NYT: Mr. Softee Trucks Tap Ice Cream Market in China

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/nyregion/15softee.html

"Customers like Meng Xiangbo, 19, a college student, have proved Mr. Conway right. He is a regular customer of the Mr. Softee truck that peddles its treats in Suzhou's university district.

One recent balmy afternoon, Mr. Meng ordered a kiwi sundae. "They have six flavors," he said of the sundaes. "I eat a different one every day. On Sunday, I rest.""

Cultivated Play: Farmville | MediaCommons

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/content/cultivated-play-farmville

"...it seems appropriate to examine the most popular video game in America. Farmville is a free, browser-based video game that is played through one's Facebook account. Users harvest crops, decorate their farms, and interact with one another, in what is ostensibly a game about farming. While this may sound like a relatively banal game, over seventy-three million people play Farmville.[7] Twenty-six million people play Farmville every day. More people play Farmville than World of Warcraft, andFarmville users outnumber those who own a Nintendo Wii.[8] This popularity is not surprising per se; even in the current recession, video game revenues reached nearly twenty billion dollars in America last year.[9]"

Adoption, and article: Parents of Violent Adoptive Children Support Torry Hansen, Who Sent Russian Child Back - ABC News

Here are my thoughts. Article at the bottom.

We are the parents of an adopted child from China. When we first started looking into international adoption, we were quite taken with the PR campaigns waged by the Russian adoption agencies. We'd even gone so far as to put down a $500 deposit on an application. But we continued doing research. One troubling tipoff was a quote from an adoptive family in the agency brochure reporting their post-adoptive status: "fine." Just one word. And not a glowing word.

Over the next few months, after more learnings about russian adoptions which 6 years ago were well known as likely to be troublesome due to things like fetal alcohol syndrome, aids, and orphanage conditions worse than most, we switched to China especially after speaking to a couple from my mother-in-law's office who had nothing but great things to say about their agency, the transparency of the Chinese intl adoption process, and the relative health of chinese institutionalized kids.

But we also struggled, post adoption, to find resources to help us with delayed development. What we found were lots of services to help parents without financial resources - basic medical assessment services like vision and hearing. We finally found an organization to help us with a child who at 10 months old was only at a 4-6 month developmental level. She couldn't hold her own bottle, didn't have fine motor control and couldn't manipulate toys, and had a bald patch on the back of her head from lying in a crib all day. To my daughter's credit, with her will to survive and our inexpert but loving care, she was able to progress thru 8 months worth of developmental goals in 4 months. By the time we'd gotten the right help on board, she had pretty much caught up by herself.

We were fortunate. There is this false belief that "love will conquer all". As we all know, love alone can't repair failing marriages or business relationships or parent-child relations. One of the tragedies of the human condition is that adults are required to parent children with unique challenges that sometime exceed the ability of said imperfect, untrained but well-meaning parents.

I have some sympathy for the parents but I have to wonder where was the social services agency in this? The family could not have adopted without a initial homestudy followed by in home visits. They only had the boy since the end of last year - less than 6 months. Did they reach out for help locally? As the parent you are expected to remain the voice of sanity. You are supposed to do something rational before it gets to the point of no return.

It's not just a parenting issue. Adoptions can involve behavioral issues that local social and medical agencies are unfamiliar with. And it's not just an adoption issue - or are all biological kids innately in-tune with their parents and present fewer challenges?

There are millions of kids in orphanages world wide that would be much better off in permanent homes. International adoption should not be the first choice of a country but can be successful. What is needed is two things. One: eliminate the financial transaction aspect of adoptions that prioritizes the completion of "adoption transactions" over the well-being of adoptees. Two: create a mechanism to build a critical mass of knowledge, world-wide, about adoption issues and get it out to prospective and existing adoptive parents.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/parents-violent-adoptive-children-support-torry-hansen-russian/story?id=10372316&page=2

" "We believe there is a culture of secrecy surrounding adoptions so as not to impede the flow of adoptions happening, but in the process, thousands of families are traumatized and scarred," said Skeirik. "We believe it is possible to be both an adoption advocate and honest about the significant costs."

Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, agrees that all agencies, institutions and countries involved in adoption need to be more forthcoming with information about children. He said support is needed for all families -- those with biological, foster and adoptive children.

"There are insufficient resources for parents who need help with their kids, period," he said. "It's not about scaring people off adoption, but helping people do a good job as parents." "

An Apple launch that thought differently | The Social - CNET News

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20001966-36.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheSocial

Have some more Kool-Aid...

"And what first had seemed like a scheduling folly--releasing the device on a weekend, and to boot, a weekend with a major religious holiday attached to it--began to look like Apple's marketing savvy at its best. The iPad, a device meant to live on couches and coffee tables, was riding a wave of word-of-mouth marketing in family living rooms on a holiday. There was something quite brilliant about that."

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NYT: HP Working on Halfpint Android Tablet

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/hp-working-on-halfpint-android-tablet/

Not really new news, but in the news again. And what is up with the violation of the NDA? Who do they think holds the cards here?

"A senior editor of a major magazine publishing empire working on an internal corporate project, and speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement, told me of an array of H.P. tablets. He said, “I’ve seen a much smaller version of H.P.’s tablet that works exclusively with Android. It’s smaller than the Windows 7 version, almost like a half-pint size, or about twice as large as the iPhone.” But this may be one of many projects in development."

NYT: Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/science/12psychedelics.html?scp=1&sq=hallucinogens&st=cse

"It was a whole personality shift for me," Dr. Martin said. "I wasn't any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people. You have a feeling of attunement with other people."

Chat Roulette

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/tim-walker-chat-roulette-is-like-some-bastard-child-of-skype-and-stumbleupon-1899349.html

"Like some bastard child of Skype and StumbleUpon, Chat Roulette drops you into a face-to-face conversation, via your webcam, with one random stranger after another, at the click of a mouse.

Most Chat Roulette exchanges last only a fleeting few seconds: the time it takes the stranger to see you, decide on the evidence of your face or your wallpaper that you're worth no more of their time, and click onto their next chat. I'm warned that approximately one in every 10 clicks will bring you up against p*nises in various states of tumescence. But approximately one in every 20 will produce an enriching exchange. One friend found himself in a conversation with a naval officer, who'd logged on from his base somewhere in the Middle East; another had a short play performed for her by two Spanish aspiring theatricals."

List of earthquakes

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes#Largest_earthquakes_by_magnitude

75pct of the 20 largest earthquakes happened between nov and march (5 months).

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Sensorly aims to keep coverage maps honest - Engadget

http://i.engadget.com/2010/02/05/sensorly-aims-to-keep-coverage-maps-honest/

"...do you trust a carrier's coverage map of unknown age, origin, and honesty, or real-world experience? If French firm Sensorly has its way, you'll soon be able to answer the latter thanks to the deployment of an app for your phone that continuously measures cellular and WiFi signal strength at your location and silently reports it back to the company's servers where it's compiled into color-coded maps predicting your ability to connect..."

click the link to see the map you've always wanted to see.
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Engadget: new iSlate data leaked

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/05/hp-slate-to-cost-549-have-1-6ghz-atom-z530-5-hour-battery/ (nice comparison slide)

With an SD Card slot, USB2.0 Host port, expandable memory, webcam, Flash support and true multitasking, HP's iSlate would be, in fact, a true laptop replacement for me.

My 3 key computing activities on a laptop are:
- Uploading pictures from my digital camera to our webserver.
- Full web browsing experience
- Photo editing in Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements, and Thumbs Plus

iPad supports none of these, but any Windows tablet should support them all. Well, I take that back. There is a Photoshop iPhone app, and interestingly, it is able to condense Photoshop into the 5 tasks you are most likely to do in PS - which suggests that some apps really are overblown and aren't worth multiple DVDs and multiple 100's of $$.

In addition, a plus would be, and it remains to be seen whether any tablet can do this:
- video editing
- digital scrapbooking in PS Elements (processing/memory intensive, file sizes up to 300MB)

Pen support may make extended text entry a joy. I know my 1 year old HP TouchSmart tx2's handwriting recognition is absolutely superb. In addition, it changes the way I write because it forces me to slow down. I can type almost as fast I can compose in my head which isn't necessarily a benefit because it all comes out unedited and out of order. But when I write instead of typing, i fall into a different cadence and I express myself differently.

The wierdest thing that I have to remember about the iPad is that since it has to sync to a PC, you cannot sync your iPhone or iPod to the iPad. You have to sync them all to the laptop/desktop that you couldn't get rid, of which is now just a big iTunes repository.

Back to Photoshop, I first realized the power of the iPhone when I was able to take a picture, crop and colorize it, put a cute frame around it, and post it to my blog - while standing in the middle of Disneyland - all in less than 60 seconds. That is game-changing. I didn’t realize that I had digital workflows in my personal life that were crying out to be streamlined. Even my Blackberry can't do that (crop and colorize). And it remains to be seen in what ways the iPad will also be game-changing but it will probably be just as surprising.

So yes I suppose I'll have to get a 3G iPad or iSlate or somesuch for "research purposes". For now I'll wait to see which one becomes the most compelling.

Forbes: Hewlett-Packard's Mark Hurd: He Wants It All

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0412/technology-hp-mark-hurd-ibm-cisco_2.html

Below the senior tier, however, HP is more miserable than restless. It consistently ranks at the bottom of its big-scale competitors on Internet sites where employees compare notes. On one (www.proletar.com/by-employees/HP.html) it scores 1.6 out of a possible 5 stars, compared with 3.3 at Cisco and 3.7 for IBM. At Glassdoor.com HP managed a 2.5 out of 5 among 1,045 employees ("If you want to be kicked like a dog, come work here!" is typical), three slots above Countrywide Financial, and Hurd got a 30% approval rating (IBM's Samuel Palmisano, 40%; Chambers, 60%). Common complaints concern overwork, favoritism and managers looking over their shoulders in fear of not meeting Hurd's inexorable goals. "A sweatshop," says one low-level manager who recently departed. "No one wants to quit now, but watch them go when the economy recovers."

The pain seems particularly acute for some of the dwindling population of long-term vets who remember HP, perhaps wrongly, as a warm and caring place. Founders William Hewlett and David Packard devised the cuddly idea of management by walking around and hosted company cookouts to buffer their hard-nosed, hard-driving approach. By contrast, HP's executives staff arrives at headquarters in Palo Alto through a secure entrance, surrounded by barbed wire. Last year at the onset of the downturn, the boss cut salaries by 5% (at lower levels) to 20% (himself), then paid the money back when things recovered.

Hurd knows that morale is down but figures it will rise again as people adapt to the new HP. "Not everyone is comfortable with being pushed," he concedes. "We're still working on things like sales compensation--measuring people on revenues, margins and customer delight--that can create a lot of stress." Still, he adds, "we are trying to move the ball down the field fast--there is so much opportunity. Our competitors aren't waiting."