Category Archives: senior lifestyle

Snapshot View Of Snapchat

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Everyday, someone asks me about Snapchat. What is it? Why is it so popular? 

David Pogue, tech editor at Yahoo Finance, did a marvelous job explaining it. I decided to write bullet points, from his lengthy explanation, so you too can know enough about the app to engage in conversations. 

1-Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, recently went public at $24 per share. It’s now  $22.07.

2-The company lost $515 million last year, and $373 million the prior one.

3-Most people who use it are under 25, and 70% of them are female. 

4-Approximately 200 million people use Snapchat every day. They send 20,000 photos a second, and watch eight billion videos a day.

 5-Snapchat is made up of three apps. 

A-10 second self-destructing photos and videos. The app offers overlays on photos.

B-Longer term posts on the user’s time line called “Your Story.” Chats can be conducted by typing, talking, or video calling.

C-A news section is being developed where online publications can post their own content  for you to read: ESPN, Comedy Central, BuzzFeed, People, National Geographic, CNN, and many others.

If you want to know more, watch or read Pogue’s complete explanation. Click here

Dr. Stuart Ungar Says A Happy Chapter Two Life Is Filled With Exploration  

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My friend, Dr. Stuart Ungar, an Englishman, gave up his medical practice in London at 60 to explore other life-long passions. I interviewed him because I was curious how he made the transition into new ventures at an age when many people retire and withdraw from the rat race. Dr. Ungar offers his views on leading a rewarding and satisfying life after you give up your main career. 

Why I became a doctor.

Why did I decide to give up my practice.

What it takes to have a happy Chapter Two In Life.

Robots, The New Delivery Men

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The next time you order food from a local restaurant, a robot may show up. The first two cities to see robots roaming through their streets are Redwood City, Calif. and Washington, D.C. 

The company that is making this possible is Starship Technologies, an Estonia-based startup. Starship  is working with delivery food service companies Postmates in Washington, D.C., and DoorDash in Redwood City, Calif.

Re/Code, the tech site reports that the six-wheeled robots are a little under two feet tall, weigh about 40 pounds empty and travel four miles per hour. Watch the above video to see the robots in action.

Starship was created by two Skype co-founders, Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis. They just received $17.2 million in funding from Daimler AG, Shasta Ventures, Matrix Partners and others.

Starship has been experimenting with robot deliveries in more than 40 cities in Europe. I guess this is now the real deal. 

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Comic Solutions 

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I found the new iTunes Terms of Service document so unique, I wanted to share it with you. Artist R. Sikoroyak turned the entire iTunes Terms of Service document into a comic book with cartoon characters. How clever is that? 

The document was always famous for being long and boring. No one ever wanted to read it. Now, more people will not only read it, but will  collect it as well. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs stars as the main character.

This comic book is a classic example of turning a major negative into a plus, something we need more of in our lives. 

Nap Pods

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Nap pods have been around for a few years. I first saw them in Asian airports. They were situated near the gates, so travelers could rent them for 20 minute power naps. Apparently, it was a hit with Americans like me, because now they are being used around the United States. A number of different companies make pods to sleep in.

I just found out that several New Mexico high schools have installed them in class rooms for sleep-deprived students. The National Institute of Health reports that only a third of teens are sleeping eight hours. 

The Institute recommends 10 hours a night. The sleeping pods in New Mexico were paid for through mental health grants from the state. Educators believe 20-minute naps can help students feel more refreshed and then they become more productive.

Hammacher Schlemmer feels nap pods are going to be a big business. In the future, we may see them in shopping centers, golf courses, libraries, sports arenas, co-working spaces, and theme parks.

Hammacher Schlemmer is selling the Nap Pods for $16,000. The company says, “The pod’s contoured, cushioned bed provides optimal ergonomics for napping by elevating the feet, relaxing the lower back, and slightly bending the knees, all of which promote blood circulation. Its spherical dome enclosure provides semi-privacy; a privacy visor provides additional seclusion. 

“Controlled at the armrest, a built-in timer is set to a pre-programmed 20-minute nap, but can be set to any preferred nap time. A suite of ambient rhythms plays through the built-in 200-watt Bose speaker (or headphones jack) to eliminate surrounding distractions. The pod gently wakes nappers with slowly brightening light and vibration, minimizing grogginess. White glove delivery. Special conditions and guarantee limitations apply. 60″ L x 57 1/4″ W x 48″ H. (310 lbs.).”

I’m rooting for the success of Nap Pods. This may be the answer to a lot of personality disorders and mean-spirited people. A little extra sleep can possibly change attitudes. We can only hope. 

Two Art Events Today 

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I learned something interesting about art today. A curator for a large personal collection told me, “It doesn’t matter if you are a novice, or an expert. You are always learning.” That made me feel very comfortable in a world that I know very little about. 

First stop. Juan Carlos Maldonado, president of Art&Art Collection, invited patrons of the Perez Art Museum of Miami PAMM to view his collection of abstract art. The Unbounded Line is a selection of work that shows the intricate and remarkable histories of abstract and constructivist. We loved the art  Here are some of the pieces we saw.


Then off to Williams McCall at Frameworks where Eliot had three photos on display.

    

My favorites. 


Was It Good For You? 

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Some people will not want to fake it anymore, thanks to a new high tech condom ring. They will be more interested in measuring it. The i.Con smart condom is manufactured by British Condoms.

The i.Con and its companion app, tracks speed, “average thrust velocity,” duration, skin temperature, girth, calories burned, and frequency of sessions. 

The i.Con also features a micro-USB charging port providing eight hours of use. The manufacturer swears “all data will be kept anonymous, but users will have the option to share their recent data with friends, or, indeed the world.” 

Wow wee!!

The Wedding Writer  

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The other day I saw a story in the New York Times about Vincent Mallozzi, the newspaper’s wedding reporter. I flipped out. He was the guy, who in 2008, wrote one of the first stories ever about how women were using the Internet to support each other after their divorce. My client was http://www.firstwivesworld.com.


Vinny Mallozzi worked for the sports section of The New York Times from 1986 until 2003, when he became a Weddings reporter and lived happily ever after. Here is the story about Vinny. 

Vinny is the wedding reporter.

In 2008, Vinny called to say he thought it would be  interesting to sit in on a live meeting for First Wives World so his readers could truly understand what challenges divorced women faced. He showed up with his photographer, Earl Wilson, and proceeded to stay for a few hours listening to the gripes and future plans of each woman. 

Paul, Debbie and Jonas

 
The founders of First Wives World, Paul Lambert, Debbie Nigro and Jonas Neilson, became true pioneers of the Internet because of that story. Read it here.

I was amazed that almost 10 years later, I was able to Google the story and find it. It just reminded me how lucky I am to be involved in the digital world and how many great stories I have personally created in my career as a PR agent. While most days I want to rip the hair out of my head trying to get a writer to pay attention to my pitch, there are stories like this that make it all worthwhile.

HandL Phone Case Inventor Allen Hirsch Featured In The NY Times About His Other Life 

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Full disclosure: Allen Hirsch is my client.

Full disclosure: The documentary being featured in the New York Times about Allen’s love and experience with a capuchin monkey named Benjamin, took place years before I met him.

Full disclosure: If you ever loved an animal, you will identify with Allen and Benjamin’s relationship.


Allen Hirsch is an artist, writer, real estate developer, and inventor who lives in New York City. He invented the HandL line of phone cases that I represent for public relations.
Allen’s story is told in a series of videos called “Long Live Benjamin” in the Op-Doc section of the New York Times.

The documentary was created by Jimm Lasser, a Cannes Grand Prix and Emmy award-winning Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy in New York and Biff Butler, a Cannes Lion, Clio and Emmy award-winning editor with Rock Paper Scissors. “Long Live Benjamin” is their first film.

Before you watch the videos, read Allen’s  words. 
“I’ve always struggled to be human, to know how to act and to what purpose. As a young New York artist, living in a tiny commercial storefront downtown on Crosby Street, I documented this process through drawing and painting self-portraits, which faithfully recorded the shifting moods and musings that swirled through my mind. This practice brought few answers, but did conjure the questions, which gazed back out at me starkly from the canvas.

“After marrying a woman from Caracas in the mid-1990s, I started traveling to Venezuela, where I became fascinated with the lives of people living on the jungle coast. The simplicity of sunlight, children’s laughter and the basic search for daily necessities was enough to quiet my New York rumblings. Then one day my wife brought home a cardboard box with a shriveled baby capuchin monkey, clinging to life. His mother had been killed by locals who liked monkey soup. It was a propitious moment and I immediately knew I was meant to care for him.”

 Click here to access the videos. 

Be ready to get emotional.
 

 

From Beyond The Grave  

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David Pogue of Yahoo Tech recently promised, in a series of social media posts, that he would show us how the dead can become alive again.  Watch the video from CBS’s This Morning last Sunday to see how computers can recreate a dead person.

Pogue interviewed Paul Debevec of the Institute for Creative Technologies, at the University of Southern California, who invented the Light Stage, a machine that he says “produces a series of high-resolution photos from different angles to reconstruct a 3-D model of a dead subject’s face.”

Pogue explains that “once someone has been scanned into the Light Stage, engineers can digitally recreate him or her with about 50 different facial expressions.”

This new technology may not allow dead people to stay dead. Now that’s a scary thought. People you know from the past can now show up in your future. Pogue explains in the video. Don’t miss it.