The 2008 Google Summer of Code is on. We have discussed this four-year-old tradition before (2005, 2006, 2007). Google will once again be hosting a program that gives computer science students a $4,500 stipend to work on open source software projects. Last year, Google funded over 900 students’ projects in more than 90 […]

Depression is common but it’s not a sign of weakness. In fact, experiencing the condition for a brief period can actually benefit you.
A leading psychiatrist has claimed that a bout of depression could be good for the soul — it may bring misery to its sufferers, but it can also […]

Chris Anderson has a brilliant article in Wired Magazine this month about the economy of FREE. Between new ways companies have found to subsidize products and the falling cost of doing business in a digital age, the opportunities to adopt a free business model of some sort have never been greater. But which […]

A sophisticated robotic dog could be a good companion for your dog-loving grandmother who can’t care for a living pet, a new Saint Louis University study suggests.
The researchers compared how residents of three nursing homes interacted with Sparky, a living, medium-sized gentle mutt, and Aibo, a doggie robot once manufactured by Sony that looks like […]

Aimed at providing mankind with a Noah’s Ark of food in the event of a global catastrophe, an Arctic “doomsday vault” filled with samples of the world’s most important seeds will be inaugurated on Tuesday.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Nobel Peace Prize winning environmentalist Wangari Matai will be among the personalities present at […]

For those of you who are more on the sending than receiving end of the email equation, here is a review of the top 14 email marketing services.  Leading the pack this year is iContact, followed by Constant Contact, and Benchmark.

 
The much-anticipated benefits of personalized medicine are being lost or diluted for many Americans who are too afraid that genetic information may be used against them to take advantage of its growing availability.
In some cases, doctors say, patients who could make more informed health care decisions if they learned whether they had inherited an elevated […]

 
Bill, alert Ken and Barbie. We just bagged another one of these menaces
More of the Top 10 Photos of the Week after the jump.

Tech-savvy teenagers are increasingly paying a heavy price – including criminal arrest – for parodying their teachers on the Internet.
Tired of fat jokes and false accusations of teacher-lounge partying or worse, teachers and principals are fighting back against digital ridicule and slander by their students – […]

Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What’s up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates that reach you anywhere in the world. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know, and […]

Online banking is now widespread in the US and UK, according to a survey conducted by Gartner during June, July and August 2007.
The study found that 71 million US adults and 14 million UK adults regularly use Web banking services.

Because of the breakneck pace of change in the technology world, there is so much information that most of us need to keep up with on a daily basis. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time to read as much as we would like. As a result, podcasts are one of the most valuable tools that […]