Lifestyle posts

Tell your boss that you’re not trying to be lazy. You’re helping the environment. That’s the report from the Center of Economic Policy Research, a liberal think tank. In the 13-page PDF they released, fighting climate change may be as easy as taking on a more “European” style of work schedule. “For all practical purposes, some amount of climate change is inevitable. However, the amount of warming is very much under our control. In addition to reducing emissions by other means, a significant reduction in climate change is possible by choosing a more European response to productivity gains rather…

What would you say if I told you that the tools you need to accomplish everything you need professionally and practically are at your fingertips in a one-stop-shop on the Internet? It’s true. And you’ll find tons of useful help and organizational guides to accomplish everything you need in a place you may have never thought to look: Mommy blogs. I’m not a mother. But knowing my own mother and watching my sister with my niece and nephew, I’m well aware that there’s no determination comparable to a woman that needs to get something done for their family. I have much less to juggle than the majority…

Pay-TV is skyrocketing in popularity all throughout Europe. Ninety-five operators across 25 countries in the European pay-TV market added 10 million subscriptions in the last 10 years. What will the next five years look like for this market? Pay-TV households will increase by 10.2 percent to 186 million between 2012 and 2017. During this timespan, cable services will decline by 4.9 percent while Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services will increase by 35.9 percent. What’s the reason for this explosive growth? The growth of HDTV channels is part of the answer—since the end of 2009…

In 2011, we wrote about how Groupon must fail to save the internet. At the time, there were already some fishy things happening in the Daily Deals segment of eCommerce and more fishiness continues to pop up even today. What happened to the promising future of Groupon and its biggest competitor, LivingSocial? With Amazon revealing that LivingSocial lost $650 million in 2012, it’s clear that both of the daily deals juggernauts are slipping. It seems like yesterday that Google was getting their $6 billion offer rejected by Groupon. What has changed? Why is the industry failing? To answer that, we…

For a video that’s over 45 years old, it comes pretty close to describing the realities of the 21st century home office. The multiple screens are a nice touch, though not for the right reasons. They anticipated different devices based on purpose rather than form. Having a pair of computer monitors, an iPad, and smartphones may not have been part of the original vision, but they understood the direction of the future well enough. They knew that most everything would be digitally rendered from telephones to newspapers to stock reports. They anticipated that for many, the “work would come to the home”…

In many ways, smartphones are actually too smart. They have capabilities that few ever take advantage of and there are so many apps that there’s no way to explore a fraction of them. Smartphones can help you organize, remember, and hack life in general with their capabilities. Used properly, they can even help you make money. This video from Hack College gives us a breakdown of five different ways you can make the most out of your smartphone in a smidgen over a minute. From optimizing your actions to linking to the cloud, these hacks can take your smartphone use to another level.  …

We know where to find porn. There are more websites dedicated to giving people their skin fix than there are sites dedicated to curing cancer, solving political issues, or educating children. Why, then, does porn continue to pop up on so many apps and just about every user-generated content site? Vine, Twitter’s new 6-second video app, had major porn problems within hours of launch. 500px photography app had to settle for a 17+ rating on the app store over porn. Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Ning – they’ve all had their share of porn issues that keep popping up despite desperate measures taken…

Last year, Audi started showing off its e-bike concept, a high-tech 50 MPH electric bike with carbon fiber and built in WiFi. The cool two-wheelers made its rounds through the blogosphere and tech shows and inspired many to think outside of the box with bicycle designs. Georgian designer Vladimer Kobakhidze was one of the inspired and designed a concept folding bike with the Audi logo proudly emblazoned on the frame. What Kobakhidze may or may not have done intentionally was to use the Mercedes Benz famous three-spoke logo as the wheels of the bike. It’s all harmless, but fun to point out nonetheless….

“Striking” might be overkill, but in a world where Jesse Eisenberg can get away with playing Mark Zuckerberg, this geek CEO doppelganger image is creepy enough to note. Kutcher tweeted the image after the premier of his new movie, jOBS, at the Sundance Film Festival. As far as the movie itself, the initial reviews range from lukewarm to pleasantly surprised. Nobody is heralding it as triumph, but few are calling it the stinker that many anticipated and reviews of Kutcher’s performance have been positive. Are you going to see it? Thank you Sundance for your support of Jobs twitter.com/aplusk/status/…—…

Today, the fastest standard flight from Paris to Sydney requires one quick stop and takes about 22 hours. The SpaceLiner project by the German Aerospace Center hopes to cut that time considerably by launching a rocket with up to 50 passengers into the upper atmosphere and gliding down to the destination at 24 times the speed of sound. If successful, the total travel time would be 90 minutes. If it sounds ambitious, it is. The target launch for commercial use of the concept is 2050. That doesn’t diminish the potential that such technology could bring to a world that is still desperately separated…