Dr. Christopher McGinley, superintendent of the Lower Merion, Pennslvania school district that is currently embroiled in a national scandal over alleged spying via webcams in school-provided laptops, replied to the allegations in an email sent out to parents today.

Some background: Lower Merion School District, located in the stretch of the Philadelphia suburbs known as the Pennsylvania Main Line, is one of the wealthiest and most decorated public school districts in the country. It's even able to provide Apple MacBook laptops to all 2,300 students in its Harriton High School--a luxury that's increasingly looking more creepy than admirable. Students had been reporting for the last year that the tiny green LED light next to their school-provided laptop's webcam had been lighting up at random times, indicating the webcam itself was in use, for no clear reason. That problem was waved off as a technical glitch by the school's security and technology department.

But two days ago, sophomore Blake Robbins filed a disturbing lawsuit against the school district. He was disciplined by the high school's vice principal for "improper behavior in his home," with the vice principal citing photos taken by his laptop as evidence of this vague wrongdoing. After some digging, it was discovered that the school had installed software on the laptops that allowed the security and technology department to remotely take photos using the laptops' webcams--they say the software is only used in case of a stolen or misplaced laptop, which doesn't entirely mesh with the "improper behavior" session Robbins endured. Articles appeared in the AP, Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Times, and all over the blog world, all outraged. Today, the superintendent of the school district responded with this letter:

Dear LMSD Parents/Guardians,Our history has been to go to great lengths to protect the privacy of our students; whether it comes to student health, academic or other records. In fact, many of you may remember the heated debate over whether to have security cameras monitor some of our food vending machines.Privacy is a basic right in our society and a matter we take very seriously. We believe that a good job can always be done better.Recent publicity regarding the District’s one-to-one high school laptop initiative, and questions about the security of student laptops prompted our administration to revisit security procedures.Laptops are a frequent target for theft in schools and off school property. District laptops do contain a security feature intended to track lost, stolen and missing laptops. The security feature, which was disabled today, was installed to help locate a laptop in the event it was reported lost, missing or stolen so that the laptop could be returned to the student.Upon a report of a suspected lost, stolen or missing laptop, the feature was activated by the District's security and technology departments. The security feature’s capabilities were limited to taking a still image of the operator and the operator's screen. This feature was only used for the narrow purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District never activated the security feature for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.As a result of our preliminary review of security procedures today, I directed the following actions:-- Immediate disabling of the security-tracking program.-- A thorough review of the existing policies for student laptop use.-- A review of security procedures to help safeguard the protection of privacy; including a review of the instances in which the security software was activated. We want to ensure that any affected students and families are made aware of the outcome of laptop recovery investigations.-- A review of any other technology areas in which the intersection of privacy and security may come into play.We are proud of the fact that we are a leader in providing laptops to every high school student as part of our instructional program. But we need to be equally as proud of the safeguards we have in place to protect the privacy of the users, as well as to safeguard district-owned property while being used by students.We regret if this situation has caused any concern or inconvenience among our students and families. If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at info@lmsd.org. Additional information has been posted on our website, www.lmsd.org.Thank you for your time and attention.Sincerely,

Dr. Christopher W. McGinleySuperintendent of SchoolsLower Merion School District

I contacted a teacher at the Lower Merion School District, who told me that the teachers and other staff are under "a very severe gag order" not to speak to press--it is an ongoing legal case, after all, and the school district is being very careful not to say anything to incriminate themselves. I spoke to a few other people in the community (I grew up on the Main Line myself, just down the road from Lower Merion) who said that the story has been dominating local news--the Main Line Times seems to be camped outside the high school--and that parents are extremely concerned about the possibility of school officials being able to spy on their children outside school grounds.

The school maintains its statement that while the terms of use are incomplete, their intentions were good and the ability to spy was never actually misused, even though the possibility was there. We'll update the story as events unfold.

[Via Main Line Times]

It's not yet the norm here in the States, but if this new sugar-based plastic actually takes off, composting might become as widespread as it is elsewhere--because this stuff, unlike current "biodegradable" plastics, breaks down in a matter of months, instead of centuries. This is a big deal.

There are biodegradable plastics on the market now, and some retailers actively use it instead of normal plastic bags. But even though it's made of natural materials like corn, it still takes as long as a few hundred years to decompose--better than vinyl, sure, but not exactly ideal. This new type of plastic, developed by researchers at Imperial College London, is created from glucose polymers extracted from trees and grasses. Not only is it faster to decompose, but it would halt dependency on fossil fuels, which are used to make 99% of today's plastics, and it's said (though no details are provided) that its production is more energy-efficient than typical plastic.

The development team is currently engaged in creating a market-ready version of the tech, but is optimistic that it can be done. Hopefully sometime soon we'll be able to toss plastic wrappers and packaging into the compost bin along with our banana peels.

[Via the Telegraph UK]

The National Science Foundation just announced the winners of its 2009 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, all of which appear in the latest issue of the journal Science, out today. There are a ton of great photos, illustrations, videos, and graphics among the bunch, including this beauty, an illustration of the forces lung cells exert in forming capillaries which will appear on the cover of the new Science.

One of our favorites is Northwestern students Christian Thiemann and Daniel Grady's "Follow the Money: Human Mobility and Effective Community," winner of the Non-Interactive Media category. It's a video (the above image is a still) based on data culled from Where's George?, the collectively powered Web site where users enter their zip code and the serial number and series of any U.S. bill in order to chart the zany misadventures of American currency.

The information it presents helps reveal the different ways money travels through the country and the true behavioral boundaries of American communities. Better understanding these patterns could shed light on a host of biological and anthropological phenomena, from the origins of dialects to the spread of disease. In fact, the two students were part of the Northwestern team The New York Times reported on last spring, which used Where's George? to track the potential spread of swine flu.

The image also calls to mind the visualization Pete Warden recently released based on data pulled from 210 million public Facebook photos, which reveals the connections among disparate parts of the U.S. The two maps are far from an exact match but they show similar patterns, offering a reminder that relationships are their own form of equity.

Chicago may lack the crackling energy of other startup hotspots like Seattle, Austin, Boston or Boulder, and its reputation for back-office, white-collar companies such as the former Andersen Consulting firm doesn't help much. But Chicago is where many Internet mainstays were launched, from the jobs site CareerBuilder and travel service Orbitz to RSS technology innovators Feedburner (bought by Google in 2007) and the online audience measurement outfit comScore. One hot startup right now is the coupon site Groupon.

Health-care companies also have realized great potential in the area, led by Abbott Laboratories. And lest one forget, it was at nearby University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where Marc Andreessen developed Mosaic, the Web browser that paved the way for the commercial Web. So there's that.

These days Chicago's startup culture is aimed at the steady and sure. As Matt McCall, a partner at New World Ventures and managing director at DFJ Portage, notes, Chicago is home to many of the largest companies in the country, including Accenture, Boeing, Integrys Energy, MillerCoors, McDonald's, ACNielsen, Trans Union, and Fortune Brands. The list is long and comprehensive. For startups, it means a rich source of customers for products that fill a need or enhance their businesses.

McCall spoke with FastCompany.com about what makes Chicago's startup scene so strong.

What makes Chicago a great place for startups?

Chicago has a mixture of a lot of very interesting things. I'll start with the first, which is the customers are here. There are more Fortune 500s in this region than anywhere else in the U.S. And I've noticed this when I'm sitting in board meetings in San Francisco or New York or here. If you ever look at the sales pipeline, the Midwest is almost inevitably always the largest sales region because it's a diverse economy and those companies tend to take care of their own here. So if you have a leading technology here, in almost every single situation, the top customers for those companies were all Midwest corporations. That's the first thing I'd say.

The second is you've got more federal research dollars flowing into the universities here than any other region in the U.S. So if you just look at the federal funding--and this is just for Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, those three alone receive over $2 billion a year in U.S. federal funding. And it depends on the year, but they're number three, four and five in the U.S. in research funding.

And the third is the connectivity, which is if you'll look at a lot of successful companies in the valley, almost inevitably a huge percentage of them either went to school or grew up in the Midwest. And that's ranging from [Oracle CEO] Larry Ellison growing up on the south side of Chicago to the YouTube guys.

So number four is you now have critical mass of what we call family trees where you've got entrepreneurs that are fourth generation entrepreneurs. They're on their fourth business. As a result, they played at the big leagues. They've got a mafia of people that they can pull in to the companies. So when you go to recruit teams in certain spaces, you have the talent. Now, where are those spaces? I've always said we try to focus on areas where we are able to produce the number one or number two player in the U.S. or world out of our region and those areas would be interactive marketing, B2C, e-commerce, B2B, Internet enabled B2B, some enterprise software, medical devices and a host of other areas, everything from Archipelago to Think or Swim, OptionsXpress. You've got all kinds of talent, from writing the software platforms to actually creating exchanges.

Would you say that Chicago breeds or attracts entrepreneurs?

My phrase is we've inflected. And so, when you inflect, you start to be able to kind of see the family trees or the number of entrepreneurs. That number is growing pretty significantly and I'll give you some examples. On the B2B space, you've got Brad Keywell and those guys who were involved with launching InnerWorkings. It's a classic Midwest play. Go after boring B2B industry with an Internet infrastructure and disrupt it. That company is public. I don't know what it will do--$500 million, $400 million in revenue after four years?

They then went and said, "Hey, this looks like a great idea." For their next company, they did Echo Global Logistics, which goes after the notion of, "I need a truck to go from Chicago to Kansas City. What's available?" Well, there's a lot of dialing for dollars. Why not put an Internet infrastructure in place? They'll do--I don't know what the number is, $300 million in revenue after four years? And they just went public, the same group.

What makes Chicago's entrepreneurial ecosystem sustainable for the long run?

I think ecosystems hit inflection points and I think that what you're seeing in Chicago is this growing amount where there is CareerBuilder and Orbitz. FeedBurner was [founder] Dick Costolo's fourth company.

And now you're seeing the Performics and FeedBurner guys going into next generation startups as well. So I would say that I think we've inflected and as a result, when you start a company, you've got kind of these built-in talent pools that you can reach into that you didn't have say in 2000.

Could you describe a Chicago entrepreneur, a typical Chicago entrepreneur?

My take on the Midwest entrepreneur is the following: incredibly capital efficient because obviously capital is scarce in the Midwest. And so as a result, the way that they run their businesses tends to be very capital efficient, very tight, very focused, number one.

Number two is they tend to be very collaborative and cooperative. And to give you an example, when we were doing our--whenever we talk to anyone about Dick Costello and Eric Lunt in that team, they always use the phrase, "I'm in the Dick Costello fan club."

Why haven't there been more angel funds?

I think we are going to see more of that. My belief is that good angel communities come from successful former technology entrepreneurs. It's the guy that was successful, has a lot of money, and can bring both his domain knowledge and network, as well as his money. And so, as we're getting now into third or fourth-time entrepreneurs, we're starting to see more of that happen. [Performics founder] Jimmy Crouthamel for example has been fairly active supporting the startups in the region. We're starting to see more of that but not nearly enough. It's something that is coming. I think the challenge was a lot of the money in the Midwest comes from traditional industries or it's more conservative pensions or things along those lines, so I would say if there's one thing the region does need to work hard on, it's the institution of family capital supporting the region.

What kind of exits do you see in Chicago? Is Chicago a billion dollar exit playing field?

We actually did a chart. I don't want to misspeak here, but for the last five years, there were I think $23 billion worth of exits out of Chicago and in this region in general. So yeah, there's a lot of it.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/poisonbabyfood/ / CC BY 2.0

Is anonymity online coming to an end? The pervasive attitude says yes.

The Pew Research Center teamed up with Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center to survey 895 experts on the future of the Internet--and at the forefront of the discussion is the sticky topic of anonymity. Experts were nearly split down the middle, with 55% agreeing that Internet users will be able to communicate anonymously and 41% agreeing that, by 2020, "anonymous online activity is sharply curtailed." Not only are there divergent opinions on whether online anonymity will be possible in the future, there isn't even a consensus on whether anonymity is universally desirable.

"The routine and pervasive corporate and governmental surveillance, tracking and 'proviling' (profiling) systems that are already much too widespread are certain to continue and expand," says Jim Warren, a tech entrepreneur and activist quoted in the Pew report. "Those who are in positions of power--both corporate and governmental--ALWAYS want to know ever-more about everyone." Anthony Townsend, director of the Institute for the Future, agrees. "Given the amount of communications monitoring governments already do, we're likely already past this point," he says.

Others say that's too simplistic a view of anonymity. Axel Bruns, associate professor at the Queensland University of Technology, finds value in an in-between realm of pseudonymity, identifying as a human but not a specific person. "Other than for law enforcement hardliners, the challenge is not to tie every online activity to a specific identified user, but simply to verify that the activity is carried out by (or at least on behalf of) an actual human being rather than by a spambot or other malicious and disruptive entity--and for this, verified pseudonymity is sufficient," he says. Craig Newmark, founder of Craig's List, also sees shades of gray: "We'll see a wide range of online identity options, from anonymity, to different levels of reasonably verified identity. Whistleblowers, for example, need anonymity. Public discussion boards need some modest level of verified identity, whereas home banking needs strong authentication."

Even further, a lack of anonymity can also be more positively spun as "authentication." After all, there are benefits to identifying one's self. Stephen Downes, of the Canadian National Research Center, explains: "Where authentication is voluntary, and clearly in the client's interests, and non-pervasive, people will gladly accept the constraints. Just as they accept the constraint of using keys to lock the car and house door but have the prerogative to, if they wish, leave either unlocked."

It's impossible to generalize from a group of viewpoints so often in complete disagreement, but the theme of the online world coming to mirror the physical world certainly emerges from the rubble. And with extremists on both sides harping away about the impact of total anonymity online, we sometimes forget that in no other part of our lives can we be completely anonymous. It only makes sense that it will be impossible to maintain total anonymity online--as Tom Wolzien puts it, "Even the Wild West was tamed." Heywood Sloane, of the Bank Insurance and Securities Association, sums up the attitude that often flows beneath the more speculative, theoretical, and moral statements made by others:

[Via Pew Internet]

A few years back, an article The Atlantic coined the term Baby Genius Edutainment Complex to describe Baby Einstein and other toys and educational products that prey on parental anxieties about their little ones growing up to score highly on the SAT, get into an Ivy, and land a great job. That market shows no signs of contracting if the 2010 Toy of the Year Awards (which toy makers like to call the Oscars of the toy industry but you can call the TOTYs), handed out at the just-concluded toy fair in New York, are any indication.

The 11 honorees include the Electronic Toy of the Year, Technosource's touch-sensitive Rubik's TouchCube, which lights up when you play with it and includes a built-in solver so that kids can learn how to do the impossible (for me, anyway). There are also a couple of winners made by Crayola, including the Infant Toy of the Year, the Crayola Beginnings Color Me a Song game, which plays country and salsa music at various tempos depending on how quickly little Picassos are drawing.

The wildly popular Zhu Zhu Pet Hamster, an interactive robotic pet that squeaks when you touch it and knows where in its hamster habitat it is, won Toy of the Year as well as two secondary prizes. One of the hottest toys of the holiday season, it survived a lot of adversity to get to the Toy of the Year stage, beating back a consumer advocacy's charge that it contained a toxic chemical. There have also been problems with kids' hair getting caught in the motorized hamster wheels, but maybe that's another way the toy teaches kids about how the world works.

One of the secondary categories Zhu Zhu won for was Girl Toy of the Year; the Boy Toy in the Year, meanwhile, was the Voltron-esque Bakugan 7-in-1 Maxus Dragonoid, a bunch of tiny transforming robots that stick together with magnets for to form a giant one. Transformers for boys, hamsters for girls--some things never change.

[Via InventorSpot]

We know that our fondness for the internal combustion engine plays a part in climate change. But a new study out of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City indicates just how much cars are hurting us, now and in the future. In a new paper published earlier this month by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of NASA climatologists presented an economic model for the climate change that will take place this century, which measures the contributions of 13 specific industry sectors based on the unique portfolio of airborne chemicals each one emits.

It's well known that road transportation is doing the most damage, but researchers arrived at that conclusion by figuring out that cars produce few aerosols, which help mitigate the warming impact of the pollutants and greenhouse gases they produce. Industry, by contrast, pumps a ton of aerosols into the environment, which actually have a cooling effect on the environment. This positive impact of aerosols, which has factored into a number of previous climate-change models, is something of a Pyrrhic victory, however, since aerosols' deleterious impact on human and ecosystem health is well-established. That's why much of the developing world has spent the last few decades trying to eliminate them in everything from hairspray to fire extinguishers.

As a result of that effort, by the year 2100, industry will be hot on the heels of transportation in its overall contribution to warming. However, by then, our thirst for electricity will have made power generation the head of the class when it comes to climate change, ahead of road transportation and industry. We've got dauntingly big problems, as the study shows, which makes it a bit depressing. But better analysis of the specific patterns of human behavior that lead to those problems will, one hopes, make the solutions clearer.

[Via NASA]

Hulu and the iPad would seem like a software and hardware combo born in media heaven, but we hadn't heard a peep from Hulu officially on the matter. But now Hulu's kind of confirmed its iPad plans. The trick is, you may have to pay.

The news isn't absolutely concrete, but AllThingsD has heard directly from several insiders inside Hulu's parent companies: Simply put, Hulu would love to serve up its Web video content to iPad users. The iPad is expected to be a soaring success, and it's a device that's expressly designed for high-quality media consumption in a portable package. With a mobile Hulu solution in front of millions of new iPad users, the company could make a lot of money from embedded advertising.

Those same insiders have suggested that for the iPad Hulu may abandon the free-to-view business model it's followed so far for the desktop and adopt a subscription-based system instead. The iPad-Hulu income would offset money "lost" in keeping the desktop implementation free and may even turn a profit if it proves very successful--while putting Hulu on all three screens in our modern lives: The TV, the PC and our mobile media devices.

The most obvious barrier is that the current Hulu system centers on Adobe Flash-powered video, and this is not going to be supported on the iPad. There are work-arounds like HTML5 or even the pop-out player system that the official YouTube iPhone app uses, but they'd require some serious back-end engineering at Hulu to get them to work--like re-encoding all of Hulu's video archive. Hulu also has to ask its content providers to grant it access to transmit to a mobile device--not an issue for the already Apple-friendly Disney, but it could be for others. Or they may demand a slice of the profits, which is where the payment model for the mobile Hulu app would come into play.

We did know that Hulu was likely to charge for its services at some point, and that Hulu and the iPad would get together sometime. But with all the complex rights negotiations and coding for the videos themselves needed, Hulu is not likely to be on the iPad at launch. One thing's for sure--just as we pointed out, this news is a clear sign that owning the iPad is ultimately going to cost you many extra dollars in the long run...but you'll probably enjoy spending it.

[Via AllThingsD]

A recently revealed patent suggests Apple has exciting plans for its future iPhones and laptops centering on near-field communications. Soon just popping your iPhone near a MacBook may enable wireless syncing. And that's just the start.

Near-field communications themselves aren't new, but it would be for the Apple devices in question. The technology centers on extremely short-range wireless interactivity between two devices--you may have heard of the tech in uses like wireless credit-card payment by cell phones in Japan. And Apple's patent takes the idea to some extremely elevated levels, with a future iPhone acting as a near-field key to all sorts of clever interactivity.

The simplest scenario would involve an NFC antenna embedded in an iPhone, with an interactivity range of about 2-4cm, and a MacBook with similar circuitry. Bringing the two devices close together activates the link, and the accelerometers in the iPhone will allow for actions like unlocking the MacBook, rotating an image on screen or even unlocking a combination lock with complex gestures. Once this circuitry is in the iPhone, however, it opens up all sorts of possibilities, as Apple notes, and your iPhone could even be programmed to activate proximity sensors for secure entry to office buildings--with the added benefit that you tend to carry your phone at all times. And since the iPhone is smarter than the usual dumb keycards used for this purpose, it could even enable better security, with PIN-code access and even automated alerts if the iPhone is being used improperly.

Apple also notes that an NFC connection could be used to trigger a LAN or WAN connection, which would then allow fast wireless comms between a computer and the iPhone and a greater range of connection between the two devices. Sounds like an answer to long-demanded wireless syncing between iPhones and iTunes--especially since iTunes itself is referenced in the patent.

But will we see this implemented in iPhones any time soon? As with all Apple patents, Apple could just be covering its back, and it may never intend to actually bring the idea to market. But this concept is so blatantly useful, and the technology is already largely proven and cheaply available that Apple certainly could attempt it--perhaps even as soon as the version 4 iPhone expected in the middle of this year. Could it even be the reason behind the slightly elongated case seen in recently leaked images purporting to be the iPhone 2010?

[Via Patently Apple]

If you've got a friend, relative, or famous radio personality who makes a point of doubting the effects or even the existence of climate change--especially if that person cites a snowstorm as evidence--we've got a few apps that'll learn 'em good, and then teach 'em how to make up for the damage they've done.

Skeptical Science: John Cook, creator of Skeptical Science, created this iPhone app as a handy go-to reference for deflecting questions (and embarrassing the questioner) on the subject of climate change. Got a friend who doubts mass climate change is the result of human impact? This app will teach you how to make him look like a complete idiot. Free. [iTunes via Treehugger]

Jungfrau Climate Guide: This guide is designed to show tourists to Switzerland's Jungfrau region how climate change has affected its scenic mountains and valleys--but should work just as well around the globe. If, for example, you walk over and stand in front of a glacier, the app will tell you how much smaller it is now than it used to be, and provide pictures of the same glacier 100 years ago to prove its point. Have you been to Jungfrau, Limbaugh? I think not. $9.99. [iTunes via CNET]

Now that you've taught your foolish, uninformed friend/relative/Fox News Host about both the scientific and practical effects of climate change, he'll be crushed. Here are a couple apps to help him right his wrongs.

Greenmeter: In case you weren't aware, you can't just give up on reducing the environmental impact of your car after you buy it. Greenmeter gathers information on your vehicle's power and fuel efficiency, and evaluates your driving before giving you tips on how to reduce fuel consumption and lessen the pain your car hands out to the air around it. It's also good for non-hippies who are just kind of cheap and want to learn how to save gas cash. $5.99. [iTunes via Greenmeter]

GreenYou: GreenYou calculates your carbon footprint, including the ways you kill the planet just by traveling, eating, and living, and then gives you tips on how to reduce that effect. Useful! $0.99. [iTunes via Treehugger]