Twitter is taking the world by storm, leaving Facebook and email in its wake. We examine how the micro-blogging site is helping users in their personal and professional lives.

New internet technologies like Twitter are strengthening family ties and bridging the generation gap between kids, parents and grandparents, according to a new survey.

The findings fly in the face of concerns the internet is driving a wedge between families and alienating parents from their kids.

According to the Norton Online Living Report, released today, tools like twitter, Facebook, Skype, webcams, photo and video sharing sites and instant messaging are keeping families connected.

There are a number of posts about the ways in which ‘we’ use social media that puts us into ‘categories’. What I think adults often miss is that young people (not us) are using social media to strengthen their existing friendship networks, not necessarily to widening them.

Educators who are forming new personal learning networks have the life experience to see professional value in it, to deem it as beneficial. These networks create new friendships.  However, the majority of adults (parents) use them as young people do – as friendship networks. They use Facebook in largely facile ways and if anything the depth of conversation and interaction between people is eroding down to 140 characters or less as they abandon email communication for more sporadic Facebook updates and Tweets.

This slideshow provides the framework for a discussion about how educators can model ‘creative integrity’ and how they can assist students to leverage the Creative Commons as content creators.

It seems cloud computing is still an abstraction. But the term itself isn't new. Anyone who has ever seen a network diagram has probably seen a cloud with arrows pointing to and from it. The cloud represents the network--either a local intranet, or the internet at large--and all the resources available on it. Instead of having software that is stored and run on an individual PC, the user taps into this "cloud" for his or her computing needs. Characteristically, cloud computing is efficient, automated, and delivers standardized resources--all of which can result in significant cost savings. Several U.S. colleges, universities, and K-12 school districts are already reaping the benefits of switching to a cloud-computing model.

Zoho, makers of an awesome web-based software suite comprised of document, project and invoicing management tools, has given its online word processing tool Writer a fresh look along with a couple of new features worth checking out. The Chennai, India-based startup says Zoho Writer 2.0 comes with hundreds of improvements, for the most part on the user interface.

Cloud-based computing is a major educational technology trend to watch in the next two to three years, according to the recently released K-12 Horizon Report by the New Media Consortium (NMC). Representatives from NMC presented the report at the 2009 COSN conference last week in Austin, Texas.

Wes Fryer blogs about Cloud Computing.

Nova Spivack is worried about Twitter. He loves it the way it is today. But it's about to change big time, and he wonders whether it can survive the transition.  http://www.twine.com/item/123c9051b-g8/can-twitter-survive-what-is-about-to-happen-to-it