Alexander Hotz is a freelance multimedia journalist and public radio junkie based in New York City. Currently he teaches digital media at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

As August nights get cooler, we begin begrudgingly counting down the remaining summer days. Once Labor Day passes, it’s back to school time for millions. The best part of going back to school is clearly the shopping

Adding more fuel to the wildfire of rumors about a possible Google social network, one Google staffer has posted a huge slide deck of research findings on social networking problems and solutions. Social networking is a complex, fascinating puzzle that we’re just beginning to solve.

Rebecca Zook is an online female math tutor who has been helping students get math into their brains for seven years. She blogs about learning at Triangle Suitcase . We’ve sorted the contenders from the pretenders and found five genuinely fun ways to help your kids learn math this summer.

This post is brought to you by Dos Equis .

Facebook just announced a tool that notifies you by e-mail or SMS text message when someone logs into your Facebook profile from an unknown computer. The idea is to help you recognize when a hacker has broken into your account so you can respond quickly by either changing your password (if that’s still possible) or contacting Facebook.

If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable’s Job Lists section gathers together all of our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired.

Disney’s ABC television network was the first in the industry to market on the iPad with their impressive app. Downloaders can stream TV episodes free of charge and early data is showing that they’re doing so in droves. According to data shared with the Wall Street Journal , the ABC iPad app has been downloaded 205,000 times and users have already streamed 650,000 television episodes.