Here’s an early Christmas present for all those going in and out of Greensboro, Piedmont Triad Airport, FREE Wifi courtesy of Google. Unlike the typical $10 or more per day to get that twenty minutes of browsing before your flight you will be able to check that last email all thanks to Google. On top of this if your flying Virgin America, probably not for most of us, you will also be able to browse the Internet on any flight.

Word of warning as I’ve posted here before on using public WiFi:

• Always use a software firewall, XP’s built in Firewall will suffice
• Do not browse any site where you will enter private data unless that site is SSL, even then there is a risk of a man in the middle attack
• NEVER send private data via email, on a Public WiFi or not!
• Always assume your browsing is monitored when on a Public WiFi

What an excellent title to a blog, unfortunately it’s not mine but from The Silicon Valley Watcher. The topic of the post was a recent event hosted by Google called Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age. This two day event brought together 200 of the nation’s top thought leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, research, philanthropy, and policy to create and act upon a breakthrough strategy for scaling-up effective models of teaching and learning for children. The forum will showcase cutting edge research, proven and promising models to challenge decision-makers in key sectors to help "refresh and reboot" American global leadership in education.

For those who don’t know the history of Google the co-founder Sergey Brin dropped out of Stanford to start Google and is now the 26th richest man in the world. Both of Brin’s parents were well educated with his father being a mathematics professor.  Brin followed his fathers interest in mathematics but also was interested in computer science and was in the graduate computer science program before he dropped out. He is quoted from this event as saying:

"It’s important for students to be put in touch with real-world problems," Brin said. "The curriculum should include computer science. Mathematics should include statistics. The curriculums should really adjust."

So far they have not posted a recording of the event but hopefully that will be forthcoming.

AS the saying goes, "if it sounds to good…”, well it does of course. This is another online scam this time offering a job with Google without every leaving your home. The kits cost anywhere from $1.95-2.95 on these various sites that are popping up and once they have your account into they start billing you $70 a month. These offers have come across from email to Twitter links and the sites can appear very legit. If you see anything like this just hit DELETE!

Google has now opened it’s doors and will be hiring everyday people to work from the comfort of their own homes posting links. The way this works is Google will allow people to signup and receive a package which will contain all the step by step instructions to get setup from home.

This will allow Google to hire talent in places like Canada that would otherwise be unreachable and compensate them based on results on a long term basis.

What you need: A Computer, an Internet Connection and the desire to make a living working from home. No special skills are required other than knowing how to use a computer and navigate the internet.

For those that use Gmail if your trying to access the web interface today your probably running into a bit of trouble. Appears Gmail’s web interface went down around 4:15PM EST although IMAP and Gmail services themselves are up and processing email. The event seems to be worldwide so here’s a big, fat, WOW!