Add it up: Three Glasgow Middle students are headed to the Mathcounts National Competition in Washington, D.C., in early May to represent Louisiana. Elvin Gu and Louie Kam, two seventh-graders, and Scott Wu, an eighth-grader, will make up the Louisiana team. This is the third year Wu has been on the state Mathcounts team; he finished seventh in the competition last year. Gu has made the state team for the second year in a row. Mathcounts is a competition for middle school students that asks them math questions in a spelling bee–style format.
Plus one: Google is giving people the option of recommending Internet search results and online ads. The “+1” button rolls out today. It represents Google’s latest imitation of Facebook in an attempt to make it easier for its users to share their insights with their online contacts. Google hopes to benefit from its version of Facebook’s “Like” button by making its search results more relevant and its ads more tempting to click. The +1 button initially will appear next to search results and ads for a relatively small number of Google users. Anyone who wants the +1 feature sooner can sign up at google.com/experimental. Google plans to allow other websites to place the +1 button next to their content, too.
