Take Note: 5 Social Media Mistakes Not to Make at Work [Social Media]

Forbes, this morning, has a very on-point list of the top 5 social media mistakes to stop making at work. The author, Kelly Clay, supports her points with help from John Pirc, security researcher and Director of Product Management for HP TippingPoint and co-author of Cybercrime and Espionage. More »

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Mathematical Proof That Crime Doesn't Pay [Crime]

If you're struggling for cash, maybe the idea of robbing a bank has idly entered your mind. Don't do it! Because a new study by a team of economists shows that it doesn't make any financial sense whatsoever. More »

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What Apple Didn't Announce Yesterday—And Why It Matters [Wwdc 2012]

Apple dropped a lot of shiny new products and some gorgeous software to drool over at yesterday's action-packed WWDC keynote. Among them, a beautiful new retina display MacBook Pro, refreshed MacBook Airs, Mountain Lion OS X, and iOS 6, along with a few other goodies that didn't necessarily warrant an explicit mention. For the most part, we're thrilled about what we saw. More »

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Best Buy: Hacker Attacks Are Increasing For Online Retailers

Several weeks ago, we told you how several Best Buy customers were complaining that someone out there was attempting to make bogus, phantom purchases through their BestBuy.com accounts. We wondered at the time if the retailer's site had been a possible victim of someone cracking into its customer database, but Best Buy says these unfortunate incidents are the result of ramped-up efforts by scammers against BestBuy.com and other websites. "We -- along with a growing number of other retailers -- are seeing increased attempts by hackers around the world to target customer accounts on BestBuy.com and other online retail sites, and compromise the stored user information," a company rep tells Consumerist. The company says that its user accounts -- user names, passwords, other stored information -- have not been compromised and that the scammers "appear to be using combinations taken elsewhere in an attempt to gain access to BestBuy.com accounts." As you know, any number of sites have had their user databases hacked, thus giving scammers access to user names and passwords that people might have used on other sites. And if you're going to test a login and maybe make an illegal purchase, an electronics retailer seems like a good target. "We are working to take care of our customers affected by these attacks," adds the rep, "crediting their accounts for any unauthorized purchases, and requesting that they take the time now to protect their online information (such as updating their BestBuy.com account passwords, not using the same passwords across different accounts, etc.)." Best Buy customers with immediate questions or concerns can call 1-888-BESTBUY. In general, you should never use the same user name/password combination for multiple sites. Once someone has that info for one site, it's incredibly easy for them to run a script that attempts that ID/password combo at numerous sites, hoping to hit just a few.

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Army Plan: Wirelessly Recharge Gadgets ... From 50 Feet Away

The Pentagon wants to eliminate annoying cords with wireless power, and wants to boost the range to more than 50 feet.

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Brush Your Teeth Or Get Cancer And Die

"Failing to brush your teeth properly could increase the risk of dying prematurely from cancer, researchers claim. They found a link between high levels of dental plaque, or bacteria, and dying from cancer up to 13 years earlier than might otherwise be expected. Those with the most bacteria on the surface of their teeth and gums had an 80 per cent increased risk of premature death."---See more posts by Alex Balk6 comments

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New York Facebook Already Thinks It's Better Dressed Than California Facebook

Facebook's New York boss is determined to keep the company from turning into Google as it expands beyond boring old Silicon Valley.

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Tablet Users Are Geezer Couch Potatoes, Says New Report

New research shows that tablet owners are more likely to be older - and far more interested in consuming content than producing it. Those demographics blow holes in popular tablet-as-PC-replacement theories. Smartphone Users Like Tablets The insights come from a report last week from market analyst comScore, which also shows that nearly one in four smartphone users also used tablets during the three-month period ending April 2012. A hefty 23.6% of smartphone users reported using tablets, while just 10.4% of feature phone owners had used tablets. The report didn’t offer direct evidence of why smartphone usage was predictive of tablet usage, though some educated guesses could be made. First, you’d expect smartphone adoptees to be more interested in tablets. Second, the iPhone’s onscreen keyboard demonstrated to consumers that a decent computing device didn’t have to have a mouse and a physical keyboard. Finally, smartphone users might be more interested in tablets because of the idea that apps bought within a particular ecosystem (especially iOS, but also Android) can be used across devices. Geezers Like Tablets The report did show the demographics of smartphone and tablet owners skewed heavily toward an older population segment. “For both devices, the heaviest overall audience concentration was between the ages of 25 to 44. Compared to smartphone owners, tablet users were 28% more likely to be in the 65 and older age segment, and 27% less likely to be age 18-24,” according to comScore’s statement. That 65+ figure is telling, offering one reason why tablets don’t seem to be showing up in the enterprise and business IT spaces as much as some had predicted. If this research is accurate, unlike other technology early adopters, many tablet adopters appear to be well outside the workforce - and won’t be joining that workforce, either. It’s not surprising that tablet users are three times as likely to watch video on their devices as smartphone users - watching video on a tablet is a much better experience. But it also emphasizes that tablets are still widely deployed as content consumption devices, not content production. Content creation seems to remain the province of desktop and laptop computers. Predictions of the death of the PC - at least in work settings - seem to be a bit premature.

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What Americans Spend on Groceries

Tired of high grocery bills? Quit griping! According to the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans are actually spending less of our money on groceries than we did 30 years ago. Lam Thuy Vo of NPR's Planet Money blog explains: We now spend a much bigger share of our grocery money on processed foods, which includes things like frozen dinners, canned soups and snacks. We spend much less on meat, largely because meat is much cheaper than it was 30 years ago. More at NPR's Planet Money Blog: Link 

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Mountain Lion Price Set at $19.99, Ships Next Month

Apple announced on Monday during its 23rd annual Worldwide Developers Conference that its Mac operating system OS X Mountain Lion will be priced at $19.99 when it ships in July. Apple exec Craig Federrichi told conferences attendees that those who buy a new Mac will receive a free Mountain Lion upgrade. "This is for upgrades from Lion and all the way from Snow Leopard, and it will upgrade all of your personal Macs," Federrichi said. The exact date in July was not noted. In February, Apple released a developer preview of OS X Mountain Lion, which is the ninth major release of Mac's operating system. The update brings a slew of apps and popular features from the iPad and iPhon… Continue reading... More About: apple, Mountain Lion, Snow Leopard, wwdc

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Apple intros new iPad Smart Case: clever enough to cover both sides, priced at $50

And we're still not done. A new iPad case has managed to sneak onto the Apple Store's online shelves, and it'll protect your precious slab on both the back and front. The Smart Case appears to augment last year's Smart Cover with an additional (polyurethane hardshell) coating for the back of your iPad. Priced at just under $50, the case fits both second and third-generation iPads and will arrive in six different color options. And yes, you can still get that ever-pressing message engraved onto it too. [Thanks Nikhil] For more coverage of WWDC 2012, please visit our event hub!Apple intros new iPad Smart Case: clever enough to cover both sides, priced at $50 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jun 2012 15:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink   |  Apple Store  | Email this | Comments

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Your Grandparents Are Spending All of Their Money

The Wall Street Journal has some news for you, Baby Boomers: Not only have you suffered financially in the recession, but that inheritance you're counting on from your parents, well, you might not get it after all. This is because today's grandparents are probably going to live a long time, long enough to spend their money for themselves. You might actually have to take care of them. Curses! According to Anne Tergeson: As a group, boomers likely won't be getting as much of an inheritance as they hoped. Even worse, far from receiving a bequest, a growing number are tapping some of their own savings to help their cash-strapped parents make ends meet. For families, the result is often a lot of scrambling, dashed dreams, and conflict and angst as parents and children try to come to grips with the lean new reality—and divide up a smaller pie. The growing aging population in the U.S. is a real thing, not to be scoffed at. Tergenson gives us the numbers: "a 65-year-old man has a 60 percent chance of living to age 80 and a 40 percent chance of reaching 85. For women, the odds are 71 percent and 53 percent, respectively." This means that seniors aged 85 and older are actually the quickest growing portion of the population. Which means, best case scenario, hooray: Our parents and grandparents will be with us for a long while! But not everyone has planned, financially or otherwise, to live that long—and even if they have, the money they've saved may not be enough to cover it, particularly if they become ill and need medical treatment. And living so long, who won't? As Michael Wolff wrote in New York magazine in May, the parents of adult parents are living longer and longer, even past the point some would describe as actually "living," instead being kept only basically alive by doctors and medical technologies. This is a real issue.   But the way The Journal covers it, as if children are sitting around waiting for their parents to drop dead so they can collect the cash, seems a little...odd. Are so many baby boomers really counting on their parents' money? Is it really so awful to assume that you might need to help your parents financially, should they live into their 90s? This article seems to say yes.  "Due to the new realities of longevity, adult children—who have rightfully assumed they would inherit something substantial from their parents and have lived their lives accordingly—can no longer count on that," says Lillian Rubin, a sociologist, psychologist and author.  It's that "rightfully" that's so strange: Suddenly, that sense of entitlement we judge in Millennials and, for example, the character of Hannah in Girls, who allowed her parents to support her in her twenties, appears to stem from a far more established source, i.e., the Baby Boomer. Is it worse to expect cash from mommy and daddy when you're 20...or 60 years old?    It's one thing to point out that the set of circumstances—each generation tending to do better than the proceeding, and passing along their economic successes for the next to improve upon—may have changed in recent years. This has changed still from situations longer ago, in which aging parents were never expected to live anywhere but with their children, who probably supported them, too. But Rubin's point about rightful expectations is held up by the stats. According to Boston College's Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, "baby boomers and their offspring could inherit as much as $27 trillion over the next four decades, with the progeny of the wealthiest pocketing much of the windfall." There is money there, it's just not going to go to everyone.    We hope, anyway, that the inheritance-expecting are outnumbered by the adult kids reflected in a quote from 63-year-old Gary, who told the Journal, "An inheritance would help, but I am not looking forward to it. I don't want an inheritance if I have to lose someone I love." Or, as commenter Bill Scurrah wrote, "I can't help but be bemused by this article. As the son of parents of very modest means, and a person of modest means myself, I never expected to inherit anything but a few sticks of furniture and a photo album. If it had not been for Social Security and Medicare, and the 60K we got from selling their town house, my mother, who survived my dad by two years, would have had nothing to live on and no way to pay her medical costs (which, by the way, were quite modest compared to some of the estimates I come across for old age care). There are millions of people who simply do not operate in the realm of inheritances, investments, expensive retirement facilities, etc. For us, articles like this describe life on a different planet."   Image via Shutterstock by Tony Bowler.  

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Apple selects TomTom as primary iOS 6 maps provider (update: confirmed)

Been wondering exactly which data service is replacing Google as Apple's map provider? According to these leaked screenshots (shown above) from the iOS 6 developer beta running on an iPhone 4S, it appears to be TomTom. The company is no stranger to iOS, as its navigation app and car kit have been available on the iPhone since 2009. On an interesting note, the maps application specifically mentions "data from TomTom, others," which means there may be other suppliers that aren't getting called out by name. We'll keep you posted as we hear more what's going on behind-the-scenes. Update: TomTom has independently confirmed to us that it indeed "has signed a global agreement with Apple for maps and related information." [Thanks, Anonymous]Apple selects TomTom as primary iOS 6 maps provider (update: confirmed) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

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Researchers Connect Flame to US-Israel Stuxnet Attack

The sophisticated espionage toolkit known as Flame is directly tied to the Stuxnet superworm that attacked Iran's centrifuges in 2009 and 2010, according to researchers who recently found that the main module in Flame contains code that is nearly identical to a module that was used in an early version of Stuxnet.

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Top risk of stroke for normal-weight adults: Getting under 6 hours of sleep

Habitually sleeping less than six hours significantly increases stroke risk among middle-age to older adults of normal weight and at low risk for sleep apnea, study of 5,666 people followed for up to three years reports. Participants started with no stroke history or high risk for sleep apnea, BMI was adjusted for. First stroke symptoms were measured, along with demographic information, stroke risk factors, depression symptoms, health behaviors. Study found no association among overweight participants.

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Study: Airport Security Full-Body Scanners Won't Zap You With Dangerous Radiation

If you're imagining your organs being zapped through with invisible rays of unhealthy radiation while standing in an airport security full-body scanner, well, stop that. A new independent study into the devices used by the Transportation Security Administration found that they do not expose passengers to dangerous levels of radiation. The study by the Marquette University College of engineering is believed to be the first independent review of the scanners, reports the Chicago Tribune. It found that radiation from the backscatter scanners passes beyond the subject's skin and reaches 29 different organs, but that the levels of radiation are much lower than other X-ray proceduers. The TSA has also submitted the scanners for testing by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the U.S. Army Public Health Command. All of those tests have shown that the scanners aren't putting passengers at risk, but critics are still calling for more independent studies. The Marquette study isn't based on testing of the actual machines, but its conclusions were based on scanner radiation data released publicly by the TSA. The study's author ran those numbers through simulation software that modeled how X-ray photons travel through a body. It estimated that scanners expose passengers to less than a third of the maximum recommended dose of 0.25 micro sieverts. There are already some doubters of this study, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who says the study is in doubt because it used TSA data. "We do not truly know the risk of this radiation exposure over multiple screenings, for frequent fliers, those in vulnerable groups, or TSA's own employees operating the machines," she said in a statement. TSA scanners pose negligible risk to passengers, new test shows [Chicago Tribune]

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Tweepify Turns Your Twitter Activity Into a Person

If we are what we tweet, then this is what we look like. A new tool called Tweepify turns your Twitter activity -- how often you tweet, followers-to-following ratio, etc. -- into humanoid "tweeple." Each body part of the visualization signifies a different aspect of your life on Twitter. Head height signifies number of followers, while head width signifies how many people you follow. Eye height represents how recently you last tweeted. Mouth heigh represents how many followers you gain per day, while mouth width reflects your total number of tweets. Head size corresponds to tweets per day, arm length to the reach of your tweets and leg length to how long you've been on the social… Continue reading... More About: trending, Twitter

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JetBlue Launches A Live Online Game Show

Contestant can win a vacation and the airline will promote its holiday deals in the process.

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Charge Smartphones Wirelessly Using Your Laptop [Video]

Intel's embedded induction charger allows mobiles to conduct electricity without any cables.

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Origami Kayak Unfolds & Is Ready-To-Use In Minutes [Video]

A large artist portfolio quickly assembles into a working boat.

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