Maybe you haven’t noticed that we’ve become the nation with the collective attention span of a tsetse fly. Or that we’re a nation utterly convinced that the more things you can do at the same time the more gifted you are.

The signs of the impending wreckage are everywhere. In London, they’ve padded certain phone poles to stop overly focused texters from walking into them. In the U.S., approximately 40% of automobile accidents (one occurs every 13 seconds) are based on inattentiveness, with cellphone distractions being the primary cause. Facebook makes it way too easy to fritter away the day trading repartees with kindergarten buddies, leaving you wondering where the day went. Our kids are more comfortable texting it than saying it. The latest study from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds our kids spend more than 50 hours of screen time each week. Not 50 serial hours though; they just multitask screen time better than the rest of us. (The homework/iPod/Facebook/texting/TV combo is fave.) Read more »

A lady walks into a bar–only this time the punch line is that it’s a Genius Bar. As a long-time PC user, my relationship to Apple is complicated. Love ‘em because they’re beautiful, admire the way they work. Hate ‘em because they’re closed systems, the complete antithesis of everything that the information age should be. Apple may be a benevolent despot, but a despot nonetheless.

Back to the Genius Bar. I made my maiden voyage with some trepidation, after upgrading my iPod Touch to Version 3.0 and encountering troubles. I brought my shhh…HP Pavilion along to show that I buy my music, most often from iTunes, and that while my podcasts, movies, and photos all made the upgrade, my music was still stuck in my PC’s library. Read more »

If you read nothing else this week, take a look at the new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Some of the top line findings are worrisome. Kids still rank TV their fave for media—spending as much as seven to eight hours a day watching (that’s a full time job). Turns out that there’s little parental oversight, and kids who watched the most TV were also the least contented. The biggest surprise? Despite the proliferation of home computers, the TV continues to be top dog.

More research into what kids watch and how we might tap into their screen time for learning is required, but congrats to Vicky Rideout (who previewed the results at our Kids@Play Summit in Las Vegas.

CES is a toy show for adults and this year’s CES showcased bigger, better, and more expensive toys than ever. The year’s hottest toy was undoubtedly 3D.

The TVs came to CES in a dizzying display of shapes and sizes. Mobs of people wearing special 3D glasses made it feel like you were walking into the cast of Mission Impossible. All were staring at cathedral-sized walls of 3D piled upon 3D. Those of us old enough to remember the red/blue cardboard glasses we got at the movies remember that the only decent part about the 3D experience was faking those “scary moments” as an excuse to grab the hand of a dates. Read more »

I feel like the Grinch mentioning this around the holidays, but it’s a fact. Kids get homework even as the holidays approach. The rule of thumb is that kids get 20 minutes of homework per grade. So by junior high school you’re looking at between 2-3 hours of homework each evening–and that’s after a long day of school and extracurricular activities.

Of course, if they browse without some structure or keep their IM and Facebook accounts open while working, the web can be a disaster. But if you help them hone in on the problem, the homework helpers on the web are pretty darn good.

Read more »

The Last Gadget Standing was the very first event that I produced for CES. That was nine years ago. The premise of the contest hasn’t changed. At CES you’ll see hundreds of new product introductions. But, by the time the year’s out, a healthy chunk of them are never to be heard from again.

Last Gadget Standing was created because “the people” can spot the winner in the crowd of new products. Unlike journalists, consumers are not likely to be swayed by a gadget without a reason, or by bells and whistles that you’d use once in a lifetime.

Read more »

AIP stands for Aging in Place, and as boomers age, or find themselves with aging parents, you’re going to hear more about how to use technology to allow folks to live in their own homes longer. Whether it’s a televisit for the doctors or a motion ssensor that detects a fall, there are many roads to aging in place. For more info see AIPatHome.com.

I don’t know how you spend your post-Thanksgiving Fridays, but our family usually goes for a  vigorous hike; then we turn into couch-sloths.  But for many, Black Friday means getting up at 4AM and getting ready to do battle at the shopping malls, big box stores and even online.
 Black Friday,  a shopping day that was traditionally designed to get stores into “the black”.  This year they’ll be lucky to get into anything that isn’t deep, deep red.  And consumer’s will be the recipients of retailer’s headaches. Read more »

With hundreds of new product launches and an annual industry reunion, CES brings out the fortune-teller (oops, I mean analyst) in all of us. The economy has forced companies to tone down big risk-taking schemes, but there’s still plenty to talk about, even if some of it comes with a lower price tag. Read more »

Intel’s Reader is a book reader of a completely different kind. It’s designed for those who have trouble reading the printed word. It doesn’t matter whether the reading problem comes from low vision or a learning issue, the Reader handles both.

While it’s a far cry from pocket-sized, the Reader is a two-handed device that’s about the size and thickness of a hefty paperback. The body houses a high resolution (5-megapixel) camera with autofocus and a full-powered Linux-based PC with the Intel Atom processor. Read more »