Mauritius opposition leader Navin Ramgoolam was confirmed as prime minister on Tuesday following a thumping election victory for his coalition that took every parliamentary seat on the main island.

Earlier this year, Barakah Beats by Maleeha Siddiqui made it to the top of my “to be read” stack. The cover had caught my eye and I’d heard good things about it from friend and author Madelyn Rosenberg, who has excellent taste in books. 

Informational text — resources whose purpose is to inform — is essential to daily life and fundamental to literacy. Unfortunately, young children typically have limited exposure to informational text. Two 9-week randomized controlled trials with 263 first-grade children from low-income communities examined whether free educational videos and digital games from the PBS KIDS show “Molly of Denali” supported children’s ability to use informational text to answer real-world questions. Study 1 found significant positive intervention impacts on child outcomes; Study 2 replicated these findings.

Ever since that first childhood moment when I clapped two pot lids together and discovered the sounds that rang out, I’ve been fascinated by what sound can do to spark imagination and share information. I don’t use cookware as cymbals these days but am more quietly appreciative of how meaningful and beautiful the sounds around us can be.

I’m writing this blog because of the disarray I see over the topic of context instruction and the poor instructional practice that it seems to manifest. One confusion is already well recognized, but merits some mention here. The other befuddlement usually goes without remark, and yet it, too, has unfortunate consequences for young readers.

A recent article on Chow.com identifies a trend in American aviation catering: The surprisingly high demand for ginger ale on America’s planes. Why ginger ale, and not Coke, 7UP, or Bloody Mary mix? The most popular theory among flight attendants is that it relieves nausea. “If [passengers] have motion sickness, it settles their stomach,” says Elizabeth […]

Sometimes our WordPress plugin users need to create an Admin user account for their sites. In this tutorial I will share a small PHP code with you that can be used to create a WordPress Administrator user to your site. Alternatively, you can also create a WordPress admin user via MySQL. You will need to […]

The post Add a WordPress Admin User Account via PHP appeared first on Tips and Tricks HQ.

With more and more online marketplaces popping up, many individuals prefer to pay for items, whether they be new or second hand using the PayPal Goods and Services option. The PayPal ‘Goods and Services’ option gives buyers further peace of mind with the PayPal guarantee. If the seller does not provide what they have described, […]

The post Factoring In PayPal Fees When Sending Money Using the Goods and Services Option appeared first on Tips and Tricks HQ.

Elon Musk could have a role in Donald Trump’s White House, and this could mean stricter AI standards. It’s no… Continue reading Musk and Trump’s relationship could lead to tougher AI standards

The post Musk and Trump’s relationship could lead to tougher AI standards appeared first on ReadWrite.

Meta Platforms is rolling out enhanced privacy and parental controls for Instagram accounts of users under 18 in a significant overhaul aimed at addressing growing concerns around the negative effects of social media.

Construction has started on the undersea component of Google's Umoja fibre-optic cable.

Police revealed Tuesday they had infiltrated and taken down an encrypted chat app called Ghost used by criminals across the world.

Many fans of Huawei on Friday were disappointed that its much-anticipated phone, Mate XT - more than twice the price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max - was not available for walk-in customers.

Meta launched AI chatbots voiced by Hollywood celebrities including Judi Dench and John Cena on Wednesday, betting its billions of users are eager to embrace artificial intelligence.

Uber Safari is launching this week, offering riders in Cape Town the opportunity to go on a one-day game drive to a private reserve for $200.

Microsoft on Tuesday doubled down on deploying artificial intelligence to consumers, releasing an updated version of its Copilot chatbot that can hold voice conversations and interpret images.

Communications and Digital Technology Minister Solly Malatsi will issue a policy direction on equity alternatives to the 30% equity employment rule in the communications industry.

Samsung Electronics issued a rare apology and acknowledged on Tuesday it was facing a "crisis" over its technological competitiveness, reflected in a disappointing profit guidance, despite a global AI boom.

Nigeria began a process to sanction Starlink after the satellite-internet service owned by billionaire Elon Musk increased its prices without approval from the regulator.

The Internet Archive, an online repository of web pages, was offline Thursday after its founder confirmed a major cyberattack that exposed the data of millions of users and left the site defaced.

Google is investing in the development of the next generation of nuclear power, backing a company that’s building small modular reactors and agreeing to purchase energy once the sites start supplying US grids.

The South African Artificial Intelligence Association wants LinkedIn to be investigated, as it claims the social networking platforms new data use practice violates local personal information protection law.

The latest investment insights and market developments.

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is China's richest person, with personal wealth of $49.3 billion (R872 billion), an annual rich list showed on Tuesday, although counterparts in real estate and renewables have fared less well.

The PlayStation 5 Pro hits shops on Thursday with a price tag that has raised eyebrows among gamers, but growing sticker shocks in the tech industry have yet to deter consumers.

Tech accelerator Startupbootcamp, British-East African business tycoon Ashish Thakkar’s Mara Group and Blend Financial Services are planning a $250 million (R4.4 billion) fund to invest in new African technology companies.

The University of KwaZulu-Natal will share R2 million in research funding from the UK government to improve 3D-printing techniques for rocket engine components.

Patients lie on the floor at Uitenhage Provincial Hospital in Kariega, some with drips in their veins.

Cape Town police have arrested two suspects in connection with the murder of Noem My Skollie actor David Manuel and his friend, Alfonso Fisher, in Gugulethu last month.

A formal disciplinary process, or lack thereof, around the suspensions of two high-ranking officials at the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has pitted Higher Education and Training Minister Nobuhle Pamela Nkabane against NSFAS administrator Freeman Nomvalo.

When Ebrahim Rasool returns to Washington in December as South Africa's ambassador, one of his primary goals is to reposition Pretoria as a "moral superpower"

Gauteng legislature secretary Linda Mwale has signed a sweetheart agreement with Nehawu to let 32 employees accused of defrauding the institution off the hook.

It was out of fear for his mental health and to avoid the perpetuation of an ongoing wrong that a judge ordered that one of the five men charged with the murder of soccer star Senzo Meyiwa be removed from solitary confinement.

The MK Party continued its campaign against accountability for corruption, with its deputy leader, John Hlophe, suggesting National Director of Public Prosecutions Shamila Batohi was "misleading the nation" about the Guptas' extradition.

July was a big month for model releases: There are new large models from Mistral and Meta, smaller multilingual models from Mistral and DeepL, another Mistral model that specializes in code generation, and a small version of GPT-4o. The security world saw another software supply chain disaster when CrowdStrike released a bad software update that […]

I recently attended a weekend-long birthday getaway for an old college friend, and as soon as I arrived, he pulled out a box and said, "You have to play this game."

And he was right.

Hitster describes itself as a Music Party Board Game, and that's accurate. — Read the rest

The post Do you like party games and music history? Try HITSTER appeared first on Boing Boing.

With NASA's sights on moon bases, the question becomes how do you build shelters for tomorrow's lunar inhabitants? Carting up large amounts of raw materials from Earth is prohibitively expensive. And the only resources on the surface are regolith—lunar dust—and water. — Read the rest

The post NASA plans to grow mushroom houses on the moon appeared first on Boing Boing.

Neuroscientists have confirmed what every stoner already knows: music sounds better when you're high on weed. In a paper titled "Exploring the interaction between cannabis, hearing, and music," researchers from Toronto Metropolitan University reported results from a study in which participants "reported significantly greater hearing sensitivity and levels of state absorption while high compared to sober." — Read the rest

The post Music really does sound better when you're high, scientists report appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: If you still don't have a mouse for your WFH setup, get this ergonomic Logitech MX mouse for $89.99 (reg. $99)!

You know what part of you body seriously takes a beating after a long day or week of work? No, it's not your neck—though you need a more supportive office chair. — Read the rest

The post Your hand is cramping up! Use this ergonomic mouse instead appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Minnessota maker named Caleb Olson built the Poopcopter, an autonomous drone that seeks out dog-doo and retrieves it for disposal.

He describes it as the "world's first aerial bound self-guided dog poop removal system." See it in action below.

"The Poopcopter is capable of scanning areas defined by a user, your backyard for example, and as it scans it's performing real-time computer vision using the camera which is inside the drone," Olson says. — Read the rest

The post The Poopcopter is a DIY autonomous drone that finds and collects dog-doo appeared first on Boing Boing.

President Obama's recent press conference on March 26 was available for online viewing.

According to an article written by Chris Lefkow on Yahoo, 67,000 watched the webcast live. Of course, millions if not tens of millions watched the press conference live on broadcast television so what is the big deal about another 60,000 or so watching on the web?

I wrote about the democratizing effect of using the internet to bypass the Washington press corps and taking questions from the people in my last post.

But there is at least one more point of interest. The Obama press conference exemplifies how video can be used to great effect in the enterprise.

The internet will never supplant television's ability to broadcast to tens of millions of people. Why pay for the bandwidth to replicate the scale and quality of a broadcast platform that already works very well?

But the internet does scale rather well to the needs of the enterprise: an audience of tens of thousands. And there are several "internet television" services that are emerging to deliver video across the corporate network to the employees.

But this begs the question: why should a corporation or organization invest in a network able to deliver video across its enterprise and then settle for pre-recorded video with no interactivity?

It was not the video feed that made the Obama press conference so noteworthy. It was the 104,129 questions that were submitted by the American people. Enterprise video is much more effective when it is combined with interactive rich media features like live questions and answers, live polling, surveys, testing and certification, synchronized PowerPoint, whiteboarding, registration and reporting, etc. Choosing to merely deliver the video - live or on-demand - is choosing to ignore the strengths of webcasting and get the least bang for your buck.

Why invest in servers and hubs and routers and content engines and then settle for a video platform that does not enable interactivity?

According to research done by Steve Vander Haar that he shared in a recent webcast, 68% of executives polled believe streaming video has measurable value only when it is combined with a registration system that enables reporting about who watched.

Registration and reporting adds accountability to internal communications and adds measurable results and lead generation to external communications. Internet television gives that capability away when it simply loops pre-recorded video in a window on one's website.

President Obama's press conference is a template for the effective use of internet video in the enterprise. Just as the televised Nixon vs. Kennedy debate serves as the defining example for understanding the difference between television and radio in politics, I believe this press conference will be regarded similarly for its effect on politics and on business communications.

There are plenty of corporations out there who are already doing a great job with rich media. Some of them are my clients. But the nature of corporate communications is that much of the content is for an internal audience, so there is not an obvious opportunity for organizations to learn from the successes of others. But the Obama press conference lays the formula bare for all to see.

Steve Vonder Haar recently released an outstanding research report about the online webcasting event services business.

He states that consumers of webcasting services have been motivated by two priorities: 1) the desire to keep costs low; and 2) the desire to keep involvement of their own IT departments to a minimum. For this reason, major webcasting event service providers, like ON24, have enjoyed their greatest success at the ends of the market spectrum: low cost self-provisioning services and high touch premium webcasting services.

The premium end of the market has been bolstered by the complexity of the client's needs, which has kept fees high and competition at bay. The low end of the market had become increasingly commoditized.

He concludes that service providers are going to have to push more to the middle of that spectrum and identify more companies that require well-produced webcasts for the market to continue growing.

He also mentions that the complexity of webcast events that has traditionally protected the major service providers is no longer a significant barrier to entry. Sophisticated webcasting software offered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis allows any number of production companies, agencies, and event companies to compete on an equal footing with the ON24s and the OnStreams.

According to Hoovers, the US marketing and services industry includes about 35,000 companies with combined annual revenue of about $80 billion. The industry is fragmented because the top 50 companies generate less than 40 percent of that revenue. In other words, there are a large number of potential buyers of enterprise webcasting software that want to compete for online event services business at a time when traditional advertising revenues are falling and internet advertising revenues are growing. Internet communications are definitely going to become a greater point of emphasis for these companies.

I am unable to attached the report, but you can request a copy at the Interactive Media Strategies website.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is hosting a webcast at 1 pm EDT today, Friday August 7.

Use the hashtag #HCRQ to ask a question via Twitter or email hhsstudio@hhs.gov.

When the Baby Boomers retire they are going to be taking their substantial knowledge with them. The younger generation to whom that knowledge should be transferred likes to consume video.  This has some very interesting implications for organizations that want to capture that knowledge, organize it, and make it easy for employees to find it and benefit from it.

Here is a link to a webcast on June 1 where Dan Rasmus, a technology strategist and author of Listening to the Future , will discuss the potential for video to serve as an all important medium for knowledge transfer and organizational learning.

Topics to be Covered:
• Knowledge Acquisition via Video
• Video as a Tool for Knowledge Management
• Use of Video or Operational Efficiency
• Practical Applications of Video for Learning in the Enterprise

Click here to register for the webcast

Interactive Media Strategies released data on July 14 showing that 62% of corporations that purchased video communications technology made the decision at the President/CEO level when there was no prior investment in this kind of technology.  That number dropped to 58% when the prior year's spend was as much as $10,000.

The same data shows that when an enterprise already spends $100,000 or more annually on video, the decision-making authority is almost evenly distributed between IT (35%), functional department heads (31%), and the President/CEO level (34%).

I think the clear implication of this data is that when corporations are already committing resources to video communications and the value of video has already been established, and this kind of technology is no longer considered exotic, then decision-making authority becomes more broadly distributed to IT and the business units.

This data is interesting when paired with data released in 2010 that shows 15% of executives surveyed that do not spend money on video and are thus not using video communications believe video communications are "very effective."  58% of executives surveyed that spend $100,000 or more annual on video technology indicated they believe video communications are "very effective."

I am sure this great difference is due to several factors, including: executives who are predisposed to see value in video are those most likely to invest in it, and those that have already made a six figure investment in video will likely not be motivated to feel as if the investment was wasted.  Nonetheless, video obviously wears well because executives who are heavily invested in video believe much more in its value than executives who do not employ the technology.

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