Heeather and Ken decided to upgrade their Father today. For a Father's Day gift they bought me a sim card for Heather's cast-off Samsung SGH-S300. I'm now no longer the only person I know without a mobile phone! I'm sure it will come in handy!!

Couldn't let the BBC NEWS | Education | Students 'want friendly campuses' article go by without a mention!:

"Four-fifths of undergraduates want to experience a "friendly campus" while at university, a study suggests.

The higher education market research agency Opinionpanel also found that 72% valued an institution which did well in academic league tables.

Overall, Strathclyde was rated the best university in the UK, followed by University College London, King's College London, Oxford and Cardiff."...

How cool is that? B-)

EETimes.com - IBM will unlock door to Cell:

"The three developers of the Cell processor are preparing to release full chip specifications and software libraries in an effort to rally the open-source community around the device that powers the Sony Playstation 3. With the outlook for the multicore chip's use beyond Sony's internal systems cloudy at best, the partners are hoping to spark its uptake in applications ranging from HDTVs to supercomputers."...

Robert Scoble reports that Microsoft is Trying to get kids to look inside their computers and consider programming:

"A group of us here have children and are trying to figure out how to get them to think about computers, science, technology. It's a tough problem in an age of Yu-Gi-Oh and Star Wars and super-cool gaming system"...

More details from Jeff Sandquist - Microsoft Evangelist - Welcome to Bitman's Place

..."You know an entire generation of the computer industry was born out of the natural curiosity of kids and the availability of the PC during the 80’s. This week my team launched a beta of a website that we hope will help capture the excitement of learning about computers for the next generation of programmers.

We call the website Bitman’s Place.

The goal is to teach the next generation of programmers the fundamentals of computer science while tapping their natural curiosity and attraction to technology. We do so through a series of fun, interactive, step by step lessons delivered online that can be done individually or together with parents or teachers."...

A laudable aim for sure. I've had a quick shuftie at Bitman's Place - via the 'invitation link' in Jeff's post. On the whole it's quite impressive although - as you might expect - a little too PC and Windows-centric for my taste. One thing that caught my eye was this howler from What is a computer? Question 3: What is a microprocessor?:

1. A microscopic organism that is used to create yogurt
2. The hearth and the brains of the todays computers
3. A person that researches microscopic things

Now I know that processors run really hot but to call them the 'hearth' is going a wee bit too far don't you think? ;-) As for the grammar - no comment!!

Update: whoever wrote the answers to Question 5 has a sense of humour!

As someone born on Merseyside and having spent the first nine years of my life there I was delighted to see Liverpool crowned kings of Europe

"Liverpool have been crowned European champions after a stunning comeback in their Champions League final against AC Milan. The Reds make European soccer history by coming from 3-0 down to beat favourites Milan 3-2 on penalties in an astonishing final that had finished 3-3 after extra time."...

This must rank as one of the best football matches I've ever watched on TV. Nail-biting stuff. I can only begin to imagine what some of my old childhood friends are feeling, and doing, right now. Fantastic. Well done The Reds.