Category: Uncategorized Page 3 of 16

A driver in the next lane is moving his lips. Is he on a hands-free cellphone? Talking to someone in the car? To himself? Singing along to the radio?

If lawmakers follow the advice of a federal board, police officers will have to start figuring that out — somehow.

The National Transportation Safety Board said this week that drivers should not only be barred from using hand-held cellphones, as they are in several states, but also from using hands-free devices. No more “Sorry, I’m stuck in traffic” calls, or virtually any other cellphone chatter behind the wheel.

Though no state has yet implemented such restrictive rules, the NTSB’s recommendations carry weight that could place such language into future laws, or motivate the federal government to cut funding to states that don’t follow suit.

Many of the men and women patrolling the nation’s streets and highways wonder how they would sort the criminally chatty from the legally chatty.

“It would be almost impossible to determine if someone was talking on a phone or exercising their vocal cords,” said Capt. Donald Melanson of the West Hartford, Conn., police department, which took part in a national pilot program aimed at cracking down on drivers’ cellphone use. “That would be much more difficult to enforce, almost to the point where it would be impossible.”

via www.washingtonpost.com

I am obviously not a fan of distracted driving, but the idea of banning all phone use in a car seems like a dramatic overreach and a bit ridiculous. It will be unenforceable, and in a short time, technology will eliminate many of the distracting aspects of car calls… like dialing a phone with your fingers versus with your voice.

Talking to someone hands-free is no different or worse than dealing with two distracting kids in the back seat. I don't see how you can make this illegal unless you want to also making talking in a car illegal in general. Obviously, that would be a stupid idea. Thus, this is a stupid idea.

For early stage companies, angel investment can be an attractive funding option, says James Hunt, angel investor and adjunct professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. Hunt specializes in early stage funding and has holdings in about two dozen companies. Here, he shares the secrets to getting a blessing–and funding–from an angel.

via www.entrepreneur.com

Good advice for entrepreneurs from an experienced Washington, DC angel, James Hunt.

We’ve come to accept that millennials adopt technology at a faster rate than other generations. And we’ve come to accept that millennial moms are uber-digital — not only the mommy-bloggers gathering in San Diego this week for the annual BlogHer conference. What we don’t often talk about is how that’s going to shape the generation coming up after the millennials — the iGen. Technology isn’t going to skip this generation, it’s being handed down right from mother to child.

via adage.com

Amazing stats. Kids know how to use a phone before they can tie their shoes. Very interesting.

Do you know your children's friends? Sure, you may meet some of them when they come over to play Dead Rising 2 or work on homework with your kid, but a huge amount of a modern kid's social interaction happens online. uKnowKids ($9.95/month or $99.95/year) aims to help you get familiar with your child's circle of online friends and warn you of any risky or inappropriate online interactions. It doesn't attempt to impose parental control on the kids; it's strictly an informational tool.

via www.pcmag.com

PC Magazine rated uKnowKids 4 stars (Very Good).

Not bad for a product and company that has been financed on a dime, not a dollar to date.

Congratulations to the entire uKnow.com team. Well done!

In 2009, Steve Woda and his brother Tim dreamed up a new company: an Internet-based service that would help inform parents about how to protect their children in today's high-tech world. The motivation was personal: In early 2009, a child predator had been caught stalking one of Tim's children via social media.

An experienced entrepreneur, Steve planned to seek seed funding in stages while he and his brother worked out the company's early kinks. The happy results so far: Since late 2009, their Arlington, Va., company, uKnow.com, has already attracted about $1 million from a progression of about 20 "angel" investors (individuals and groups who invest in start-up companies).

"Timing was on our side," says Steve, uKnow.com's chief executive officer. "Unfortunately, there's a rising risk for kids online. But fortunately, we found a growing number of angels available to help us address this problem."

While the venture-capital industry continues to consolidate, making it hard for some entrepreneurs to get investment capital, angel investments are on the rise. Angel investors are typically wealthy individuals who, like venture capitalists, make high-risk investments in fledgling companies in hopes of reaping exceptional returns. The difference is that the money they typically provide is much less than what venture capitalists offer, so angels usually have funded very early stages of new businesses. But even that is changing.

via www.csmonitor.com

An interesting article about angel investors as well a bit of uKnow.com's history.

Enjoy.

While Facebook and Twitter are popular sites for making friends, teens have also seen social media’s unfriendly side — 88 percent of them report having witnessed mean or cruel behavior, according to a new study.

About 12 percent of the teenagers said they saw this type of behavior online “frequently,” while 29 percent said they observed it “sometimes,” said the report by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 799 teens between the ages of 12 and 17.

At the same time, 69 percent of the teens said their peers are mostly kind on social-networking sites, the research said. About 95 percent of all American teens between the ages of 12 and 17 use the Internet, with 80 percent of them using social- media sites, the report said.

via www.businessweek.com

This is an amazing study by Pew. 9 in 10 kids have witnessed bullying occur on the major social networks.

Mom and Dads need to get engaged… NOW!

My recommendation is that if you are a parent, you should immediately go to uKnowKids.com and take advantage of their free parental intelligence tools.

If you are a grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc…, share uKnowKids.com with those you love. Again, they have free tools you can start using today!

"At what age should I let my child join Facebook?" This is a question that countless parents have asked my collaborators and me. Often, it's followed by the following: "I know that 13 is the minimum age to join Facebook, but is it really so bad that my 12-year-old is on the site?"

While parents are struggling to determine what social media sites are appropriate for their children, government tries to help parents by regulating what data internet companies can collect about children without parental permission. Yet, as has been the case for the last decade, this often backfires. Many general-purpose communication platforms and social media sites restrict access to only those 13+ in response to a law meant to empower parents: the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This forces parents to make a difficult choice: help uphold the minimum age requirements and limit their children's access to services that let kids connect with family and friends OR help their children lie about their age to circumvent the age-based restrictions and eschew the protections that COPPA is meant to provide.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

This is a very interesting article about parents' attitudes towards the federal government's age restrictions on the Web. As we all know, the restrictions turn out to be meaningless, and of little value. We are better off giving parents the tools they need to parent verus somehow convincing ourselves that an unenforceable age restriction is going to be of any assistance to the challenges of keeping kids safe online.

Scalable pricing is a powerful tool to grow revenue in a SaaS or software business. It allows you to capture more of the revenue that your customers are willing to pay, without putting off smaller customers that are not able to pay high prices. It also provides a great way to continue to grow revenue from your existing customers. This post looks at how to create scalable pricing using multiple pricing axes, and discusses the different types of axes that can be used.

via www.forentrepreneurs.com

This is a great article for those entrepreneurs thinking about how to optimize the profitability of their consumer or enterprise SAAS business models. This includes freemium.

Do your kids use the “invitation” feature on Facebook to spread the word about parties and events with their friends? If so, make sure they know how to use the feature properly – or they could be putting themselves at risk.

Facebook invitations are fairly simple to use, and can be sent to anyone with a Facebook account or email address. Click “events” from your home account page and fill in the date and location, upload an optional picture, and customize the privacy level of your event (public or private.) The important part is this: don’t forget to triple-check the privacy level!

Last month a German teen identified as Thessa invited friends to her 16th birthday party using Facebook, but she forgot to mark the invitation as “private.” The result? The invitation went viral, causing 1,600 people to flood her street on the day of the party – even though Thessa later realized her mistake and cancelled the event. The police were called in to handle the crowd, and Thessa (who was nowhere to be found) had a very unhappy birthday.

Thessa’s real-life faux pas was preceded by a similar occurrence last year in Australia (which luckily turned out to be a hoax.) Facebook invitations for Kate Miller’s birthday went viral and Facebook ended up closing down the event after over 60,000 people RSVP’d.

via timwoda.com

A good article about how to safely use Facebook and protect your privacy online.

At the beginning of August, Betabeat began talking about a coming crunch for seed stage companies in New York. We believe that the bubble in early stage financing had peaked, and that in the coming months, many young startups would find it hard to raise follow-on cash.

At the time, local investors like Chris Dixon and Shai Goldman argued that this wasn’t some dire turn of events, but simply the natural cycle of venture capital funding playing out. But the drumbeat of seed stage slaughter now seems to have made its way to the mainstream press.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story yesterday, “Web Startups Hit Cash Crunch,” which claimed that valuations for these early stage companies had fallen by as much as half in recent months and the venture capital funding was at an all time low. AngelList’s Naval Ravikant said that startup financing is getting weaker by the week and that the survival rate for young companies is dropping fast.

But new data from CB Insights, a venture capital database here in New York, disputes that outlook. Their quarterly report shows a record number of seed stage deals over the last quarter and a steady growth in overall venture deal flow and funding since 2009.

via www.betabeat.com

This is another article disputing the WSJ's suggestion that the financing market is quickly going south for startups. Again, a good read.