Digital Grandparent

In this digital age, we can do almost anything by computer, virtually, and dieting or good nutrition is no exception. No, you won't lose weight by hanging out on the computer, but there are really good resources available online. Digital dieting is quite possible, and you can lose weight sort of virtually.

It's pretty typical for baby boomers to be nutritionally reborn. We wake up one morning, suddenly aware of our own mortality, and decide to change our ways. You'd be surprised how often that works. We're now old enough and wise enough to understand why healthy living is necessary. I stumbled across a book series called, Eat This, Not That, found it mildly life changing for my husband and myself, and I reviewed it. That lead me to look around the Internet and see what else is out there.

I found the SouthBeach Website, and of course there's WeightWatchers. There are sites that charge a fee - and experts say paying that fee may be motivation to stick to a plan. There are sites that don't charge anything. I found one blog that has a resource list that's pretty encompassing; The Online Mom did a good job of putting a one-stop list up, focusing more on tools for managing your health than on diet sites, as such.

Summer is ending. We're all going to become a little more sedentary as the weather degrades - so why wait till New Years to resolve yourself toward virtual and real health? A little planning, a little surfing, and you can make little changes that will move you toward the 21st Centruy life expectancy we know is out there.

Being a PC person, I don't often delve into MAC stories but this is news. For the first time, the latest OS operating system, SnowLeopard, will, say the pundits, include anti-virus software, and it was bound to happen.

SnowLeopard is due out any day now (officially Aug 28) at $29 for the upgrade (you listening, Microsoft?) - and the world is waiting with baited breath - or at least the MAC fans are. Most of us don't want to shell out the bucks attached to the price points of MAC stuff. The systems, that is PC and MAC, are getting closer and closer together with each new generation even though Apple calls Snow the "world's most advanced operating system.). Now that hackers have scared Apple into shipping anti-vi with their system, who can tell the differences?

West Coast computer security guru, Joshua Long, the JoshMeister, talks about the amazing MAC news in his blog today. Even though I don't have a MAC and haven't for years, I'm mildly distressed that it's come to this. What a world.

This may be the coolest iPod app I've ever seen. GoPostal is a service app for iPhones that allows you to snap a photo, compose your own custom message, and send a postcard from your phone or computer. It's dirt cheap and more fun than summer craft camp.

Made by a company called Print Your Life the app can be accessed at their website (click on Design a postcard from your computer). You can create an account or be a guest. The process takes seconds and the resulting postcard is not an e-card, it's mailed through the post office. Cost of postage and printing is included at $1.29.

You can also download the app from the Apple Store. the app is free, the postcards are priced as above.

Google just deployed a test version of their new search engine, known as Caffeine. You can play around with Caffeine in the Google sandbox, a popular test area on Google's website. Web moguls are saying this may be the end of keyword obsession in web development since the new search function is supposed to be smarter.

If you have a website or blog, you might be interested in an article I did on one of my own sites about keywords and why they aren't as hot as one might think.

Anyway, I worked with the new Google Caffeine and found differences between it and the current Google. It is faster. I hit "search"-- it seemed like the first page of hits popped up. Cool. And, Caffeine seemed more intuitive than search engines have been for a while. My key argument about search engines has been that they will find you the biggest, most established, corporate-type sites that contain the exact terms you're searching for. Or they'll give you blogs - dozens of blogs, good or bad. But they didn't seem to find smaller, off the track sites that might be exactly what I am looking for but may not parrot the terms I searched on.

Caffeine seemed to bring me a bigger variety of results. I entered the same key phrases into current Google and then into the sandbox and I got fairly different replies.. I liked the sandbox replies more.

No matter how images were captured in the 1960s, a wealth of memories is preserved in the images of the hippy era, the Viet Nam era, the Beatles era.The decade of the 1960s is when photo-journalism and videography came alive. America watched a war from our living rooms, of course, but we also saw images that characterized the unrest and feelings of rebellion sweeping the nation. Sometimes, those photos were manipulated (in the dark room) to be more like how the photographer felt. Sometimes, they were staged.

Take a few minutes to savor this photo essay from the photo guy who calls himself Mr. Sixties. Robert Altman was right htere, as chief photographer for Rolling Stone Magazine. Share Altman's photo essay with friends, and remember that this technology is what gave rise to digital photography, light room technology, and photo editing. Once upon a time in our youth, black and white film and color film recorded history. Now, we use pixels.

About six weeks ago, America went digital with television, as we all are aware. How are we doing with the conversion process? Contrary to the dire predictions that tens of thousands of kids would never see Sesame Street again and seniors (that would be us baby boomers...) would never find out where the people of Lost are actually lost, the DTV, digital television, conversion is going pretty well and the over 55 baby boomer group gets the best report card.

Gearlog says only about 1.1 percent of the U.S. population is behind the eightball, so to speak, which means 98.9 percent have figured out what to buy and how to go with the flow and convert to digital TV. For a huge number of us, that meant nothing more than sitting back and, well, doing nothing. those who subscribe to a service like cable TV, saw no changes. Those who decided on a new, digital-ready TV and an antenna saved a boat load of money (that would be me) and are receving, for the most part, a damn fine signal and enough programming to keep the TV running strong.

There have been some issues. In Chicago, where I live, the digital signal from some stations - like the ABC affiliate is a bit wonky. Read - inreliable. There are frequent, pixelated drop outs in the video, which experts thought would not happen with antenna service, but it does. Seattle area is having some issues, too, mostly around topographical stuff. Stations are working on it, and the problem is fairly widespread, but, they say, curable.

And let me say this to those media moguls and tech gurus who were so concerned aobut us poor mature adults who would be left out in the dark - Gearlog cites statistics that indicate a different picture. About 2.7 percent of people under 35 have not made the switch, but only 0.4 percent of those over 55 are unprepared. Did ya get that, kids? The fogies got it down. (Doin' the got it down dance....)

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Looks like the next cool thing is going to be solar powered home theater. Richard Glikes, ultra tech guru and exec director at Home Theater Specialists of America (HTSA) is all over the Internet with his favorite green living home technology. The state-of-the-tech system is powered with solar energy provided by roof-mounted panels that produce, in sunshine, 700 watts of power per hour. Engadget says it should run things for nearly a full day without help from the traditional power grid.

Electronic House magazine online reports it a little differently, saying the panels will provide 19 hours of viewing pleasure per week. From my perspective, that's not exactly right - seems like the panels can keep the system going in a sunny location, given a sunny week, pretty consistently. But I do home tech, not energy science. At this point, the solar powered home theater is a prototype - though given enough budget, you or I could probably duplicate it.

Glikes used a 100-inch screen, mega speakers and all the best, of course. The idea could be scaled down to suit the average home theater fab. But then, there are questions to ask. Where is all that equipment manufactured? How much impact does the production of the equipment have on the environment? And the solar panels - likely made in the Orient somewhere and then transported here on ships, trucks and trains. How long would you have to use solar power to scale down the carbon foot print of the entire process of getting this home theater?

We'll see more on this solar home technology, no doubt, or even wind powered home electronics -- maybe. But the latest green thinking says we should look at the whole picture of so-called "green" alternatives before we jump on board. But it's a cool idea, isn't it?

Want to read some more on tech for baby boomers?

Do your grandkids text while they drive?
New technology to enhance search dog capabilities

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This week may mark the first time in U.S. History that a Presidential kegger party hit the headlines, worldwide. I'm not sure if linking Barrack Oabama, a distinguished educator, a plain old cop and a keg is actually newsworthy. But toss in Microsoft, Bill Gates, a patent application for an ultra-high tech kegerator and Bill Clinton and you're gonna sell papers.

What's all the beer hoopla about?

Barrack Obama hosts a kegger later today. Special guests police Sgt. James Crowley, educator Henry Louis Gates, Jr (Harvard) and a passel of press. Need the backstory?

1. The sarge arrested the prof last week when the prof broke into his own home.
2. A concerned neighbor called the cops, and all hell broke loose.
   
3. Cries of racial profiling, nosy neighboring and a Presidential faux pas - Obama said the cops acted stupidly - hit the media.
4. It was good timing - Michael Jackson's demise was beginning to fall off the front page, anyway.

The kegger is hip President Obama's way of diffusing the situation and apologizing man-to-man (hiccup!) for his slip of the Presidential lip. (Sounds of much back slapping and belching.)

Wait! What about Clinton? Gates? And Microsoft? How do they fit in?

I have to connect my blog posts with technology, of course, and with baby boomers.

Perusing the Web, I found baby boomers Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and some guy named Nathan Myhrvold (ex Microsoft techno chief) banded together and dreamed up a new uber-tech kegerator:
"temperature-stabilized storage containers" -- super-high-tech devices intended for use in the storage and transport of "water or flavored water, dairy product or fruit juice, carbonated soda, wine, beer or distilled spirits, for example."
They evidently filed for a patent. Three choruses of we can change the world.

Which all proves one thing.

You can sell media, with just about any headline, to some of the people some of the time, but there will still be that looney bunch that says we never did put a man on the moon.

posted @ Thursday, July 30, 2009 7:16 AM | Feedback (0)

This may be the most important blog post you ever read. It is becoming clear that using a cell phone while you drive is at least as dangerous as drinking a number of cocktails and then hitting the road. Texting while driving? More dangerous than driving drunk. Texting is the most dangerous distraction on the road and an epidemic - especially among teens whose heads are firmly in their back pockets. If you know some teen drivers - ride herd on them until they get it. You may save lives.

Two consumer groups FOIA-ed (Freedom of Information Act) documentation that indicates possible hanky panky in 2003 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Network news media is reporting that NHTSA declined to conduct a study related to cell phone use by motorists. NHTSA allegedly squelched pounds of existing documentation that indicates extreme danger when drivers use cell phones. Even hands-free cell phones. Drivers on cell phones, says that documentation, caused nearly 1000 highway fatalities in 2002 and were responsible for 250,000 accidents. The data in 2002 said 6% of drivers were using cell phones at any given time. Imagine what that figure is now.

In 2003, traffic fatalities due to cell phone use had more than doubled, and texting wasn't even invented then.

I took a defensive driving course a couple of years ago, something I strongly encourage my peers to do. It was fascinating - I learned things I had never known and revisited basics I had forgotten. One of the key points our instructor made was that your car, at highway speeds, goes half the length of a football field in under 2.5 seconds. If you look away from the road long enough to locate and pick up your beverage, unwrap your burger, swat your misbehaving child, or glance at your map, you can easily find yourself in an emergency situation facing a traffic hazard you never saw coming.,

If you are texting, you look down in your lap. Your thumbs are busily punching text buttons while your knees steer the car. You compose a text to your BFF (best friend forever), it could be your last thought. Or the last moment of someone else's life. All because of 140 characters of text that were so urgent.

You don't text, you say? How about your kids, nieces and nephews, grand kids? My daughter does. My neighbor texts in the car. My real estate agent texts or talks on a cell phone constantly.

You don't think it's a big problem? I challenge you to watch other drivers carefully as you drive home today. See how many swerve slightly as they go. Are their heads canted downward, toward their laps? Are their hands on the wheel...or texting? You'll see an amazing number of people in that position as they fly down our roads and highways. If you honk - you'll get the finger.

If that text-addict screws up - you may get dead.

Read a Virginia Tech original cell phone study.

What are the worst electronic gadgets and concepts available today? I searched the web to see what venerable gadget gurus had to say and here's a list of sites for you to visit if you're interested in avoiding the crappiest gadgets on Earth. Save money.

Wired's gadget lab disses AT&T, Asus and Apple, among others. Check out their list of trashy inventions.

Audio gadgets to throw down a black hole - Sgt. Pepper???

Worst science cliches - are we done with silver bullet theory - please? Can we quit with the Holy Grail nonsense?

Switched thumps Sega and Gizmondo among others

Twenty worthless pieces of junk

See how many of these you've fallen prey to - and toss them into a garage sale or thrift store to see if you can hoodwink other innocent buyers. Let us know what other electronics you think are just not worth their salt.

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