Kids Love Snapchat Because They See Facebook Like Adults See LinkedIn

Kids Love Snapchat Because They See Facebook Like Adults See LinkedIn

Kids are in a petri dish, where their every social post can be scrutinized and used against them. That’s why disappearing media startup Snapchat is important, says its investor, Benchmark‘s Bill Gurley. Teens don’t want their daily lives permanently recorded. Gurley said at TechCrunch Disrupt Europe in Berlin that Snapchat board member Mitch Lasky’s kids tell him they view Facebook like adults view LinkedIn.

It’s the lack of this understanding that’s led many people to discount Snapchat and deride it as merely a sexting service. But the kids get it. Founder Evan Spiegel said onstage in September at Disrupt SF that Snapchat now sees 350 million “snaps” (photos and videos) sent every day. That’s stunning, especially considering 350 million is the same number of photos Facebook sees uploaded daily.

Here’s the Benchmark team discussing Snapchat onstage. You can read about the rest of the talk here, where they discuss Benchmark’s strategy for adding value alongside their investments.

Gurley went deep to explain why ephemeral messaging is on the rise:

“For kids, the Internet is increasingly becoming a place that you can’t share, that you can’t have fun, that you can’t socialize in the way you want to. I think that’s really the essence of Snapchat. It’s a platform where they can communicate and have fun without any anxiety about the permanence. You hear about kids not getting jobs because of what’s on their Facebook page.”

If you’re an adult, you might not want to post your vacation photos to LinkedIn because it could make you look like a slacker. And that’s the way some kids feel about sharing photos on Facebook. They’d rather privately share photos that self-destruct so they don’t get judged.

Kids want to be kids just like they always have, but now they live in a world of social media. Snapchat affords them a degree of privacy during their formative years when they’re expected to make mistakes.

Ephemerality Is Here To Stay

This overarching perspective of teens is key to understanding why Snapchat isn’t just a feature that Facebook can clone like it tried to with Poke. Its independence and the fact that the whole service is ephemeral is core to its success, and supports Spiegel’s decision to refuse acquisition offers from TechCrunch.

This is also why ephemeral technology isn’t just a fad. Permanent social networks will always have a place. They help us build an archive of knowledge and a record of our lives. But ephemeral messaging more accurately digitizes many of the ways we interact, like in-person conversation.

Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook as companies may not be around forever, but both the concepts of ephemeral and permanent sharing have a healthy future. And that understanding makes reports of Snapchat raising money at a ~$3.5 billion valuation seem a lot less crazy.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/9subavqarRY/
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White House aide fired over Twitter account

WASHINGTON (AP) — A White House national security official was fired after it was discovered that he was behind an anonymous Twitter account that criticized the Obama administration.

Jofi Joseph was nonproliferation director on the National Security Council and was involved in nuclear negotiations with Iran.

His postings on the @NatSecWonk account, which no longer is available on Twitter, often took shots at administration policy and figures, including Secretary of State John Kerry, and members of Congress.

One tweet said: "More people should be asking why John Kerry installed two former aides, both with ZERO foreign policy experience, into top posts at State."

Another tweet said: "That Obama only called Kerry/Hagel AFTER he made decision with his WH aides on going to Hill underscores how all foreign policy is WH-based." The post referred to Obama's surprise decision in late August to seek congressional authorization for military strikes against Syria as punishment for a chemical weapons attack in August.

Joseph could not be reached Wednesday for comment. No one answered the telephone at a number believed to be his.

In a statement to Politico, Joseph said he took "complete responsibility" for the Twitter feed, saying it started as a "parody account." He apologized to those he insulted.

A White House official confirmed that Joseph no longer works for the administration, but declined further comment on personnel matters. It was not immediately clear how officials determined that Joseph was behind the Twitter account.

Joseph began working at the State Department in 2009. Deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said he was assigned to the National Security Council in 2011 and became an NSC employee last August.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday he had no additional information to provide.

Carney said White House staffers cannot access social media sites like Twitter from the White House unless they have an official, authorized account. Carney and many other senior administration officials have official Twitter accounts and they often send several messages a day.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-10-23-US-White-House-Twitter-Firing/id-6490caf3fc674aefbc199682823c825d
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Health Screens Offered By Nonprofits May Harm More Than Help

Stacy Riggs of Fairfax, Va., is prepped for a screening for atrial fibrillation by Life Line Screening medical assistant Kennea Blake at Messiah United Methodist Church in Springfield, Va.

Jenny Gold/Kaiser Health News

Messiah United Methodist Church in Springfield, Va., is unusually busy for a Thursday morning. It's not a typical time for worship, but parishioner Stacy Riggs and her husband have come for something a little different: a medical screening.

"I'm getting ready to turn 50 sooner than I'd like to say, and just thought it was a good time to get an overall screening," said Riggs, of Fairfax, Va. She doesn't have any symptoms, but she stopped by the church, which as a service to parishoners is offering a day of testing by the company Life Line Screening.

For less than $200, Riggs is getting six different screenings for stroke, heart disease and osteoporosis. Life Line says they've checked 8 million Americans this way at churches and community centers, and up to 10 percent of them have been found to have some sort of abnormality.

But several of the tests performed by Life Line are on a list of procedures for healthy people to avoid.

The tests can potentially do more harm than good, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel that recommends evidence-based treatments. Even though the screening tests are generally noninvasive, follow-up exams and procedures often are not, and can increase a person's odds of being injured or overtreated.

One of those questionable tests is carotid artery screening, which looks for plaque buildup in a neck artery that can cause a stroke. It's on the American Academy of Family Physicians' list of procedures to avoid.

With that test, "the patient is more likely actually to have a stroke because of the screening and subsequent testing and possible surgery than if they'd never been screened at all," says Dr. Glen Stream, who chairs the academy's board.

The problem, he says, is that many of the findings are false positives – in other words, things that may be abnormal but won't ever hurt you. But once you find something, he says, it's hard not to aggressively treat it, even when that's not the right approach.

"There's sort of a compelling momentum for patient and doctor both to say, 'Well, now that we know there's a problem, we need to investigate and understand it. And then there's the dilemma about, 'Do we treat it?' " Stream explains. "So many times watchful waiting is the right treatment option, but it just doesn't always sit well."

Dr. Andy Manganaro, medical director of Life Line Screening in Independence, Ohio, takes a different view. He says the company's tests save many lives. Manganaro, who was a vascular surgeon for 30 years, says he was often called to see a patient in the emergency room who had an already-ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm that could have been discovered earlier with screening tests of the sort that Life Line Screening offers.

"Had they known they had the aneurysm a week before, we could have fixed it with very little risk to them," he says. "And they would have been going home instead of to the morgue."

And while most of the research and advisory panels are nearly unanimous that several tests offered by Life Line and other companies are more likely to cause harm than good for people without symptoms, Manganaro counters that the research those panels cite is out of date.

Even people who aren't at major risk can benefit, he says, because the tests push them to change their lifestyles before more damage is done.

"Yes, you can tell people in general, lose weight, stop smoking, exercise, lead a healthy lifestyle. But most often it goes in one ear and out the other," Manganero says. "On the other hand, though, if you show someone a picture of their carotid artery filled with plaque as compared to a normal carotid artery, they're much more likely to throw out their Lucky Strikes on the way out the door."

“ When information comes in the form of an advertisement or promotion, regardless of the source, be skeptical.

- Dr. John Santa

But it's not just about quitting smoking or taking other steps to improve your health. It's also about money.

Life Line Screening is a for-profit company, and it often partners with local hospitals and surgical centers that help promote the screening days. If Life Line screens find an abnormality, the patients can be referred to the hospital for follow-up care, which means more business for the hospital. Cardiac care can be especially lucrative.

The fact that for-profit companies are pushing these tests should raise consumer suspicions, says Dr. John Santa, medical director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center.

"When information comes in the form of an advertisement or promotion, regardless of the source, be skeptical," Santa says. "Realize that from a health point of view, if this was a really good and important thing to do you probably wouldn't need to be advertising and promoting it."

Most important, he adds, is to talk to your family doctor before doing any kind of screening to make sure you're getting the tests that are right for you.

This story was produced in collaboration with Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/28/239861764/health-screens-offered-by-nonprofits-may-harm-more-than-help?ft=1&f=1001
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Woods says the next step is up to Golf Channel

HAIKOU, China (AP) — Tiger Woods put the heat on Golf Channel over analyst Brandel Chamblee's insinuation of cheating, saying Monday that he was ready to move forward and that now it was up to what Golf Channel was prepared to do.

Woods spoke publicly for the first time since Chamblee, a longtime critic of the world's No. 1 player, wrote a column for SI Plus in which he gave Woods an "F'' for his five-win season because of a series of rules violations.

Chamblee wrote that Woods was "a little cavalier with the rules," and he made the analogy of the time his fourth-grade teacher crossed out "100" and gave him an "F'' for cheating on a math test. Chamblee last week went on Twitter to say the cheating comparison went too far, and he apologized to Woods for "this incited discourse."

"All I am going to say is that I know I am going forward," Woods said before his exhibition match with Rory McIlroy at Mission Hills. "But then, I don't know what the Golf Channel is going to do or not. But then that's up to them. The whole issue has been very disappointing as he didn't really apologize and he sort of reignited the whole situation.

"So the ball really is in the court of the Golf Channel and what they are prepared to do."

Golf Channel has not commented on the flap. Chamblee is an analyst, but he wrote his column about Woods as a contributor to another publication. Chamblee has said he was not asked to apologize by anyone.

Woods' agent, Mark Steinberg, was so incensed by the column that he issued a statement to ESPN.com that raised the possibility of legal action. Steinberg shared his client's views.

"I'm all done talking about it and it's now in the hands of the Golf Channel," Steinberg said. "That's Tiger's view and that's mine, and all we want to do is move forward. And whether the Golf Channel moves forward as well, then we'll have to wait and see."

Woods accepted a two-shot penalty in Abu Dhabi for taking relief from an embedded ball in a sandy area covered with vegetation. Augusta National gave him a two-shot penalty for taking the wrong drop in the second round of the Masters. And the PGA Tour gave him a two-shot penalty after his second round of the BMW Championship when video evidence showed that his ball moved slightly from behind the first green. Even after watching the video, Woods insisted that his ball only oscillated.

Also in question — at least on Internet blogs — was the drop Woods took on the 14th hole of the TPC Sawgrass during the final round of The Players Championship. Woods checked with playing partner Casey Wittenberg on where to take the penalty drop, which is standard procedure. Wittenberg said it was the correct spot.

Chamblee said in an email last week to The Associated Press that he never said outright that he thinks Woods cheated, and that was by design.

"I think 'cavalier with the rules' allows for those with a dubious opinion of the BMW video," Chamblee said. "My teacher in the fourth grade did not have a dubious opinion of how I complete the test. But she was writing to one, and as I was writing to many, I felt it important to allow for the doubt some might have, so I chose my words accordingly.

"What people want to infer about that is up to them," he said. "I have my opinion, they can form theirs."

Chamblee has developed a reputation for being critical of Woods, mainly regarding his golf game. His column struck a nerve with many, however, because of the implication that three rules violations and a penalty drop involving Woods amounted to cheating — the strongest accusation possible in golf.

"What brought me here was the realization that my comments inflamed an audience on two sides of an issue," Chamblee wrote on Twitter when he apologized. "Golf is a gentleman's game and I'm not proud of this debate. I want to apologize to Tiger for this incited discourse."

___

AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson in Shanghai contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-10-28-GLF-Woods-Chamblee/id-957521ab8e59440f9ef26dad2cd4845c
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Livescribe's latest smartpen draws heavily on iOS

I’m an easy person to spot at meetings. While everyone else is dutifully tapping away at their iPads, I’m still scribbling down notes with pen and paper like a 20th century chump. It’s not that I’m a luddite, but after trying out a parade of note-taking apps for the iPad, I’ve just never found anything in the digital world that matches handwritten notes.

Livescribe says I’m not the only one to feel this way. According to the digital penmaker’s internal research, roughly two-thirds of smartphone and tablet users still prefer pen and paper for jotting down notes in meetings, lectures, or whenever they’re on the go. But the company thinks its latest offering will be the one that causes us holdouts to cast aside our old-school pens for a digital counterpart.

The company’s latest smartpen, the Livescribe 3, goes on sale Monday online, with the pen arriving in stores next week. In addition to a slimmer design, the Livescribe 3 promises tight integration with the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, thanks to a just-released iOS companion app.

Livescribe 3 smartpen

Previous pens from Livescribe were more desktop-centric, says Bryan Rodrigues, the company’s vice president of marketing and e-commerce. But pens like Livescribe’s Pulse and Echo hit the market before the proliferation of mobile devices. The Livescribe 3 takes a much more iOS-centric approach.

“People are taking to the road with a notepad and an iPad and trying to get more out of that,” says Rodrigues, pitching the Livescribe 3 as the third piece of that puzzle.

The pen is mightier

The Livescribe 3 is an actual pen, of course, that sets down physical notes in actual ink. But pair the smartpen with Livescribe’s Dot Paper notebooks, and the pen keeps a digital record of every pen stroke. The tip of the Livescribe 3 contains a camera that’s capturing what you write, allowing the pen’s companion software to search through your text of find specific words in your handwritten notes.

With the Livescribe 3, Rodrigues says his company was aiming for a more pen-like look and feel. The new version certainly feels more slender than past Livescribe pens, the result of an inside-out redesign to make everything slimmer. There’s no on/off switch; instead, you twist the Livescribe 3 to turn it on, just like you might twist a ballpoint pen before writing with it. (Forget to twist the Livescribe 3 off? Then pen shuts down after four hours to conserve battery life.)

“It’s a writing gadget that looks and feels like a writing implement,” Rodrigues says.

Remove the rubber cap on one end of the Livescribe 3 smartpen to get to its charging port; that cap also doubles as a capacitive stylus.

It’s also a writing gadget that boasts some impressive battery life—about 14 hours of active writing on a single charge, according to Livescribe. The Livescribe 3 is able to last that long thanks to its use of Bluetooth Smart, a low-energy version of the wireless connectivity standard that connects the Livescribe 3 to your iOS device. When you’re running on juice, just flip over the rubber cap on the top of the Livescribe 3 to get to the Micro-USB charging port.

An LED indicator gives you an at-a-glance look at the Livescribe 3's status. This blue light means it’s connected via Bluetooth to your iOS device.

That rubber cap happens to be one of a number of clever design features built into the Livescribe 3: The cap doubles as a capacitive stylus that you can use with your mobile device. Don’t expect to do the kind of elaborate sketching you’d produce with a dedicated mobile stylus, but for tapping your iPhone or iPad screening, it should do the trick. A series of LED lights on LightScribe 3—green when the pen is turned on, blue when it’s connected via Bluetooth, red if you’re recording audio to store on the pen—keep you apprised of any status alerts. There’s even a Find My Pen function where the Livescribe 3 lets out a little beep to help you locate it on your desk or in your travel bag.

Take note

It’s the Livescribe+ app, though, that really adds value to the new pen. Available on iOS 7 for the iPhone 4s and later, third-generation iPad and later, and fifth-generation iPod touch, Livescribe+ records the handwritten notes as you jot them down on paper, saving you the need to transcribe your scribbles into digital form later. It’s not a completely instantaneous process—in my demo time with the Livescribe 3, there were a few noticeable seconds of lag time between when I wrote something down on a Dot Paper notebook and when it appeared on an iPad. But really, for the purpose of getting your notes from a piece of paper to your mobile device, the app performs well from what I can see. (You don’t need to have your iPad with you when you’re writing down notes; you can also sync up what you’ve written down later. The Livescribe 3 holds up to 2GB of notes—that translates to roughly 20,000 pages, Livescribe says. And if you’re in a meeting that requires 20,000 pages of notes in a single sitting, you’ve got bigger problems than not having your iPad or iPhone handy for syncing.)

Flip over a block of handwritten notes in the Feed view of the Livescribe+ app, and you can convert it into text.

The Livescribe+ app can display notes in your handwriting; you can also convert that into digital text. The app’s Feed view cuts up notes into blocks of writing; flipping one of those boxes over converts it into digital text, which you can then edit to your heart’s content. Once your notes are in digital format, you can use them to create reminders, contacts, and calendar appointments or copy and paste into other apps. Livescribe+ also recognizes phone numbers and URLs, so tapping on those will either initiate a phone call or launch a webpage.

“There's multiple ways to do everything, so you can find the way that suits you,” Rodrigues says.

The app also lets you organize notes by tagging them, highlighting them as favorites, or flagging them. It’s a simple matter of tapping on the appropriate Tag, Favorite, or Flag icon on Livescribe’s Dot Paper notebook, and the corresponding note will be categorized in the Livescribe+ app.

Play back a pencast you’ve recorded with Livescribe+, and the app highlights the relevant portion of your notes in green as the audio plays.

You can also record audio with the Livescribe+ app, creating what the company calls “pencasts.” Audio recorded via the app is synced to what you’re writing down. When you play back the audio, Livescribe+ highlights the relevant section of your notes. Other features of the Livescribe+ app include the ability to add pictures, text, and captions to your notes.

You can share notes from Livescribe+ as PDFs with any service or app that supports PDFs, including Evernote and Dropbox. You’re able to share pencasts as well, though anyone you share with will need to download Livescribe+ themselves to use the audio playback features.

The app is currently only available for iOS devices due to Apple’s support for Bluetooth Smart. This summer’s Android 4.3 release added native support for Bluetooth Smart, and Livescribe plans to add Android support in 2014 as more devices adapt the low-energy connectivity feature.

What you get

The Livescribe 3 comes in two editions. The $150 standard edition features the new black-and-chrome smartpen, a 50-sheet Starter Dot Paper notebook, a replacement ink cartridge, and a Micro-USB cable. The $200 Livescribe 3 Pro Edition features a darker shade of chrome and includes a leather smartpen portfolio, a 100-sheet Dot Paper Journal, the replacement ink cartridge, and a Micro-USB cable. In addition, the Pro Edition features one year of Evernote Premium (normally $45) for free.

Livescribe 3 Pro smartpen

In addition, Livescribe also sells Dot Paper notebooks and journals in a variety of sizes, with prices ranging from $9 to $25. The company offers replacement ink cartridges as well, and will list other standard-sized ink cartridge brands that work with Livescribe pens on its website.

Philip Michaels Editor, Macworld

Philip has covered the Mac market since 1999, with a focus on the iPhone, iPad and iOS in recent years. In all that time, he has never tested a fart app.
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Syria chemical disarmament on track but peace talks in doubt

Damascus (AFP) - Syria is set to hand over a detailed plan for the destruction of its chemical arsenal by Thursday, days ahead of a UN deadline, the international watchdog said.

But prospects for a peace conference, which the world body is trying to convene in parallel with the disarmament process, looked dim after key opposition leaders spurned efforts by Western and Arab powers to persuade them to attend.

And on the ground violence raged unabated, with a rebel attack on a gas pipeline causing power outages across Syria and a deadly car bombing and shelling hitting Damascus.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said on Wednesday that the Syrian government was expected to hand over its disarmament plan within the next 24 hours.

The plan is the next step for Damascus under the terms of a US-Russian deal to head off military strikes on Syria which calls for all its chemical weapons and production facilities to be destroyed by mid-2014.

"We expect Syria's initial declaration of its chemical weapons programme within the next 24 hours," spokesman Michael Luhan told reporters in The Hague, where the OPCW is based.

President Bashar al-Assad's regime has already handed over an inventory of its chemicals, weapons and facilities, and a joint UN-OPCW team has been in Syria since the start of the month inspecting and destroying them.

The team has now checked 18 of 23 declared sites in Syria, destroying production equipment at almost all of them, Luhan said.

But parallel efforts by the United Nations to convene a peace conference in Geneva next month have run into resistance from the opposition, who are insisting on a raft of preconditions.

Leaders of the National Coalition -- the main opposition umbrella group -- insisted they will not attend unless regime change and Assad's departure are on the table.

A meeting in London Tuesday between opposition leaders and 11 governments from the Friends of Syria group produced little more than a joint statement that Assad should play no future role in government.

Damascus retorted on Wednesday that no foreign party could be involved in deciding the country's leadership.

"The Syrian people will not allow any foreign party to impose itself ... in choosing a government, or in determining its powers and tasks," the foreign ministry said.

It said the government was ready to attend the planned Geneva conference to "try its best to ensure its success without any preconditions or any foreign intervention."

'No negotiations if Assad departure not on table'

The opposition is due to meet at the start of November to finalise its position on the Geneva talks.

But Coalition head Ahmad Jarba showed no signs of readiness to compromise.

"The only thing we are willing to negotiate is a transfer of all power and then the departure of the mass killer (Assad)," he said.

On the ground, rebels shelled two of Damascus's main squares on killing five people and wounding at least 22, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A car bomb hit a checkpoint in a western suburb of Damascus, causing multiple casualties among the troops manning it, the Observatory said.

And an attack by rebels near the capital caused a power outage across Syria, state news agency SANA quoted Electricity Minister Emad Khamis as saying.

An AFP journalist in Damascus said he could see from a distance a huge fire blazing near Damascus International Airport, which is located near the affected power station.

He also confirmed power was out in the capital.

The Observatory reported outages in several areas, including Aleppo in the north and Homs in the centre.

"It is likely this was a large-scale operation planned well in advance," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

In September, a similar outage was caused after a high voltage power line was sabotaged.

• Politics & Government
• Unrest, Conflicts & War
• Syria

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/key-syria-talks-open-london-080543809.html
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Marcia Wallace, The Simpsons Voice of Edna Krabappel, Dead at 70

Marcia Wallace has died at the age of 70. The actress died Friday night, Oct. 25, in Los Angeles, TMZ reports. According to the site, she had been sick for the past several months, and passed away at her home with her family by her side. 

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The Emmy awarding-winner actress first broke out in Hollywood in TV with guest roles in Bewitched, The Brady Bunch and The Bob Newhart Show. She also was featured in Murphy Brown, 7th Heaven and The Young and the Restless. Her film credits include My Mother the Werewolf and Teen Witch.

PHOTOS: Stars gone too soon

Wallace was best known as the voice of Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons for the past 23 years from 1990 to 2013. She also spent three decades on various TV game shows in the 70's, including Hollywood Squares, Match Game and The $25,000 Pyramid.

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Wallace was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985 and became a high-profile advocate for breast cancer awareness. She became a motivational speaker, and traveled across the country to discuss her personal story.

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/marcia-wallace-the-simpsons-voice-of-edna-krabappel-dead-at-70-20132610
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