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Post image for Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

by mark on June 17, 2009

Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

The rectangles even help Americans to successfully emote, often by using a combination of visual and aural signals to indicate when laughter or tears should be produced.

“Life would be very different if it weren’t for these magical squares of light,” cultural studies professor and social critic David Ostroff typed to reporters using one of his wireless messaging rectangles. “Sry. Have 2 go. Movie about 2 strt.”

On average, Americans interact with anywhere from 53 to 107 pulsating rectangles every week. For many, however, this is simply not enough. Despite having a leisure rectangle in every bedroom, along with multiple work rectangles, a rectangle just for the children, and one or two rectangles that can do the work of several rectangles in one, many citizens admit to being dissatisfied.

If Apple really wanted to be different, they would avoid building another rectangular device and do something insanely great, like give us a glowing nonagon, or a let’s get all retro and go back to the 1950′s style glowing squircles.

Have you ever measured how much time your kids are in front of all glowing rectangles? It would be an interesting experiment. I wonder if we actually did measure all of that time with TV, computers, iPods, and video games, if it would make us more likely to impose limits.

If you do come up with measurements, post them in the comments.

For my two kids, my son exceeds my daughter by a large margin. My daughter is mostly in front of her computer, while my son does a considerable amount of TV and iPod Touch staring in addition to the time he spends on the computer and it can consume an unhealthy amount of time.

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A Tale of Two Types of Parental Control Software

by mark on March 31, 2009

Choosing parental control software

Speaking to a customer who was trying out ComputerTime, I was asked if ComputerTime did parental control types of things. What she really was asking was, “Does ComputerTime do internet filtering?” Some people think the terms are synonymous. But parental control software is a more general term and can refer to different types of control.

Blocking and Logging Parental Control Software

Most parental control software that hit the market over a decade ago, primarily monitored or blocked websites along with other internet related activities. Some software went as far as spying on kids every activity.

Website blocking software has never been extremely effective*. To be effective, the database of sites that need to be blocked has to be complete. But everyday, tens of thousands of new domains are registered. Old domains expire and are acquired by people who put up different web pages than the previous owners. If you feel comfortable utilizing a tool that may only be 90% accurate — that’s better than nothing — but don’t rely on it for real protection.

I gotta feeling like somebody's watching me
I Spy with my 25 Eyes by nickhall

Tools that give parents detailed logs of websites visited, every keystroke typed, and even screen snapshots seem a bit creepy. Just because parents can monitor every aspect of their kids online lives, is it the right thing to do? Parents will take different sides on this issue. Parents today should think back to when they were kids: If your parents clandestinely listened in on your phone conversations, or trailed you in their cars at a distance, using parabolic microphones to listen to your conversations across the parking lot, would you resent or respect them for how they handled your upbringing.

SoftwareTime’s Approach to Parental Control

SoftwareTime‘s stance is that the best web filter is the watchful eye of the parent. Ensure that computers are located in a public area of the house and if you choose, set limits that disallow use of the computer at times that you won’t be around to keep an eye on the activity.

ComputerTime encourages responsible use of computers. Kids push against boundaries, not always respecting limits. They don’t always act in their own best interest, and ignore consequences. Parental guidance is required. ComputerTime helps parents to provide this guidance, but does not replace parents.

With ComputerTime, it’s you, the parent, that still sets the rules for how long and when your kids can be on the computer. You can be strict with the limits that you set, or you can be flexible and let the kids manage their time within relaxed constraints if they have shown themselves to be more responsible. Since you’re only managing time with ComputerTime, it’s a less intrusive type of parental control.

Things Are and Aren’t Different Today

Kids with cell phones, the web, IM, email, FaceBook, MySpace… It’s a whole new world.

But kids themselves, they haven’t changed all that much. The aspire to be trusted, respected, loved, appreciated, etc.

The best way to handle our children in today’s technology-saturated world is similar to what our parents would have done when we were kids:

  • Have a good, open relationship with our kids where they feel comfortable talking with you. Spying on them would joepardize that relationship, so don’t do that.
  • Provide guidance. Teach your kids good values and responsibility so that kids can do the right thing whether that be at the playground, the mall, or online.
  • Pay attention to your kids. You’ll know when something is wrong; attentive parents notice subtle changes in kids behavior and moods when they are in trouble.
  • Give them roots and wings

Do you agree with this philosophy? Do you think parents always be aware of exactly what’s going on? Overtly or covertly? Leave a comment below.

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A quick shout out to my friend Brett, who posted about his fears and uncertainties about how to best handle the issue of how much privacy he should give his kids when they’re old enough to get onto the Internet. It’s a problem that a lot of parents wrestle with, and inspired me to share my two cents.

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Hearing Loss Occurs Sooner Than You Might Think

by mark on March 9, 2009

Whether you suffer hearing loss from headphones depends on three things: how loud you listen to music, how long you listen, and what type of headphones you listen with.

Most MP3 players (such as the iPod) come with the earbud style headphones which are placed in the ear, will cause hearing loss faster than supra-aural headphones which rest on the outer ear.

Study: Hearing damage occurs after more than 5 minutes of full-volume listening on iPod earbuds.

The worst choice appears to be the headphones that isolate outside noise by fitting into the ear canal.

Sennheiser PX 100 Headphones

Played at no more than 50% of the maximum volume, none of the headphones appear to cause permanent hearing loss. You can even enjoy constant listening at those moderate levels.

Higher volumes bring the risk of damage, and then listening times also become a factor. If you are going to push the volume up, then you should limit how long you listen.

Recommendations:  Find a good set of supra-aural headphones. I’m a fan of the Sennheiser PX 100 headphones. They are comfortable, light, and sound terrific. Most importantly, don’t play it so loud!

Previously: Famous Rocker Pleads With You to Turn It Down.

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That Diabolical ComputerTime!

by mark on December 18, 2008

This week, ComputerTime was recommended in an article in USA Today called “Gifts that are Good for You“. Yay! The author of the article turns out to be a Mom that actually has been using the software for a while and she really liked it.

For the harried parents of a computer addict: Just send them to softwaretime.com. Here they can download a free two-week trial of the diabolical ComputerTime software. (If they like it, offer to spring for the $39 permanent version.) The program lets a parent set time limits. The kids get passwords to log on for their allowed periods and are blessedly, quietly, automatically logged off when their time expires. No screaming arguments, no sneaky midnight Facebook sessions.

She didn’t even touch on Time Tokens or that you can have one set of limits across all of the computers on your home network. But I like the “diabolical” label that she puts on it. Why haven’t we used that in our marketing?  Hmmm.

Have you tried ComputerTime yet? If you have, we would enjoy hearing how it works out for your family.  If you haven’t tried it out, it’s available as a 14-day free trial, so why not give it a shot?

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Like You Really Need More Evidence

by Mark on September 20, 2008

Godfrey Reggio’s, Evidence.

The blank, comatose look. I’ve seen it myself. You can easily witness it too. Just watch your kids watching TV. Give them a few minutes to settle into it. It’s like watching a person go under hypnosis. I know that feeling too. I used to watch more TV myself years ago, even as an adult.

The debate always seems to be raging if television is good or bad for you and your family. What is it that people are looking for as proof? Dead brain cells? Some measure in the drop in intelligence that can be correlated with television watching? Given the number of variables that influences a persons cognitive ability, I don’t know that we could ever isolate television as an influence.

I certainly don’t want to subject my kids to being part of that study at any rate.

Stephen Dubner (Freakonomics co-author) blogged yesterday about What TV Does to You, with an image of a kid silhouetted against a glowing TV.

I am inclined to agree with him that educational TV has benefits. I like the technology. But the average American isn’t watching over 4.5 hours of educational TV daily. Most of them are watching crap. And most kids who spend hours in front of the TV are watching Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network.

The highlight of Dubner’s post is this excerpt which he took from a friends book:

That last year in New Haven, I could go out to friends’ houses more or less when I wanted to and watch television as often as I liked, only to find that now I agreed with my mother about TV. I had begun not to like what happened to me when I watched.

Given the chance, I stared like a guppy, immobilized for hours in somebody’s den on an increasingly itchy wall-to-wall carpet, intent on things I didn’t even enjoy, passive and yet also anxious, too aware of how soon the hour would be up when the little world in front of me would evaporate and I’d have nothing left but an uneasy regret and another new show beginning that I couldn’t get up and walk away from.

It was so easy not to resist because television was doing all the work for me, making all the decisions. That was especially true, I noticed, when I watched baseball. The field became reduced to the fragment that fit on the screen, minimizing the game into a fraction of itself, implying that everything happening off-camera was irrelevant. The players were minimized as well, because they did not exist unless the ball came their way. Then the lens swooped into their faces and there was too much of them — which weirdly created distance.

This nails it. I’ve had the same feelings. After turning off the TV after being sucked into a few hours of aimless channel surfing, I would think to myself, “Wow. I just wasted a few hours.” Things seemed interesting at first, and I would land on a channel, watch for a bit, move on to another channel. Maybe I did get sucked into something for a full hour. But when it was over, I thought, “That was lame.” I would recognize that I felt a bit drained. I bit disappointed that I wasted that time. I finally realized this and just about gave up TV. I still maintain a Netflix account and will watch the occasional movie. I still watch educational shows with my kids. But I still have to limit and sometimes pry my son off of Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network.

I still tell him that it’s going to shrink his brain. I don’t care what the researchers say on this one. I know it in my gut. I know what TV can do to a person in the short term if they watch low quality programming, so-called entertainment, or sit in front of it for too long even watching the better programming.

Instead of debating good or bad, maybe all we really need to do is ask ourselves, “Is there something my kid can be doing for these one or two hours that would be much better for them than watching TV?”

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Should I Teach My 5-Year-Old .NET Programming?

by mark on December 5, 2007

How much technology is “too much, too soon”?

Opinions on this vary so much and most parents make their decisions from the gut anyways, or they just leave it up to the kids to decide. If the kids like computers, video games and gadgets, they just let them have at it.

My friend Brett (Dadtalk) ponders this question as he notices that his kids don’t want to play with the “toy versions” of things. They much prefer the real things. I noticed this with my kids too, my daughter when she was 2 couldn’t leave our TV remove alone. So we bought her this flashy toy one. Instead of black and gray, it was bright red, blue, green, and yellow, and each button played fancy sounds and made the device flash. In no time she became bored with it and kept wanting the real TV remote again.

Like most parents, Brett spends a lot of time thinking about the welfare of his kids and what he can do for them now to prepare the for the real world. He wants them to have an edge in the real world. Who wouldn’t. And the tools of the real world contain computers, cell phones, PDAs. Brett comments:

“One day a computer will be the single most important tool in their lives.”

Hold that thought.

I met a neighbor at a soccer game once, and we chatted. I told him about the product that I was developing, ComputerTime, and how it would help parents limit the time that their kids would spend on the computer because some kids just can’t get off of them without a lot of effort on the part of their parents. His response was, “Oh! I don’t think I would want that on my computer. If I could get my kids to use it 24 hours a day, I would!” Huh? You want to raise a sedentary, greasy, anti-social, pasty-white, introverted nerd?

As somebody who has worked in the software development world, let me tell you what it’s about in a nutshell.

  • Problem Solving
  • Creativity
  • Ability to Learn New Things
  • Motivation
  • Communication
  • Listening
  • Speaking
  • Leadership
  • Persistence
  • Imagination
  • Teamwork
  • Designing Complex Systems
  • Doing Computer Things (writing code, Googling, creating documents, email, etc)

The point is, that a job in the computer field can be lucrative, but if you put your kids on a computer for 24 hours a day, are they going to learn how to do all of those other things on the critical skill list above? And that list is about the same for any other career your kids might be interested in.

Kids need to learn those other skills and they’ll do by playing with other kids, getting involved in group activities, playing alone, reading, talking, helping Mom and Dad around the home, being left alone for a while with a problem with real objects in our real environment, walking the dog, helping cook dinner, building a dog house, helping fix the alternator on the car, and sure, using electronic devices once in a while.

I did all of these things growing up and I didn’t start using a computer until I was 15. And look where I am today! Steeped in technology, being successful, and yet always struggling to keep up with the constant change!

Think about this: Compare cell phones now to cell phones 10 years ago, or cell phones 20 years ago. Compare DOS to Windows 3.1 to Windows Vista. Compare Fidonet BBS, to AOL, to the World Wide Web 1995 to the World Wide Web 2007. Do you think anything your kids learn today, technology-wise is going to matter when they’re coming out of college in 20 years? The landscape will look quite different than it does today. I’m sure of that.

So what’s going to be the single most important tool in your kids lives? Their brains, properly equipped with a broad range of problem-solving and social skills!

So Brett, don’t worry too much about your kids falling behind in the technology curve. I think they’ll do great. Focus on the basics and raise wonderful, creative, well-rounded adults who can problem solve in a team environment and persist at things and be really fun to work with, and they will prosper. Those skills never become obsolete, and in a tech industry, they sometimes seem so hard to come by these days.

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