Facebook versus ACT!
December 3, 2008 by encinoman
In the 1990’s, it was common for professionals to “live all day in ACT!”, ACT! being a contact manager that also had a word processor, calendar, to-do list, etc. ACT! was all about productivity.
In fact, you were supposed to call people (remember calling people?) in your ‘tickler’ every 30 days, where you had listed some conversation-starter like “Saw your wife at the dog show.”
Now those professionals live all day in Facebook, briefly departing to do actual work. Indeed, many IT types and other corporate drones would ban it if they could. Facebook versus ACT!: an interesting contrast between packaged, stand-alone software and a widely-shared web application.
But are they really so different? As the ACT! website puts it:
Tags: ACT!, Facebook, social-networking
Posted in social-networking, technology | No Comments »
Diary of Reggie, Alligator at Large, Post #6
November 14, 2008 by encinoman
So now it’s a state crime to ? Believe me, you’re sitting around all day in this oversized bathtub they call a zoo, you’d want a drink too.
Alligator apologies for such a long time posting, but between my escape attempts and just lying around depressed, haven’t wanted to say much.
But now, Ziggy’s here! A friend! My kingdom for a friend! Or I’m hoping, anyway.
In LA, it seems like it’s everyone’s secret hobby to raise an alligator from a baby–guess between the showers, sprinklers and pools, no one needs their bathtubs. Not to mention the lowlives with their shark tanks–now Bill Maher wants Barack Obama to have a shark tank in the White House?
Watch out, man–we predators eat puppies.
So get me a friend. Or a drink, at least.
Tags: Barack-Obama, Bill-Maher, Reggie-the-alligator
Posted in Reggie-the-alligator | No Comments »
October 27, 2008 by encinoman
Sent email to Zocalo LA, “the intellectual life of LA”, to RSVP my attendence at Princeton Professor (now Nobel winner) Paul Krugman’s lecture “The Financial Meltdown and the Future of American Politics.” Particularly wanted to see him as my son now goes to Princeton.
But after driving 15 miles to attend, the wife and I were among dozens, perhaps hundreds of hipsters turned away, as their system didn’t return emails (”We were full since Oct. 7; it was on the website,” incorrectly claimed one harried organizer). Lots of people with confirmations were turned away as well.
As a long-time writer for Successful Meetings magazine and attendee of many lectures, concerts and conventions, this was one of the worst-organized events I have tried to attend.
If you want to hear Krugman you can listen here; you’ll forgive me if I don’t bother.
It was a good thing I missed the lecture; I might have violated Zocalo’s “code of civility.”
Tags: Paul-Krugman, Princeton, Zocalo-LA
Posted in Public Relations, meeting-planning, public-relations-disaster | No Comments »
October 29, 2008 by encinoman
One of the most commented-on pieces on ABCNews.com is a long posting by Michael Malone on “Media’s Presidential Bias and Decline.” If you wade through the 2295 words (yes, I counted), he makes some good points:
“What I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side — or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del…
“Why, to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer — when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media? “
Good questions–but Malone’s conclusion is from left field. To editors “presiding over a dying industry: Obama “offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career…With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.”
it’s true that Barack Obama has gotten positive media coverage since the beginning of his campaign, when any honest person would say he was a long shot. Back then (and really, for most of his campaign) he was the underdog, and certainly the media likes the underdog narrative. Then there was his youth, his personal story (up from poverty through education and hard work!) and, not least, his race, however that’s defined.
To echo the technology journalism for which Malone is known, editors do like the ‘new new thing’–and that ain’t McCain. It was Sarah Palin, until journalists did the vetting job the McCain campaign should have done.
On the flip side, as Kurtz says “Critics, including many conservatives, say the media have been too easy on Obama, and bias cannot be discounted as a factor. A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that from the end of the conventions through the debates, McCain’s coverage was more than three times as negative than Obama’s.”
Yes, the press is liberal: Slate magazine is voting 55:1 Obama over McCain, for example. But the press used to love John McCain, when it perceived that he stood for something.
As a media trainer, I would fault the McCain campaign with failing to put out a positive, detailed agenda about what they were running for and delivering consistent messages supporting it. (Hint: Lower taxes and Joe the Plumber ain’t “Morning in America.”)
The Politico refers to this reality here (via Andrew):
“There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe. As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.”
Tags: Barack-Obama, Andrew-Sullivan, The-Politico
Posted in Journalism, Media Training, Politics | 1 Comment »
Drudge Headline of the Day
October 30, 2008 by encinoman
Tags: Drudge-Report, Huffington-Post, Matt-Drudge, tabloid-journalism
Posted in Journalism | No Comments »
LA Times Invents Ford Malibu
October 30, 2008 by encinoman
The Los Angeles Times, laying off yet another 75 journalists this week, is living in the past. The paper is running a 7-part front page story about the good old days of “The Gangster Squad“, and how they illegally bugged and harassed gangsters like Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Siegel in the 1940’s.
Meanwhile, in the same issue (Sunday, October 26, 200 
a staffer writing about Barack Obama’s outreach to Latinos in Las Vegas wrote that one of the individuals interviewed was “trying to make a living buying and selling automobiles” and “pointed to two Ford Malibus in the frontyard.”
The writer wrote me to apologize, but the accuracy of such an ‘insignificant’ detail (in a Sunday paper with a circulation of one million) means either the Times editorial staff has zero knowledge about America’s auto industry and its products (it’s a Chevy Malibu, unless it was a Ford Mustang, Focus or Fusion) or that the factchecking and copyediting staff has been decimated in the cutbacks. (Or maybe the Times took a Philip K. Dick-like look into the future, merging the struggling automakers.)
Either way, such obvious errors call into question the accuracy of the whole journalistic enterprise. No wonder the Times wants to run a series on long-dead gangsters. As with the ghost story my editor at the Enquirer urged me to embellish, they won’t be suing.
Tags: LA-Times, Ford-Malibu, Ford, General-Motors, gangsters, Mickey-Cohen, Bugsy-Siegel
Posted in Journalism, copyediting, death-of-newspapers | 1 Comment »
UCLA Snoops Shows No More Privacy
October 31, 2008 by encinoman
Some 1041 patient files were violated by peeping eyes at UCLA Medical Center–and that’s just the ones they know about.
While the files violated included those of California First Lady Maria Shriver, actress Farrah Fawcett and singer Britney Spears, we don’t even have 1000 celebrities in LA, even if you add 5 actors from each of the top 20 TV shows, another 5 from the top ten films, 50 musicians, the entire roster of the Dodgers, Angels, Lakers and Clippers (that last a stretch) plus comedians, politicians, artists and has-beens.
So that means people at UCLA (and probably your local hospital) are snooping on their ex’s, their neighbors and ‘that guy they brought in today’ out of boredom and unwholesome curiosity. More than 165 workers at UCLA have been disciplined; doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe they should start actually firing and arresting people.
As CEO of workstation maker SUN, Scott McNealy was best known for his intemperate attacks on Microsoft (referring to Bill Gates and the current CEO as “Ballmer and Butthead”) and his uninspired leadership of the failing company.
But even a broken clock is right twice a day. As McNealy told reporters back in 1999, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”
Tags: Scott-McNealy, Privacy, Farrah-Fawcett, Maria-Shriver, Brittany-Spears, UCLA Medical Center, Sun-Microsystems
Posted in Privacy, technology, technology-journalism | No Comments »
November 1, 2008 by encinoman
Violating patient privacy doesn’t just happen in Los Angeles, or to people like Farrah Fawcett. Even in Jacksonville, FL, there are celebrities–and hospital workers anxious to violate their privacy.
Twenty hospital workers — nurses, admissions workers and patient relations staff — lost their jobs this week, accused of breaking federal privacy rules by accessing the medical records of the (NFL Jacksonville) Jaguars’ Richard Collier.
Two weeks after Collier — who was shot 14 times — was well enough to be discharged from Shands-Jacksonville Medical Center, 20 hospital employees were fired for violating Collier’s medical privacy.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, (HIPAA) should not be a joke. My medical condition is between my doctors and appropriate supporting personnel and myself–it’s not watercooler chatter for the bored and stupid.
While I admit that wheedling records out of hospital personnel is what tabloid reporters, as I used to be, are trained to do, doesn’t mean that it’s OK for medical personnel to sell or otherwise discuss a star’s (or anyone’s) medical condition.
And this will not stop until doctors are among those fired or otherwise disciplined.
Tags: tabloid-journalism, Privacy, Farrah-Fawcett, celebrities, Richard-Collier, NFL, Jacksonville, HIPPA, privacy-violation
Posted in public-relations-disaster | No Comments »
Dumbest Election Reactions
November 5, 2008 by encinoman
Ralph Nader called Barack Obama an “” on Fox the other night, apparently because Nader thinks he’s a corporate tool. Perhaps Nader would like someone more authentic like Jesse Jackson (last seen sobbing for the TV cameras after the election) to “cut his nuts off?”
Then there’s this NSFW missive, from my erstwhile employer Larry Flynt, the auteur behind the eagerly-awaited ‘Nailin Palin’.
Meanwhile, NBA star Gilbert Arenas was convinced both contenders would raise his taxes if elected. Earning his “” sobriquet, he protested in the dumbest way possible: by not voting.
Tags: Barack-Obama, Gilbert-Arenas, Jesse-Jackson, Larry-Flynt, Ralph-Nader
Posted in Politics, public-relations-disaster | No Comments »
The Dread Media ‘Anniversary’ Story
November 10, 2008 by encinoman
If I ran the journalism world, the first thing I would ban would be the “anniversary story.” Even though I won an LA Press Club Award for this LA Times piece about the Rodney King beating.
Basically, a media ‘anniversary’ is an excuse for journalists to write a little history, bring up some (generally lurid) event from the past or do some “Trivial Pursuit’ style follow-up (where is Kato Kaelin now?!) on half-remembered players. It’s a hook to write something that will get page views or blog hits, requires little actual reporting, and often gives the reporter the chance to play historian, draw parallels to our own time, or better yet, pontificate.
Certain dates are inevitable. I’m sure November 22 this year (the 45th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination) will bring both memories of that tragic day in Dallas and the death of Camelot, and sober comments on the threats against President-Elect Obama.
A few guidelines: generally, anniversary dates have to be for events in living memory. Hence, 9-11 will generate recaps of the events and commentary for at least the next fifty years, but April 14 won’t get much (the date of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination 143 years ago).
Second, round numbers are key. Like my Princeton reunions or wedding anniversaries, the big ones are 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40 and 50 years. Thus, January 28 won’t be an important media anniversary date until 2011, when it will mark 25 years since the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986.
Third, ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’ Significant numbers of dead, or the notoriety of the incident, are sufficent reason for ‘celebrating’ the anniversary.
The last few weeks of October and early November have brought major looks back at the and even at the murder of Nancy Spungen by Sid Vicious (relived in New York Magazine’s Entertainment Section!), each taking place in 1978, 30 years ago. Each of these stories fits the “anniversary story” criteria perfectly: In living memory, lurid, and a round number.
A fourth criteria for the anniversary story, importance, is highly subjective and thus easily ignored. I was surprised and dismayed by the lack of update coverage on Los Angeles 15 years after the LA Riots last year. And the 70th anniversary of the Nazi pogroms of Kristallnacht, the terror against Jewish homes and businesses that ignited the Holocaust, while commemorated in Germany, received precious little coverage in the U.S..
As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But whether we remember or not, all of us are condemned to a lifetime of anniversary stories from the media.
Tags: Barack-Obama, 9-11, media-anniversaries, Kristallnacht, Kato-Kaelin, Nancy-Spungen, Sid-Vicious, Kennedy-assassination, space-shuttle-Challenger, Rodney-King
Posted in Journalism, media-anniversaries | No Comments »
Henry Blodget Belongs in Jail
November 14, 2008 by encinoman
Yes, you can make an arguement that the American car companies should go out of business.
But not if you’re Henry Blodget, one of a pack of analysts with screaming conflicts of interests who contributed to the last financial meltdown, during the dot-com era. He was fined $4 million dollars and permanently barred from the securities industries in 2003 for his deceptive practics.
Blodget was the dot-com one. A former managing director at Merrill Lynch and the senior research analyst and group head for the firm’s Internet sector, Blodget was charged by the SEC with issuing “fraudulent research under Merrill Lynch’s name, as well as research in which he expressed views that were inconsistent with privately expressed negative views.”
Further, he “aided and abetted violations of antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and violated SRO rules by issuing research reports on one internet company (GoTo.com) that were materially misleading because they were contrary to privately expressed negative views.”
Blodget is now the CEO of the financial news site Clusterstock.com, which I have to say is pretty good (and comments on the securities industry from which Blodget was supposedly banned). Not bad for a pump-and-dumper who belongs with Dennis Kowzlowski–behind bars.
Tags: pump-and-dump, Henry-Blodget, Dennis-Kowzlowski
Posted in Journalism, business-journalism | No Comments »
ABC’s Spelling Error: Journalism’s Decline
November 14, 2008 by encinoman
The copy editor and the fact checker are no more. Also no more, sadly, is proper spelling, attention to detail and just basic accuracy. Take today’s ABCNEWS.COM story about the Montecito fires–please.
That’s Montecito, ABC–not “Monticeto.” In October an LA Times writer referred to an interview subject keeping a pair of “Ford Malibus” in his front yard. There’s lots more of this every day.
After an outcry from the readers, they fixed the Montecito story, but as one wrote, “The town is Montecito, not Monticeto. Spelling matters. In a previous posting someone asked whether the line editor was asleep. Nope. Probably didn’t see that the spelling was incorrect. Watch the crawl on CNN or MSNBC. During the course of a day there are scores of errors. As a nation we’ve lost the art of paying attention to detail. That’s why our economy is in trouble. We didn’t read the fine print when we signed the mortgage papers.”
Thousands Flee Tony California Town as Blaze Rages
Thirteen injured and more than 100 homes destroyed in fast-moving fire in Montecito
By MIKE VON FREMD and JONANN BRADY
Nov. 14, 2008
Flames that ripped through multimillion-dollar mansions Thursday evening continuing burning this morning in the upscale Southern California community of Monticeto, near Santa Barbara. At least 100 homes have been destroyed.
Tags: death-of-newspapers, fact-checking, copyediting, sloppy-journalism, Montecito
Posted in Journalism, Publishing | 1 Comment »
CES 2009 Cuts Room Rates: Signs of the Apocalypse
November 21, 2008 by encinoman
In another sign of the economic apocalypse upon us (thanks Henry Paulson, another parting gift from the Bush Administration and the ‘worlds most economically developed man’) the Consumer Electronics Association notified preregistered attendees of significant price cuts on ten different Las Vegas hotels.
No more the “biggest and best CES ever?” With Best Buy swooning, Circuit City expiring and all the manufacturers suffering, even long-time CEA head Gary Shapiro will have a tough time putting lipstick on this pig.
Tags: CES, Consumer Electronics, Henry-Paulson
Posted in 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, Consumer Electronics | No Comments »
January 27, 2009 by encinoman
There seemed to be plenty of leakage at the Consumer Electronics Show this year from the Adult Entertainment Expo. (And vice versa; Fox Home Video was promoting the ‘legit’ release Choke, starring Angelica Huston and Sam Rockwell, by distributing faux anal beads at the adult show.)
A case in point is FyreTV (www.fyreTV.com) which used one of the press parties at the ‘legitimate’ show to demonstrate what it proudly called “the world’s first wireless IPTV set-top box (or BoXXX, as they would have it) for streaming DVD adult content.”
The wireless ‘BoXXX’ ships with any new subscription, which starts at $9.95. The company signed to provide content from such stalwarts of the industry as Vivid, Wicked Pictures, Evil Angel, Seymore Butts and Sin City, among many others.
Is there a catch? According to one spokesman I talked to, it’s no ‘all the porn you can eat’ plan. The $9.95 basic service offers just 100 minutes a month, giving users an incentive to limit their ‘viewing’ to 3 minutes a day.
Just don’t fall asleep…
Tags: CES, Consumer Electronics, technology-journalism, porn, technology, FyreTV, BoXXX, Adult-Entertainment-Expo, Choke, Sam-Rockwell
Posted in 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, CES, porn, porn-industry | 1 Comment »
January 22, 2009 by encinoman
Although I am not an Apple fanatic, I do wish the best for Steve Jobs as a person. Being sick and focusing on getting better is no picnic.
That said, I think he should make a final break with Apple, in the same way that Bill Gates receded from Microsoft. Lost in the happy news about Apple beating estimates in a shitty market today was this news about an SEC investigation into Apple’s disclosure policies about his illness.
The investigation and Apple’s non-disclosures (such as the ‘hormone imbalance’ sham) suggest the company took a ”Weekend at Bernie’s” approach to propping up the great man. And as usual, the dwindling band of technology ‘journalists’/Apple syncophants didn’t ask the hard questions.
While the Woz is right that Apple can survive with Jobs, the company needs to go cold turkey now.
Tags: bill-gates, Apple-Computers, Steve-Jobs, technology-journalism, Steve-Wozniak
Posted in business-journalism, technology, technology-journalism | No Comments »
Arianna is Right
December 23, 2008 by encinoman
I’ve often taken a critical look at the Huffington Post, because of their uncool policy of not paying contributors, which is bad in itself and can lead to horrible work like this. Then there’s their habit of “borrowing” work on the Web.
But there’s no denying the intelligence and wisdom of its founder, the eponymous Arianna Huffington. Interviewer Choire Sicha recently asked her, “What was the most under-covered story of 2008?”
“I think the most under-covered story for me was: How did we get here? How did we get suddenly, or appear suddenly, in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? And exactly how did all these billions of dollars disappear? I think most immediately, the most under-covered story is how are the billions of bailout money being spent.”
She’s right. Henry Paulson’s bailout ‘plan’ seems to be to fly a helicopter over Wall Street dumping out buckets of cash.
But the coverage problem rests with the news media, which seems unwilling and unable to cover the crash of home values, banks, stocks and jobs in ways America can understand and act on.
One reason is that business desks are being slashed and the survivors are dispirited, wondering if their own jobs will be next, making for low-energy reporting. A second is the “innumeracy” too common in the news media, which Yglesias notes has “almost no understanding of quantitative methods.” Finally, you can blame our celebrity culture from Barack to Britney, whether it’s force-fed to consumers by editors or whether the media is responding to pressure for ratings from their own pressured bosses.
Tags: Arianna-Huffington, Huffington-Post, innumeracy, Yglesias
Posted in Huffington-Post, Journalism | No Comments »
Playboy Gives Skoal Happy Ending
December 16, 2008 by encinoman
I opened the mail today and got my new Skoal edition of Playboy. Under the clear plastic wrap, a woman was posed naked on hundreds of cans of Skoal, smiling alluringly. Skoal had the look, the goods guys like and most of all the official Playboy logo, if not the endorsement of the National Cancer Institute.
Turned out it was the back cover; the front cover is Carmen Electra, again.
But there’s a fine line between selling advertising, and selling out to your advertisers, especially one selling so morally
questionable a product. Is Playboy so desperate that it doesn’t know who it is anymore?
Tags: advertising-lows, dipping-tobacco-cancer, Playboy, Playboy-sells-out, Skoal, snuff-cancer
Posted in Advertising, Playboy, death-of-magazines | No Comments »
Mistakes of the Liberal Media
December 11, 2008 by encinoman
Yes, we know things are very bad now in the media; today’s Mediabistro bucket of cheer talks of layoffs at Newsweek, NPR and the death of local newspapers.
But that’s no excuse for making ridiculous, egregious errors like mispelling “Montecito” or inventing a new car, the “Ford Malibu.” But those are innocent mistakes compared to not checking the background of spokespeople before they’re interviewed, or bowing to political correctness.
Today, NPR’s Marketplace had a long interview with Henry Blodget about whether he saw this ‘bubble’ coming. Yes, the same Henry Blodget who was fined $4 million and banned for life from the securities industry is now a respectable commentator, like notorious anti-Semite Amiri Baraka this summer.
But when a host of a KCRW-FM show dares to compare firing someone for donating money to an anti-gay marriage cause to the Blacklist, he’s slapped down by the station manager.
Tags: Amiri-Baraka, KCRW.ORG, death-of-journalism, Henry-Blodget
Posted in Journalism, political-correctness | No Comments »
Ruth Seymour’s KCRW: The State is Moi
December 10, 2008 by encinoman
Few general managers are as closely associated with a public radio station, for better or worse, than Ruth Seymour with KCRW-FM, beginning her tenure in 1978. So it’s not surprising that the 70+ aging lioness (or dragon lady, as many would have it) in winter still believes as King Louis XIV of France believed “L’Etat, C’Est Moi (The State, That’s Me)
At KCRW, no one is bigger than the station, except Seymour, as acclaimed writer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh discovered a few years ago. The latest to feel her wrath, perhaps stirred by various KCRW constituencies, is Claude Brodesser-Aker, who decried the forced resignation of Rich Raddon from the LA Film Festival for his donation to “Yes on 8″, the proposition which actually said no to gay marriage. Seymour, who is certainly old enough to remember the Hollywood Blacklist, said the
“The Business compared his resignation to the Hollywood Blacklist days when members of the film industry lost their jobs because of alleged Communist sympathies. The actors, directors, writers and producers who were targeted in the Blacklist never resigned their positions. KCRW regrets airing this out-of-the-blue opinion and has made it clear to those involved that it is unacceptable.”
But Seymour-as-KCRW is often curiously silent when other ‘mistakes are made’ on the station’s airtime. In June, I wrote and blogged about another KCRW program giving airtime to one of America’s most notorious anti-semites.
Queen Ruth never responded.
Tags: KCRW.ORG, Ruth-Seymour
Posted in political-correctness | No Comments »
The Chutzpah of Henry Blodget
December 8, 2008 by encinoman
What is chutzpah? The Yiddish expression means, roughly, a lot of nerve. One example of chutzpah is the man who kills both his parents and throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.
Another is disgraced Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget publishing an article called “Why Wall Street Never Gets It.” He claims wearily “Our government—at our urging—will go to great lengths to try to make sure such a bust never happens again. We will “fix” the “problems” that we decide caused the debacle; we will create new regulatory requirements and systems; we will throw a lot of people in jail.”
That’s chutzpah from a man who could have gone to jail himself. And the esteemed Atlantic Magazine should receive the red badge of dishonor for publishing–and paying–Blodget, and for giving him a byline which reads “Henry Blodget is the editor of Silicon Alley Insider, an online business publication.” Omitted is the fact that he was fined $4 million dollars and permanently barred from the securities industries in 2003.
As you’d expect, Blodget goes for self-exoneration.
“By late 1998, I was cautioning clients that “what looks like a bubble probably is,” but this didn’t save me. Fifteen months later, I missed the top and drove my clients right over the cliff. “
And guess whose fault it was? “Later, in the smoldering aftermath, I was accused by Eliot Spitzer, then New York’s attorney general, of having hung on too long in order to curry favor with the companies I was analyzing, some of which were also Merrill banking clients. This allegation led to my banishment from the industry.”
Blodget may call it an “allegation” but the SEC fined him a total of $4 million and as he says, banned him from the industry. Why he is allowed to comment professionally on Wall Street, and indeed run the Silicon Alley Insider, is beyond me.
But hey–he’s got chutzpah.
Tags: Henry-Blodget, chutzpah, The-Atlantic, Wall-Street-meltdown
Posted in business-journalism | No Comments »
Websurfing is Good For You!
December 5, 2008 by encinoman
Survey says “the Web-savvy group also registered activity in the frontal, temporal and cingulate areas of the brain, whereas those new to the net did not.” (These areas of the brain control decision-making and complex reasoning.)
Study leader Gary Small of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA said “A simple, everyday task like searching the Web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older,” Small said.
Of course, the survey didn’t say anything about the effect of websurfing on one’s s0cial skills, waistline, posture or self-respect.
Tags: Internet, Internet-and-aging, Internet-health
Posted in technology-journalism | No Comments »
