Despite the big three not showing up, and other cast members not being invited, and more essays analysing the undertones, it’s still exciting.  If you like that sort of thing.

However, ALL of that is overshadowed (eclipsed?) by this fantastic 8-Bit Twilight Eclipse Interactive thingy on YouTube.

(For some reason, every time I play, Bella dies.)

Man up, Met.

Number of ‘Neet’ (Not in education, employment or training) teens 16-18 falling, but still high. It’s gone from 10.3% in 2008 to 9.2% in 2009 (just in England).

Glastonbury’s finished and, apparently, lots of teens were there.

“Why facebook want you to believe that email is dead” << the suit and tie analogy made me laugh.

More calls for the Mosquito to be banned.  Fingers crossed, it’s a disgusting product. Article here.

Update: it wasn’t banned. Damn.

Sadly, it seems that Oi, Mate, Gimme Some More! has been put together with the best of intentions, but very, very cringey results.   It’s an attempt to make Dickens more accessible to young people and, with titles like ‘Da Tale of Two Turfs’, just seems woefully patronising.

I hope I’m wrong but, as far as I can see, the main market for this will be adults wanting a cheap laugh at the expense of how they think modern teenagers communicate. And dats da troof, ma homiez.

Cinema chain Vue Entertainment is launching a series of cut-price film screenings exclusively for teenagers to double teen cinema attendance, starting with Twilight and New Moon in advance of Eclipse being released.  Only £1.95!

Confessions from a science chatroom, from our mates at I’m A Scientist.

Quite right. I learnt the words ‘righteous indignation’ from the Bucky O’Hare opening credit sequence, looked it up, and it became part of my 6 year old vocab. Nerdy, but true.  I also learnt a surprising amount of Greek mythology from Ulysses 31.

From:  http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/09/teen-founds-profitable-ad-network-branchr-wins-young-entrepreneur-award/

Fifteen year-old Christian Owens, founder of online advertising network Branchr, was recently named Enterprising Young Brit 2010. The Daily Mail gives the annual award to teen tycoons with startups in the United Kingdom.

Owens founded the startup, which counts MySpace as an advertiser — to give you a sense of the prestige — in January 2009. The company provides small and medium sized businesses with an alternative to Google through its pay-per-click advertising platform.

Love it.

Basically, completely awesome!

From the (not entirely unexpected) audio CD versions of books, to the (entirely unexpectedly) hilarious CBBC sketch show series, to the (apparently amazing) exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, not to mention the recently released game for PC/Wii/DS, Horrible Histories is now everywhere.

Personally I think this is great – Horrible Histories books are certainly the single thing I credit most with my own interest in history. (The Ancient Egyptians used to scoop out dead people’s brains through their noses  with long hooks before they mummified them, don’t ya know.)

And, very excitingly, next on the agenda looks to be a virtual world:

Scholastic Children’s Books is developing a virtual world around its “Horrible Histories” line of kids books in partnership with virtual world designer Yomego. Users will be able to explore  areas like Rotten Rome, Awesome Egypt, and Terrible Tudor London. The companies are apparently planning a virtual goods store, moderated chat, and live events where users can meet the author. The world is set to go live in Summer 2011.

If they can maintain the perfect mix of humour, grossness and Actual Facts that we all love about HH, this will be incredible.  Fingers crossed.

Today’s 16-year-olds could be in their 20s before they get the chance to have their say about what they think at the ballot box in a general election.

So what policies would influence London’s under-18s if they could vote?

Worth a read, although inevitably (suspiciously?) focussed on knives/guns/pregnancy… issues that are still not representative of the majority of UK teens and disproportionately representated in the mee-jah.