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Google's Teach Parents Tech site to help mom and dad find the 'any' key this Christmas
It happens every December. You head home for the holidays only to be accosted by parents who need help fixing their computers. This year, it looks like Google will be lending a hand with its unannounced Teach Parents Tech series of public service videos. The Google-registered website teachparentstech.org still shows a "coming soon..." graphic and the videos remain unlisted on YouTube, but that shouldn't stop you from sending the source link below to your parents right now. At the moment, we're counting 54 cross-platform how-to videos hosted by real live Google employees. The videos are brief (less than a minute) covering topics as simple as "how to copy and paste" and "how to attach a file to an email" to more advanced sessions covering "how to setup an email autoresponder" and even "how to find cheap flights." Unfortunately, even Google can't explain to parents how to create a FAT32 hard drive partition. See what we mean after the break. Update: And it's live. Might as well get in the gift-giving spirit, eh? [Thanks, Nathan G.]
Should the BBC be doing games?
The British Broadcasting Corporation, as a public service corporation, is in an interesting position with regards to gaming. Broadcasting is moving away from just providing TV and radio programmes towards interactive content; the BBC's remit is to "educate, inform and entertain". With decades of history in entertainment and storytelling, how does gaming fit in?Alice over at Wonderland has some interesting views on the subject -- and as a BBC employee, she's well placed to give her personal view in a lengthy and worthwhile piece. An interesting point ties in with both the BBC's Digital Britain and the recent findings that (unsurprisingly) lots of Britons are gamers:Most importantly though, the BBC has an obligation to reach all of its license-fee paying households. If there are household members who prefer games to television and radio, then the BBC ought to be providing to them on the platforms and mediums they favour.Perhaps we'll end up reliving history: in 1981 the BBC instigated the creation of a microcomputer to be used for educational purposes during the show The Computer Programme. This influenced the microcomputer revolution in the UK; if the BBC gets into gaming in the same way, perhaps the UK's attitude towards games could be similarly revolutionised. The BBC is in a position to turn game development and esports into a national pastime, if it so chooses -- the question is whether it ought to.
