A language teacher was explaining to her class that in French, nouns unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine.”House” in French, is feminine -”la maison,” “Pencil” in French, is masculine “le crayon.”

One puzzled student asked, “What gender is computer?” The teacher did not know, and the word was not in her French dictionary.

So for fun she split the class into two groups appropriately enough, by gender and asked them to decide whether “computer” should be a masculine or a feminine noun.

Both groups were required to give four reasons for their recommendation.

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Below is a nice collection of WordPress tutorials available around the web (in no particular order):

• WordPressTutorials.com - WordpressTutorials.com offers comprehensive, beginner-and-advanced, non-geek-speak, audio/video tutorials to help you blog for fun & profit!
• ThemeLab.com WordPress Tutorials - A nice collection of WordPress training tutorials.
• iThemes.com Tutorials - Video tutorials that cover general issues related to using WordPress.
• Optiniche.com WordPress Tutorials - WordPress video tutorials for developing and utilizing WordPress.
• Weblog Tools Videos - All blogging related videos.
• Wordprezzie.com - Beginner & Advanced WordPress Training Tutorials
• Best of WordPress Tutorials - More than 100 tutorial resources related to WordPress
• WP-Tutorials.org - List of over 50 tutoriales hand picked, sorted in 13 categories.
• WPscoop.com - A list of WordPress Tutorials
• WordPress Hacker - Learn how to customize WordPress like a pro.
• BasicWordPress.com - Learn WordPress With This Free Guide
• HarkinsCreative.com - A series of video tutorials for clients, and anyone else who wants to know more about the basic functions of a WordPress-based web site

For computer Geeks only…

What is Project Euler?

Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems.

The motivation for starting Project Euler, and its continuation, is to provide a platform for the inquiring mind to delve into unfamiliar areas and learn new concepts in a fun and recreational context.

Who are the problems aimed at?

The intended audience include students for whom the basic curriculum is not feeding their hunger to learn, adults whose background was not primarily mathematics but had an interest in things mathematical, and professionals who want to keep their problem solving and mathematics on the edge.

Can anyone solve the problems?

The problems range in difficulty and for many the experience is inductive chain learning. That is, by solving one problem it will expose you to a new concept that allows you to undertake a previously inaccessible problem. So the determined participant will slowly but surely work his/her way through every problem.

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The idea, said Lime Wire CEO George Searle, is to add trusted context to user searches for content, given that people are more likely to want–and feel comfortable with–content from people they know.

Additionally, Searle explained that the new social features of LimeWire–which has 70 million monthly unique users and more than 5 billion queries a month–will enable people to choose whether to make files available to the public at large, or just to their friends and family.

In many ways, this is much like many other content-sharing systems. But to Searle, adding a social component to LimeWire means making what is already an extremely popular service more personal to many users. (more…)

Java is such a great language and platform for any kind of application. It is open, fast, powerful, runs on any platform, and there are more jobs for Java than any other programming language. After reading more FUD and Java bashing from Ruby land I thought it would be fun to put together a list of truly amazing uses of Java that covers a wide spectrum.

10 - Sun SPOT

The Sun SPOT Device is a small, wireless, battery powered experimental platform. It is programmed almost entirely in Java to allow regular programmers to create projects that used to require specialized embedded system development skills. The hardware platform includes a range of built-in sensors as well as the ability to easily interface to external devices. The SPOT Development Kit contains two complete, free-range Sun SPOTs (with processor, radio, sensor board and battery) and one basestation Sun SPOT (with processor and radio). Also included are all the software development tools and cables required to start developing applications for your Sun SPOT.

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Without doubt, Google is the most useful website on the Internet. You can search almost anything on it.

Google Search engine is also very friendly because when you visit google.com, you only get a clean and simple page where you just type what you would like to search.

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What if your desktop were actually a 3D environment? What i

f your CD or movie database becomes a 3D jukebox? Project Looking Glass is based on Java technology and explores bringing a richer user experience to the desktop and applications via 3D windowing and visualization capabilities.

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