science.