DadTalk

New Ways to Monitor Kids

If you haven’t noticed, a lot of Americans are screaming bloody murder about government involvement in our lives. Just look at the health care debate.

But consider this: Bari Lynne Williams, who was arrested for drunk driving, wears a government-imposed ankle bracelet that monitors her blood alcohol levels, reports The Washington Post. There seems to be one good reason for this:

It’s cheaper to keep Bari working than incarcerated for $150 a day. In fact, Bari pays for the $12 a day biometric anklet.

With states struggling to cut budgets and laying off prison guards, it’s hard to argue with their logic. And at least the ankle bracelet is only being used on convicted offenders.

It’s just a little bit spooky, though, when you consider how else biometrics could be used. How many parents would love to stick an alcohol-sensing bracelet on party-going kids?

While it’s already possible to monitor a child’s location via a phone’s GPS, why stop there? How about embedding a chip under the skin?

I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before market-hungry companies come up with additional devices:

• Have a promiscuous child? Build a device that monitors sexual arousal! (Of course such a device may never work with always-aroused teen boys.) Regardless, the device should come complete with remote for sending electrical shocks.
• All parents need a device that monitors when your teen is lying.
• Another monitor might reveal when your child is overeating or puking up a meal.
• An excitement monitor could be used to determine when kids are playing video games.
• A Vitamin D monitor can watch for when children are spending too much time in the sun.
• Nicotine, marijuana and coke monitors are absolutely essential parent tools.

Have other great ways to monitor your kids? Post ’em in the comments.

Spam Filters Run Amok

I just spent THREE frigging hours trying to get an email through to a colleague. After calling my email service provider and then Cox TWICE, I learned this critical fact:

Cox will block emails that have several LINKS. The only way around this is to practically turn off your spam filters. So if you have two or three web addresses in your signer, there is no guarantee the email will arrive at the destination!

Another shocker: Cox spam checker kicks in BEFORE the white list. That means you can white list a sender and the emails STILL WON’T ARRIVE.

This is insane! SPAM gets through email systems everyday, while legitimate email does not. How much business is lost everyday? How many friends feelings are hurt because they didn’t get a response? What’s the point of a high-tech society if it doesn’t even work?

You Say ‘Eye Telescope,’ I Say Cybernetic Implant

Personally, I don’t know how anyone can tolerate an object inserted into their eye, but you have to admit that this “eye “telescope” is simply amazing. While the implant is specifically designed for macular degeneration, it’s easy to imagine all the possibilities down the road.

This particular telescope magnifies images on the retina so they land on healthy tissue, reports The New York Times. The device was approved by a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel in March and already is in use in Europe.

Despite the recession, technology marches forward. How long before we see multiple cybernetic implants in humans?

Who Knew It Was So Easy?

While working on a blog post about video learning sites, I came across How To Make A Burning Laser Flashlight on VideoJug. Now, you may be confused during the first minute of the video or concerned the project is too complicated, but I urge you to watch it until the end for the punch line. Can you say shock and awe? Can you say totally irresponsible yet strangely fascinating?

Additional

Make The New 007 Laser Weapon

Old Light Bulbs Redesigned

Could good news be coming to the world of light bulbs? As you may know, energy efficient compact fluorescents have a nasty problem: they contain small amounts of the neurotoxin mercury. And while LED lights are more efficient than CFLs, they are generally too expensive. Aesthetically speaking, both types of light bulbs emit odd color tones that seriously complicate taking indoor pictures and make my wife’s skin appear green.

So it came as a surprise to me that manufacturers are working hard to make energy efficient incandescent light bulbs, reports The New York Times. While these new bulbs don’t save quite as much energy as the two competitors, there seems to be room for significant improvement.

Philip’s is already selling Halogena Energy Savers at Home Depot and on Amazon. The bulbs go for about $5 a piece, but it takes time for new products to come down in price. But researchers are working on a variety of improvements that may soon find their way into homes.

Just the thought of an efficient bulb that doesn’t use mercury and puts off decent light brightens my day.

Want to Learn More About Twitter?

If you don’t, I understand. I mean, enough is enough already. On the other hand, Twitter is getting hard to run away from. If you want to learn more, go to my other site for an article on how to make the most of Twitter.

Can Kindle Save Newspapers?

This was written for my new website at WriteThru.

While the easy-to-read flat screens now being sold by Amazon are definitely a step in the right direction, technology can only save an industry if the revenue model makes sense.

Consider these drawbacks:

1. Consumers either have to pony up $489 to buy one of the devices OR sign up for a lengthy subscription to get a discounted device, reports the Los Angeles Times.
2. Amazon wants 70 percent of the subscription revenue from newspaper sales, reports Endgadget. Worse: Amazon also gets permission to republish content on other devices, such as the iphone.
3. If consumers must buy multiple subscriptions – ranging from $5.99 to $13.99 a month – to get news from EACH source, which content companies will be left out in the cold? Perhaps local news providers?
4. Do the math: News producers will get only $1.7 to $4.197 a month if they’re getting only 30 percent of the revenue.

What Was I Thinking?

Because I’ve just launched WriteThru.com, which offers free webinars to media professionals seeking to enhance their technology skills, I’m going to cross-post my “explainer” here on DadTalk. Please feel free to spread the word about WriteThru … I can use the help!

I LEFT THE LOS ANGELES TIMES knowing an economic storm was coming, but I had no idea just how hard the media world would be hit. I figured there would be layoffs at newspapers beyond those of the late 1980s and early 1990s, but then mistakenly hoped that the market would stabilize.

Today, I find it heartbreaking to see so many hard-working colleagues and friends suddenly wondering how to pick up the pieces of their damaged careers. PaperCuts counts nearly 16,000 newspaper jobs lost in the United States in 2008 alone and nearly 9,000 more so far this year. And by all accounts, TV, radio and magazine employees all have been equally pummeled.

But I do not believe that professional journalism will die. Hints of what might emerge are seeping through. Think ProPublica. Think VoiceofSanDiego. Consider the possibilities of electronic ink/paper. I don’t know exactly what form this golden era of journalism will materialize, but I do know that many of the journalists who are losing their jobs today will help launch this renaissance.

How Much Privacy Should Parent’s Grant Kids’ Digital Life?

Scenario: Your 13-year-old daughter comes home from school, runs crying up to her bedroom with cell phone in hand.

Do you:

1. Go up and talk to your daughter but don’t ask to see the message on the phone.
2. Demand to see the messages on the phone.
3. Go back to making dinner and pretend nothing happened.

Happily for me, I’m still years away from having to make that decision. My oldest is only 6, and he does not have cell phone or even Internet connectivity.

But eventually, I, like many parents, will face unhappy technology scenarios and subsequent “values” decisions. The key question in my mind: how intrusive of privacy should parents be when it comes to technology?

Consider the latest social/legal conundrum facing authorities and parents in Greensburg, Pa. There, three teenage girls sent nude photos of themselves via cell phone to teenage boys, reports The New York Times.

Let’s Shed Some Light on Clean Energy Options

Although solar cells are technologically exciting, there’s another way to convert sunlight into energy. Stirling generators can convert heat energy into electricity without the use of toxic chemicals.

Essentially, all you need are large mirrors, a Stirling engine, a little bit of reusable hydrogen gas, some water to wash the mirrors, engine oil and a lot of land. There are several companies around the world that have worked hard to take advantage of this technology.

Stirling Energy Systems, headquartered in Phoenix, is building two large solar plants in California, for example. The above picture is what these solar generators look like.

Just one of these engines can produce enough energy – about 55,000 KWh of electricity – to power about a dozen homes each year. The efficiency of these machines is impressive, reaching a conversion rate of 31.25 percent, reports Popular Mechanics.

But as I wrote earlier this month, there always, always seems to be a downside to energy production. As you can see from this picture, it takes a LOT of solar engines to make enough electricity to feed our energy needs. While one looks cool, lots of them are kind of unattractive.

This solar farm is in a fairly desolate spot in the Mohave Desert where the general population is not likely to complain about aesthetics. But the solar project, which has been winning clean energy awards, has a new problem: a California judge “struck down plans to build a high power transmission line (through a national park,) effectively dooming the massive solar initiatives set to be built in the desert,” reports Daily Tech.