Techno-toddler

My two-year old daughter, who cannot pronounce the letter L in the word please and is not potty trained, picked up my wife’s iPhone and brought it over to the shower door. She held it up to my wife, who was taking a shower, and said, “Animals.” “Alright, my wife said. “If you can find your animals, you can play with it.”

Clara pressed the button at the bottom of the phone to turn it on, swiped the “slide to unlock” bar, exited the app that my wife was using, swiped two screens over, located her “Animal” app, pressed it, and began playing.

The girl still sleeps in a crib, sucks her thumb, and cannot negotiate stairs.  And we don’t even allow her to use the iPhone very often. She usually plays with her apps while we clip her toenails, change her diaper, or when she loses her mind in a restaurant.

Much of what she has learned has simply been by watching us.

Which is why I was not surprised to learn that a survey of online mothers found that more small children can play a computer game than ride a bike.  In addition, only 20 percent can "swim unaided," 11 percent can tie their shoelaces without help, and 20 percent know how to make an emergency phone call.

I know that I was not allowed to leave kindergarten without the shoe tying and emergency phone call skills mastered. Mrs. Carroll would take us out of Mrs. Dubois’s kindergarten classroom and test us until we passed.

I recall the process being quite stressful, at least for me.

So we’ll get around to the swimming and bike riding and shoe tying in all good time, but for now, I think her ability to navigate the iPhone is quite impressive.

And a little frightening.

Finally. A solution.

The People’s Bank ATM prompted me with this message today:

Would you like your preferred language at this and all other People’s Bank ATMs to be set to English?

What? 

You’re not going to ask me if I speak Polish or Cantonese or Swahili every time I need cash?

It’s about freaking time.  

ESPN fail: A simple design decision gone awry

Last night’s NBA freshman-sophomore scrimmage was filled with playground-style dunks, fast break offense and sparse defense.  

Bounce pass alley-oops, off-the-glass jams and other plays you’d never see in a competitive basketball game. 

Yet it was this image that that ESPN chose as the splash card for their video highlights of the game:

Wizard’s point guard John Wall doing who-knows-what, trailed by a skeptical referee.

It’s the little things that make me crazy.

 

Here’s the actual video in case you were interested in watching and noting the disparity between this image and the actual video footage. 

Sexy rumpus. I like that.

Outstanding advice from From The Oatmeal’s Valentines Day cartoon:__________________________________

If Valentines Day really means so little to you, then I politely ask you to shut the hell up and treat it like any other day.

OR

Go have a sexy rumpus adventure with someone who smells nice.

Less complaining.  More sexy rumpus.

Goodbye Apple?

My next phone may not be an iPhone 4. 

Just because women choose not to contribute to the assemblage of all human knowledge does not make the medium any less egalitarian

The Daily Beats asks: How egalitarian is this? According to a recently published study, only about 13 percent of those who edit or write articles for Wikipedia are women—the average Wikipedia contributor is a male in his mid-20s.

Actually, Daily Beast, Wikipedia is entirely egalitarian.

Anyone is allowed to write or edit for the online encyclopedia. Even I have edited articles in the past. Simply because the predominant contributors of Wikipedia are twenty-something men does not make it any less egalitarian than watching the National Football League or reading Maxim magazine.

Some things just appeal more to men than to women.

And while it might be slightly more palatable to ignore football and Maxim and less so when it comes to the world’s largest and most utilized storehouse of human knowledge, the fact remains that women have simply failed to show an interest in it.

And not because of a lack of equality.

The Daily Beast goes on to mention:

Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, has declared it her goal to raise that number to 25 percent by 2015. The move to include more women isn't about feminism or equality, she says, but an effort to make the encyclopedia as good as it can be.”

I was pleased to hear that Gardner’s goal to increase female participation in Wikipedia has nothing to do with a feminist agenda since no woman is being denied the opportunity to participate in the online encyclopedia. Since the encyclopedia's business is conducted entirely online, the sex of a Wikipedia editor does not play a role in a woman’s willingness to participate.

Women are not being asked to walk into a boys’ club and demand to be heard. They simply need to login and press keys on a computer.

This is not a failure of opportunity. This is a lack of interest or desire.

And honestly, are we surprised? I have known a hell of a lot of twenty-something men who would be excited to spend hours in front of a computer screen, writing and fact checking articles about wombats and the Crimean War.

I cannot think of a single woman who would be willing to do the same.

Like it or not, nerds and geeks of this particular ilk are predominately male.

Still, Gardner’s goals are noble. A more balanced view of the world’s information would be good.

But if women have demonstrated a disinterest in the writing and editing of Wikipedia during its first ten years of existence, I am intrigued as to what Gardner has planned in order to change this.

Does she plan on tapping into the vast hordes of female geeks out there, just waiting for the opportunity to sit in front of their computers for hours at a time, fact-checking articles on ancient Babylonia and the reproductive cycle of the horseshoe crab?

If so, I hold out little hope for the future female participation in this noble endeavor.

A joyous response to the misery of others

A study released by Stanford University shows that Facebook users often perceive their friends as having more fulfilling social and emotional lives. As a result, people end up feeling more lonely, isolated and depressed.

My reaction to Facebook has always been the opposite. Given the propensity to complain or allude to vague personal problems (with the hope that someone will engage), I always find Facebook rather uplifting.

Joyous even.

Admittedly, I often access Facebook through other platforms, so I don't spend as much time reading my Facebook feed as it might seem, but still, it never takes long to find someone who is upset.

While not all status updates are littered with whining and complaining, there are generally enough moans and groans related to the weather, work, children, the lack of sleep, travel snafus and illness to send me from my computer with a genuine skip in my step.

Facebook is my daily pick-me-up. A reminder of why I am so happy to be me.

Perhaps I’m just friends with the right people.

Or the wrong people.

Or the right people.

There is a big difference between girl-on-girl and elephant-on-girl

Today I Googled “What percentage of women are killed by women each year”?

The fifth item on Google’s list was:

How many women are killed by elephants each year?

No, Google.  Not even close.

By the way, the answer to the elephant question was less than 20. 

5 bits of podcasting advice from a professional podcast listener

After thousands of hours of podcast listening, I have come up with a short list of advice for podcasters everywhere. What All Podcasters Should Keep in Mind Prior to Recording

1. We don’t care where you record your podcast or the current weather conditions in that locale.

2. We don’t care about any glitches or technical snafus that took place prior to recording. Pretend like they never happened.

3. We don’t care about the temperature or any other atmospheric conditions in the room in which you are recording.

4. We don’t care about how tired, sick or jet lagged your may be, especially if you have just finished vacationing somewhere or attending a conference that your listeners would have enjoyed attending as well.

5. We don’t care if you have an advertisement embedded in your podcast as long as you don’t continue to talk about the advertisement after is has run.

The phone sucks. Voice mail is slightly more palatable, and now, it's easily accessible.

I despise the phone. In a recent survey of incoming calls to my phone (26 in all over a period of eight days), more than half of these calls were requests for favors and assistance. And in almost every instance, the call stopped me in the midst of something more important.

Makes me not want to own a phone. In fact, whenever I place a call, I’m often just looking to leave a voicemail, which brings me to some great news:

Have you ever wanted to leave someone a voicemail without risking them picking up the phone?

Now you can.

Speeding kills… road signs.

A couple years ago, I gave my wife a GPS for her birthday. We quickly switched it over to the British voice and named her Diana.

Though Diana has proven to be extremely helpful in terms of navigation, I have an excellent sense of direction and can usually find my way around, so the benefits to me in this regard have been minimal.

This is never the case for Elysha. Once she leaves her hometown, her internal map is at times almost nonexistent. Thanks to Diana she can get around without having to write down directions before leaving the house.  For me, it’s meant that I don’t worry nearly as much as I once did when she is driving.

Nevertheless, the GPS has made one significant difference in the way that I drive.  One of the features on the GPS is an estimated arrival time, and it is remarkably accurate.  What I’ve come to realize through this feature is that speeding is pointless. Even on a two hour excursion, accelerating from 65 to 80 miles per hour for the highway portion of the trip doesn’t improve your arrival time significantly enough to make it worth the chance of a speeding ticket.

In many cases, it makes little difference at all.

This fact has become so evident to me that I think GPS should be required in every teenager’s car, as a means of slowing them the hell down.

Of course, a GPS probably wouldn’t have stopped me and Danny Pollock from getting my Datsun B210 up to 100 MPH on Elm Street just for kicks, and it would have done little to thwart my games of mailbox baseball and the subsequent breaking of my wrist.

And it have done little to prevent the accident that nearly killed me, and it couldn’t have saved the No Parking sign outside St. Paul’s Church or the Stop sign on the grounds of Blackstone Millville Regional High School or the door of the PhotoMat hut in the Almacs' parking lot

But I did a fair bit of speeding back when I was a teenager, and I received a multitude of tickets in response. Like many teenage boys, I was reckless and dangerous and should not have been given a license until I was twenty-one, but short of keeping me off the road, a GPS might have slowed me down a bit.

And it might have prevented the accident that totaled my Corolla and kept me and some friends from attending a Yankee’s game a few years ago.

It’s a miracle that I’m still alive.

Revenge is sweet, as long as it doesn’t harm Clara

It’s for reasons like this that I have purchased my daughter’s domain name.

The Internet is not always necessary

While in the vet’s office, I noticed a sign that read: For your convenience we are now online at ctvetcenter.com.

While I appreciate the effort, I’m not sure how an online presence makes a veterinarian more convenient. Perhaps if I could schedule appointments online, that might be good, but no, this is not one of their offerings.

Sure, they list their hours of operation, but my vet is a 24-hour emergency care facility, which means that they are always open, no matter the time. I once brought my dog in at 3:00 AM.

Apparently there are employment opportunities at the location, but how many people bring their pet in for a checkup, hoping to land a job as well?

And yes, there’s even a place to upload photos of my pet, but this can hardly be termed convenient.

When I can schedule an appointment online, find some ideas on how to get the cat to shut up at night, or arrange for a staff member to administer Kaleigh’s eye drops each day, I’ll be impressed.

Crazy Town

Just watch.  Trust me.

The Google is God

I love the Google. I know there is great consternation about the amount of personal information that the company gathers and potential threats to personal privacy, but I don’t care anymore. Take everything I’ve got, Google Gods. It’s worth it. Case in point:

Yesterday, my buddy and I were on the way to the Microsoft NERD Center in Boston for a conference on social media. We had no address for the location, but I simply entered NERD Center into my Google Maps app on my phone and received instant, turn-by-turn directions to the location.

Regaling the powers of the Google, I wondered what else it could do. On Sunday, we would be leaving Boston and heading south to Foxboro for the Patriots game. I knew that I could enter Gillette Stadium into the Google and get directions, but I wondered what other search terms might bring me there.

Instead of Gillette Stadium, I entered Sullivan Stadium, the original name of the former stadium from the 1970s.

Google gave me directions to Gillette Stadium.

Then I entered Tom Brady, the name of the Patriots quarterback..

Google gave me directions to Gillette Stadium.

Then I entered Randy Moss, the name of a Patriots wide receiver.

Google gave me directions to Gillette Stadium.

Then I entered Jerod Mayo, the name of a Patriots linebacker.

Google gave me directions to Gillette Stadium.

On a whim, I entered my name into Google Maps.

Google gave me directions to the NERD Center in Boston. I was registered online as an attendee of the conference.

Google knew where I was going to be on the day in question and provided directions to me.

Astounding.  And yes, a little frightening, too.

The good, the bad and the people who should shut up

After day one of  Podcamp Boston, a few thoughts: 1. Why didn’t anyone tell me about Podcamp before now? Many, many thanks to AnnbKingman for giving me the heads-up!

2. There are some very smart and engaged people making a living in new media, and they are more than willing to share much of their experience and expertise, and they are enthusiastic in doing so. How many other industries can make this claim?

3. Content is king and an engaged audience is a close second. These are the primary means to monetization. There are no silver bullets, no magic advertising or sponsoring formulas, despite the number of people in search of them today.

3. Humility and self-deprecation result in greater attention and respect.  Self-aggrandizing, self-promotion and the hard sell always strike me as desperate and weak.

4.  Why no female presenters?

Oh, and if you have something negative to say to a presenter about his craft in the midst of his presentation, have the decency to say it when the session is over. Do not air your criticism publicly. These are people who are giving of their time and expertise, and while this does not inoculate them from scrutiny and criticism, they have a right to expect civility and respect during their presentation.

Thoughts?

One of the only reasons to like the fashion industry

I can’t stand the fashion industry. Even though I readily admit to watching Project Runway (for the creativity and problem-solving on display and not the fashion), the whole industry makes me a little sick. The obsession with physical appearance that the industry promotes, its use of stick-thin models and the way in which labels are plastered all over items for the purpose of allowing others to equate the price of the item to its perceived value is ludicrous, materialistic and disgusting.

Other than my sneakers, I am proud to say that I own a label-free wardrobe.

That said, this is the best thing I’ve seen from the fashion industry in a very long time:

Lifehack of the decade

A week or so ago, I complained about the ridiculous size and placement of the Caps Lock key on the average keyboard. Then I found this.

The answer to all my troubles.

A hotkey script that keeps the Caps Lock function from activating unless the key is struck twice.

Brilliant. The best news of the week.

Download it immediately.

TheKnot.com threatening to take over the world

TheKnot.com is a website that many people (mostly women) use in order to plan their weddings.  I am familiar with this site because my DJ company has been recommended on it many times in the past.

Yesterday I was directed to one of these recommendations, and while there, I noticed for the first time that TheKnot has expanded.

Considerably. 

The site now includes TheNest.com, which provides advice on buying a home, investing, decorating and cooking. 

Now that you’re married, ladies, allow The Nest to guide you along as you buy a new home, invest your money, purchase a couch and cook delicious meals.

And when it’s time for a baby, have no fear.  There is also TheBump.com, a site that claims to assist in getting pregnant, being pregnant and choosing a baby name.

What’s next? 

SpankMyChild.com?  Helpful parenting tips and an assortment of effective punishments for the new mother.

TheOtherWoman.com?  Ideas and strategies on confronting your lying, cheating husband and amassing an incontrovertible storehouse of evidence to use against the jackass in court.  

TheHotFlash.com?  Support and guidance for ladies experiencing the joys of menopause.

Just for the record, thehotflash.com already exists (and hasn’t been updated in nine years), but theotherwoman.com and spankmychild.com are still up for grabs.   

I find this continued outreach of The Knot to be very clever, particular in light of the state of mind of most women as they approach their wedding day.   

About a third of the brides with whom I work as a DJ assert at one time or another that they are considering becoming wedding planners, explaining that the accumulated expertise and research that they have done for their own wedding now qualifies them to assist others.  They often proudly and almost reverently motion to their bursting-at-the-seams bridal binder when making such assertions, assuring me that the information contained therein is worth its weight in gold.  

I don’t have the heart to tell them that more than half of all brides have binders equally large.   

And while these brides may truly believe that they would make excellent wedding planners, I secretly believe that most of them are simply experiencing post-nuptial depression, the enormous, cavernous hole left in their lives when the planning, strategizing, purchasing and stress of planning a wedding is suddenly gone.  The moment that some women have dreamed about for their entire lives is over, and now they must face a lifetime absent of such a dream. 

Some convert their planning energy to decorating energy.  Thus TheNest.com. 

Some hurry up and have kids.  Thus TheBump.com. 

Others get depressed.  Thus Prozac. 

Still others hope to continue planning weddings by proxy.  These are the wedding planning dreamers.

And I think TheKnot has wisely recognized this phenomenon and provided these women with an opportunity to remain plugged into the community that has become so important to them for so long.  It’s a way for the overtime bride to slowly and painlessly ease away from the overwhelming realm of wedding planning rather than allowing the honeymoon to cut it off quickly and cleanly. 

Contrary to popular belief, sometimes it’s easier to peal the band-Aid off slowly rather than tearing it off. 

Clever on The Knot’s part, if this is the case, but it seems a little cruel as well. 

Sort of like bride crack.  Keep them addicted and coming back for more.

My sources

A friend recently wrote to me:

I enjoy these little articles that you link to a lot. I just have one question though: Do you really have that much free time to find all of these? Please tell me there is some kind of automated thing that sends them to you.

It’s a good question, and it’s one that I get a lot.

Though I have RSS feeds setup for some of my favorite news sites, a lot of my news comes from podcasts that I listen to daily. The list includes:

Several CNET technology podcasts, including the daily podcast Buzz Out Loud

The Economist’s weekly podcast summarizing articles from the magazine

The Scientific American daily podcasts 60-Second Science and 60-Second Psyche, plus the weekly science podcast, Science Talk

The New York Times daily front page summary, Ethicist, Book Review and weekly science podcasts

The Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast

The Big Money’s business and finance podcast

TED’s audio and video podcasts

The New Yorker’s Comment and Outloud podcasts

NPR’s Story of the Day, Books, Planet Money, Technology, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and Playback (a monthly podcast that looks at the stories that NPR was covering 25 years ago)

Slate Magazine’s daily podcasts

ESPN’s daily Best of Mike and Mike, Football Today, and The BS Report, as well as the Patriot’s weekly podcasts (in football season)

WNYC’s weekly podcast Radio Lab, which deals with a specific topic in detail each week

The American Life, similar to Radio Lab, and often the most popular podcast in iTunes

Books on the Nightstand, a weekly podcast dealing

Bill Maher’s Real Time podcast, the audio broadcast of his HBO weekly television show

I know it seems like a lot, but many of the podcasts are less than ten minutes long, and some are just a minute or so. And considering that I wake up everyday before 5:00 and have my headphones on and playing whenever I am not speaking or writing, I can consume quite a bit of media in a day

Add in the time spent in the car, on afternoon walks with Kaleigh, work outs at the gym, and doing chores like folding laundry, doing the dishes, etc. and it’s not difficult for me to clear my daily supply of podcasts quickly and move on to my current audio book or music rather quickly. 

Isn’t the world great?  Targeting content, delivered daily, without advertisements.