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School-issued laptops are becoming more and more common these days, but thanks to the action of one high school, students and parents might have second thoughts about bringing them home. The parents of a Pennsylvania high school student, Blake J. Robbins, have filed a lawsuit against his school district after discovering that school officials had allegedly been remotely accessing the laptop in order to take webcam photos of the students at home (via BoingBoing). There are a number of unanswered questions about this story, but if true, it could mean serious penalties for the Lower Merion School District.

According to the complaint, the school in question (Harriton High School) had issued laptops equipped with built-in webcams to every student so that they could have “24/7 access to school based resources” and the ability to work seamlessly between school and home when it comes to research and projects. In November of 2009, however, Robbins was disciplined by the Assistant Principal of his school, Lindy Matsko, for engaging in “improper behavior” in his home. At that time, Matsko cited a photograph from the built-in webcam on the laptop.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Just as the Internet has evolved over the past decade, cell phones have become much more than devices for making and receiving phone calls. Today, smartphones can do everything from email, to sync with our desktops, to turn-by-turn driving directions.

As the editor of a blog that covers technology, one of the questions I’m most often asked by friends is “what smartphone should I get?” The answer is always: it depends. Each platform has its pros and cons, and depending on how you want to work when on the go, one may prove significantly better than another. Here’s a look at some of the things to consider and ask your wireless retailer about if you’re looking to get a smartphone or get your whole team connected:

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Operating System

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Just like computers can be either PC or Mac, smartphones run any of a half dozen popular operating systems: iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android, Palm, and Symbian. And just like your computer, the OS you choose will be the most important decision in terms of determining what your mobile experience will be like for the next two or more years (the likely length of your contract).

Some general characterizations about each: iPhone has the most apps and perhaps the most compelling interface. BlackBerry is superior for power email users. Windows Mobile works the most seamlessly with Microsoft Office. Palm offers an intuitive way to use multiple applications simultaneously. Android, though relatively new, may ultimately offer the largest selection of devices. Symbian is the most popular internationally.

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Carrier

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You’ve probably seen commercials from the likes of Verizon and AT&T touting their own coverage, and in some cases, insulting that of their competitors. Be aware though, their coverage maps can be misleading. If you plan to use a lot of applications or browse the Web while on your mobile, you’ll want to know what type of 3G coverage your carrier provides in the areas that you’re likely to spend most of your time.

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Applications

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“There’s an app for that” might be the most ubiquitous tagline in advertising during 2009. That’s because quite simply, there is a mobile app for just about everything – on iPhone. But while iPhone apps may significantly outnumber those currently available on competitors, other platforms aren’t slouches either when it comes to the applications you’re likely to care about. In terms of social media, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have apps (either their own or third-party) on virtually every platform, and in terms of productivity, basic office functionality can be had across the board too (with some caveats, read on …)

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Compatibility

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Most smartphones will synchronize with your desktop and web applications, whether they’re Microsoft Outlook or Google Apps. However, depending on what you use, the experience can be smoother on one platform versus another. For example, not surprisingly Windows Mobile devices come with native support for Microsoft Office – including Outlook – whereas on Google Android devices, like the Motorola Droid, you’ll need to download and setup additional applications in order to sync. However, the Droid is optimized for users that run Google’s mail and calendar apps, among others. If this is a concern, ask your retailer about how the phones you’re looking at sync with your desktop or web productivity apps of choice.

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Total Cost of Ownership

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One of the most overrated things people tend to talk about when evaluating mobile phones – especially smartphones – is the upfront cost of the device. The truth of the matter is that most smartphones, from BlackBerry to Palm to iPhone, will cost between free and $300 when you activate, but thousands of dollars over the length of your wireless contract – typically two years. Thus, it’s far more important to consider the device itself, the monthly voice and data charges, and the other criteria discussed here. Additionally, if you’re getting smartphones for multiple users, be sure to inquire into the plans that the carrier offers for businesses.

Volumes could be written on the intricacies of each platform and which is superior, but now at least you know what to ask as you evaluate the 24×7 mobile lifestyle. Unfortunately, making a mistake can be costly – in terms of both frustration and potentially early termination fees – so be sure you know exactly what you’re getting into before signing your smartphone contract.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, JerryPDX

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More small business resources from Mashable:

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- Top Mobile Productivity Tools for the Small Business
- HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
- 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
- 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business
- 6 Must-Follow Steps for Selling in Any Economy
- 5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business
- HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business

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Reviews: Android, Facebook, Google, Microsoft Outlook, Twitter, YouTube, iStockphoto

Tags: android, blackberry, iphone, Palm Pre, windows mobile

Jessica Faye Carter is an award-winning author and columnist. Her company, Nette Media develops social media technologies for women and multicultural communities, and she blogs at Technicultr.

The expression of community has changed considerably since the emergence of social media technologies, but its basic foundation — the notion of individuals exchanging information, ideas, and opinions — remains firmly intact. Today, one of the most widely-used tools in developing these types of exchanges online is WordPress, the popular blogging and publishing platform. Part of its appeal is the ease with which users can build advanced functionality into their sites with plugins. If you’re interested in building a community around your site, there are plenty of third-party add-ons that can help create one.

These 10 WordPress plugins add features that will help you to engage your user base.

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Highlight Your Best Content

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1. Featured Content Gallery – If you’re not an expert in programming or design, Featured Content Gallery makes it easy to highlight images, posts, or pages anywhere on your site. It comes with a sleek and contemporary design that is fully customizable through the WordPress dashboard, so that you can integrate your highlighted content seamlessly with the rest of your site.

2. Popularity Contest – Your users will want to know what’s popular and interesting to their peers in the community and the Popularity Contest Plugin can help. It keeps track of the most popular posts and pages on your site and acts as a leaderboard that directs users to the most active content in your community. You can customize the point values assigned to user actions on the site, such as comments or views, and display the results easily in a widgetized-sidebar.

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Facilitate User Engagement

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3. Viper’s Video Quicktags – Including video in your community is easy using Viper’s Video Quicktags. Just enter the URL of the video in the prompt box and see a preview of the video right on your screen. Then specify the dimensions and other customizations you’d like to add and see your final product before saving it into your post. Supported video sites include YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo and others.

4. WPtouch – Part of keeping the community vibrant means letting your users take it with them. You can go mobile with your community using WPtouch and avoid building a mobile website or the costs of developing an iPhone application. You can control the mobile user interface by allowing the browser to automatically route users to the interface of your choosing — your site or the WPtouch interface, which looks similar to an iPhone app. You can also show or hide post excerpts and customize the icons and general appearance of your mobile site.

5. Disqus Comment System – Nothing stops a potential commenter in their tracks faster than having to set up a user ID and password in order to leave a message on your site. At the same time, most of us would like some sort of authentication process we can use to identify and correspond with other users as we develop our communities. The Disqus Comment System allows users to engage with your site using their Twitter, Disqus, Facebook, OpenID or selected other accounts. This prevents users from having to set up new accounts while allowing for authentication. Bonus: the Reactions feature allows you to include the social component of user feedback into your comments.

6. Customize Your Community – Customize Your Community (CYC) provides some useful options for those building communities in WordPress. It allows you to re-brand the WordPress pages for registration, logging in/out, and lost passwords, as well as the user profile pages. In addition to giving your community a standardized look and feel, CYC helps with a long-standing navigational issue in WordPress: it automatically directs “subscribers” to their profiles and bypasses the WP backend entirely.

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Measure on the Fly

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7. Clicky – While Google Analytics provides you with a long-term perspective on your site metrics, Clicky gives you instantaneous feedback. The dashboard includes traditional site metrics, but also offers cool features, like “Spy”, which pinpoints the location of current visitors on a map. It’s an easy way to get a snapshot of your site’s current activity and, in conjunction with Google Analytics, gives you a comprehensive overview of your site’s activity.

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Improve User Navigation

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8. Breadcrumb NavXT – Your users aren’t exactly Hansel and Gretel, but they still may occasionally need help navigating your site, particularly if it’s content-heavy. Breadcrumbs are usually located just below a site’s primary navigation system and look something like this:

Home » Dance Music » Saint Etienne » Method of Modern Love

Breadcrumb NavXT, the successor to Breadcrumb Navigation XT, improves your site’s navigation by building this kind of virtual breadcrumb trail for your users to follow. This way, users will know where they’re located on your site. This plugin may require customization, depending on your theme; check out the Advanced Options section of the plugin’s homepage for additional instructions.

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Monetize It!

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9. Advertising Manager – If you were previously using the Adsense Manager plugin, you’ve probably noticed that it hasn’t been updated in a while. That’s because it has been succeeded by Advertising Manager, which is recommended unless you are using WordPress version 2.5 or earlier. The renamed version supports a broader group of ad networks in addition to Google AdSense, such as Adify, AdBrite, and several others. It also imports your AdSense Manager settings, for users of the previous plugin.

10. WP125 – Do you prefer a more hands-on management style for your advertising? WP125 allows you to do everything from arranging the ad display so that it fits your site design to setting timelines for ads (they can be removed automatically or manually at expiration). It also provides a placeholder for empty ad space, which you can switch to your own customized version.

Do you have another plugin that’s been helpful to you in building your community? Share your favorites in the comments below.

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More WordPress resources from Mashable:

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WordPress Themes: “Top 12 Stunning WordPress Themes“, “30+ WordPress 3 Column Themes,” “20 WordPress 4-Column Themes,” “30+ WordPress 1-Column Themes,” “10 Unusual & Original WordPress Themes”

Plugins: “50+ WordPress Plugins for Multimedia,” “30+ WordPress Plugins for Statistics,” “30+ WordPress Plugins for Comments,” “30+ WordPress Plugins to Get More Blog Readers,” “Top 10 WordPress Plugins to Promote Your Social Media Profiles”

Miscellaneous: “WordPress God: 300+ Tools for Running Your WordPress Blog,” “The 7 Weirdest and Wackiest Uses for WordPress“

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Reviews: Clicky, Disqus, Facebook, Google Analytics, Google Video, Twitter, Vimeo, WordPress, YouTube

Tags: community, Lists, plugins, Wordpress

Filed under: Hardware, Podcasting, Ask TUAW

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we’ve got questions about getting an iPhone, disposing of old Macs, wake from sleep issues, exchanging a recent Mac purchase, podcast hardware and software, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you’re running and which version of Mac OS X (we’ll assume you’re running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don’t specify). And now, on to the questions.

Tom asks:

I’m considering an iPhone but want to know what my options are. Is the iPhone the best smartphone if I’m a Mac user?

The short answer to that question is “Yes.” The iPhone is the best smartphone for you if you use a Mac. It’s designed by Apple to work seamlessly with your Mac and iTunes and for the most part, it does. For Mac users the iPhone offers the best user experience possible and keeps you, at least hardware-wise, entirely in the Apple fold.

That said, the iPhone itself may or may not be the best smartphone for your needs. One drawback is that it’s only available if you are an AT&T wireless customer. So, unless you are already an AT&T customer, or are willing to switch, you are out of luck.

Plus, using AT&T on a daily basis can sometimes be challenging as it’s network occasionally has issues. Also, the coverage in some areas is not quite as good as other networks such as Verizon — even in larger cities such as Los Angeles, where I live.

Continue reading Ask TUAW: Choosing an iPhone, used Mac disposal, wake from sleep, podcast software and more

TUAWAsk TUAW: Choosing an iPhone, used Mac disposal, wake from sleep, podcast software and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Accessories, Enterprise, Software

Even though the iPhone, in its several iterations, is most likely the smartphone of choice for the discerning Mac user, that doesn’t mean Mac users choose the iPhone exclusively. In fact, RIM’s BlackBerry device still commands a sizable share of the smartphone market. So, if you happen to be one of those people who use a Mac and a BlackBerry, wouldn’t it be nice if both of your devices could work together by synchronizing files, music, video and more seamlessly via an application supplied by RIM themselves to maximize compatibility?

Well, that dream may become a reality according to a tipster who gave the scoop to the folks at the Boy Genius Report. According the the Boy himself, RIM is poised to give Mac and BlackBerry users something they’ve sorely needed: a brand new, updated and super cool BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac on September 25th.

This information isn’t 100% confirmed, but Boy Genius does let it slip that he’s using a previous build of the software and that it is “running beautifully.” So, I guess that’s a good sign this is probably one dream that will, in fact, come true — and very soon.

TUAWBlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac on September 25th? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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