Google Hummingbird: Are You Still Playing Russian Roulette with Google? – Copyblogger

However, the funny bit about our endless quest to know how Google ranks pages is that the truth has always been right in front of us: do the hard work of knowing your customer inside and out, establish your authority, and deliver the high-quality content they need.

via Google Hummingbird: Are You Still Playing Russian Roulette with Google? | Copyblogger.

This is a seriously good article.  I recommend it highly if you are trying to establish an online brand.

Cinnamon Game Harms Players

Calls to the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) related to cinnamon increased from 51 in 2011 to 178 calls in the first 6 months of 2012, wrote Steven Lipshultz, MD, of University of Miami’s Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine in Florida, and colleagues, online in a Perspective in Pediatrics.

 

Of the 178 calls, 122 (69%) were classified as intentional misuse or abuse “consistent with the cinnamon challenge,” the authors wrote, and about (17%) required medical attention.

 

The challenge requires a person to swallow a tablespoon of the dry, ground spice in 60 seconds without drinking fluids.

 

The authors pointed to 51,000 YouTube video clips — one viewed 19 million times — as of August 2012 that showed adolescents watching someone coughing and choking as the cinnamon triggers a severe gag reflex. They said the popularity of the Internet coupled with peer pressure instigated too many cinnamon challenges.

via Cinnamon Game Harms Players.

I am so thankful my own children are (mostly) past the stupid stage.

Twitter and Facebook ‘harming children’s development’ – Telegraph

A generation of children risks growing up with obsessive personalities, poor self-control, short attention spans and little empathy because of an addiction to social networking websites such as Twitter, a leading neuroscientist has warned.

Baroness Greenfield quoted figures showing that more than half of 13- to 17-year-olds now spend more than 30 hours a week using video games, computers, e-readers, mobile phones and other screen-based technology.  She said the human brain evolved to its surroundings and needed a “stimulating environment” to grow and properly develop.  But she warned that a reliance on social networking and increased use of computer games could effectively “rewire” the brain.

via Twitter and Facebook ‘harming children’s development’ – Telegraph.

You Are Not A Computer – HBR

The Internet, and all it has come to include, is the most powerful interruption technology ever invented. It slices and dices our focus, fractures and distracts it, gives us less and less of more and more. It prompts us to skim, scan, and skip rather than immerse ourselves in any one thing.

Technology has no business setting our agenda, but it has turned into our dominatrix. Masochistically — but all too willingly — we submit to it. Emailing, texting and tweeting, searching Google, checking Facebook, and surfing websites not only consumes our time and energy, it also diminishes our capacity to pay attention to anything for very long — or to resist the next digital temptation.

via You Are Not A Computer (Try As You May) – Tony Schwartz – Harvard Business Review.