Group items tagged

Nearly 80% of children between the ages of 0 and 5 who use the Internet in the United States, do so on at least a weekly basis, according to a report released Monday from education non-profit organizations Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop. The report, which was assembled using data from seven recent studies, indicates that young children are increasingly consuming all types of digital media, in many cases consuming more than one type at once. Television use dwarfs internet use in both the number of children who surf the web and the amount of time they spend on it. The analysis found that during the week, most children spend at least three hours a day watching television, and that television use among preschoolers is the highest it has been in the past eight years. Of the time that children spend on all types of media, television accounts for a whopping 47%. Heavy television viewing may even be partially responsible for the rising number of children who use the Internet. Parents in one study indicated that more than 60% of children under age three watch video online. That percentage decreases as children get older (the report suggests this is because school-age children have less time at home), but even 8- to 18-year-old children reported in another study that they consume about 20% of their video content online, on cellphones, or on other portable devices like iPods. Internet and television use among children has become entwined in other ways as well. A 2010 Nielsen study suggests that 36% of children between the ages of 2 and 11 use both mediums simultaneously. Altogether, children between the ages of 8 and 10 spend about 5.5 hours each day using media - eight hours if you count the additional media consumed while multitasking. The report doesn't attempt to solve the more-than-decade-old debate of whether all of this screen time is good for children. Instead, it preaches balance: "My mother used to say that too much of anything isn't good fo

A 'Spooks And Suits' Red Team Game Social media apps meet national security Jul 20, 2011 | 12:40 PM | 0 Comments By Kelly Jackson Higgins Dark Reading What if a former Navy SEAL petty officer were a member of Anonymous? Senior members of the U.S. intelligence agency, including Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, and a former SEAL officer, will participate in a red-team exercise in September where they'll play the role of Anonymous/LulzSec and APT attackers, as well as the defenders trying to fend off these adversaries. Sure, simulated cyberattack games are nothing new these days. But this one is part and parcel of the upcoming Spooks and Suits summit in Silicon Valley on Sept. 23 and 24, and it throws together intell officials and attendees. It's the brainchild of cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr, who wanted to bring together three-letter agencies, like the CIA, NSA, and DoD, with social media and Web 2.0 developers and start-ups to actually communicate one-on-one with each another and with general attendees. It works like this: Attendees will be randomly assigned to one of four teams of 25 to 30 people: Anarchist hackers (a la Anonymous and LulzSec), APT attackers, or one of two defending organizations. The teams then must observe all of the panel discussions -- which will cover threats against the intell community, as well as demonstrations of new and existing social media applications -- from the perspective of either adversary or defender, depending on which team they are assigned. "If one of the apps presented has to do with a game, the objective for the attendee is to say, 'How can I use that game as an adversary? Or how can I use it to uncover or defend against an adversary?'" says Carr, who is the founder and CEO of Taia Global, an executive cybersecurity firm, and author of "Inside Cyber Warfare." "During breaks, they can play with the apps with an eye to their mission." The teams will have a working lunch period for buildi

The N12 bikini is the world's first ready-to-wear, completely 3D-printed article of clothing. All of the pieces, closures included, are made directly by 3D printing and snap together without any sewing. N12 represents the beginning of what is possible for the near future. The same process can be used to make shirts, dresses and suits that are custom fitted using body scanning. It is 0.7 millimeters (1/36th of a inch) thick nylon. 

Spammers don't fit the life patterns of regular users.  "[Microsoft researchers]  are using studies of legitimate and malicious social networks to spot bogus email accounts that are used to push spam, malware, and otherwise malicious links."

Use Google's ngram viewer to see how a word (or words) are used across time by searching for their prevalence in books.  

Scientists have used animal cells to create an artificial form of meat without the need for the rearing and slaughtering of livestock. The product, known as "in vitro meat", is made from thousands of stem cells which multiply to produce strips of muscle tissue without ever leaving the lab. Dutch scientists experimenting with pig cells say it could be just six months before the first test tube sausage is produced, and within a year lab-grown burgers could be created using similar techniques with cows.

Very cool use of Google Moderator to try and brainstorm what Egypt should do now that Mubarak is gone.

GSA's guide to its employees on how to use social media in an official capacity.  

Create a site uptime monitor for any website. Quite possibly the most awesome use of Google Docs I've seen yet.

A cute way to "play spy" using self-destruct emails.

Positive government transparency or a "D'oh!" moment for the intelligence community (starting to think that's an oxymoron).

Which? "government transparency" or "intelligence community" ?

 Color lets you snap and share photos and videos. But instead of sharing them with people you specify, it shares them with people near you-and if those people are using the Color app to capture stuff, you can see it, too. It all happens in real time in one 

"The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN) is a community of federal employees dedicated to the idea that citizens deserve clear communications from government. We first developed this document in the mid-90s. We continue to revise it every few years to provide updated advice on clear communication. We hope you find this document useful, and that it helps you improve your writing"

Using Correlate, you can upload your own data series and see a list of search terms whose popularity best corresponds with that real world trend.

This article summarizes some of the issues around the recent study that possibly finds a link between cell phone use and cancer.  The neat thing about the article is that it provides a tool to look up cell phone models to see how they perform on this rating.