Scott Stein of CNET's Digital City Podcast is the latest victim we've pulled into The 404 studio to co-host the show while Jeff is honeymooning in Hawaii.
Scott brings his expertise in mobile computing to help us discuss today's stories about elderly iPad-ing, cracking iPhone 4s, the link between hyper-texting teens and risky behavior, mobile STD testing, and how to protect your kids from digital predators that happen to be named Wilson G. Tang.
The holidays are approaching quicker than we thought, but Scott is already prepared with a brand-new Apple iPad for his father-in-law, proving the universality of all Apple products. Scott's a dedicated iPad user himself, but still hopes for the day when all syncing is done in the cloud...unfortunately, that feature lives in same Apple dimension as external storage and flawless cellular reception, so we'll likely see it materialize in the iPad 19G.
We haven't completely fallen down the Apple rabbit hole yet, but we do come up with a new digital concept called the Syncing Centipede, so listen up, but don't you dare steal the idea.
Apple has its own internal problems to deal with, and yet another iPhone 4 flaw has surfaced, this time regarding several cases causing cracks and scratches on the back of the phone.
The irony of this story is twofold: first, Apple used to recommend these recalled cases to mitigate the initial reception crisis, and second, what about Apple claiming that the glass on the iPhone 4 was supposedly 30 times stronger than the 3G's plastic back and therefore less prone to scratches? Let's take bets on how many of these "flaws" will miraculously disappear with the introduction of the iPhone 5.
Or maybe we should just get rid of phones altogether, because apparently teens who text more than 120 times a day (media's calling them "hyper-texters") are more likely to engage in risky behavior like sex, drugs, and alcohol abuse.
So says a study done at 20 public high schools in Cleveland last year, where researchers found that one in five students were hyper-texters, one in nine are hyper-social networkers, and one in four students had sent or received a sext message!
This understandably makes Scott worried for his own young kids, and he makes a good point about the importance of parents setting rules to limit the amount of texting and Internet use per day. Semirelated story: We need more Superparents like this!
Episode 706
Subscribe in iTunes audio |
Suscribe to iTunes (video) |
Subscribe in RSS Audio |
Subscribe in RSS Video…
Read more 
Manage updates with the Download App
