The 50 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For

The 50 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For Dropbox Category: Cloud Storage See also: The Cheapskate's Guide to Getting Free Dropbox Space, How to Get 8GB+ Extra Dropbox Space for Free with Google AdWords, How to Supercharge Your Dropbox with Wappwolf, and more Dropbox coverage Google Chrome Category: Web Browsers See also: The Always Up-to-Date Power User's Guide to Chrome, The Best Packaged Apps for Chrome, The Best Chrome Apps You're (Probably) Not Using, Lifehacker Pack for Chrome 2013, and more Chrome coverage Firefox Category: Web Browsers See also: The Always Up-to-Date Power User's Guide to Firefox, The Best About:Config Tweaks for Making Firefox Better, Lifehacker Pack for Firefox 2013, and more Firefox coverage Evernote Category: Notes See also: I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing, What's All the Fuss About Evernote? Should I Be Using It?, Note Taking Styles Compared: Evernote vs Plain Text vs Pen and Paper, Should I Use Springpad or Evernote?, and more Evernote coverage Alternatives: Springpad, Simplenote Pocket Category: Bookmarking See also: The Best Way to Save All the Useful Articles You Come Across Online and more Pocket Coverage Alternatives: Instapaper and Readability Skype Category: VoIP See also: Get Better Quality Video Chat, Disable Skype's Ads, The Five Best Webcams, Phone-ify Your Computer for Considerably Improved At-Home Calls and Texts, and more Skype coverage Google Maps Category: Maps See also: How to Set Up the Ultimate Personal Google Maps, Make your GPS App Give You Better Directions, Wean Yourself Off Your GPS Dependency, and more Google Maps coverage Gmail Category: Email See also: Master the New Gmail with These Tips, Shortcuts, and Add-Ons, Top 10 Clever Tricks Built Right Into Gmail, Get Google and iOS Living Together in Perfect Harmony, Fix Gmail's Newest Annoyances with These Userstyles and Userscripts, Everything You Need to Know About Gmail's New, Super-Confusing Layout, and more Gmail coverage Google Voice Category: Communication See also: The Most Helpful Ways to Use Google Voice that You're Not Using, Top 10 Clever Google Voice Tricks, How to Improve Your Google Voice Experience on the iPhone, Get the Most Out of Google Voice on Your Non-Smartphone, How to Port Your Number to Google Voice Without Paying an Arm and a Leg, and more Google Voice coverage Instagram Category: Photos See also: Know Which Shots Work Best with Each Instagram Filter, Normalize Turns Instagram'd Photos Back to Normal, Instagram Can Now Record 15-Second Video Clips with Special Filters, and more Instagram coverage Spotify Category: Music Streaming See also: Why Spotify Apps Are Actually Pretty Useful, How to Automatically Mute Ads on Spotify, How to Stop Spotify from Posting Every Song You Listen to on Facebook, and more Spotify coverage Feedly Category: News Readers See also: The Best New Features Feedly Has Added for Google Reader Switchers, The Best Extensions and User Scripts to Power Up Feedly, Five Best Google Reader Alternatives, and more Feedly coverage Alternatives: The Old Reader, Tiny Tiny RSS Google Drive Category: Cloud Storage/Office Suites See also: 8 Extensions That Make Google Drive More Powerful than Dropbox, File Syncing Faceoff: Dropbox vs. Google Drive, Instantly Send Any Gmail Attachment to Google Drive, Access Most Google Drive Commands with One Keyboard Shortcut, and more Google Drive coverage Google Calendar Category: Calendars See also: Get Google and iOS Living Together in Perfect Harmony, Manage Your Money with Google Calendar, How to Use Google Calendar as a Project Management Tool, 8 Great Experimental Features to Enable in Google Calendar's Labs, and more Google Calendar coverage Google Play Music Category: Music Streaming See also: How to Make Google Music Your Secondary Media Player (and Why You Should), Google Music All Access: Should It Be Your New Streaming Service?, Cloud Music Comparison: What's the Best Service for Streaming Your Library Everywhere?, Music Plus Makes Google Music Awesome, and more Google Play Music coverage Google Now Category: Personal Assistant See also: How to Train Google Now to Give You Better Suggestions, Learn Over 60 Google Now Commands with This Infographic, Speed Up Google Now with This Simple Tweak, and more Google Now coverage Dolphin Category: Web Browsers See also: The Best Web Browser for Android, Dolphin Browser Releases a Beta with Early Access to New Features, Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Web Browsers for iPhone and iPad, and more Dolphin coverage Wunderlist Category: To-Do Lists See also: Wunderlist Is a Simple, Elegant, and Free To-Do App that Synchronizes Across Your Machines, Back to Basics: How to Simplify Your To-Do List and Make It Useful Again, How to Fix the Recent Syncing Issues in Wunderlist, and more Wunderlist coverage Pandora Category: Music Streaming See also: How to Discover New Music in the Post-MP3 Age, Five Best Internet Radio Services, and more Pandora coverage Hangouts Category: Messaging/Video Chat See also: Five Google Hangouts You Can Join to Learn Something New (or Have Fun), 15 Free Google Helpouts to Get Expert Tips for Your Everyday Problems, Google Hangouts Adds SMS Support, Location Sharing, and GIFs, and more Hangouts coverage LastPass Category: Password Managers See also: The Intermediate Guide to Mastering Passwords with LastPass, How to Build a (Nearly) Hack-Proof Password System with LastPass and a Thumb Drive How to Automatically Fill in Repetitive Web Forms (and Avoid Tons of Tedious Typing), LastPass Updates with a New Design, Shared Passwords, and More, and more LastPass coverage XBMC Category: Media Centers See also: Create a Kickass, Seamless, Play-Anything Media Center: The Complete Guide, How I Built the Media Center of My Dreams for Under $500, How to Make XBMC Easier to Use (Especially for Non-Geeks), OpenELEC Is a Fast-Booting, Self-Updating Version of XBMC for Home Theater PCs, Top 10 Ways to Power Up Your Home Theater PC, and more XBMC coverage Alternative: How to Stream Your Media from Home to Your Phone Anywhere You Go with Plex VLC Category: Media Players See also: Master Your Digital Media with VLC, Set a Video as Your Wallpaper with VLC, How to Fix Movies that Are Really Quiet, then REALLY LOUD, and more VLC coverage Alternatives: PotPlayer Mint.com Category: Personal Finance See also: Is Mint Ready for Your Money?, How to Create (and Stick to) a Realistic Budget with Mint, Four Ways Mint Can Make Your Tax Season Easier, and more Mint coverage TeamViewer Category: Remote Access See also: Use Your Home Computer from Anywhere: A Comprehensive Guide to Remote Controlling Your PC, How Do I Troubleshoot My Parents' PC Remotely? and more TeamViewer coverage Avast! Free Antivirus Category: Antivirus See also: The Best Antivirus App for Windows, The Difference Between Antivirus and Anti-Malware, Why You Should Use Antivirus Even If You Browse Carefully, and more Avast coveage Any.DO Category: To-Do Lists See also: Five Best To-Do List Managers, The Coolest "Extra" Features in Any.DO, and more Any.DO coverage Ubuntu (and other Linux Distros) Category: Operating System See also: Getting Started with Linux: The Complete Guide, How to Find the Perfect Linux Distribution for You, Five Best Linux Distributions, Build a Killer Customized Arch Linux Installation (and Learn All About Linux in the Process), Ubuntu vs. Mint: Which Linux Distro Is Better for Beginners?, Turn an Old Computer into a Networked Backup, Streaming, or Torrenting Machine with Ubuntu, and more Linux coverage MusicBee Category: Music Players See also: MusicBee Is a Powerful, Easy to Use Music Manager, Five Best Desktop Music Players, Top 10 Underhyped Windows Apps, Music Player Showdown: Which Desktop Player Is Best for Syncing to Android?, and more MusicBee coverage Alternatives: Winamp (Deceased), MediaMonkey uTorrent Category: BitTorrent Client See also: How to Completely Anonymize Your BitTorrent Traffic with a Proxy, How to Disable Ads in uTorrent, How to Monitor Your BitTorrent Downloads from Any Computer or Mobile Device, How Do I Torrent Safely Now That Demonoid Is Down?, How to Add Automatic Virus Scanning, Video Conversion, and Remote Downloading to uTorrent for Free, and more uTorrent coverage Alternative: Transmission CCleaner Category: Utilities See also: The Maintenance You Need to Do on a Windows PC, Run CCleaner on a Schedule to Keep Your PC Crap-Free, CCleaner Enhancer Makes CCleaner Even Better, Now Cleans 270 New Apps, and more CCleaner coverage HandBrake Category: Video Conversion See also: How to Rip a DVD to Your Computer, The Hassle-Free Guide to Ripping Your Blu-Ray Collection, Calculate the Perfect HandBrake Video Encoding Settings for Your Device, and more Handbrake coverage VirtualBox Category: Virtualization See also: The Beginner's Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox, Should I Run a Second Operating System in a Virtual Machine or Dual Boot?, How to Run Mac OS X Inside Windows Using VirtualBox, and more VirtualBox coverage CyanogenMod Category: Android ROMs See also: Everything You Need to Know About Rooting your Android Phone, How to Choose the Right Android ROM for You, CyanogenMod Unveils New User Accounts for Remote Find and Wipe, and more CyanogenMod coverage F.lux Category: Utilities See also: Flux Changes Your Screen Brightness by Time of Day, Make Your Computer and More Friendly to Use at Night, Prevent Eyestrain at Your Computer, and more Flux coverage GIMP Category: Image Editing See also: Top 10 Photoshop Tricks You Can Use Without Buying Photoshop, Build Your Own Adobe Creative Suite with Free and Cheap Software, Is GIMP better than Photoshop?, Tweak GIMP to be More Like Photoshop, and more GIMP coverage Alternatives: Paint.NET LibreOffice Category: Office Suite See also: Battle of the Office Suites: Microsoft Office and LibreOffice Compared, LibreOffice 4.0 Adds Better Collaboration and Text Comments, Plus a Ton More, and more LibreOffice coverage Thunderbird Category: Email See also: Backing up Gmail with Thunderbird, The Best Plugins to Supercharge Thunderbird, How to Sync Your Desktop Email Client (Outlook or Thunderbird) Across Multiple Computers, Thunderbird to Slow Down Development, Focus on "Security and Stability" Only, and more Thunderbird coverage Picasa Category: Photo Manager See also: How to Upload and Share Photos on Flickr, Picasa, or Facebook, Picasa 3.5 Organizes Your Photos with Facial Recognition, Picasa Now Offering Virtually Unlimited Photo Storage, Brings Google+ Tagging, and more Picasa coverage Twitter Category: Social Networking See also: Top 10 Uses for Twitter (That Aren't Self-Indulgent), How to Mute Retweets from Any User on Twitter, Navigate the New Twitter Like a Pro with Keyboard Shortcuts, Why's Everybody So Pissed About Twitter, and Should I Care?, How to Deal with Your Biggest Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ Annoyances, and more Twitter coverage AutoHotkey Category: Utilities See also: Turn Any Action into a Keyboard Shortcut, The Best Time-Saving AutoHotkey Tricks You Should Be Using, Show Us Your Best AutoHotkey Script, and more AutoHotkey coverage Launchy Category: Utilities See also: Why You Should Be Using an App Launcher (and How to make It Do More Than Launch Apps), The Best Application Launcher for Windows, and more Launchy coverage Quicksilver Category: Utilities See also: Hack Attack: A beginner's guide to Quicksilver, Top 10 Quicksilver Plug-ins, Turn Any Action Into a Keyboard Shortcut on Your Mac, and more Quicksilver coverage Alternatives: Alfred Mailbox Category: Email See also: Malbox Is the Best Gmail Client We've Seen for iOS, Get 1GB of Free Dropbox Space with Mailbox, and more Mailbox coverage Titanium Backup Category: Utilities See also: How to Set Up a Fully Automated App and Settings Backup on Android, How to Upgrade to a New Android Phone and Take Everything with You, and How to Speed Up Your Old or Sluggish Android Device Google Keep Category: Notes See also: Not Just Another Notes App: Why You Should Use Google Keep, Google Keep Adds Reminders So You'll Never Forget to Act on Your Notes, and more Google Keep coverage Adblock Plus Category: Ad Blockers See also: Everything You Can Do with Adblock Plus (That Isn't Just Blocking Ads), The Best Browser Extensions That Protect Your Privacy, and more Adblock Plus coverage MP3Tag Category: Music See also: The Start to Finish Guide to Whipping Your Music's Metadata Into Shape, Six Best MP3 Tagging Tools TrueCrypt Category: Encryption See also: How to Encrypt and Hide Your Entire Operating System fro Prying Eyes, How to Add a Second Layer of Encryption to Dropbox, and more TrueCrypt coverage 7-Zip Category: File Compression See also: What's the Best Way to Compress a Bunch of Files? and From Saucy Pics to Passwords: How to Share Sensitive Information Over the Internet

Google Ejects Android ROM-Maker Cyanogen's Installer App From Play - Citing Developer T&C Violations

Well that didn't take long. Google has asked Cyanogen Inc. to remove its alternative Android ROM installer app from the Play store. Cyanogen raised $7 million from Benchmark Capital back in September to turn its geek-beloved aftermarket version of Android into a mainstream flavour of the platform - with the ultimate aim of using an Android variant to compete with standard Android (and iOS) for consumers' attention. To kick off its mainstream market targeting effort, Cyanogen released an installer app for its CyanogenMod earlier this month - to make it easier for less tech savvy Android users to flash the ROM on their devices. But, writing in a blog yesterday, Cyanogen said Google's Play support team had contacted it to ask it to remove the app, citing violations of Play's developer terms - warning that if the app wasn't voluntarily removed it would be forcibly ejected. So Cyanogen's attempt to boost the popularity of its Android-based alternative to Android apparently got Google's attention too.

At the time of writing Google had not responded to requests for comment on why it asked Cyanogen to remove its installer app. But here's what Cyanogen said Google told it: Today, we were contacted by the Google Play Support team to say that our CyanogenMod Installer application is in violation of Google Play's developer terms. They advised us to voluntarily remove the application, or they would be forced to remove it administratively. We have complied with their wishes while we wait for a more favorable resolution. To those unfamiliar with the application, it has a single function – to guide users to enable "ADB", a built in development and debugging tool, and then navigates the user to the desktop installer. The desktop application then performs the installation of the CyanogenMod on their Android device. After reaching out to the Play team, their feedback was that though application itself is harmless, since it ‘encourages users to void their warranty', it would not be allowed to remain in the store. Android being an open platform means users can still download and install Cyanogen Mod via a number of routes, including from Cyanogen's own website. However, if you're on a mission to lower the barrier of entry to your alternative Android firmware, requiring people to seek out and sideload your software rather than stumble across an installer app sitting on the shelves of Google's mainstream store does make that mission a lot harder - as Cyanogen's blog post goes on to note: Fortunately, Android is open enough that devices allow for installing applications via ‘Unknown Sources' (ie sideload). Though it's a hassle and adds steps to the process, this does allow us a path forward, outside of the Play Store itself. According to Cyanogen, the installer app was downloaded “hundreds of thousands” of times in the two weeks+ it was available on Google Play, which it argues proves “the demand for more choice” - another reason Google may have started feeling uncomfortable about the installer's presence on its store. Android may be an open platform but Google Play is very much ‘made and maintained in Mountain View'. Cyanogen is clearly hoping to resolve the Play blip if it can. “As we work through this new hurdle, we will continue to make available and support the installation process via our own hosting services,” it added in its blog. Why might the average Android user want to install Cyanogen Mod? It's a way to ditch the bloatware and crapware loaded onto many Android devices by carriers, for instance, or to remove a custom Android skin - such as HTC's Sense UI - that's irritating or slows down the Android experience. Custom skins also typically delay the process of getting Android updates, and can also force Android users to be stuck on older version of the platform even if their device hardware could technically handle an upgrade. Cyanogen Mod also includes features not offered in standard Android - including native theming, an OpenVPN client, support for Wi-Fi- Bluetooth- and USB-tethering, CPU overclocking and FLAC audio codec support. In addition, Cyanogen argues that its ROM can increase the performance and reliability of Android compared with official firmware releases. Why might Google be nervous about Cyanogen? If an alternative Android platform was able to gain significant traction it could undermine Google's monetisation of Android - via the services it preloads onto Android (such as Play, Maps, YouTube) - by providing an opportunity for other services to be preloaded instead (as is often the case in the Chinese market). It could also weaken Google's control of Android, and it could erode the attractiveness of the platform in carriers' eyes, making them less keen to promote Android devices to their customers and in their retail stores if they can't be sure their users won't be saddled with their branded bloatware.

PowerUp 3.0 Is A Bluetooth Module That Turns A Paper Plane Into A Lean, Mean App-Controlled Flying Machine

There's something intrinsically appealing about a choreographed blend of low and high tech. To wit, meet PowerUp 3.0: a Bluetooth 4.0 device that turns a bog-standard paper airplane into, well, a smartphone-controlled lean, mean flying machine. Or so its makers claim. And if those claims stack up pranking your teachers is about to get a whole lot more sophisticated. What exactly is Power Up 3.0? It's a Bluetooth module that connects to a paper plane to act as both frame, propulsion/steering device, and Bluetooth communications hub - meaning the user can control the plane via their smartphone. The Micro-USB charged module is apparently good for 10 minutes of flying per charge, and has an 180 feet/55 metre comms range (i.e. between it and you, piloting it via Bluetooth link to your smartphone). Max speed is 10mph. So far PowerUp 3.0′s aviation enthusiast makers have a working prototype and an iOS app but they've taken to Kickstarter to get the project off the ground (ho-ho). The campaign launched on Saturday and blasted past its $50,000 target in just eight hours, according to inventor Shai Goitein, so there's clearly considerable appetite for disruptions to paper-plane throwing mechanisms. Or for a lower cost way of bagging yourself a remote-controlled airplane, which is basically what this is - albeit, not an ‘all weathers' aircraft. Soggy paper planes aren't going to go anywhere, app or no app. At the time of writing PowerUp's Kickstarter funding total is soaring north of $135,000 (and climbing steadily) - if they reach $150,000 an Android app will also be baked. The basic PowerUp 3.0 package costs $30 but all those pledge levels have been bagged by early backers, so the kit now costs from $40 - or more if you want extras like rechargeable power packs. The current iOS app, which has been in the works for more than a year, includes a throttle lever for ascending/descending, and a tilt to steer function - which manipulates a small fin on the rear of the module to shift the plane's in-air trajectory. There can't be a paper-plane folding kid in the world that hasn't wished for such trajectory bending magic. The module's frame is made of carbon fibre, so it can survive the inevitable crash landings - as well as be light enough for flight. Backers of the PowerUp 3.0 can expect to be disrupting their lessons come May next year, when the kit is due to ship. After the Kickstarter campaign, Goitein says the plan is to sell the module via retail outlets from June next year, with an RRP of $50.

Bond, The App For Giving Gifts, Lands On The Web

Just in time for Black Friday, Bond is bringing its gifting platform to the web after spending a couple of months as a native mobile app. Bond, created by Sonny Caberwal, takes all the heavy lifting out of gift giving, with a large focus on the enterprise and professional gifts. So let's say you just finished up a big interview at your dream job, or you just left the office of a brand new client after making a huge sale. That's the perfect moment to open up Bond and choose a gift in a certain price bracket, easily obtain the recipient's address, and even formulate a hand-written note. Oh, did I mention? Bond has a robot that writes hand-written notes. And according to Caberwal, the Robot is being refined to learn new versions of handwriting, so that one could eventually send a hand-written note to a friend or colleague in their own handwriting. But why? Well, after a few months on the market, Bond has realized that big corporate clients are going to be the future for Bond. Caberwal eventually sees Bond becoming a platform that large corporations can customize to their own gifting needs. As a first step, the team is bringing Bond to the web.

Black Friday Online Sales Up 9 Percent; Mobile Is 37 Percent Of All Traffic And 21 Percent Of All Purchases

After a strong Thanksgiving holiday push in e-commerce spending, Black Friday online sales are already up 9 percent in 2013 over the same period last year. The data, from IBM's Benchmark real-time reporting unit, covers 800 online retailers and millions of transactions. As of noon ET today, the average order value was $142.33. That compares to the average order value of $127.59 from yesterday. Mobile shopping continues to grow, as mobile traffic accounted for 37 percent of all online traffic, up 36 percent compared to the same period last year. Mobile sales remained strong, reaching 21 percent of all online sales.Smartphones drove 24.5 percent of all online traffic, compared to tablets at 12.2 percent, making it the browsing device of choice. When it comes to making the sale, tablets drove 13.2 percent of all online sales, more than one and a half times that of smartphones, which accounted for 7.8 percent. Tablet users also averaged $137.55 per order, versus smartphone users, who averaged $118.33 per order. By smartphone OS, iOS was almost four and a half times higher than Android, driving 17.5 percent vs. 4 percent for Android. On average, iOS users spent $131.52 per order compared to $113.13 for Android users. iOS also led as a component of overall traffic with 25.8 percent vs. 11 percent for Android. In terms of social, shoppers referred from Facebook averaged $93.73 per order, versus Pinterest referrals, which drove $103.30 per order. However, Facebook referrals converted sales at a rate more than twice that of Pinterest referrals. A 7 percent increase in sales is a modest jump, considering that U.S. e-commerce spending last year on Black Friday was $1.042 billion, an increase of 26 percent from 2012. Black Friday online sales actually surpassed $1 billion for the first time last year. But comScore is forecasting double-digit growth in both desktop e-commerce and m-commerce spending for the holiday season. It's still early in the day, however, and the West Coast is just waking up. We'll update this post with numbers through the day.

Aardvark Founder Max Ventilla Is Trying To Turn Education On Its Head With AltSchool

Alice, a single mom living in Daly City, was facing major roadblocks with her public school system. Her five-year-old son was advanced enough to enter first grade instead of kindergarten. And her older son, who was about to enter third grade and had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, hated school. She knew there was a better educational alternative but couldn’t afford to send her kids to private school. She happened to be searching online and saw an ad on Facebook for AltSchool, a small one-room school, located in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco, that focused on child-centric education. The school was exactly what her children needed: learning based on the specific child’s needs and challenges rather than a rigid curriculum based on standardized test results. AltSchool, while private, also offered a generous financial aid package, and she enrolled her kids right away. AltSchool is the brainchild of Aardvark founder and longtime Google executive Max Ventilla. Ventilla, whose social search company was sold to Google in 2011, previously worked on the Google+ team, and was one of the search giant’s early proponents of social search and personalization. He sold another tech startup in enterprise software before his long tenure at Google (he worked at Google before Aardvark, as well). Earlier this year, he started thinking about his next startup and what area he’d like to focus on. Education was at the top of his mind, as he has a two-year-old daughter about to enter pre-school, and a son on the way. And he saw education as an area where he could have a huge impact. “One of top five industries in the U.S. by expenditure is elementary education, and as opposed to other large industries, the median experience is bad from every angle,” he explains. The dysfunction and relative slow-to-change nature of the educational system is one of his biggest frustrations. The cost of education is increasing, he adds, but that isn’t translating into children excelling more effectively at skills like reading and math. “If a time traveler came back from the early 1900′s, and looked at schools, they would look relatively the same. And there’s something wrong with that, because children and our world have changed.” He started researching where success was actually taking place at a broader scale in schools, in early education. What ties these schools together is the notion of child centeredness, he says, which is providing individualized education where the student learns at his or her own pace in ways most nurture them and their education. [pullquote]If a time traveler came back from the early 1900s and looked at schools, they would look relatively the same.[/pullquote] With this in mind, Ventilla decided that he wanted to build a school that approaches education and learning through a lens of things the children are most passionate about. “I believe the right way to teach a person is not as a subject but through an immersion,” he continues. An example of this is if you are teaching children about aquatic life, you can incorporate the subject to teach chemistry, ecology, economics, politics and even culture. The more he imagined what his vision would look like in reality, the more it sounded like a home school environment but with a larger group, skilled teachers, and a curriculum that focused on exposing children to experiences, as well as skill-building. Armed with this goal, Ventilla left Google in April and raised $3 million from First Round Capital, Harrison Metal, Baseline and a few other investors who had backed him during the Aardvark days. He hired teachers, operators who worked with him at Aardvark, and brought on Richard Ludlow, the founder of Academic Earth, as his COO. Ludlow’s online education video site, which was called a “Hulu for Education” and was a Bill Gates favorite, was eventually acquired last year by Ampush Media.

Ventilla found space in Dogpatch for his micro-school, hired a bunch of former Google engineers and set upon redesigning the entire school experience in the spring and summer of this year. One of the first distinctive characteristics of Ventilla’s AltSchool is that there is no such thing as a child “at grade level.” As he explains, most students vary in skill level in subjects like math, reading, science, art, physical education and social studies, and “grades” are confining. Like Alice’s children, most children learn at different levels, so they need specialized attention. In this inaugural class, there are around 20 students between the ages of five and 10. They are split into two main learning groups, with the 5-7 year olds, and the 8-10 year old populating each group. There are generally eight students to one teacher but for some activities the entire group learns together. The actual building has one large room that is sectioned off into areas for play and learning. AltSchool teachers create highly personalized curriculum each week, called Playlists, which are a set of 10 or so goals and projects that the student has to complete for the week. Each child is given an iPad mini, where they can access their playlists through project management software Trello. Each weekend, AltSchool teachers plan their playlists for each of their students based on what that student’s personalized curriculum and goals are for the week. Projects could range from making a list of what you are thankful for for Thanksgiving to reading a book. Another area where Ventilla is hoping to disrupt traditional education is video. The classroom is outfitted with a number of video cameras so that teachers can just press a button to document a moment. Ventilla says that teachers, parents and students who have been able to actually watch a breakthrough moment or a moment of breakdown have been able to help their children learn better. ”You can see what works for specific children, and what doesn’t work,” he tells me. The technology is pretty impressive. AltSchool has built audio hardware to better record in noisy settings, and video is uploaded to an online CMS that both parents and teachers can access. Unsurprisingly technology is the central foundation of education and planning at the AltSchool. Ventilla has brought on a team of technologists, designers and engineers who are developing tools and formatting existing ones to support teachers, parents, and students. He envisions this base of talent as building an R&D shop for what works in his micro-schools.

In addition, AltSchool students are using LearnZillion on their iPad minis to learn math skills, as well as an internal SMS where parents and teachers can access children’s work, progress, videos and more. Plus, parents and teachers can collaborate through this dashboard on students’ weekly playlists. In fact, Ventilla is hoping to build some proprietary software of his own to use within the school. His vision is to have a hundred engineers and designers working on developing better technology products for in-class learning. AltSchool also embraces a “school without walls” approach. Classes regularly venture outside the classroom to take advantage of the amazing cultural experiences available in San Francisco, often leveraging Uber SUVs for easy quick trips. Recent field trips include Smitten Ice Cream, which inspired a study of the applied physics of their innovative quick freeze process using liquid nitrogen; Mission Science Workshop, to engage in hands-on chemistry lessons; Walt Disney Family Museum, to study animated filmmaking; San Francisco Maritime Museum, as children explored life before modern transportation and communication; and Good Eggs (founded by Aardvark co-founder Rob Spiro) to learn about sustainable farming, healthy eating and environmental awareness. Looking to the future, Ventilla is building out a network of micro-schools, which will be modernized versions of the “one room schoolhouse” housing 60-100 students each.­ Continuing the theme of customization, elements of each micro-school – such as electives offered, foreign language instruction, academic calendar, and even locations – will be customized for the interests and needs of local communities of parents. Next year, AltSchool will open up another school in the Potrero Hill area, and a middle school (for older children) in SOMA. The startup is also looking at a possible Palo Alto location based on demand. Tuition isn’t cheap–it’s $19,100 per year (which is lower than many private schools in the area) but Ventilla says generous financial assistance is available. “We don’t believe that classes should be comprised of the elite who can afford it,” says Ventilla. Ventilla has much larger ambitions of taking AltSchool nationwide, or even outside of the U.S. And he says, this is definitely his last startup. And he looks forward to his children attending AltSchool for their primary education. As for Alice, within three months of attending AltSchool, her five year old is reading at a first grade level, and doing math at a second grade level. Alice’s nine-year-old son is currently excelling at fourth grade math and reading. And they both love school.

Google's Android 4.4 Update Seems To Hurt Video Playback Performance On Nexus 7

Google's Android 4.4 KitKat update is rolling out to Nexus devices globally, and I was eager to get it on my Nexus 7 tablet. Turns out, it's possible I should've left well enough alone. Immediately after updating (via official, OTA channels), I noticed performance seemed to suffer, and now a study conducted by Finnish mobile video and touch testing firm OptoFidelity adds some solid data to back up my observations. OptoFidelity compared performance of HD video playback, both 720p and 1080p at both 30 and 60 fps on the Nexus 7 from 2012, and the Nexus 7 from 2013, before and after an upgrade to KitKat. The results show dramatically better performance on Android 4.3, before both tablets made the jump to Google's latest mobile OS. Frighteningly, the Nexus 7 from 2013 couldn't even play any 60fps video after the update.

The score differences aren't small, either, as according to OptoFidelity's classification system, both Nexus 7 devices drop from delivering “satisfactory” performance to offering up something in the “unsatisfactory” range, with the newer model suffering the most. I found using my own device that animations seemed to execute less smoothly, and I was more prone to encounter missed touches than I had been before the KitKat update. For an update that was supposed to be backwards compatible with a lot of down range devices, this performance backslide on the most modern tablets is a little bit of a head scratcher. Hopefully it's just a launch bug that'll be zapped in a future update. We've reached out to Google for more info, but for now you might want to hold off on that KitKat update, unless you really badly need those emoticons.