Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found.
Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found.
Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found.
Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found.
Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found.
Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found.
If you’re wondering whether the neighbors are calling you a “crazy cat lady,” here’s a symptom.
Cat owners — and lots of them — are creating feline Facebook profiles, and spending countless hours online as their pussies, in character.
These cats have their own photos, furry friends, wall posts, and interspecies relationships.
One four-legged Facebook user, Courthouse Cat Curling attended Feline State University.
In one of Kitty Finnegan recent updates, she “just ventured under the living room chair. It was a trip, let me tell you. Meow.” Her listed activities include, “cuddling,” “meowing,” and “pooping on the floor.”
Some profiles are tongue-in-cheek, some dead serious, and some just plain creepy.
It’s not a new trend, but it’s an important one. HuffPost Weird News sat down with one of these social media pussies for an interview. Meet Watson Hanson, a rescued stray from Pittsfield, Maine, who just went from being “in a relationship” to “single,” according to her profile:
Andy Campbell: Why are cat Facebook profiles SO HOT right now?
Watson Hanson: Well, after watching birds and squirrels fight over the birdseed, what else is there to do?
What about cat privacy? What kind of owner lets their cat social network? It’s dangerous out there.
Privacy? Not really a concern since I stay inside at all times. Owners? Yeah, cats don’t have owners — we have loving people who dote on us constantly.
How much time each day do you spend on Facebook?
About an hour is purrfect for me(ow)… It depends on if I’ve gotten my 22 hours of sleep or not.
Are your friends mostly humans, or pets?
Definitely humans… Most pets are jealous of other pets.
I noticed that you recently broke up with Jeter Haverly-Johndro, a dog. This is upsetting. What happened? Are you on good terms?
Not on good terms… We were together for about a month and a half… Let’s face it — he’s a dog.
Ouch.
I should have known I couldn’t trust him.
How old are you?
I’ll be 3 on the 19th. Happy Birthday to ME(OW)!!
It’s also important to note that Facebook profiles are supposed to be human, and Facebook can and has banned accounts that are feline (don’t worry, we’re not telling).
It would be a difficult feat for Facebook to ban them all, however. There are countless active cat profiles, and a simple page search yields dozens of cats.
All the players are on social networks these days: Kitty Bigellsworth, Mimi, Nibbles, Crunchy The Cat, Mr. Mean Cat (who enjoys puddles), they’re all online.
The more well-to-do kittehs have taken to Instagram.
DENVER (AP) — Busy, tech-savvy and often miles from their peers, thousands of new veterans are going online to find camaraderie or get their questions answered — forcing big changes in long-established veterans groups and inspiring entrepreneurs to launch new ones.
“We’re going back to school, we have full-time jobs, we have families and kids,” said Marco Bongioanni, 33, of New York, who deployed to Iraq twice while on active duty in the Army.
That leaves little time for what he calls “brick-and-mortar” groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion.
Bongioanni and many other men and women who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are gravitating to websites open only to them, where they can talk about GI Bill education benefits, job hunting, the personal toll of war and other concerns they share, any time, day or night.
“The fact that it’s a virtual world, 24/7, allows us to manage it better,” said Bongioanni, now a major in the Army Reserve and attending Army Command and General Staff College in Georgia.
They can also track their health benefits on a Department of Veterans Affairs website and read the VFW magazine on their smartphones, upgrades prompted at least in part by the needs and habits of the 1.4 million veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“You need to go where they are, and that’s online,” said Jerry Newberry, director of communications for the VFW.
Not all the changes are happening online. The VFW’s oldest chapter, Post 1 in Denver, was created in 1899 by First Colorado Volunteers returning from the Philippines in the Spanish-American War. Today, it’s reorganizing around the needs of the new veterans.
Its new building, currently being remodeled, won’t have a full-time bar. The space will be devoted instead to offices for veterans service groups, said Izzy Abbass, the post commander and a 44-year-old Army veteran of the first Gulf War.
“We’re not the traditional VFW post,” he said. “Typically the image is of a smoky, dark bar, (a) bunch of guys wearing funny hats sitting around bitching, and they look a lot older than I do.”
Abbass said he has deep respect for the previous generation of veterans and is grateful for what they accomplished, on the battlefield and at home. He said older veterans in Post 1 are among the strongest advocates for making changes to engage the new generation.
The VFW traces its origins to local associations of war veterans who lobbied for health care and pensions, and their meeting halls often became neighborhood gathering places.
The VFW is no longer the center of its members’ social lives, Abbas acknowledged.
“There’s, what, 2,500 bars across Denver? We could hit a different one every night and be fine,” he joked.
Post 1 emphasizes activism, working with veterans groups on college campuses, sponsoring outings for families of deployed servicemen and women and coordinating with a group that helps families reconnect after a deployment.
“What we’re saying is, look, we love you as a member, but we don’t want you to sit on the sidelines, because if we as vets don’t step up to help our fellow vets, no one else will,” Abbass said.
It was the activism that persuaded Dana Niemela to join Post 1.
“To be quite honest, I thought it was for a different generation of veteran,” said Niemela, 36, who served in the Navy from 1997 to 2005, including two years in the Mediterranean. “When I thought of VFW, I thought of World War II, I thought of Vietnam. I frankly didn’t think of women, and I think that’s a common stereotype,” she said.
“When I started meeting the other members and this post in particular, I was really inspired by how actively engaged they were in the veteran community,” she said.
For Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who don’t have much contact with their peers, a website can be a lifeline, said Jason Hansman, manager of the Community of Veterans website at the not-for-profit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
“We’re talking about less than 1 percent of the population that served in Iraq or Afghanistan. The social isolation can be great,” said Hansman, 29, who served in Iraq with an Army civil affairs unit.
In November, one veteran’s messages on the site grew darker and darker as he struggled with job and relationship problems, and he eventually made a suicide threat in a chat room. Following its policy, Community of Veterans gave the veteran’s contact information to the VA’s Veterans Crisis Line, and the suicide was averted, Hansman said.
Community of Veterans started in 2008 and has swelled to more than 23,000 members.
TakingPoint.com, a for-profit veterans website, had nearly 16,000 members weeks after going live this year, said David Johnson, the 30-year-old founder and CEO of the website.
“It’s kind of like LinkedIn meets Facebook meets Angie’s List,” Johnson said with a laugh. Its name invokes the vanguard role of the point soldier or pilot at the head of a patrol.
TakingPoint will soon offer software that can analyze individual veterans’ service records and tell them what benefits they may qualify for, said Johnson, who served three tours in Iraq with the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group.
“The VA in some places has nine-month backlogs,” Johnson said. “Calling up the VA (for that information) … in my opinion is not what a lot of people are doing.”
The VA has long been saddled with a reputation for bureaucratic torpor, but its hospitals and benefits offices have leaped online with 150 Facebook pages, 75 Twitter feeds and a combined total of nearly 640,000 friends and followers, said Brandon Friedman, director online communications for the VA.
“In terms of reach, we’re doing very well,” Friedman said, acknowledging that some of the 640,000 online contacts are duplicates. “In terms of impact, we’re not sure yet, and we’re still struggling with how you measure that.”
The American Legion and VFW have launched Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, but the transition to the web isn’t always easy.
When the Legion wanted to start taking membership applications and renewals online, it “literally took an act of Congress,” national communications director John Raughter said.
Congress chartered the Legion in 1919 — its purposes include “to cement the ties and comradeship born of service” — and any change in the Legion’s constitution, such as new membership procedures, requires congressional action.
The Legion and VFW say their membership numbers show they’re connecting with new veterans. The Legion, with 2.4 million members, has grown by 50,000 since 2009, Raughter said.
“We don’t want to be so aggressive that we become pests,” Raughter said. “Some of the troops, their big message is, ‘Leave us alone. We’re coming home. We’re settling in.’ That’s why we’re more interested in advocacy.”
The 1.6 million-member VFW said Iraq and Afghanistan veterans make up 15 to 16 percent of its total, the largest single group.
Cameron Cook, a 37-year-old Iraq veteran who is director of veteran student services at the University of Colorado’s Denver campus, tells other veterans it’s important to get involved.
“I try to tell them, ‘You know that GI Bill you’re on, that Post-9/11 GI Bill you’re on? There would be no such thing if it wasn’t for these organizations really pushing for us,’” said Cook, a former Marine and a member of VFW Post 1.
While Cook keeps in touch with his military buddies on Facebook, he said email and online networking have limits. He insists on meeting face-to-face with student veterans in his program.
“I think it makes you feel like you’re part of something instead of just having a name on a website,” he said. “I think face-to-face interaction makes you really feel like you belong a lot more.”
___
Online:
Community of Veterans: http://iava.communityofveterans.org
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America: http://iava.org
TakingPoint: http://www.takingpoint.com
Veterans of Foreign Wars: http://www.vfw.org
VFW Post 1: http://www.vfwpost1.org
American Legion: http://www.legion.org
Department of Veterans Affairs: http://www.va.gov
VA MyHealtheVet: http://www.myhealth.va.gov
___
Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP
This story is the latest installment in a joint initiative by The Associated Press and Associated Press Media Editors taking a closer look at this latest generation of war veterans as they return to civilian life, and the effect this is having on them, their families and American society.
It seems only natural that in trying to ban a statue promoting the sharing of one’s nude photos online, a Kansas City area mother would use the Internet to gather signatures from strangers to do so.
That’s exactly what Joanne Hughes of Stilwell, Kan. did after she saw a sculpture in the Overland Park Arboretum depicting a headless, bare-breasted women photographing herself (shown below).
Hughes, who started her petition on Change.org, was visiting the park with her young children when they came across the statue.
“They [her kids] were busy looking for snails on the ground,” Hughes told the Kansas City Star in June. “We ushered them past. But as a mom of two girls, especially, I don’t want them to have to see something like that.” Hughes believes that such a statue shouldn’t be shown in a public place.
We’re not exactly sure how children would find the female breast of the statue, called “Accept or Reject,” offensive, or even know that “sexting” — the act of taking and sending nude pics, usually via cellphone — was being shown. Likewise, city officials shrugged off the mother’s concerns, since they saw nothing “inappropriate about having that in front of children.”
Fox 4 News in Kansas City reports that, after teaming with the American Family Association, Hughes’ online petition has garnered 4,700 signatures. That’s above the 3,000-name threshold to put the arboretum up on obscenity charges before a grand jury.
After the petitions were filed with the county this week, officials will have to listen. The country has the next two months to convene the grand jury.
“The message this piece sends to the children and young adults in our community has the potential to be destructive,” the petition reads. “With all the problems we are having with sexting in our youth culture, do we really want to be encouraging children and teenagers to take nude photos of themselves?”
For what it’s worth (and this should be worth something), the sculptor, Yu Chang, intended the exact opposite message. “The artist told us that the point of the piece is that the virtual world removes control over one’s image,” Julie Bilyea, Overland Park arts coordinator, told KCUR. “He is depicting a woman who’s making the conscious choice to ignore her mind, soul, and identity.”
Even Hughes acknowledged to the Star that artists have been depicting the nude human form for centuries.
“I have seen the statue of David in person,” Hughes said of Michelangelo’s statue in Florence, noting that the depicted David isn’t taking a picture of his penis.
What do you think of the controversy? Is Hughes and the American Family Association going too far in calling the statue obscene? Or do you think they have a point?
Bestselling, award-winning crime author R.J. Ellory has been caught faking Amazon reviews for both his own books and the books of his competitors.
Ellory was caught writing the fake Amazon reviews by fellow author Jeremy Duns, according to ABC News. Such an act is dubbed “sock-puppeting,” or writing anonymous online reviews praising one’s own work.
Gawker posted the complete Twitter thread written by Duns, via Storify, in which the author describes the posts Ellory wrote about his own works.
“Ellory writes 5-star reviews of his own work on Amazon. Long, purple tributes to his own magnificent genius,” Duns tweeted. “RJ Ellory also writes shoddy, sh—-y sniping reviews of others authors’ work on Amazon, under an assumed identity.”
Adding, “Prasing [sic] yourself is pathetic. Attacking other writers like this? I have no time for it, and have no time for anyone who defends it.”
Ellory posted one of the fake Amazon reviews under the pseudonym “Nicodemus Jones,” writing: “I don’t need to really say anything about the plot of this book. All I will say is that there are paragraphs and chapters that just stopped me dead in my tracks. Some of it was chilling, some of it raced along, some of it was poetic and langorous and had to be read twice and three times to really appreciate the depth of the prose…it really is a magnificent book. Ignore all dissentors and naysayers, this book is not trying to be anything other than a great story, brilliantly told. Just buy it, read it, and make up your own mind. Whatever else it might do, it will touch your soul.”
“Nicodemus Jones” also wrote a negative review about Stuart MacBride’s “Dark Blood.” It was in this review that Duns caught onto Ellory’s fraudulent reviews. He noticed that one particular Nicodemus Jones thread had postings by user “RJ Ellory,” according to the Guardian.
Ellory issued a statement to the Guardian, offering his apologies for sock-puppeting.
“The recent reviews – both positive and negative – that have been posted on my Amazon accounts are my responsibility and my responsibility alone. I wholeheartedly regret the lapse of judgment that allowed personal opinions to be disseminated in this way and I would like to [apologize] to my readers and the writing community.”
Ellory, who won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award in 2010 for “A Simple Act of Violence,” is not the only author guilty of writing fake reviews.
Orlando Figes, a leading historian, admitted to writing anonymous Amazon reviews celebrating his own work and condemning the work of his competitors in 2010, according the BBC. He was sued by two historians and ordered to pay damages.
One of the United Kingdom’s most successful thriller writers, Stephen Leather, also admitted to sock-puppeting and claimed the practice is commonplace.
“I’ll go on to several forums … and post there, under my own name and under various other names and various other characters,” Leather disclosed at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, according to the Telelgraph. “You build this whole network of characters who talk about your books and sometimes have conversations with yourself … I have friends who are sockpuppets … One person on their own, difficult to create a buzz. If you’ve got ten friends, and they’ve got friends, and you can get them all as one creating a buzz, then hopefully you’ll be all right.”
John Locke, a successful self-publisher and author of “How I Sold One Million E-Books In Five Months,” admitted to buying five-star reviews to boost his Amazon visibility, The New York Times reports.
Sam Millar was accused of the act earlier this year. Science fiction and fantasy authors also found that frustrated writer Robert Stanek was sock-puppeting in 2009.
The Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge questioned if the Ellory scandal is just the tip of the iceberg.
“Already other publishing practices are coming under scrutiny. Do too many crime writers provide quotes for the jackets of their friends’ books?” he asked, adding, “Most of the crime writers I know are genial, friendly souls (Ellory has long been regarded by many in the community as atypically self-aggrandising and chippy), so perhaps not. But since Amazon is unlikely to discontinue its practice of allowing pseudonymous reviews, the industry needs to get to work on regaining readers’ trust.”
Authors have already publicly condemned Ellory for abusing online anonymity by “misusing these channels in ways that are fraudulent and damaging to publishing at large.” Notable authors who have signed the petition against sock-puppeting include Karin Slaughter, Ian Rankin, Jo Nesbo and Val McDermid.
The depths to which interns will sink in return for a few weeks of experience are well documented – and lamented by campaigners.
But this might be a new low.
The ‘digital boutique’ Neo Pangea has announced its own version of the Milgram experiment, in which they will give internet users the chance to physically and mentally attack their new intern, online.
Come October 11 and 12, the company will give the controls of a robotic device to the Internet that has the ability to shoot foam darts, swing a club, release clouds of smoke, play loud music, and a extend a boxing glove attached to some lazy tongs.
The target of this (good natured) abuse will be Frank Marsters, a student and apparent ‘intern’ at the company.
Exactly why Marsters agreed to be the target of unending online ridicule isn’t clear – though the company has put a donation box on its website for guilty punishers to contribute to his college fund.
Yes, it’s a bit tacky – and a slightly cheesy PR stunt. But come 11 October it’s going to be hard not to click that link…
When Mark W. Riley of Little Rock, Ark., became unemployed for the first time in two decades, he ventured into the Great Online.
“Once I found out I was going to be laid off in April of last year, I realized how much job-hunting had changed in 20 years,” Riley said. “The big advantage now is that in order to give people the opportunity to see my work … I’m able now to put all that stuff online.”
Riley, a 54-year-old marketing expert, created accounts on LinkedIn and YouTube, where he uploaded commercial spots he’s created for educational institutions, grocery stores and political candidates.
“I had an interview yesterday and the interviewer had already taken a look at my portfolio, based on the links I’d put up,” Riley said. “So that was a big improvement over what it was like 20 years ago. [Back then] I either had to open up a big notebook or ask, ‘Have you got a VCR?’”
Riley’s doing what job counselors (and even the government) tell unemployed people to do: Get online. It’s a phenomenon LinkedIn cofounder Allen Blue said will revolutionize the economy and empower jobseekers.
“The world of employment, the world of how the economy functions, is undergoing radical change right now because of big data,” Blue said in an interview at The Huffington Post’s “What Is Working” jobs expo in Tampa, Fla. (More than two dozen companies and nonprofits have partnered with HuffPost to search for ways to reduce unemployment. LinkedIn is pitching in with an online forum and data on job openings.)
“Within a few years there’s going to be tremendous perception of what’s actually happening at all levels of the economy and we’ll actually be able to see it clearly, really, for the first time in history,” Blue said. “The great thing about it is that that power’s actually going to be in the hands of the individual job seeker.”
The power is also in the hands of businesses, Blue said. “Every single employer out there is like, ‘Thank god for LinkedIn and Facebook. I know so much about the people I’m hiring.’”
More than 5 million Americans have been unemployed at least six months, and studies have shown even a short period of joblessness makes job seekers less attractive to potential employers. HuffPost asked Blue if all that knowledge about job candidates can be a disadvantage for those with gaps on their resumes.
“I’m told it can,” he said, “but the ability for me to find information about them –- see what they’re interested in, see what they care about, see who they hang out with, see what kinds of things they’re learning, skills they’ve acquired … We’re putting a huge effort right now into collecting skill information.”
“That’s on your LinkedIn profile. You’re now out there in front of lots of people who could discover you through that path. Every new piece of information you stick on that profile is a new path to finding you.”
While he’s joined LinkedIn and is connected as much as possible via social media, Mark Riley is also planning self-promotion of a more old-fashioned variety. He’s drafted several versions of a “Hire me!” advertisement to put on billboards around town, as soon as he can find a way to pay for it. The ads show Riley’s smiling face and direct people to his LinkedIn page.
“My father was the general manager of Donrey Outdoor in Little Rock for many years,” Riley said in an email. “Billboards put food on the table and put me through college, so I believe in them as an effective advertising medium.”
Looking for Love and Sex Online is Old News
For the better part of the past two decades online bulletin boards like Craigslist, dating websites such as eHarmony and Match.com, and endless pay-for-play sexual hookup websites have provided the single, lonely, horny, cheating, or simply bored man or woman with the fastest and most direct route to meet, date, romance, and/or simply have sex.
Finding Sex Faster Than a Table for Two.
As modern life has shifted away from the home or office-based computers and become all about the smartphone, we now have apps that allow us to literally “hook-up” on the go. Smartphone “friend finder” apps like Ashley Madison (for marrieds and partnered individuals seeking “out of the roost” sex), Skout and Blendr (for single straight men and women), Grindr (to find male-male partners) or Pink Cupid (to find lesbians and bisexual partners) — among many others — are actually friend finders in name only. More accurately, these more accurately named, “sex-finder” apps are designed to help you geo-locate an immediately available, readily accessible romantic or sexual partner much in the same way that Yelp or Citysearch will direct you to a nearby four star sushi bar or Italian deli with a good smartphone and the flick of your index finger.
Given the fact that nearly half of all U.S. households now own at least one smartphone, it seems reasonable to assume that increasing numbers of people are eagerly following this app-created breadcrumb trail to sex with strangers wherever and whenever time and circumstances allow.
Once downloaded and opened, sex finder apps bring up an instant photo grid of potentially available sex partners, presorted by location, gender, age and/or sexual preference — all on your smartphone screen. In crowded urban areas these apps often locate multiple people within a mere few hundred feet!
And just like that, the days of being rejected when out clubbing or trying to pick someone up at a party are a thing of the past. With sex apps there’s no muss, no fuss, just the act itself and a handshake on the way out, thank you very much.
Megan, a single medical student in her mid-20s, talks about her sex app experience:
When out at a club a few months ago I decided to give one of these apps a try and turned on Blendr. I swear, in less than two minutes this guy I’d never met or seen — David — started texting me. It turned out that he was hanging out with friends at a bar across the street. Feeling safe, with my friends all around, I texted back, asking him to come over and I’d buy him a drink. In less than five minutes, there he was, arms crossed, big smile on his face, right in front of me. It turns out he’s a really sweet, straight, single, professional ballet dancer. Now how sexy is that? And the great part for both of us is he isn’t looking for a relationship, and neither am I, at least not for the foreseeable future. My school and training schedule is just too crazy for that. But David and I did hook up that night, and quite a few times since, totally without strings, but also having a lot of fun.
Thanks to smartphone apps, seeking and finding fast hot casual sex has become, much like real estate, all about location. The more sizable and interesting the nearby crowd, the better your shot at finding partners. As such, any jam-packed venue is now a prime cruising spot for app-aware people looking to get laid. This entire genre of apps has in effect turned your local dog park, museum, mall, and crowded train station into a gigantic “singles” bar (though not everyone is single). It’s just so easy — just turn on your app. And if you have traditionally been the kind of person too shy to make the first move — no worries, as long as your app is open it is actively signaling your availability, so it won’t be long before someone finds you.
The Dangers of Convenient Sex
Unfortunately, much like a casino app in the hands of a compulsive gambler, those struggling with sexual addiction and similar sexual problems see sex finder apps as the equivalent of crack cocaine. And, as with all addictions, whether to substances or behaviors, the consequences to the active abuser can be profound.
Rico, a 32-year-old gay guy, had this to say about his experience:
Just after a friend introduced me to Grindr, by the end of the first week, without giving it much thought, I’d had three previously unknown sex partners over to my place. In a heartbeat Grindr became my #1 distraction from stress, tedium, and loneliness, but it also quickly replaced dating and most of my social life. Bored at work? Grindr. Sitting at a slow ballgame? Grindr. Out of town and in a lonely hotel room? Grindr. A weekend without plans? Grindr. And so it went. When out to dinner with friends I would set my phone to silent so it would merely vibrate in my pocket when someone was looking to connect with me. Before long using the app started to take over whatever free time I had. I found myself leaving the app on all the time and big surprise, my life quickly became all about the search for sex. Within three months I ended up getting fired for sneaking out of work to hook up. And just as bad, two guys I genuinely liked dating dumped me when they found me cruising Grindr while they were in the other room making dinner or on the phone. They did the right thing, I get that. But I still haven’t been able to put the thing away and stay away.
Rico’s story aside, sex finder apps have for most healthy people generated a reliable new source of casual romantic and sexual encounters, offering a readily available, mostly free source of brief sexual encounters and connection.
Are these apps right for you?
One important recommendation for anyone choosing to enter the “friend finder” world is to make sure they have genuine clarity about what it is they want.
If you’re devoted to finding a spouse or long-term partner, a traditional dating website is probably a much better option than Blendr.
If you are in a primary relationship and looking to cheat — apps likely are your fastest route to sex and potential relationship problems. But do remember to ‘play safe’, especially if you’re planning to keep this secret from a spouse.
If your primary interest is casual sex, sex locator smartphone apps will likely fit the bill.
Regardless of your situation or goal, remember that when using these apps, as do all technologies that involve intensely pleasurable activities, caution should be exercised, particularly by anyone who has a history of losing themselves in escalating, obsessive quests for sexual intensity.
For a while now, Amazon has been rumored to launch a successor (or two) to the original Kindle Fire. While it was supposed to launch at the end of July or early August, it appears there was a delay in its production. In any event, Amazon is scheduled to host a press event on September 6th in California.
The event description does a good job of concealing the products the online retailer plans on launching. Based on recent speculation, however, I think it is safe to assume a new Kindle Fire tablet and Kindle ereader will each be announced.
It will definitely be interesting to see how Amazon wishes to take on the Nexus 7 and whether it opts to compete with the iPad and wide array of Samsung Galaxy tablets with its own 10 inch tablet. Stay tuned, folks, all this information and much more will be revealed in a few weeks.
[Engadget]
U.S. Cellular is currently selling the Samsung Galaxy Metrix 4G Android smartphone, featuring a QWERTY Slider keyboard and 4G LTE today online only. However, the Metrix 4G will be available for purchase in-store starting August 24th.
The carrier has an interesting price plan for the Metrix 4G and it depends if you live in an area with 4G LTE service or not. For customers that do live in a 4G LTE zone, the Metrix costs $129 after a $100 Mail-in-Rebate. However, customers that live outside of such a zone must pay $179 after a $100 MIR.
Now, in terms of specs and features, the Metrix 4G offers a 4 inch Super AMOLED touch screen display, Android 2.3, 5MP rear facing camera, front facing camera, and a 1GHz processor.
My recommendation is to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Metrix 4G if you live in a 4G LTE zone. It’s hard to justify paying a premium device when you won’t even have access to one of its main selling points — 4G LTE. Again, it is available for online purchase today and in-store purchase on Friday, August 24.
[U.S. Cellular]
The graph below, based on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, shows manufacturing employment in the United States as a fraction of all employment. As you can see, the line heads downward in an almost perfectly straight line beginning in the mid-1950s. Notice that the line doesn’t become steeper as globalization takes hold after the passage of NAFTA in 1994 or the rise of China over the past decade or so. The line just slopes consistently downward.
This is primarily the result of technology, and in particular, automation. Manufacturing in the U.S. has become dramatically more productive and requires fewer workers. If we were to graph manufacturing output (rather than jobs), the line would slope upward, not downward. The value of U.S. manufacturing production is now far greater than it was in industrial era of the 1950s, even after adjusting for inflation. We just make all that stuff with a lot fewer people.
One of the most interesting things about the graph above is that, if technology is the primary driver, then employment in China must inevitably follow the same path. In fact, there are good reasons to believe that manufacturing employment’s downward slope will be significantly steeper for China. The U.S. had to invent the technology to make manufacturing more productive, while in many cases China only needs to import it from more developed nations. It is also true that China is beginning its journey at a time when information technology (which is the primary enabler of automation) is many orders of magnitude more advanced than in the 1950s when U.S. manufacturing employment was at its peak. (See this recent article on skilled robots from The New York Times).
In the U.S. (as well as in other advanced countries), workers shifted out of manufacturing and into the service sector — which now accounts for the vast majority of jobs. Will China be able to pull off the same transition?
The U.S. had the luxury of building a strong middle class during an earlier time. Technology was advancing consistently and increasing productivity, but it was not so advanced as to create a mismatch between the type of available jobs and the skills of workers. Unionization was strong in the private sector and helped ensure that the lion’s share of productivity increases ended up in workers’ (rather that corporate owners’) pockets. Those workers, in turn, became the broad-based consumer class that purchased the output from all those factories and kept the overall economy humming.
The situation in China is quite different. Consumer spending accounts for only about a third of China’s GDP (as opposed to 60 percent or more in nearly all developed countries). While China has built a significant middle class in absolute terms, it remains small as a percentage of the country’s huge population.
Workers enjoy few of the rights and protections that characterized the U.S. workforce of the 1950s. As I wrote in my book, The Lights in the Tunnel:
The [Chinese] government actively enforces discrimination that tends to drive wages even lower. Much of the work in China’s factories is performed by migrant workers who officially live in the countryside but are allowed to come to cities or industrial regions to work. These workers typically live in factory dormitories and do not have the right to bring their families to the cities or to genuinely assimilate into an urban middle class. Wages for these workers are far lower than for urban dwellers, and the money that they do earn is for the most part either saved or sent home to help support their families. These workers are not in a position to become major drivers of local consumption any time soon.
According to The New York Times, those worker dormitories apparently play an important role in Apple’s (or Foxconn’s) ability to bring production online at any time of the night or day:
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
Even that level of worker availability and efficiency isn’t enough for Foxconn, which recently announced the introduction of huge numbers of robots. That may be a great way to drive production, but it’s hard to see how China will succeed in dramatically shifting its economy toward domestic consumption.
And that has to happen before a shift to a service economy can take place. As consumers become more wealthy they begin to spend a larger fraction of their incomes on services — things like banking, insurance, health care, education, entertainment and travel — and that in turn drives service sector employment. At least that has been the path followed in other developed countries.
In the absence of consumer spending, China’s economy remains highly dependent on manufacturing exports and, especially, on fixed investment. An astonishing 50 percent of China’s GDP is driven by investment in things like factories, housing and infrastructure (the U.S. figure is around 15 percent). The problem is that all that investment has to ultimately pay for itself, and that happens via consumption. Once a factory is built it has to then produce something that gets sold at a profit. Homes, retail buildings and apartment complexes likewise have to be sold or rented out. Obviously, no economy can indefinitely invest anything like 50 percent of its output without eventually finding a way to get a positive return on that investment.
Achieving that return requires consumers — either at home or abroad. China continues to rely heavily on consumers in the U.S. and Europe, but that’s unlikely to be a sustainable formula for growth. The debt crisis and the resulting austerity is cutting into economic growth and consumer spending in both Europe and the U.S.
As manufacturing automation increases (perhaps dramatically) in China, in the U. S. and other developed countries the most disruptive impact from technology will be in the service sector — where millions of white collar jobs and service jobs in retail, distribution, food service and other areas may ultimately be at risk. After all, if robots can build an iPhone, then its a good bet that they will also someday be able to build a hamburger or mix a latte. The result may be continuing high unemployment, stagnant wages and tepid consumer spending throughout much of the developed world.
The real problem China faces is that it is late to the party. Just as it reaches its manufacturing employment zenith, it faces a potentially disruptive impact from automation technology. And that will happen roughly in parallel with similar transitions in the service sectors of the countries that currently consume much of its output. In the face of that, can China succeed in re-balancing its economy toward consumption, increasing personal incomes, and building a vibrant service sector to keep its population employed?
Martin Ford is the author of The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future (available from Amazon or as a PDF download). The book argues that accelerating information technology, and in particular robotics and artificial intelligence, is likely to have a disruptive impact on the future job market and economy. He also has a blog at econfuture.wordpress.com.
The spoiler police would have you thinking that the NBC network’s time-shifted coverage of the London 2012 Olympics was the broadcasting scandal of the century, as medalists became common knowledge worldwide long before their events aired in prime time. In reality, the experience of this year’s games just shows us how much viewer behaviors and expectations have evolved — and suggest new ways for brands to think about event coverage in our multi-screen world.
Technically, NBC did not do anything new to deserve the criticism some had directed its way. The network covered the Olympic Games the same way it has for decades, airing the most popular events on tape in prime time (instead of live) to accommodate for the time zone difference. All that’s new this year is the explosion of “always-on” social media — including more than 50 million tweets about the Olympics, according to Twitter. That’s a lot of spoilers! But how much do they really matter?
Even before the games started, we knew one important piece of information: it’s not just about the TV anymore. A survey commissioned by Velti and conducted online by Harris Interactive in July showed that 40 percent of those who planned to follow the Olympics intended to do so on two or more devices. When looking at both smartphones and tablets, roughly equal numbers of people planned to watch non-live content, such as video clips and replays, as those who planned to stream live coverage.
With so many people receiving Olympic results ahead of time, either through social media, live streams, or other live sources, the audience for time-shifted coverage should have plummeted — right? Yet NBC’s ratings were as strong as ever. Clearly live event viewership is not the zero-sum, black-and-white proposition some would have us believe. Instead, we can infer a few more nuanced points:
• Different screens serve different needs. If you want to watch events as they happen, wherever you happen to be, a smartphone or tablet is just the device to use. If you want the storytelling behind the event — profiles, interviews, history, rooting interest — TV is ideal for deeply engaging, lean-back content.
• It’s not just about finding out who wins. Even when you already know the outcome, you want to see how it plays out, in full sound and motion, in a rich environment of context and commentary.
• Sporting events are inherently social. The Velti online survey also found that 39 percent of U.S. adults using their smartphones to follow the games would also be communicating with their peers via talk and/or text. Back in the day, people gathered around TVs to share the Olympics experience; today, they’re just as likely to do so through their mobile devices.
For brands seeking to leverage the excitement around live events, this means that:
• True reach must extend across platforms. If you’re only on one screen, you’re leaving your brand out of a big part of your audience’s experience. Conversely, a multi-screen campaign will reinforce your brand at multiple points: both in the viewer’s hand and on the screen across the room; both live as it happens and later in prime time.
• Campaigns should reflect the way people use each platform: fast-paced experiences on mobile and online to reflect real-time excitement without getting in its way; deeper engagement and storytelling during time-shifted coverage.
• By weaving your campaign into the social aspect of the experience, you can make your brand part of the conversation in a new way while gaining valuable viral exposure.
Shazam launched a ‘Social TV Interactive Experience’ for the 2012 games that illustrates this new thinking. The app gives viewers instant access during the NBC broadcast to additional content on their mobile device, including the ability to download the NBC Olympics apps and keep up with the schedule of events and medal counts. Up-to-the-minute results on all events were complemented by in-depth coverage of athletes including bios, news, and photos, satisfying the audience’s desire for both types of experiences. Interactive viewer polls and social media integration made it simple for people to share their experience of the games. Other apps, like Showyou, automatically highlighted the Olympics content that was most shared with its users within the app and other social networks, taking the mobile experience to another level.
While Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt were making history, the London 2012 Olympics left a different legacy for brands — as the first multi-screen event of its scale. The games raised the bar for creative, forward-thinking cross-platform campaigns and rewarded the marketers who rose to the challenge.
Times are tough for aspiring writers.
Newspapers are closing down left and right, magazines are firing editorial staff and replacing them with crowd-sourced content and, for some reason, no matter how many times you get blackout drunk you’ve yet to wake up a completed first draft of the Great American Novel sitting on your desktop.
This isn’t to say there’s a complete dearth of opportunities for talented scribes. Take, for example, a recent posting that appeared on Craigslist’s San Francisco Bay Area section.
One “31-year-old, single straight male, 6 ft tall, educated, well traveled, and working a good job in San Francisco” is looking to contract the services of someone of the literary persuasion to help him design and manage his online dating profile.
“I am simply too busy to do this myself,” he writes, “and could also use the assistance of someone with a little more creative flair than I have at my disposal.”
“I will pay you $200 to create my profile for an online dating website (I haven’t decided which one; we can discuss this),” the ad continues. “For each successful first date you set up with a girl of whom I approve, I will pay you an additional $40. If I end up becoming in a relationship with someone you put me in touch with (thereby ending our agreement), I will pay you an additional $200 ‘severance’ bonus.”
Also, check out that correct semicolon usage! (Swoon!)
We think this is an amazing opportunity for a young, female writer to sign up for the job, initially despise her new employer and then slowly, over the course of about 90 minutes, gradually fall in love with him. The movie version will star Rachel McAdams and Matthew McConaughey, be named Alright Cupid (after the fictional dating site they use) and have a disappointing opening weekend.
On Reddit, some commenters thought the whole thing was “creepy” while one Redditor speculated, “the CL poster will have a string of first dates with the writer’s friends.”
Even so, this isn’t in the same ballpark as the creepiest thing someone has done on Craigslist this week alone.
NEW YORK — Another day, another low for Groupon’s stock.
The online deals company issued a lackluster quarterly report after the market closed on Monday. Since Tuesday, the stock has hit a new low every day.
It fell another 25 cents, or 5 percent, to close Friday at $4.75. Earlier in the day, it hit $4.51. That’s down more than three-quarters of its initial public offering price of $20 in November.
On Monday, Groupon Inc. reported its first-ever quarter-to-quarter decline in gross billings – a closely watched measure of how much money is collected from customers.
Groupon, which is based in Chicago, blamed the weak economy in Europe and unfavorable currency-exchange rates, but analysts have pointed to a more troubling possibility: online deals fatigue.
Groupon pioneered the online daily deals market, which offers subscribers deep discounts on everything from spa sessions to tequila tastings. Although it has raced to build market share, similar businesses are easy to set up. The model sparked a flood of copycats, including LivingSocial, Google Offers, Travelzoo, DealOn and SocialBuy. Together, deals flood online mailboxes multiple times a day.
The number of active customers at Groupon grew just 3 percent from the first quarter. The average spending per customer over the past 12 months was $165. That’s down from $179 average spending in the first quarter.
By Katherine Harmon
(Click here for the original article)
Losing weight and keeping it off is a common goal—and constant challenge—for millions of Americans. And people spend loads of cash on specialized diet and weight loss programs, meetings, even personal coaches. But could something as easy, accessible and affordable as an online program help people trim down?
With the rising rates of people who are overweight or obese, researchers have been trying to find cost-effective ways to help more people lose more weight—more easily. A new review of 18 randomized studies finds that computer-based and online programs do, indeed, help people who are overweight or obese drop weight and maintain that progress. The 143-page analysis, which assessed data from 4,140 adults, was published online this week in the Cochrane Library.
After following a computer or online weight-loss program for six months, participants in various studies shed more pounds than those who received more basic care, such as a paper workbook or pamphlet. Individuals who were in weight-maintenance programs that used computer-guided tools also kept weight off better than those who got the basic care. The online programs often included interactive features, message boards and messaging capabilities. Although there were variances in how long the studies followed subjects, the review authors were able to conclude that, “Computer-based interventions have a positive effect on short-term weight loss and short-term weight loss maintenance.”
Some of the studies also included a group of subjects who were placed in-person weight-loss programs, such as weekly or monthly meetings. Those individuals tended to lose the most weight overall. “But health care providers have limited opportunities to provide this care,” said Susan Weiland, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and lead-author of the analysis, in a prepared statement. Finding a less labor- and resource-intensive way to help more people lose weight—even if that weight loss is only moderate—could make a big difference on the national or global scale.
“These large-scale systematic reviews are helpful to determine—using available peer-reviewed studies—what works and what doesn’t work,” noted Karina Davidson, director of the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia University Medical Center and study co-author, in a prepared statement. With the new findings, “health care providers can make evidence-based recommendations,” she said—especially “since more patients are participating in online weight loss or management programs.” The new review did not include smartphone or tablet-based apps, but the researchers hope to include studies of those when they update the review in the future.
With 1.5 billion people worldwide expected to be overweight or obese in 2015—just a year and a half from now—the global burden of related, preventable health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke, is expected to continue rising. In the U.S., obesity is already a taking a bigger toll on health than smoking. The latest results suggest that simply logging to an interactive program could help many more people spare themselves the weight as well as future medical trouble.