Children make up a large part of the market for computer and video games. This topic in depth explores some of the perceived negative and positive facets of games and their impact on children. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (1) finds that "children age zero to six spend as much time with TV, computers and video games as playing outside." Current discussions not only focus on perceived...

The Contextual Computing Group is a research organization at Georgia Tech College of Computing that focuses on the field of contextually-aware, wearable computing systems. The group is interested in "how the continued emergence of on-body computational resources will impact society." Topics addressed in its work include Wearable Computing, Augmented Reality, Lifelong Everyday Interfaces, Natural...

More and more individuals are turning to the Internet to communicate with colleagues, friends, and relatives and there are a number of helpful programs currently available for general use. This edition of the Global Communications Network application allows visitors to engage in video and voice chat and administer their own chat rooms, all within a secure format. This version is compatible with...

Google Docs was launched in 2007 as a cloud-based answer to the Microsoft Office Suite of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. While Microsoft's applications are still engrained as most people's go-to for their basic office needs, Docs has been gaining ground, both in terms of market share and usability. Now part of the greater Google Drive collective, readers can create, edit, and share documents,...

Google Earth has gone underwater with this latest iteration of their popular Earth-roaming application. Along with traveling the usual roads provided by previous versions of Google Earth, visitors can now visit the bottom of the Mariana Trench, learn about ocean observations, and even discover new places to surf and dive. On the Google Earth homepage, visitors can take a guided tour of all these...

With the release of such programs as Google Earth, computer users have access to a rather diverse set of geographical data tools. One program that has recently been released in a new edition is the Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS). With this program, users can perform a number of tasks, such as spatial modeling, visualization, and image processing. The program may be a bit...

The Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, and it was completed in 1959. This website details the activities of the Seaway System, and visitors with an interest in transportation and public policy will find the site both useful and interesting. At the top of the homepage, visitors will find the five primary sections of the site, which include "Management of...

As people find themselves needing to send out emails as reminders to friends about upcoming work-related events, parties, weddings, and such happy occasions, they may find a need for this application. GroupMail 5.00.673 contains an easy-to-use interface that will allow users to send emails to up to 100 recipients. Additionally, users can also create email lists for their convenience. This...

The world of religious icons and other illustrative and symbolic elements is well-documented both in print publications, and to a lesser extent, in various online archives and exhibitions. But what about the world of graphical user interfaces, such as the icons that populate many of our computer screens? Curious visitors will find their fill at this online museum of graphical interfaces, many of...

Most people who work in the academic world of either the humanities or the social sciences will have heard of H-Net, which consists of a number of electronic mailing lists that disseminate information about upcoming conferences, seminars, workshops, funding opportunities and so on. What they may not know about is the H-Net Reviews site, which is equally valuable. The site brings together all of...