Driver Texting Now an Issue in the Back Seat

Are you serious? Texting in the backseat is now harmful to the driver? This is ridiculous. These critics say that “electronics not only put lives at risk, but also steal attention from passengers hoping for some quality catch-up time.” In a recent survey conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, found that 48 percent of people worry about a friend or family member driving unsafely, and 19 percent said the reason of their concern was texting or doing something else behind the wheel. Okay, so obviously we know not to text behind the wheel. Yes people still do, but we all know we are not supposed to. Now, they are finding excuses to eliminate texting everywhere you go! I didn’t start texting till a couple months ago and it has never been such a problem until now. They are trying to make it seem like texting is the worst thing in the world and that it is dangerous to everyone who uses it. OMG! TEXTING IS GOING TO END THE WORLD NOW! Seriously? In the survey a woman, Ms. Macauley, said. To her, talking on the phone or texting while driving, unless it’s an emergency, is “completely gross.” Okay, so texting is not gross. I don’t understand why people make a huge deal about it. Yes I agree with the rule that states that we should not be texting while driving. It’s kind of common sense that you’re supposed to be paying attention to the road and not your phone. Stop trying to bend the rules by saying, “well, I don’t look at my phone when I’m driving. I just text the world without looking.” You need to read the damn message before you reply to it! And the survey said 33% feel pressured to text if someone else in the car is driving. Okay if you feel the sudden urge to text just because other people are doing it you might have an addiction to texting. That’s pretty bad if that applies to you, but whatever. They can make all the laws they want, it doesn’t mean that everyone is going to follow them. We should be able to text anywhere in the car as long as we are not behind the wheel!

Wikipedia-Obama’s Speech

There is a raging debate whether or not people should have the option to edit Wikipedia pages of prominent political figures such as Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson interrupts Obama’s speech with an outburst. Shortly after this happened, someone posted the new information onto Joe Wilson’s Wikipedia page. At first it was going to be classified as vandalism since it was a new or unregistered user but shortly after it was deleted and the page was locked from editing. “Wikipedians” debated over the source and eventually decided that information needed to be included, but the addition of the fact that Joe Wilson did not have all the facts present at the time had to be present on the page. Another thing that was changed was that his actual quote was removed.

Obama’s Speech

Our opinions:

We think that editing should be done on Wikipedia but should be limited from political figures such as Joe Wilson or Barack Obama.
-Savanna Souza & Austin Soares

Tech Ideas from Twitterland

This article was about the common persons ideas for various electronic devices. Some of the ideas were very inventive, such as the phone not ringing during certain hours. Others were foolish, such as an Audio TiVo for the radio channel of mp3 devices. It was interesting to read about people’s ideas, and only time will tell if any of these things will actually be included.

Computerized Medical Records

Technology companies are trying to push people to bring computerized health records into small offices for physician practices. If this ends up going through, it would be very important because it'll be everything more satisfactory, it'll even cut the curbing costs. Three-fourths of the nation's physicians practice medicine with ten or fewer doctors. The first people that will be doing it would be the high investors with all the money and incentives to invest in electronic health records, then comes the small practices. The technology doctors are investing in practice management software. It's used mainly for billing not for electronic health records. More than 120,000 physicians use the practice management software, which was given to them by General Electric but only 35,000 use electronic health records. At Athenahealth, this is for most small practices, 20,000 physicians use its billing software however only 1,100 have also opted for its electronic health records. The plan is have to the payments be reimbursed to the doctors for much of their investment in electronic health records. Dell is actually going to the Houston area to all of the hospitals and doctors office including the small ones. Doctors are seeing it as an organized way to keep up with the patient's medical records, the latest that they have had done, etc. The way they plan up to set up the offices is that the flat-screen PC are to the right of the doctor present and patients sit to the left of it, but the doctors tend to say, "the computer will never get between me and a patient." I think that means that he'll always care for the patient rather than caring just about what the computer's doing, he'll care about their feelings and needs. Another reason why this is a good idea is because if a doctor is on call, a patient calls him with abdominal pain, the doctor can view the patient's medical records and previous history to make an informed diagnosis right then and there. Even when it comes to prescribing medication, he can do that from his home laptop as well. Overall, I think it's a good idea.

Tweet For Hire

Big business is using growing technologies to their advantage. Recently companies such Coca-Cola and Best Buy have hired staff to basically sit around all hours of the day and talk to people over twitter. They believe this will gain them support and people will view them as a "people oriented" store. Ever since they began doing this they have seen a profit increase across the board. They don't try to push sales on people it is more of a subconscious thing where you will see them as your friend before sales people. It is a smart marketing ploy to trick the minds of certain types of people who are easy to befriend. The companies have now even gone so far as to offer jobs over twitter to people with at least 250 friends. In Coca-Cola's case they hired a person to deal with complaints over twitter. Soon after a complaint was made that a trip that was won was not received and within a day the problem was fixed thanks to the speed of twitter. Some companies also give prizes over twitter but to get them you need to read about the deals that company is having that week or month. So we see that ultimately this is just a quick scheme to get people to be more interested in companies and it seems to be working.

More Free Minutes! :D

    The mobile phone company Sprint is now competing with its rival phone companies and offering its customers more minutes. They now have a plan for $69.99 which gives you unlimited mobile to mobile calling to any network, unlimited text and data, and 450 landline minutes. Or an $89.99 plan that offers the same unlimited things with 900 landline minutes. As mobile companies keep discounting costs for plans Sprint has taken the lead with its new unlimited calling plan.

Web Monitoring

"Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, and AOL and other services, and send that data back to the company. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids. The data is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids. According to the agreement, the software passes along data to "trusted partners.""

So is web monitoring that entirely safe? Do you find people reading your child's private thoughts comforting? Is it safe to have personal information, like what school they go to, who their friends are and what they're doing after school read just to keep your child from looking at what? Why do parents monitor their child's computer? To keep them from looking at what they assume they aren't old enough to see, to keep them barred from what they presume is evil. Why do parents believe monitoring their child's computer will keep them "safe?" They try and keep them out of chat rooms as if to keep them from making the stupid mistake of giving out personal information to a complete stranger when in fact the parents did that themselves already.

When brought up to some of the companies in question stated one competitor, CyberPatrol LLC, said it would never consider such an arrangement. "That's pretty much confidential information," said Barbara Rose, the company's vice president of marketing. "As a parent, I would have a problem with them targeting youngsters."

But others like EchoMetrix said that if parents don't want their child's information sold to businesses then they can well check a box not to, but this option is only available on their website; which most parents aren't even aware of.

And although EchoMetrix is ranked among the top 5 best for parent control, sales figures have never been included. According to EchoMetrix News Corps Fox Broadcasting, DreamWorks, Viacom, and Paramount pictures are all signed on for the leasing of private information; and when these companies were addressed none commented.

So what does that tell you there?

So tell me, is web monitoring safe?