In the US, serious injuries to pedestrians listening to headphones have more than tripled in six years, according to research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, published in the journal, “Injury Prevention.” Researchers reviewed 116 accident cases from 2004 to 2011 in which injured pedestrians were documented to be using headphones. Seventy percent of the 116 accidents resulted in death to the pedestrian. More than two-thirds of victims were male (68 percent) and under the age of 30 (67 percent). More than half of the moving vehicles involved in the accidents were trains (55 percent), and nearly a third (29 percent) of the vehicles reported sounding some type of warning horn prior to the crash. The increased incidence of accidents over the years closely corresponds to the documented rising popularity of auditory technologies with headphones. The lead researcher, Richard Lichenstein, M.D., noted two likely phenomena associated with these injuries and deaths: Distraction and sensory deprivation. The distraction caused by the use of electronic devices has been coined “inattentional blindness,” in which multiple stimuli divide the brain’s mental resource allocation. In cases of headphone-wearing pedestrian collisions with vehicles, the distraction is intensified by sensory deprivation, in which the pedestrian’s ability to hear a train or car-warning signal is masked by the sounds produced by the portable electronic device and headphones. Turning down the volume could be the difference between life and death.
Under a new law, Brazilian workers who find themselves answering work e-mails on their smartphones after the end of their shifts, can qualify for overtime. The Associated Press reported that the legislation was approved last month by Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff. The law found that company e-mails to workers are equivalent to orders given directly to the employee. Labor attorneys told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper this makes it possible for workers answering e-mails after hours to ask for overtime pay. This issue has come up in the US as well. In May 2011, Chicago policeman Jeffrey Allen filed a class-action suit against the city, asking for unpaid overtime compensation. The lawsuit alleges that Chicago Police Department employees were issued Blackberry devices and were required to respond to communication on them after normal working hours without receiving any compensation.
Researchers at Strand Consult are theorizing that Facebook is causing a reduction in text messages. That’s bad news for telecoms. Danish SMS traffic decreased by over 20 percent in the first six months of 2011. This trend is continuing into 2012. Three million out of the Danish population of five and a half million, are on Facebook. The increasing penetration of smartphones in combination with the increased interest in Facebook, has resulted in part of the daily communication between people that used to be sent via SMS, now being transmitted via Facebook. With over 800 million global users, Facebook has approximately the same number of “customers” as the largest mobile operators. Strand Consult believes that telecoms in other countries will start to see a similar reduction in SMS and that reduction will accelerate in the future.
More than 200 million people worldwide play casual games via the Internet. The popular casual game, “Angry Birds” has been downloaded more than 200 million times. “HP Technology at Work,” noted that the downloads are only the start of the earnings, with merchandising, movies and more in the pipeline. It’s estimated that by 2013 revenue from premium casual games will exceed $1 billion, the major driver for growth being from subscription services. But guess who’s actually paying to play? Although all sorts of people, from all walks of life play casual games, statistics show that it is women between the ages of 30 and 60 years old that account for 74 percent of all paying players. That’s a radical departure from the standard computer games market of young males. But gamers who pay are not where all the money lies. The actual number of people who pay for the game after trying the free download is low — there is only a two percent conversion rate. The real drivers for growth in the industry are advertising revenue and subscription services. Some companies distribute games for free on PCs but sell them on mobile phones. Others allow free play on websites but charge for downloads, limiting the number of levels that can be played without paying, or sell subscriptions. And it’s possible that in the future, players will be able to embed games on their own pages and that casual games will become personalized. You’ll be able to appear on the screen in your favorite game, or otherwise create content of your own in the virtual world of your game.
