C’mon Nothing? Really?
Yesterday marked the 30th Anniversary of the Nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.
Am I the only person wondering, “What, no Super Heroes yet?”
Friday Foccacia
I thought Raven-Symone was pretty much done when she passed on actually being part of the Chetah Girls, but apparently not. It seem she is on a 55 city “Pajama Party” tour with the child band Clique Girls (the Clique Girls are 8, 9 and 10 years old, making them the youngest pop group in music history. How cool is that?)
Whenever I am in a store like Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. I almost always wind up helping or explaining something to another customer. Either because the sales associate doesn’t know the information, or is trying to push something on a customer that isn’t really quite right for them. I guess now I had better be careful, because there have been times that I have badmouthed a product, or spoken about how overpriced it was at a given establishment. When somebody did that at Best Buy recently however, apparently they called the cops on him.
When I first read about a new study that says teens don’t worry about losing their hearing. My first reaction was, “Duh… Ya think?” But as I thought about it a little more, I seem to remember hearing and reading about such thing when I was a teen (yes… all those years ago), because of the sudden popularity of the Walkman. Now I don’t doubt that the damage that can be done with today’s stronger earphones, especially with noise cancellation. But I don’t see “everybody” being deaf from those Walkan’s now, so I am kind of thinking that these studies are overstating things, just a tad.
Being a father of a little girl, I was quite outraged by the message presented at the website missbimbo.com. But Tracee from So Sioux Me has done such a good job, and expressed exactly what I was thinking, it would probably be best if you just read her post.
How funny is THAT Department – The RIAA who has no problems with suing and attempting to collect a $220,000 award in the one (and only) file-sharing suit they have won, from a woman that allegedly shared 24 songs. But now they are mad and think it is excessive that they have been ordered to pay $298,000 in attorney’s fees on a case they didn’t win.
A worm in the Apple - I am sure there are plenty of Apple Fan-boys that thought nothing about Apple trying to sneak Safari onto iTunes users machines, but if you think you are safer using Safari, you are sadly mistaken.
A place for your face
Don’t want to spend the money for Photoshop CS3? (Not that I can say anything, that damn package is expensive). Would you like an online solution? Well, Adobe how now unveilved Adobe Photoshop Express (Beta), and is FREE with up to 2 GB in storage for you to save (or share) pictures with.
It is supposedly easy enough for the novice to be able to use, but still have some features that more experienced people would appreciate, I haven’t had an opportunity to play with it yet, and will write a full review on TechParent Tuesday, but in the mean time, you may wish to sign up and check it out.
Is that an RFID in your pocket or …
Despite what some people may think, I am not all about government intrusion in our lives, but the government is supposed to be there to protect the people, especially from the likes of monolithic corporate giants that have nobody’s interest at heart but their own.
Why isn’t that the case any longer? Why do special interest groups always get their way? (Yes, I know it is all about the money and re-election funds… it was a rhetorical question. Just follow… OK?) An excellent example is the recent first in the country RFID laws passed in Washington State.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, RFID chips are being put into and used in “everything” now, or at least they will be very soon. That “touch-less” Gas-N-Go card you have from the Station? RFID, Those new “intelligent” passports that are coming? RFID, the new digital Drivers Licenses that are being rolled out? RFID. Even some of those frequent shoppers cards. You have a lot of information that is now accessible, just by walking past an RFID reader set to grab that information.
Now rightly, there is cause for concern, and the laws they were pushing in Washington made sense. There were basically two parts; the first is making it illegal for anybody to attempt to access your information for fraudulent purposes. Rather obvious, and somewhat redundant, since fraud is already illegal, but I guess this would be another tacked on charge, or perhaps you can simply be arrested for “attempted” fraud. Whatever, I don’t have a problem with that. If somebody is “skimming” my information, then sure he should get in trouble for it without me having to be an actual fraud victim. But then there is the second part of the law, or more correctly, the original bill… because it never made it into the law.
That part, required retailers and other businesses to only gather information about you on an opt-in basis. As is always the case… it seems, the retailers and their lobbyist fought this part of the law, and eventually got it pulled out. So, now skimming is only illegal for an individual; corporations that are skimming are free to gather information about you, how long you shopped in their stores, where in the store you went, how much time you spent in each section, just by strategically placing some RFID scanners, and you will be none the wiser as they gather this information.
But don’t worry, I am sure some company will come out with some sort of RFID blocking wallet, that will be ugly, cumbersome and expensive, but will “protect” you from the “snoops.” Yup that is right, to have the privacy you should expect by default… you will have it. As long as you pay for it. (Maybe!)
Ideas that were better on the drawing board
Pants in a Pinch – a pair of pants that is vacuumed into a disc the size of your palm that is actually a pair of pants for your 3 to 36 month old child (up to 6T supposedly available by special order). I get the idea that these are “In case of Emergency” pants, but at $20 pair I am not so sure how great a deal it is. I mean how many people travel with a small child, and don’t have some sort of backup apparel in a bag, the trunk of the car, etc where you can stash something for these types of situations? And I guess whether you used them or not, you would have to keep buying a new size as you go along, as with the rest of the clothes, but then what do you do with the old one? Pass it along? Maybe I am being too hard on them, but it just doesn’t seem to make a heck of a lot of sense to me.
BabyPlays – I heard this described as the “Netflix of Baby Toys.” I dunno, to me this sounds like an idea that would have (and perhaps should have) come (and more importantly GONE) during the dotBomb era of bad business plans. Let you child play with toys that come in the mail, play with them, then send them back and get new toys. Oh sure, at a marketing meeting this sounds great, it is a great pitch story. Keeps parents from having too many toys around the house, and reduces clutter, of toys that have a limited life in a child’s world. Marketing. But it starts to fall apart in practice as I see it, especially with infant and small child toys where you would think this makes the most sense.
Toys from small kids are generally soft and contain lots of foam. It doesn’t take much to immediately think about every child that has drooled, chewed and spit up on that toy before it arrives in your mailbox. Of course the company says that they sanitize the toys, but how becomes the big issue. Too little santizing, the surface is clean but everything that is caught in the foam remains behind only to be reconstituted when your child’s wet drooling mouth comes in contact with it. Too much santizing and the foam breaks down, and the toy rendered less that appealing. $36/month gets you 4 toys per month (and plans go up from there). I don’t know about you, but with a minimum plan of 3 months or $108 total, I can get an awful lot of toys (especially baby toys) for that price. Again, I guess there is a market of some sort for this type of service, but the thought of rental toys just doesn’t work for me.
Scan-It Operation Checkpoint Toy XRay
Photobucket Faux Pas – The photo sharing site Photobucket ran into a heap of trouble with users, when they deleted pictures of diaper clad babies by Good Mama Diapers, as claimed it was because the pictures depicted ‘nudity’ They have since, backed down and admitted it was their mistake.
Seen a dumb product (or an awesome one) that you think should be highlighted on TechParent (look for the new separate blog coming soon), e-mail it to me at jaymonster at the gmail dot com.
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