Life 360: Family Locator Apps-Mapping the Shades of Grey (Part 1)

Oct. 15, 2012  Teens call them ‘trackers,’ parents call them ‘tools,’ and the telecom industry refers to GPS and LBS (location based services) as sheer “growth” in a mobile market that’s booming with map-based apps that pinpoint the whereabouts of users. We need to uncork this whopper of a conversation beyond the micro (oooh, handy! or ewww creepy!) and into macro … [Read more...]

Health2.0: Hunting Cryptic Cryptids in Cryptozoo!

Oct. 8, 2009 As we observe October as health month in multiple media iterations of kids' mental and physical well-being, it's fitting that I've been away covering the excitement at Health2.0 this week. What's it all about? To me, the Health2.0 conference is ideally a place where innovation technology collides with human needs in ambitious acceleration of fast-track … [Read more...]

Playing For Change: A Music Movement That Stirs the Soul

Mar. 18, 2009 ”Music is the poetry of the air.”---Jean Paul Richter Like a smile, music knows few boundaries in its outreach. It has the profound ability to connect cultures, remove barriers, and capture emotion even when words aren’t understood, so it makes sense that youth leverage music for self-expression in so many multimedia forms, from iTunes to profile pages, band … [Read more...]

Will 2009 Uncover Price Fixing On the Backs of Texting Teens?

I don’t know about you, but this week's NYTimes article "What Carriers Aren't Eager to Tell You About Texting" written by local SJSU professor Randall Stross has me wanting to text him an emoticon smooch for his ‘lift and reveal’ article peeling back the Wizard of Oz curtain on mobile carrier costs, profit margins and taking advantage of youth habits to … [Read more...]

Money Management for Kids: Chores, Allowance & Digital Nagging

Part Two of our interview with PAYjr CEO David Jones includes one of the rarely used aspects of PAYjr's chore and allowance program (only 5% evidently) where parents can set up cell phone reminders for follow-through in cyber-nag style.Mind you, critics have cried foul that this is outsourcing parenting and discipline to tech gizmos, but frankly, I’m not one of ‘em. Nope. No … [Read more...]