Sunday, January 13, 2013
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Community Magazine - Healthy Snacks Help Kids Fight Obesity
Dec. 17, 2012 -- Healthy snacks including veggies and cheese can help take the edge off of kids’ between-meal hunger pangs, and may help put a dent in rates of childhood obesity. In a new study, children who were given cheese and vegetables as a snack ate 72% fewer calories than children who snacked on potato chips, and this effect was even more pronounced among kids who were overweight or obese.
What’s more, these kids needed fewer calories to feel full than those who ate chips. The study included about 200 kids entering third or sixth grades. They were given chips, cheese, veggies, or a combination of veggies and cheese, and allowed to snack freely while watching a 45-minute TV show.
While children offered the veggies-only option took in the fewest calories, those offered the combo snack or only cheese took in about the same number of calories. But either option meant far fewer calories than those who were served potato chips, suggesting that replacing potato chips even with cheese alone may also be an option.
“Eliminating snacking altogether is impractical, and in some cases can backfire,” the researchers write. But replacing unhealthy snacks with more nutritious choices such as cheese and veggies may result in less backlash. The study appears in the journal Pediatrics.More...
Community Magazine - We Spent 121 Billion Minutes on Social Media in One Month
Nielsen says in its annual Social Media Report (because those are a thing now) that Americans spent a collective 121 billion minutes on social media in July alone, up from 88 billion the year before.
That's a whole lot of time for exchanging pokes and creeping on your ex. In fact, it comes down to about 230,060 years. If every single person in the U.S. used social media, that would be 388 minutes or about six and a half hours a head—13 minutes a day.
Of course not everyone is on Facebook and Twitter (weirdos), so this means there are people who are literally using Facebook for hundreds of minutes every day. Not that, uh, we're doing that right now. Anyways, we're all voyeurists and exhibitionists and this internet addiction thing is getting serious.More... Image credit: Shutterstock/Luis Louro
Community Magazine - Nokia 114 is a Series 40 handset
No-frills phone claims deep Facebook integration; pricing details and availability date not yet known.
- Dual-SIM dual-band 2G (GSM 900 / 1800 MHz).
- Series 40; Bluetooth.
- 1.8" LCD screen with pixel dimensions of 160x128 (64K colours).
- 16 MB of internal storage; 32 GB microSD card slot.
- 4.3" (l) x 1.8" (w) x 0.6" (14.8 mm) (d); weighs 80 grams.
- 0.3 megapixel main camera.
- Audio formats: ASF, WAV, MP4, AAC, AMR, MP3, AWB, M4V, M4A, NRT, WMA, 3GP, MIDI, WMV.
- Battery: 1020 mAh; Claimed talktime of 10.5 hours, music playback time of 27 hours and standby time of 26.5 days.
- Package contents: Charger, Battery, Nokia Stereo Headset WH-102, Visual user guide.
- Available colours: Black, Cyan, Purple.
Community Magazine - The First Text Message Was Sent 20 Years Ago Today
On December 3rd 1992, a 22-year-old Canadian test engineer sat down and typed out a very simple message, "Merry Christmas."
It flew over the Vodaphone network to the phone of one Richard Jarvis, and since then, we just haven't been able to stop texting.
Texting is a major staple of communication now, and by far the main use of a phone for many, but it didn't start out that way. In the very beginning, texts where just a way to send network notifications, namely to let you know you had a voice-mail.
In 1993, Nokia became the first company to make GSM handsets capable of person-to-person texting, but it still didn't skyrocket to popularity for several years. By 1995, people were only sending .4 text messages a month on average.
Things couldn't be more wildly different today. In 2010, the world sent over 6.1 trillion messages, or roughly 193,000 per second. And that's just good old-fashioned SMS, not the dozens upon dozens of services it's inspired.
So while you're launching your daily flurry of textuals, take a second to consider the fact that your inane contributions are part of an unimaginable avalanche of data. It's txting's bday u guys, LOL.[Wikipedia] Image by chaoss/Shutterstock
Community Magazine - Apple iMac review (2012)
Better, faster, stronger. The new iMac claims to be better in all the ways you'd expect a refreshed product to be better: it steps up to Ivy Bridge, and packs NVIDIA Kepler chips for stronger graphics performance.
It sports an improved display that cuts down on glare by 75 percent. But thinner? For the first time in the product's history, the iMac is missing a built-in optical drive, which allows it to measure just 5mm thick around the edges.
We can't say we've been waiting for a desktop quite that skinny, but if the new iMac delivers substantive improvements over the last-gen model, we won't begrudge Apple a little eye candy. So, does the iMac do more than just sit pretty?
Are the performance and display as good as we've been led to believe? In a word, yes. Here's why. For the past few years, our iMac reviews have been rather perfunctory. Until this fall, when Apple finally announced fresh models, the design remained the same for several years running.
Even now, we're tempted to gloss over the hardware section: from the front, this looks more or less like the last-generation iMac. Same aluminum build, including that metal chin with the glossy black Apple logo in the center. The stand in the back is basically the same, with a circular pass-through for the power cable.
(As it happens, the stand is slightly more compact than it had been, but that means little in terms of space savings since the screen sizes are the same as they always were.) Both the 21- and 27-inch machines are significantly lighter, too, but you'll only notice that when you're taking yours out of the box.More..
