There are many theories on how to use computers and social networking technology to "disrupt" education. But Rosalind Chivis, principal of Philadelphia's two-year-old High School of the Future, has some real-world experience under her belt on what does and doesn't work.

BillShrink co-founder and effective CTO Samir Kothari answered some questions I had about issues I encountered while using the service, which aims to help you find the best credit card or cellphone plan.

Founded by ex-Verizon Wireless executives, My Validas does only two things: analyze your cellphone bill and help you quickly contact carriers to lower your bill or switch services. It appears to do them well.

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Until high schools stop teaching trigonometry in favor of compound interest, Excel and other forms of consumer math, there will be a huge need for web sites like BillShrink.com and My Validas.

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Todd Bishop at TechFlash had a great summary last week of some e-mails revealed during the Vista Capable lawsuit that illuminate the complicated relationship Microsoft has with the analyst most often accused of being in its back pocket, Rob Enderle.

Ariel Meadow Stallings, the cute-as-a-button alterna-chick and Redmond employee who writes the Microspotting blog, gave away "I am the empire" t-shirts this summer to Microsoft employee bloggers.

In requiem for once-mighty PC Magazine's decision to stop printing and go Web-only, the Technologizer blog's Harry McCracken writes elegantly today about his 12 favorite departed computer magazines. I've got my own checkered history.

Consulting firm Interbrand today released its annual rankings of the best corporate brands (the 'Brandys'?). I'd never heard of it, but my interest was piqued as I was just coming off another Microsoft-Seinfeld-'I'm a PC' marketing story.

Coca-Cola kept the top spot, while IBM pushed ahead of Microsoft for the first change to the top four since at least 2001. GE held onto fourth.

With VMworld, the world's largest virtualization gathering, about to start next week, it was probably only natural that rumors of a major M&A in this hot space would bubble up to the surface.

Microsoft now has 10 million paying customers for its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), which is the license which businesses must buy if they want to do desktop or application virtualization the Redmond way, a Microsoft spokeswoman told me Thursday.

Another month, another Forrester Research report on Windows Vista. But wait! Rather than the negative spin of last month's report, in which analyst Thomas Mendel opined that Vista was in danger of becoming as big a failure as "New Coke," this report by analyst Benjamin Gray comes to a different conclusion.

Just in time for Friday, the Global Nerdy blog has done some extensive YouTube research and dug up a treasure trove of TV commercials featuring tech celebrity endorsers, similar to the one Jerry Seinfeld will be playing in all of those imminent Windows ads.

Besides the 2,000 Microsoft developers apparently working on Windows 7, the operating system also has 500 program managers. The PMs, as they are called, don't actually oversee the developers. Think of them as a software vendor's answer to Ralph Nader.

A reader of my recent story on Pixar announcing that its popular RenderMan Pro Server software would start to support Windows clusters questioned why I hadn't noted whether or not RenderMan already ran on Mac and Linux server clusters, known as 'render farms' in the animation biz.

Data warehousing appliance vendor -- and recent Microsoft Corp. acquisition -- DATAllegro Inc.'s CEO Stuart Frost responded to the patent lawsuit filed against him and his firm via his blog very early Thursday morning.