XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 08/17/13

Saturday, 17 August 2013

10 Ways Living With a Toddler Is Like Being in Prison -

As a parent, your schedule is often dictated by the needs of your child, especially when that child is young.

The necessity of getting a toddler home for a nap -- as well as the need to get them to bed for the night before the sun has even gone down -- can cripple your day. Being sequestered in your home for a few hours is usually better than dealing with a public meltdown from an overtired toddler, so sometimes, the trade-off is worth it. Still, raising a toddler can be rather suffocating.

In fact, it's uncanny how many aspects of the parenting experience remind me of prison -- complete with a sadistic little warden who harbors a Napoleon complex.

10 Ways Having a Toddler is Like Being in Prison

You can't do anything without constant supervision

Every morning begins with someone screaming at you to wake up

You're always terrified something bad will happen when you're in the shower

You're always terrified someone is going to crawl into your bed in the middle of the night

Meal time is fraught with tension

Someone's always watching you go to the bathroom

You never get to choose the movie and then it's hard to hear it over all the hooting and hollering

You're always terrified someone is going to punch, bite, tackle, stab or attack you with some kind of makeshift weapon

Contraband -- like booze, chocolate and adult entertainment -- must be smuggled in and consumed in secret

Conjugal visits are hard to come by, require intense scheduling, and are often interrupted

BONUS: One Way Having a Toddler is NOT Like Being in Prison

Being placed in solitary confinement is a reward, not a punishment

Read more -

Having An Affair? Finding An Affair Partner Takes Only 36 Hours, According To AshleyMadison .com -

How long does it take for a faithful spouse to become an adulterer?

According to AshleyMadison.com, a dating site for people seeking affairs, it only takes about 36 hours. After analyzing data from their users, AshleyMadison.com discovered that soon-to-be adulterers sign up for the dating site between 8:30 and 10:00 a.m., then search for partners during their lunch hours. The actual cheating typically takes place the next day in the evening after work.

According to AshleyMadison.com founder and CEO Noel Biderman, cheating has become increasingly easier with the advent of new technology.

"Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, stepping outside of your marriage has become as convenient as ordering food delivery or downloading songs on iTunes."

This certainly isn't the first study to examine infidelity. A 2012 study found that the most common reason people have affairs is due to emotional dissatisfaction in their current relationships. And a study from 2011 found that men who are easily aroused and men who suffer from performance anxiety are the most likely to cheat.

Check out the infographic below for more of AshleyMadison.com's findings.

NASA Releases Map Of Over 1,400 ‘Potentially Hazardous Asteroids’ For Earth -

There’s no need to send Bruce Willis or Ben Affleck into space just yet. NASA releases a new map showing the orbits of all known “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.”

With over 1,400 asteroids included on the map as of early 2013, NASA considers these to be potentially hazardous both because they follow orbits that pass close to Earth’s orbit, within 4.7 million miles, and because they are massive, each at least 460 feet in size.

The orbits of Earth, Mars, Mercury and Venus are shown in the map.

NASA says, though, that despite these asteroids being classified as “potentially hazardous,” there is no reason to worry about them.

“None of these PHAs is a worrisome threat over the next hundred years,” NASA stated. “By continuing to observe and track these asteroids, their orbits can be refined and more precise predictions made of their future close approaches and impact probabilities.”

Earlier this month NASA officials announced plans for an asteroid-mining mission set to begin in 2016.

Read more -

http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2013/08/15/nasa-releases-map-of-over-1400-potentially-hazardous-asteroids-for-earth/

New Software Forces You to Pay Attention During Company Training -

What employee hasn’t watched a few YouTube (GOOG) videos during the half hour or so running time of the company’s required online training course? Alas, this may become a memory of simpler times. Online training technology company Mindflash on Tuesday announced a new feature called FocusAssist for iPad that uses the tablet’s camera to track a user’s eye movements. When it senses that you’ve been looking away for more than a few seconds (because you were sending e-mails, or just fell asleep), it pauses the course, forcing you to pay attention—or at least look like you are—in order to complete it.

Sound kind of creepy, even Big Brother-y? Mindflash doesn’t think so. Donna Wells, the company’s chief executive officer, writes in an e-mail: “Our focus is making sure trainees get all the information they need to do their jobs well, not penalizing learners.” Trainers do not receive any reporting on individual users’ attention spans, but they are supplied with information on which content isn’t engaging trainees.

Eye tracking isn’t being used only to keep workers in line. The Samsung (005930:KS) Galaxy S4 also will pause videos when a viewer looks away, although in that case it’s primarily intended to prevent new fathers from missing basketball highlights as they doze off in their easy chairs.

The feature was developed by a group of Stanford University Ph.D.s who also founded Sension, a “computer vision technology” company in Palo Alto that wants to use emotion- and facial-recognition technology to treat autism and Alzheimer’s disease.

Wells says that for law enforcement and health-care professionals, making sure the training is effective “can mean the difference between life and death.” The stakes are lower for office workers, but maybe they’ll finally remember how to file their expenses correctly.

Read more -

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-15/new-software-forces-you-to-pay-attention-during-company-training

1 Out of Every 3 Digital Media Minutes is Consumed Via Mobile -

Mobile usage is on the rise. We got that. But I was still surprised to see this fact from BrightEdge: “Mobile internet usage now accounts for one out of every three digital media consumption minutes.”
In terms of growth, mobile visits are up 125% over last year. Compare that to the only 12% growth in desktop usage and you can see where this is going.
Software/technology, financial services and real estate were the big winners with more than 15 times the growth of desktop visits in those categories. Tech is an obvious hit. Real Estate works well with mobile because of the very mobile nature of the business. If you’re searching for a new home, having access to local information right on your phone is invaluable.
I’m fascinated by the growth in the financial services categories. Since security and privacy are big issues with mobile, you’d think that finances would be the last category to come around. I suppose, if you’re involved in the stock market, having instant access to your accounts while you’re in the car or at lunch is a good thing. Personally, I’ve given up my concerns because my bank lets me deposit checks via my phone. That’s a huge time saver, so I’m putting my faith in their firewalls and clicking send.
But while folks are using their smartphones to access information, conversions aren’t climbing at the same rate. Desktops and now tablets, are far better for conversions due to the size of the screen. I don’t care how small your fingers are, filling out the information needed to complete a traditional online purchase is tricky and frustrating.
BrightEdge only found three categories where smartphone conversions bested desktop conversions; entertainment, travel and . . .ecommerce? What? Didn’t I just say that filling in shopping cart screens is too hard on a smartphone? Entertainment has 1.6x’s the conversions thanks to the large quantity of videos in this category. As for travel? I guess people are using their phones to book hotels and check airline reservations.
eCommerce just perplexes me. If someone from BrightEdge reads this, please explain this. Sure, many sites are using fast mobile checkout through Paypal or other online payment options but I find it hard to believe that more people are buying online than on a desktop. I must be misinterpreting this stat.
In summary, this is another push to get your mobile house in order. The holiday shopping season is rapidly approaching and you don’t want to lose sales because your site doesn’t function properly on a smartphone. Fix now. Test now. Because a year from now the stat will probably read 2 out of every 3 digital media minutes is consumed via mobile.

Read more -

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2013/08/1-out-of-every-3-digital-media-minutes-is-consumed-via-mobile.html

Ohio Man Orders New Gun Safe Online, Finds 300 Pounds of Pot Shipped Inside -

An Ohio man expected the gun safe he ordered online to be empty, police said.
But instead, he found $425,000-worth of tightly wrapped marijuana bricks inside.
"I've been in law enforcement for 47 years and I've never seen anything like this," Shelby County, Ohio, Sheriff John L. Lenhart said. "It's quite effective if you think about it: wrapped airtight to withstand high temperatures. Drug-sniffing dogs probably couldn't smell it."
It turned out the gun safes were manufactured by Champion Safe Co. in Nogales, Mexico, packaged by local inmates and shipped north, police said.
"Someplace between Mexico and the warehouse in Northern Ohio, the drugs got mixed up and put in the wrong safe and got delivered to the wrong person," Lenhart said.
Police hope to question a driver for Conway Inc., the truck company they said Champion hired to move the 25 to 30 gun safes to a warehouse in Ohio for local distribution. But they have not been able to find the driver, officials said.
"Not only are we looking for him," Lenhart said, "but the bad guys are, too."
That could be a problem for whoever screwed up the shipment, police said, but not for the anonymous northern Ohio man who, in early June, found 10 bales of pot tightly bound inside the safe he had ordered for $1,700. Police believe the man who got the 1,000-pound, 6-foot-tall safe had nothing to do with the drug shipment and was only expecting to find an empty space where he could store 24 long rifles and a dozen shotguns.
The shipping method has drawn the interest of the DEA because evidence suggests that this may not be the first time sealed gun safes have been used as smuggling portals, police said.
"You just spent $1,700 to get marijuana delivered wherever you want," said Shelby County Chief Deputy Jim Frye. "That's pretty cheap."
Police will keep the case open for an extended period of time, focusing on notifying jurisdictions that could have a hand in solving the case.
ABC News reached out to Champion Safe Co. and Conway Inc. for comment, but received no response.

Read more -
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/ohio-man-orders-empty-gun-safe-finds-300-100029959.html

New Evidence Princess Diana Was “Killed by a Member of the British Military” Being Investigated -

New information that alleges Princess Diana was murdered has been passed to Scotland Yard through military sources, according to the Metropolitan Police.
The information, thought to include the allegation that the Princess of Wales, Dodi al Fayed and their driver were killed by a member of the British military, will be assessed by officers from the Specialist Crime and Operations Command.
It was passed to the police by the parents-in-law of a former soldier, according to Sky sources.
The deaths of the Princess Diana and Mr al Fayed in Paris in 1997 were investigated and examined during a 90-day inquest led by Lord Justice Scott Baker at the Royal Court of Justice in 2007.

Read more -

http://news.sky.com/story/1129902/dianas-death-police-passed-new-information

Five Minute GOOGLE Outage Reportedly Caused 40% Drop in Global Traffic... -

For a very brief few minutes on Friday you may have noticed some Google services, most notably search, appeared to be down. If not, maybe you noticed the ensuing freak-out across Twitter and the rest of the Internet.

At first glance the flash outage was little more than an opportunity for a few good one-liners and a chance to actually stand up from the keyboard and walk around for a few minutes. If we had connected nanobots floating around in our bloodstreams, certainly they would have registered a worldwide uptick in caffeine intake during those few moments.

As it turns out though, Google's downtime did appear to have global, measurable repercussions, according to analytics firm GoSquared, which estimates that it caused a 40 percent drop in global traffic during a five-minute window:

Google.com was down for a few minutes between 23:52 and 23:57 BST on 16th August 2013. This had a huge effect in the number of pageviews coming into GoSquared's real-time tracking - around a 40% drop, as this graph of our global pageviews per minute shows. That's huge. As internet users, our reliance on google.com being up is huge. It's also of note that pageviews spiked shortly afterwards, as users managed to get to their destination.

Smartphones are causing sight problems to soar - Have you got 'screen sightedness'? -

Rates of short sightedness among young people have soared because of smartphones, a leading laser eye surgeon has claimed.
David Allamby, Founder of Focus Clinics, says there has been a 35 per cent increase in the number of people with advancing myopia (short sightedness) since the launch of smartphones in 1997.
He has warned the problem could increase by 50 per cent in the next ten years.
Mr Allamby thinks the problem is so widespread that he has dubbed it ‘screen sightedness’.
He says that half of Britons own smartphones and that they spend an average of two hours a day using them
This, along with time spent using computers and watching television, is putting children and young people at risk of permanently damaging their sight.
New research found that the average smartphone user holds the handset 30 cm from their face - with some people holding it just 18cm away - compared to newspapers and books, which are held 40cm away from the eyes.
According to Mr Allamby, excessive screen watching at close proximity keeps the genes that control myopia activated well beyond the age that short-sighted would historically have stabilised - about 21.
Myopia used to stop developing in people’s early 20s but now it is now seen progressing throughout the 20s, 30s, and even 40s.
Mr Allamby said: ‘If things continue as they are, I predict that 40 to 50 per cent of 30-year-olds could have myopia by 2033 as a result of smartphones and lifestyles in front of screens – an epidemic we call screen sightedness.

‘People need to ensure they limit screen time wherever possible even by going outside without their phone for a period of time each day (getting out into the sunshine has been shown to reduce the progression of short-sight), and also seriously consider the age at which they give their children a smartphone.’
Mr Allamby says today's children are most at risk of myopia – with children as young as seven being given smartphones.

Read more: -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2394611/Have-got-screen-sightedness-Smartphones-causing-sight-problems-soar-warns-eye-surgeon.html