Yeah, because that never happened before. Oh, wait...

Maybe the company should keep some old original crackberries and maybe a couple of RAZRs on hand as replacements for 'broken' ones... That will fix the problem faster than anything...

I'm not sure if I should believe the video, it looks like an infomercial, and the disclaimer flashed at the end doesn't instill confidence that it really exists and works...

Well duh.

If only I could become a bank to borrow at the FED counter...

Those people who are 35 and up now were teenagers 25 years ago, that's 1986 and earlier. In 1986 and before, the time in which the people who are at least 35 years old and today were young teenagers beginning to think about which career path to choose. And in 1986, computers were, well, mostly boring, and definitely not something to make good money in.

So, how many teenagers do you think choose a career path into something that looks boring and not making much money?

MSDOS and it's FAT filesystem (and their predecessors) had it too, and called them 'file extensions', They uses things like 'exe' for the apps, 'ico' for the related icons, 'jpg' for the photo, 'txt' for the comments, 'doc' for the related documents, 'bat' for task descriptions, etc, etc.

They just aren't used like that much...

And instead of using what already exists, it's much better to reinvent the wheel and give it a whole new name.

(/sarcasm, or not?)

I've had one of those black rectangle flatscreen mobile devices to play videos for the little one quite a while now, and it was on the market before the iPad. It has been mistaken for an iPad frequently, even though it doesn't even have a touchscreen.

Here is a picture, 'looks like an iPad', or, because it predates it, 'an iPad looks like this':

http://www.technotalks.com/reviews/aluratek-preps-in-cinepal-hi-def-portable-media-player/

I'm not saying it's an iPad, but it looks like one and it's a battery powered thing with a big screen you can carry around and it has screens with icons, menus, and stuff, it even plays videos and music.

And in the article you link to, a commenter also linked to this interesting image: http://i.imgur.com/3AlUc.jpg

That looks pretty helpful, almost like a synaptic for windows. Does it also get rid of the 'I have an update please do another cycle of clicks now' popups that so many windows applications have?

"there would still be some murmurings about whether or not that teachers having a direct, unfiltered, (and most of all) unmonitored access to their child outside of class is a good or bad thing."

Good point, but who says that the social networks can't make something where the parents of a child, as known to the network, can choose to want to review and filter that communication, like moderators, as it is on done certain forums?

I bet a lot of parents would love to have the option to 'approve/disapprove' certail levels of contact to their children from 'outsiders'. Nana can talk directly, others get moderated by mom, dad, or nana ;-), and all postings with links to websites get moderated too...

Social Networks are not just for 'buddies', they are a way for people to communicate, and apparently quite a popular one. I can see it useful for kids to ask their teacher questions on-line, or for a teacher to notify or remind their students of something. Yes, there are other things for that such as forums, email, and chat, but there are social networks for that too, and (gasp) some people like them (probably because it both integrates a lot of the on-line methods and communication and removes things such as needing to update a contact because they switched email addresses). Don't get me wrong, I mostly use email myself, but that might just be 'legacy' or 'habit'.

Now, many students wouldn't want their teacher to see everything they do/say on the social networks, but that's what google plus has those 'circles' for. You can even let people you don't like be 'in' your social network, you just put them in a 'circle' that doesn't see anything (and vice-versa, the on-line version of fake friendlyness).