State Farm Launches iPhone App For Teen Drivers
State Farm has introduced a new free iPhone and iPod touch application aimed at helping young drivers stay safe on the road.
The "Steer Clear" application is part of State Farm's safe drivers discount program. The app gives young drivers a way to complete the Steer Clear discount program and encourages supervised driver education.
State Farm says its Steer Clear program aligns with the principles of Graduated Driver Licensing laws aimed at reducing teen car crashes by lengthening the time teens must drive while supervised and requiring practice in a number of driving conditions.
The app allows parents and teen drivers to take advantage of State Farm's Steer Clear car insurance discount, which requires teens under the age of 19 to complete 20 guided trips behind the wheel. The Steer Clear app provides a trip timer to log suggested outings and it will track practice time while the mobile device is turned off.
"Parents have told us they need more information about guiding their teen through the learning to drive process," said Laurette Stiles, Vice President, Strategic Resources at State Farm.
"This new application provides trip suggestions, goals and pointers for assessing driving skills. By providing this tool State Farm hopes to support supervised practice and improve teens' skills for independent driving."
The Steer Clear iPhone and iPod touch application also includes driving tips, a safe driving pledge and informational videos. If the program is successfully completed participants can receive up to a 15 percent discount on car insurance.
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Sat Feb 27, 2010 16:30 pm
Technology & the American Creativity Crisis
"For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining." That's the opening salvo in a recent Newsweek story that points to the latest results from the Torrance Tests of Critical Thinking that assess Americans' "CQ" - creativity quotient.
Measuring the CQ involves a series of simple tests to track divergent thinking and other problem-solving skills. These are scored based on fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. First developed by E. Paul Torrance, researchers have been administering these tests to children as well as tracking their successes as adults since the 1950s.
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By no means a perfect assessment of creativity, the CQ scores of kids do seem nevertheless to be a prediction of their "creative accomplishments" as adults. "Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance's tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers," write Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, authors of the Newsweek article. "The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ."
Who's to Blame?
Video Games: It's no surprise that the Newsweek article is quick to blame television and video games for dulling our children's creativity, even though the authors admit that there is no conclusive evidence that they're the culprit.
Game designer Raph Koster responded to the article on his blog, sugg/> [...]
Wed Jul 14, 2010 15:14 pm
YouTube Launches its Univision Channel
In November, YouTube announced that it had struck a partnership with one of the top Spanish-language broadcast networks in America, Univision. The partnership would see YouTube providing both short clips and full shows from the network. YouTube has now announced the official launch of the Univision channel.
The channel contains content from Univision's three major networks: Univision, TeleFutura and Galavisión.
"Some of the most popular shows on the channel include Univision's morning show Despierta América (Wake-Up America); TeleFutura's entertainment show Escándalo TV (ShowBiz TV), and Galavisión's home decorating series Decorando Contigo (Decorating with You), among many others. The Univision channel on YouTube will also premiere weekly show recaps made just for YouTube viewers," says Shanna Preve, Strategic Partnerships at YouTube. "These videos will feature top Univision talent summarizing the best moments from Univision shows in the last week."
"The partnership provides more premium, current, monetizeable content for our advertisers interested in reaching the growing online Hispanic demographic; Kraft Foods is the channel's exclusive launch sponsor," adds Preve.
The Univision YouTube channel represents the first time Univision programming has been made available on the Internet outside of the network's own properties (at least legally).
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Mon Feb 01, 2010 08:55 am
Facebook Showed More Ads Than Yahoo or Microsoft in Q1
While Facebook is not making the most money of any of its competitors from advertising, new comScore numbers indicate that it has become the largest display advertiser on the Web. The Wall Street Journal writes that the data, which is scheduled to be released later this week, "are the latests to show Facebook closing the gap with more established Internet-ad giants".
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According to comScore's CMO Linda Abraham, the jump in display advertising on Facebook could be a result of the site's redesign, which allowed more advertisements to be squeezed in on each page. Abraham also speculated that the takeover of advertising from Microsoft didn't seem to be a primary factor.
As we argued when Facebook took over Microsoft's share of onsite advertising, this all seems to be part of Facebook's larger advertising strategy. Not two weeks after giving Microsoft the boot, Facebook began accepting PayPal, making advertising for its 400 million users a much simpler reality. The company's press release on its relationship with PayPal directly spoke to this goal, saying that "the option to pay with PayPal makes it even easier for advertisers, particularly small international companies, to run campaigns on Facebook".
These effo/> [...]
Wed May 12, 2010 09:40 am
