Evidence for Wielding a Big Stick Piles Up

Even more evidence is piling up against driving and texting/talking as a panel convened in Washington to discuss the issue. The consensus: Public service ad campaigns don’t work. Only through “wielding a big stick” (ie more laws and restrictions) is government going to help solve the problem. And it is a huge one with estimates ranging from one in every ten, to one in every four drivers on their cell phone at any one given time on our nation’s highways. Research has shown that just talking on a cellphone puts a driver at a four-times-greater risk of crashing and that hands-free devices don't lower that risk. Texting raises that risk level several multiples higher. Bottom line: People recognize that texting/talking on a cell phone is a hazard. Whether they are willing to give it up is another question.

(This blog entry is linked to the Washington Post and you can read the article for free, but you will have to register.)

Addicted to iPhone Apps

I’ve got an appointment to go help a friend load apps (short for applications) on her iPhone so I was particularly interested in an article on USA TODAY  called Are you addicted to Apple iPhone's ubiquitous apps? Will this make me her enabler?

Seriously, though, those little apps from games to those useful things like one that helps me track traffic jams every day are pretty addicting. The biggest attraction of course is that most are cheap (if not free) and there is lots of help for various aspects of your life available literally at your fingertip. Altogether, at this writing, there are 85,000 different apps for 50 million users around the world.

So how do you know if you are addicted? According to one of the experts quoted in the article, if you are spending two hours or more a day engaged with your digital equipment and it's not for work- or homework-related reasons, then you've got cause for alarm. If you are feeling you are hooked you should know that the first Internet addiction center opened in Redmond this fall.

Want to Change a PDF?

Have you ever had a pdf document you’d like to edit, but didn’t have the Adobe software to accomplish the task? It’s either copy the whole thing over or find someone who has the software and can do it for you. Now you can do it on your own. Just go online to OnlineOCR.net , a web-based OCR (Optical Character Recognition) service that allows you to convert documents, photographs, etc. “into editable and searchable electronic documents including Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Rtf, Html and Txt.” It’s available for use in 28 languages. I tried it using a pdf, which I uploaded, requested an MS Word document. It worked perfectly. The online system uses a credit system, which I found a bit confusing at first. You get 5 free credits to begin with, which translates into 5 pages. Once your credits are used up, you can purchase more ($3 for 30 pages) or be awarded additional free credits by posting links to and information about the service online, making a video about it, etc.

Wired Youth and Internet Addiction

Ok, I write a blog on digital safety, so I am always on the look out for items of interest, so when I saw an article entitled Wired Culture May Be Setting Youth Up for Internet Addiction online, I just had to look. It was from a well-regarded source – TechNewsWorld and the lead-in said “A growing body of research suggests that too much time on the Internet may have an adverse psychological effect on some young people, with behavior and consequences similar to other addictions. The findings of a new study suggest a link between Internet addiction and mental problems including ADHD, depression and aggression.” Wow , I thought.

But then I read the whole article. The study that was being reported on happened in Taiwan and included 2,293 middle schoolers and took place over a 24 month period.

But if you read a bit further, the methodology for this study relied on kids self-reporting  their symptoms! So how reliable is it for middle school girls to report that they are depressed and have social anxiety and middle school boys to report that they are suffering from ADHD and feelings of hostility. If you are a parent of a middle schooler you probably could have predicted that and saved these folks a lot of work and told them kids this age have these issues Internet or no Internet.

So why should you link to this article? The comments of Robert Kesten, executive director of the Center for Screen-Time Awareness. He says that if your child begins to withdraw from the world in favor of time online, the first thing parents must do is examine their own use of technology. "Often, children start this behavior because parents are always on the cellphone, computer or PDA," he observes, "It is part of the family behavior."

Free Photo Books

Whether you are addicted to making photo books or you have never made one, perhaps because you thought they were too expensive, it is time for you to take a look at HotPrints. It’s a company that will let you make own color photo book for about $3 plus $.75 shipping. But it gets even better. HotPrints is now offering everyone one free photo book per month (you don't have to pay shipping, either).

The new free program is advertiser supported, which means books will come with removable inserts from sponsors (none of the ads will actually be printed alongside your photos). To help make the deal more appealing to advertisers, HotPrints is using demographic information from Facebook, like your region and profile content, to pair users up with appropriate brands. However, while HotPrints does its best to match advertisers with users, the company says that sponsors are never actually given anyone's private information. The ads themselves will be placed as full-page removable inserts in the center of the book.

To get started all you need is a Facebook account with your pictures already uploaded to your page. You can also pull in pictures from friend’s pages. Then you drag and drop the pictures into place. Books consist of eight sheets of glossy stock paper, or 16 printed pages, each of which can fit multiple color photos. You can also tweak the background colors, titles, and borders. There is a slight learning curve, although the design is quite intuitive, but you will need some patience as it takes a bit of time for different designs to load. I also found the interface kind of hard to see and so manipulating it took some getting used to – but the free price tag made it easy to justify the time.

Paying for the News

As newspaper ad revenues continue to shrink, the newspaper business is facing a tough decision about whether to charge for online information. Setting up “paywalls” that make readers pay for the information they want is a daunting task from both a technological and business perspective. And newspapers that chose the pay route have to wonder if it will create a new revenue stream or drive readers to sites where there is no charge for the news.

What do you think will happen? Are you willing to pay for the news? Is this the end of local/regional news? What happens if news only begins to come from a couple of sources? Lots of questions and very few answers at this point.

Gaming Dads Learning a Bit From Their Kids

A recent article in the Washington Post recounts that many Dads still love to play video games, sometimes late at night after the kids go to sleep, in special spaces they have built in their homes, but the truth is that their victories are getting fewer and fewer against their kids. (This certainly has a familiar ring at my house.) Some Moms play too, but it is the Dads who are feeling their talents with the controllers slipping away. While the article concedes that Dads still have the physical prowess to show kids up on the sports fields, this does set up an interesting family dynamic.

(This blog entry is linked to the Washington Post and you can read the article for free, but you will have to register.)

Twitter Not Immune from Scammers

It seems that even Twitter, using only 140 characters per message, is not immune to being used by scammers for their nefarious purposes. A slew of tainted micropostings is swamping Twitter making it hard to trust even tweets from people you know. Of course Twitter makes scammers lives a bit easier because setting up a Twitter account is easy, quick and can be anonymous, if preferred. Web links come shortened, making it impossible for participants to see the name of the originating Web domain. All this plays right into the hands of cybercriminals. Security analysts expect attacks on social networks, especially Twitter, to intensify in the coming holiday shopping season. Internet users should keep anti-virus suites current, promptly install all software updates from Microsoft, Adobe and Apple, and distrust messages that use scare tactics. Also, free tools are available; some can unravel shortened Web links before you open them; others verify that a Web link is safe.

Solutions For Common Digital Photography Problems

Ever eliminated a digital photograph and realized immediately that you had goofed? Free software actually can help and Kim Komado’s recent USA TODAY  called Try these 5 solutions to common digital photography problems can help you find it as well as a myriad of other ways to categorize, sort and store your family pictures.

KidzClix May be the New Spot for Tween Social Networking

If you are looking for a social networking site for kids that doesn’t talk down to them or underestimate their intelligence, you might want to give KidzClix a try. Created by staff members at the Center for Gifted, a hands-on enrichment program based in Chicago, this site is just getting up and running but there are already lots of games and activities to keep grade schoolers busy for hours.