Category: Family

Time:

Cursive started to lose its clout back in the 1920s, when educators theorized that because children learned to read by looking at books printed in manuscript rather than cursive, they should learn to write the same way. By World War II, manuscript, or print writing, was in standard use across the U.S. Today schoolchildren typically learn print in kindergarten, cursive in third grade. But they don’t master either one. Over the decades, daily handwriting lessons have decreased from an average of 30 minutes to 15.

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NPR has a fascinating story about video footage shot on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission that was lost (possibly even destroyed) by NASA itself accidentally:

Lebar and others spent hours and hours in a vast government storage facility known as the Washington National Records Center, a place that Lebar compares to the giant warehouse at the end of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The search team combed through “racks of documents, tapes, all kinds of things from NASA and other agencies,” says Nafzger.

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Mythbusters.

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From Apple:

Dear MobileMe member:

As a final reminder, on July 7, 2009, the .Mac HomePage web application will be discontinued. As of this date, you will no longer be able to create new pages or edit existing pages using HomePage. Any pages you’ve already published will remain live at their current web address for as long as you like. If you need to make changes to your existing pages, please do so before July 7.

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It happened last year, and it’s happening again this year: the iTunes servers are crumbling under the load of millions of users upgrading to 3.0.

I hate to say, but I told you so.

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TUAW:

One of the most awaited features, push notifications, requires a constant data connection. While the iPhone 3G can handle data and voice simultaneously when using a 3G/HSDPA connection, on EDGE (the cellular data service that the original iPhone uses) you are unable to take calls and maintain a persistent data connection. As a result, if you turn on the push notification service, you may be unable to receive voice calls.

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Relevant Magazine:

In the 1970’s, every self-respecting music fan had a basement or bedroom that contained big, big speakers and crates of vinyl.  In the 1980’s, the CD player became popular, and the shiny plastic discs were still mostly played through larger home stereo units.  In 2009, a large amount of music listening is done through little white earbuds, or a single laptop speaker.

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Over the last few months, I’ve grown increasingly annoyed by social media - and those trying to make a buck off of it as “social media gurus.”

So what does CNN do? Give me someone else to dislike:

Many of these older folks use social networks to keep tabs on younger family members and they often find fruitful connections with their peers after they’ve friended all of their kids and grandkids, according to an informal survey by Stanford University professor BJ Fogg.

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Leo King at Macworld:

Businesses can make use of Twitter as a public relations channel, but they need to be aware of security when sharing ideas, market-research firm Gartner has said.

[…]

Many businesses are using Twitter as a public relations and marketing channel, Gartner said. Businesses are “tweeting” about corporate accomplishments, distributing links to press releases, and responding to other Twitterers’ comments about their brand.

Gartner said this approach should be used with caution because uninteresting Tweets could hinder the brand image as much as help.

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Macworld:

MobileMe users have been receiving a new phishing e-mail that informs them that their annual subscription is set to renew automatically on a certain date, but that “attempts to charge your credit card have failed.” It then offers to let you log in to update your information.

Maybe I’m a jerk, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who get suckered into this kind of thing.

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Wired has an interview with Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Here’s some of what she has to say:

Our society right now is filled with lovely distractions — we have so much portable escapism and mediated fantasy — but that’s just one issue. The other is interruption — multitasking, the fragmentation of thought and time. We’re living in highly interrupted ways. Studies show that information workers now switch tasks an average of every three minutes throughout the day. Of course that’s what we have to do to live in this complicated world. […] In our country, stillness and reflection are not especially valued in the workplace. The image of success is the frenetic multitasker who doesn’t have time and is constantly interrupted. By striving towards this model of inattention, we’re doing ourselves a tremendous injustice.

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Jon Armstrong of Blurbomat (he’s married to Heather of Dooce), has posted this jaw-dropping screenshot of his Mac Pro working way too hard. The culprit? Adobe Flash.

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