Lawmaker questions Disney's plan for wristband data









A congressman from Massachusetts raised questions Thursday about how Walt Disney Co. will use information it collects when it gives parkgoers new wristbands embedded with computer chips.


Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), who co-chairs a congressional panel on privacy, asked Walt Disney Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Robert A. Iger in a letter what information the park will collect with the so-called MagicBand and how it will be used.


"Widespread use of MagicBand bracelets by park guests could dramatically increase the personal data Disney can collect about its guests," he said, adding that he is particularly concerned at the prospects of Disney collecting information about children.





Disney announced recently that it plans to unveil this spring at Walt Disney World in Florida a wristband embedded with radio frequency identification chips. A unique code in each chip lets parkgoers pay to enter the park, check into Disney hotels and buy food and souvenirs, among other things.


Disney officials promoted the wristbands as a way to make visiting the park easier. The wristbands will let Disney use the data to customize future offerings and marketing pitches.


Disney officials say they have no plans yet to introduce the wristbands at Disneyland or Disney California Adventure Park in Anaheim.


In a three-page letter, Markey said he is "deeply concerned that Disney's proposal could potentially have a harmful impact on our children." He asked whether parkgoers will have a chance to opt out of sharing their information and, if not, whether Disney will share the data with other companies.


A spokesman for Markey said his office had not received a response from Disney on Thursday, but in a statement to The Times, the company said participation in the wristband program was optional.


"In addition, guests control whether their personal information is used for promotional purposes, and no data collected is ever used to market to children," the statement said.


If parkgoers agree to release such information it can be used for marketing, Disney officials confirmed.


hugo.martin@latimes.com





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Former LAUSD teacher accused of molesting 20 children









A former Los Angeles Unified School District teacher was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of committing lewd acts and sexually abusing 20 children and an adult, law enforcement authorities said.


Robert Pimentel, 57, who taught at George de la Torre Jr. Elementary School in Wilmington, was taken into custody by Los Angeles Police Department detectives, who had launched an investigation in March after several fourth-grade girls said they had been inappropriately touched.


Prosecutors filed 15 charges against Pimentel involving a dozen of his alleged victims. The charges involve sexual abuse and lewd acts on a child and cover the period from September 2011 to March 2012, according to court records. Authorities said the teacher is suspected of inappropriately touching children under and over their clothing.





Detectives suspect Pimentel victimized an additional eight children and the adult, LAPD Capt. Fabian Lizarraga told The Times.


The arrest comes as the nation's second-largest school district has been rocked in recent months by allegations of sexual misconduct involving teachers and students.


In January, a teacher at Miramonte Elementary School in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood was arrested on suspicion of spoon-feeding semen to students in a classroom and taking dozens of photos. Some of the photos show students blindfolded and being fed allegedly tainted cookies.


An audit released in November concluded that the district failed to promptly report 150 cases of suspected teacher misconduct — including allegations of sexual contact with students — to state authorities as required by law. District officials said they have addressed the breakdowns highlighted in the audit.


Wednesday evening, L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy said both Pimentel and the school's principal were immediately removed when the district found out about the allegations in March.


Deasy said he removed the principal because he was "dissatisfied" with how the situation was handled at the school. The principal has not been identified.


Parents at the school were informed within 72 hours after Pimentel was removed from the campus, and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing was promptly notified, the district said.


District officials prepared a "notice of termination" for Pimentel and the principal, which they had planned to present to the Board of Education in April 2012, Deasy said. But both employees retired before the board meeting.


He said Pimentel and the principal will receive their full pensions because they retired before the district took action against them.


"Can you go back and fire someone who's already retired? No, you can't," Deasy said.


Detectives launched their investigation of Pimentel after some of the children told their parents they had been abused, Lizarraga said. The parents then alerted officers at the LAPD's Harbor Division.


Of the 20 children allegedly abused, 19 were students at the school, according to Lizarraga. He said detectives came across the other child as they gathered evidence.


Deasy told The Times that his recollection was that the adult was a co-worker of Pimentel.


Pimentel, who lives in Newport Beach, had been a teacher with the district since 1974, police said. He was taken into custody shortly after noon Wednesday and was being held on $12-million bail. He is expected to appear in court Thursday.


In the Miramonte Elementary case, former teacher Mark Berndt, 61, is charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct and is awaiting trial. He has pleaded not guilty.


The district is facing nearly 200 molestation and lewd conduct claims stemming from Berndt's alleged wrongdoing.


In a separate case, a jury recently awarded $6.9 million to a 14-year-old boy who was molested while he was in fifth grade at Queen Anne Place Elementary School in the Mid-Wilshire area.


The teacher in that incident pleaded no contest to two counts of a lewd act on a child and to continuous sexual abuse of a child younger than 14. He is serving a 16-year prison sentence.


richard.winton@latimes.com


howard.blume@latimes.com


Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez contributed to this report





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Google Wants to Own the Airwaves, Now






As if Google‘s launching a free Wi-Fi network in New York City earlier this month wasn’t curious enough, now the search giant is asking the Federal Communications Commission for a license to create an “experimental radio service.” What’s an experimental radio service, you ask? Well, Google won’t say exactly what its doing with the air above its Mountain View, California headquarters, but the details of the FCC application suggest it’s trying to build its own proprietary wireless network.


RELATED: Who’s Winning the Facebook-Google Tech War






Oh, so this must have something to do with Google Fiber and Google‘s becoming an Internet service provider, offering insanely fast Internet, right? Again, not exactly. “Google‘s small-scale wireless network would use frequencies that wouldn’t be compatible with nearly any of the consumer mobile devices that exist today, such as Apple’s iPad or iPhone or most devices powered by Google‘s Android operating system,” explain The Wall Street Journal‘s Amir Efrati and Anton Troianovski. “The network would only provide coverage for devices built to access certain frequencies, from 2524 to 2625 megahertz.” However, networks using those frequencies are under construction in Asia, just waiting for devices that support them. And last year, Google purchased Motorola Mobility, a mobile phone manufacturer that could ostensibly manufacture such devices. This is starting to sound sort of shady.


RELATED: You Were Right to Delete Your Google History


While it’s too soon to understand the extent of the company’s plans, it certainly looks like Google actually wants to own the airwaves now. Could we see a Google phone that works on a custom built Wi-Fi network, one that nobody else can use? It’s very possible. For now, Google‘s official answer to that line of questioning is that the company experiments all the time with all kinds of things. But according to Steven Crowley, a wireless engineer who first spotted the FCC application, ”The only reason to use these frequencies is if you have business designs on some mobile service.” 


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Artist Christo takes small steps on Colo. project


DENVER (AP) — Construction of the proposed "Over the River" project in Colorado is on hold pending legal challenges, but artist Christo said Wednesday his team is doing other work so he can one day suspend nearly six miles worth of silvery fabric in sections over the Arkansas River.


Railroad tracks are being cleared along the project route that traces U.S. 50 between Canon City and Salida, and work is beginning to mitigate impacts to bighorn sheep.


Christo is also preparing for his upcoming exhibit in Oberhausen in Germany of "Big Air Package," a 295-foot air-filled fabric bubble that will help raise funds for Over the River, which has cost $13 million so far.


As envisioned by Christo and his late wife, Jeanne-Claude, Over the River would be displayed for two weeks in late summer. The earliest it could be displayed is August 2016, but even that timeline may be unlikely.


The Bureau of Land Management's approval of a permit for it is being appealed, and a group called Rags Over the Arkansas River has filed lawsuits challenging permit approvals by the BLM and Colorado State Parks.


Opponents contend the project poses environmental, safety, traffic and economic risks and will require more than two years of industrial-scale construction work. Christo's team has said it plans dozens of measures to mitigate impacts.


Christo and Jeanne-Claude's massive projects have survived delays before.


"I don't consider it a pause," Christo said. "It's part of the dynamics of the project."


During the work on Over the River, he also is actively working on The Mastaba, a giant sculpture of 410,000 barrels planned for Abu Dhabi that he conceived in 1977. Because he is 77, Christo said he is trying to complete both projects simultaneously rather than focusing on one at a time.


Christo was in Denver for an exhibit Wednesday at Metropolitan State University of Denver's Center for Visual Art of two sketches he donated to Colorado.


___


Find Catherine Tsai on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ctsai_denver


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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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Apple shares tumble after relatively unimpressive earnings report









Apple Inc. may still make products customers love, but its latest earnings report appears to have broken investors' hearts.


For the third quarter in a row, Apple reported revenue and profit that were impressive by normal standards, but short of what analysts had expected. Investors reacted harshly, driving Apple's stock price down more than 10% in after-hours trading Wednesday.


If that trend holds when trading opens Thursday, Apple will have lost almost $50 billion in market value in the blink of an eye, and its stock will have given up almost all the extraordinary gains it had made in the last year. Investors' and fund managers' belief in one of the world's most widely held stocks will be severely tested in the coming days.





More fundamentally, despite upbeat talk by Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, the performance is unlikely to quell growing worries that Apple's remarkable run of dominance might be over.


"Overall, compared to other companies, it's impressive. But for Apple's standards, it's not great," said Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. "I do think this somewhat fuels the perception that Apple is slowing down a bit.... And it's driven by the fact that some of its competitors are catching up, and in some markets have already caught up."


Apple executives did their best during an hourlong conference call with analysts to project optimism and excitement about both the last quarter and the months ahead. They noted that the company had trouble meeting demand for both iPads and Macs, and could have sold many more had they been able to build enough.


They also pointed to a growing business in China and the expansion of iTunes, which is now available in 119 countries.


"Apple is in one of the most prolific periods of innovation in its history," Cook said. "We continue to believe our fundamentals, our remarkable people, our clear and focused strategy will serve us well in the coming months and years ahead."


Cook praised the record numbers posted by Apple. For the three months that ended in December, Apple said revenue increased 18% to a record $54.5 billion. Profit also set an all-time high but was up only slightly from the year-earlier quarter, rising to $13.08 billion, or $13.81 a share, from $13.06 billion, or $13.87.


Apple said it sold a record 47.8 million iPhones last quarter, up from 37 million iPhones in the same quarter of 2011. Despite that massive figure, some analysts had hoped to see stronger demand with sales exceeding 50 million.


"Meeting expectations is not enough for Apple," said Colin Gillis of BGC Financial. "So that's a little bit of a disappointment…. International sales were a little weaker than people expected. So we'll see how that shakes out."


Last quarter saw the introduction of the iPad mini, a 7.9-inch version of Apple's popular tablet computer. The Cupertino, Calif., company said it sold a total of 22.9 million iPads in the quarter, also a record, up from 15.4 million a year earlier. The company didn't break out iPad mini numbers from its total tablet sales, but Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer told analysts that the smaller version has been a hit and that the company experienced significant backlog getting the product to store shelves. The 22% lower average selling price for Apple's tablets suggests the mini has performed well but probably cannibalized some sales of its 9.7-inch version.


Historic comparisons were challenging this year because the most recent quarter had only 13 weeks, compared with 14 weeks for the same quarter of 2011.


Like many retailers and consumer electronics companies, the quarter from October to December is typically Apple's largest because of the holiday shopping season. Last year, Apple managed to stun investors by beating its own revenue estimates by more than 25% and earnings forecast by nearly 50%. That sent the stock soaring.


But even as Apple extended its lead as the world's most valuable company, and set a record in August for most valuable company ever when not adjusted for inflation, doubts began to creep into the minds of analysts and investors.


Shares have plummeted 27% in the last four months. On Wednesday, shares rose $9.24, or 1.8%, to $514.01 during regular trading.


Apple reported strong earnings in both the third and fourth quarters last year, but the numbers missed analysts' consensus estimates. Gradually, analysts began lowering their forecasts for Apple's earnings for the current fiscal year. At the same time,


Apple experienced some uncharacteristic gaffes. The new Apple Maps app that replaced Google Maps on iOS 6 devices had reliability problems, prompting a rare apology by Apple. And the iPhone 5 that went on sale in September faced long shipping delays as Apple suppliers struggled to adapt to the new, longer screen size.


The dismissal of iOS chief Scott Forstall, a favorite of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, raised eyebrows. But so did a new strategy for launching products: Whereas Apple updates to products used to be few and far between, the company has lately begun increasing the number of products as well as the introduction of new versions.


The first quarter saw one of the busiest product launch cycles in the company's history. The quarter was the first full quarter of sales for the iPhone 5, a new iPod Touch and nano, the fourth iPad, a new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, and, of course, the first iPad mini.


Observers have pointed to this accelerated pace as an indication that Apple is facing more competitive pressure from rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co., which is now the world's biggest seller of smartphones, with its Galaxy series of phones. The concern is that the faster upgrade cycle plus the smaller iPad mini will cut into Apple's historically high profit margins.


Such fears over lower profits have also been stoked by the debate over whether Apple plans to release a cheaper iPhone aimed at capturing market share in emerging economies and the concern that Apple has not been able to strike a deal with China's largest carrier.


Now that the first-quarter numbers have been released, analysts will be busy recalibrating their projections over the next couple of days. But the focus is also likely to shift to renewed speculation about new products that investors are hoping will drive another big run for the stock.


chris.obrien@latimes.com


andrea.chang@latimes.com





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Israel elections deal a major setback to Netanyahu









JERUSALEM — Israeli voters dealt a stunning political rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leaving parliamentary elections in a virtual tie between the right and center-left and denying him the mandate he sought to pursue hawkish policies toward Palestinian peace talks, Iran's nuclear program and construction of West Bank settlements.


Netanyahu was still regarded as the most likely candidate to form a new government after Tuesday's voting because there are few other credible figures. But the disappointing performance will require him to reach out to the center in order to form a governing coalition.


With all but votes from prisoners, military voters and some government workers counted early Wednesday, Israel's conservative and religious parties had won 60 seats in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, the same number won by centrist and left-wing parties, who were led by a surprisingly strong performance from a political newcomer, Yair Lapid.





Though the final tally could change slightly, the close race all but ensures a period of turmoil before a new government emerges, and catapults Lapid and his recently formed centrist party, Yesh Atid ("There Is a Future"), into the forefront of Israeli politics. The party formed by the charismatic former TV broadcaster won 19 seats, the second-highest number of any party.


Amid a stronger-than-expected voter turnout of 67% — up from 65% in 2009 — the conservative bloc fell five seats short of the 65 seats it amassed four years ago, while the center-left parties picked up five.


The right was led by a joint slate between Netanyahu's Likud Party and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu, which won 31 seats in the 120-member Knesset. That's far less than the combined 42 seats the two parties won four years ago when they ran separately. Based on the ratio determined in the shared slate, the results translate into about 20 seats for Likud and 11 for Yisrael Beiteinu.


Netanyahu held a slim lead as returns began to pour in Tuesday night. As the results were still being tallied, he declared victory early Wednesday and vowed to seek a broad coalition.


"I believe that the election results are an opportunity to make changes that the citizens are hoping for and that will serve all of Israel's citizens," he told supporters. "I intend to lead these changes, and to this end we must form as wide a coalition as possible."


That last part, at least, will prove true for whomever forms the next government.


Even before the tally slipped into a tie, however, Labor Party leader Shelly Yachimovich called the results a "no-confidence vote" for the prime minister, saying, "The public has said a clear 'no' to Netanyahu's policy." She also vowed to fight to replace Netanyahu in the coming days.


Her left-leaning party received 15 seats, but it was eclipsed by the surprise performance of Lapid's party, which won nearly twice as many seats as polls had predicted.


The results signal a slowdown in the rightward shift of the Israeli electorate in recent years. The conservatism has been attributed to growing pessimism by many Israelis about peace talks and by the belief that Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state. Such sentiments spread after the Palestinian uprising a decade ago, when hundreds of Israeli civilians were killed in suicide bombings.


Netanyahu's tough stance toward Palestinians and expansion of Jewish settlements on land claimed by Palestinians has tapped into such sentiments.


But critics, including centrist leaders like Lapid, say Netanyahu's policies have isolated Israel internationally and squandered a chance to reach a peace deal with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas has been praised as a moderate Palestinian leader who disavows violence, but he has refused to resume peace talks as long as Israel continues to build settlements on land it seized during the 1967 Middle East War.


Lapid, 49, appealed to middle-class, secular moderates, focusing his campaign on a promise to end the draft exemption that allows ultra-Orthodox young people to avoid military service and to slash government subsidies to West Bank settlers.


He also supports resuming Palestinian peace talks and opposes attacking Iran's nuclear program without American cooperation.


Though center-left leaders were pressuring Lapid to boycott a new Netanyahu government, he signaled willingness — at least when it still appeared Netanyahu would win — to join if his programs are implemented.


"What is good for Israel is not in the possession of the right and nor is it in the possession of the left," he said. "It lies in the possibility of creating here a real and decent center that listens to the other side, that knows how to engage in dialogue, that remembers that we are here together."


Netanyahu had been expected to reach out to Lapid in an effort to ensure the stability of his coalition and reduce his dependency on far-right and religious parties, such as the ultra-Orthodox Shas. The nature of a governing coalition, however, was thrown into question by the election results.


In theory, adding additional partners would make it more difficult for any single party to threaten to bring down the coalition by withdrawing, although it increases the chances of internal ideological battles.





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FTC study taking aim at online marketing of booze and kids






LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans this summer to recommend ways that the alcoholic beverage industry can better protect underage viewers from seeing its advertisements online.


Distillers, brewers and wineries pour millions of dollars into brand promotion on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, and industry critics contend they are not doing enough to prevent young consumers from receiving these messages.






“We’re doing a deep dive on how they’re using the Internet and social media,” said Janet Evans, a lawyer with the FTC, which is conducting a year-long study due to be released by early summer. “We’re focusing on underage exposure.”


She would not elaborate on any potential recommendations that might come out of the study, which began in April 2012.


The FTC is reviewing data from 14 big producers, Evans said, including Beam Inc, the maker of Jim Beam, Diageo Plc, home to Johnnie Walker, and Constellation Brands Inc, which makes Robert Mondavi and Ravenswood wines.


The FTC report “is something we take seriously and place at high priority,” said Karena Breslin, director for digital marketing at Constellation.


The FTC has made two requests for information since the study began, she said.


The regulatory agency has not said it intends to impose restrictions on liquor company social media advertising but it can make recommendations to the industry.


The FTC is empowered to file suit to ensure consumers are protected from deceptive marketing practices, Evans said, but she stressed that studies of this nature are meant to promote better self-regulation, not provide a basis for a case.


Executives say alcohol makers and distributors voluntarily adhere to the same industry-set standard for marketing to underage viewers on social media sites that the industry set for its ads on TV and other medium. That requires that at least 71.6 percent of an audience consists of adults 21 and older.


“No one in their right mind would want to advertise to people who can’t legally buy their product,” said Frank Coleman, senior vice president for Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the trade group that sets the industry’s advertising codes.


In June 2011, DISCUS revised its code upwards to 71.6 percent from 70 percent, after the FTC recommended it review the standard to better reflect U.S. Census population data.


Industry critics, including David Jernigen, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns Hopkins University, and Sarah Mart, research director of the advocacy group Alcohol Justice, contend the industry didn’t go far enough and should raise the standard further.


Jernigen says it needs to be at least 85 percent to effectively protect youth, so there would be no more than 15 percent exposure to the underage drinking population.


“The industry says its self-regulating but it’s ineffective and social media opens up a whole new set of problems because their ads are everywhere,” said Sarah Mart, research director for the San Rafael, Calif.-based group Alcohol Justice.


The industry group’s Coleman said the group now requires members to install age-checking tools via instant-messaging as a gateway to Twitter feeds and other branded Web platforms that ask the user for a birth date before admitting them.


In the first nine months of 2012, beer, wine and spirits manufacturers’ spent an estimated $ 35 million for paid Web display advertising, but industry executives estimate many millions more were spent on Web site creation, video production for platforms like Google’s YouTube and social media marketing efforts.


“We’ve significantly adjusted more money to digital for online video, Web sites, Facebook and Twitter content,” said Kevin George, global chief marketing officer for Jim Beam, which he says spends 30 percent of its media spend for online outlets, up from 10 percent in 2008.


Many companies are expanding their digital staff. Wine maker Constellation hired Breslin three years ago to initiate digital marketing and now has a team of five reporting to her.


Many alcoholic beverage companies flocked to Facebook because it requires users to post their birth dates when signing up. Last year Twitter partnered with Buddy Media to offer a more effective screening tool that sends a direct message to fans who click on a brand. The message sends the fan a link to a site that asks for date of birth, which has allowed Twitter to grab some more of the sector marketing. Salesforce.com bought Buddy Media last June, which is now folding the platform into its marketing cloud portfolio.


Health advocates and industry critics are crying foul. “Facebook and other interactive platforms are poorly monitored and not well age protected,” said Jernigen of Johns Hopkins University. “Anyone can say they’re 21 and click yes.”


(Reporting By Susan Zeidler; Editing by Ron Grover and Alden Bentley)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Walhberg: Boy band union is strong for summer tour


NEW YORK (AP) — For Donnie Wahlberg it's not a matter of why now, rather "why not?"


The recording artist-turned-actor was referring to the news of a major tour with his New Kids on the Block, who'll be joined this summer on "The Package Tour" by 98 Degrees and Boyz II Men.


"The state of the boy band union is strong," Wahlberg joked Tuesday. "Even though technically we're not really boy bands, but we're OK with that, so we'll accept it."


The three bands sold millions of records in the 1980s and '90s and helped usher in a wave of vocal groups that continues today.


The Boston-based NKOTB formed in 1984 and amassed ten Top 20 hits. They broke up in 1994 but got back together after a 14-year hiatus. Wahlberg said he feels the break coincided with the maturation of their fan base.


"They needed time to have families and husbands and children and get jobs and live their life," Wahlberg said.


But now he sees his band's music as a complement to the fans' adult lives.


"We created an outlet for them to feel good about themselves and tap into that youthfulness that had been put to bed for a long time ... you may be 40, but the euphoria of it makes you feel 14 all over again," Wahlberg said.


The band also announced a new single, "Remix (I Like The)," which will be released Jan. 28, and a new album, "10," which is out April 2.


That music will be a bit more mature than some of the band's previous material, member Joey McIntyre said.


"It is about the decisions that a grown man makes and goes through, as opposed to singing songs like 'Popsicle,'" he said.


Nathan Morris, one of the members of Boyz II Men, known since the early 1990s for such hits as "I'll Make Love to You" and "End of the Road," said the tour is going to be all about performing.


"If the boy band thing is attached, it's wonderful, but for all of us in here, we're ready to get out there and sing and perform," he said. "That's just what we do."


Though 98 Degrees is the youngest group on the bill, it has been apart the longest, 12 years.


"So we're excited to get back together and doing what we do," member Nick Lachey said. "We feel reinvigorated by our bond and by our group, so we're very excited by that."


Wahlberg, who stars as Detective Danny Reagan on the CBS television series "Blue Bloods," about several generations of a family of New York City police officers, said the boy bands' tour, kicking off May 31 in Uncasville, Connecticut, and continuing into July with more than 30 dates, is going to be "great."


"You have three acts that have lots of records, lots of fans," he said. "Fans that are anxious to sing those records and anxious to sing other bands' records, too."


___


John Carucci covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://www.twitter.com/jcarucci_ap


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Well: Is There an Ideal Running Form?

In recent years, many barefoot running enthusiasts have been saying that to reduce impact forces and injury risk, runners should land near the balls of their feet, not on their heels, a running style that has been thought to mimic that of our barefoot forebears and therefore represent the most natural way to run. But a new study of barefoot tribespeople in Kenya upends those ideas and, together with several other new running-related experiments, raises tantalizing questions about just how humans really are meant to move.

For the study, published this month in the journal PLoS One, a group of evolutionary anthropologists turned to the Daasanach, a pastoral tribe living in a remote section of northern Kenya. Unlike some Kenyan tribes, the Daasanach have no tradition of competitive distance running, although they are physically active. They also have no tradition of wearing shoes.

Humans have run barefoot, of course, for millennia, since footwear is quite a recent invention, in evolutionary terms. And modern running shoes, which typically feature well-cushioned heels that are higher than the front of the shoe, are newer still, having been introduced widely in the 1970s.

The thinking behind these shoes’ design was, in part, that they should reduce injuries. When someone runs in a shoe with a built-up heel, he or she generally hits the ground first with the heel. With so much padding beneath that portion of the foot, the thinking went, pounding would be reduced and, voila, runners wouldn’t get hurt.

But, as many researchers and runners have noted, running-related injuries have remained discouragingly common, with more than half of all runners typically being felled each year.

So, some runners and scientists began to speculate a few years ago that maybe modern running shoes are themselves the problem.

Their theory was buttressed by a influential study published in 2010 in Nature, in which Harvard scientists examined the running style of some lifelong barefoot runners who also happened to be from Kenya. Those runners were part of the Kalenjin tribe, who have a long and storied history of elite distance running. Some of the fastest marathoners in the world have been Kalenjin, and many of them grew up running without shoes.

Interestingly, when the Harvard scientists had the Kalenjin runners stride over a pressure-sensing pad, they found that, as a group, they almost all struck the ground near the front of their foot. Some were so-called midfoot strikers, meaning that their toes and heels struck the ground almost simultaneously, but many were forefoot strikers, meaning that they landed near the ball of their foot.

Almost none landed first on their heels.

What the finding seemed to imply was that runners who hadn’t grown up wearing shoes deployed a noticeably different running style than people who had always worn shoes.

And from that idea, it was easy to conjecture that this style must be better for you than heel-striking, since presumably it was more natural, echoing the style that early, shoeless cavemen would have used.

But the new study finds otherwise. When the researchers had the 38 Daasanach tribespeople run unshod along a track fitted, as in the Harvard study, with a pressure plate, they found that these traditionally barefoot adults almost all landed first with their heels, especially when they were asked to run at a comfortable, distance-running pace. For the group, that pace averaged about 8 minutes per mile, and 72 percent of the volunteers struck with their heels while achieving it. Another 24 percent struck with the midfoot. Only 4 percent were forefoot strikers.

When the Daasanach volunteers were asked to sprint along the track at a much faster speed, however, more of them landed near their toes with each stride, a change in form that is very common during sprints, even in people who wear running shoes. But even then, 43 percent still struck with their heels.

This finding adds to a growing lack of certainty about what makes for ideal running form. The forefoot- and midfoot-striking Kalenjin were enviably fast; during the Harvard experiment, their average pace was less than 5 minutes per mile.

But their example hasn’t been shown to translate to other runners. In a 2012 study of more than 2,000 racers at the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon, 94 percent struck the ground with their heels, and that included many of the frontrunners.

Nor is it clear that changing running form reduces injuries. In a study published in October scientists asked heel-striking recreational runners to temporarily switch to forefoot striking, they found that greater forces began moving through the runners’ lower backs; the pounding had migrated from the runners’ legs to their lumbar spines, and the volunteers reported that this new running form was quite uncomfortable.

But the most provocative and wide-ranging implication of the new Kenyan study is that we don’t know what is natural for human runners. If, said Kevin G. Hatala, a graduate student in evolutionary anthropology at George Washington University who led the new study, ancient humans “regularly ran fast for sustained periods of time,” like Kalenjin runners do today, then they were likely forefoot or midfoot strikers.

But if their hunts and other activities were conducted at a more sedate pace, closer to that of the Daasanach, then our ancestors were quite likely heel strikers and, if that was the case, wearing shoes and striking with your heel doesn’t necessarily represent a warped running form.

At the moment, though, such speculation is just that, Mr. Hatala said. He and his colleagues plan to collaborate with the Harvard scientists in hopes of better understanding why the various Kenyan barefoot runners move so differently and what, if anything, their contrasting styles mean for the rest of us.

“Mostly what we’ve learned” with the new study, he said, “is how much still needs to be learned.”

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