Brindle Media

If you use a smartphone and especially if you’re an iPhone, iPad or Mac user, pay attention. I know, the folks at The Apple Store told you that you really don’t need anti-virus protection because Apple products are virus-proof. But that could soon change. Like squirrels trying to access the food in your bird feeder, hackers are apparently obsessed with cracking the Apple codes.

PC Magazine reports:

McAfee on Tuesday (12/28/10) released its list of threat predictions for 2011 and it highlighted things like URL shorteners, location-based services, Apple products, and Internet TV. McAfee on Tuesday released its list of threat predictions for 2011 and it highlighted things like URL shorteners, location-based services, Apple products, and Internet TV.
What else made McAfee’s threat list?

• Hacktivism: McAfee predicted a rise in the number of politically motivated cyber attacks. “More groups will repeat the WikiLeaks example,” McAfee said, though strategy will become more sophisticated and leverage social networks.

• Friendly Fire: McAfee predicted a rise in the use of malicious content disguised as e-mail from sources you know. “Signed” malware that imitates legitimate files will become more prevalent, and “friendly fire,” in which threats appear to come from your friends but in fact are viruses such as Koobface or VBMania, will continue to grow as an attack of choice by cybercriminals, McAfee said. This could go hand-in-hand with social network attacks, which could eventually overtake e-mail attacks.

• Botnets: McAfee Labs predicts that the recent merger of Zeus with SpyEye will produce more sophisticated bots due to improvements in bypassing security mechanisms and law enforcement monitoring. Additionally, McAfee Labs expects to see a significant botnet activity in the adoption of data-gathering and data-removal functionality, rather than the common use of sending spam.

You can read the entire PC Magazine article here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374784,00.asp

At a recent Catholic wedding I attended, the priest spoke to the bride and groom about the difference between a contract and a covenant. He talked about how the union they were undertaking was not a contractual arrangement like a business deal but a sacred promise to each other and, by extension, to God.

This was the first time I can recall hearing this issue addressed during a wedding ceremony. It seemed apt and it got me thinking.

My generation, the Baby Boomers, grew up in the aftermath of World War II. It was the age of nuclear proliferation, a time of major scientific discoveries which helped provide answers to many of our questions about the universe and which (like the birth control pill) provided us with more control over our destinies. We witnessed the coming of age of the feminist movement and experienced the “Summer of Love” along with the era of disillusion and anti-heroism following the Vietnam War which led to the Gordon Gecko “Greed Is Good” 80s.

We went from a generation of idealists to a generation of cynics to a generation of pragmatists. No wonder we started thinking of marriage more like a business agreement and a matter of mutual convenience. Of course, the inevitable result was the burgeoning divorce rate among Boomers which must have created psychological concerns about commitments for our children.

When Googled the question “What is the difference between a contract and a covenant?”, one of the results was this: “The difference is in the attitude of contract versus the attitude of covenant. In contract both parties are hoping to limit liability or maximize profit or otherwise make things better for the self. The contract is then a way of ensuring that things go just as planned and, if necessary, to force the other party to promised action….A covenant relationship is one in which certain terms are set, yes, but the parties make the cause of the other their own cause. In other words, when I make a covenant, the goals and desires of the person with whom I am covenanting become my own.” Sounds about right.

So, have the children of Baby Boomers learned a valuable lesson about marriage and long-term relationships from our mistakes? Or is this just wishful thinking?

Your thoughts?

Copyright United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

Just prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, my brother’s Hotmail account started sending out one of those “I’m stranded in Spain, my wallet’s been stolen and I need you to send me $$$ so I can get home”– email scams to contacts in his address book. I learned about it from friends who contacted me to ask if my brother was aware that his email had been hacked. Oddly, I never received the email directly from him because, as we learned later, somehow my address had been deleted from his contact list.

The situation became more complicated because we were both visiting my mother in New England and her home is equipped with only dial-up internet service and also because my brother, who also only has dial-up service at his home, had signed up for his Hotmail account on a computer at his local library several years ago.

Consequently, when my brother attempted to change his Hotmail password, the system didn’t recognize my mother’s computer and asked my brother for the answer to his secret question. However, the automated Hotmail system didn’t remind him about what the question was and it had been so many years since he’d joined Hotmail that he didn’t recall the question. So, throughout the day on Thanksgiving and continuing through Sunday night, he kept trying to contact Hotmail customer service but the automated system kept giving him the runaround and bouncing him back to his original screens.

When I returned home, I Googled Microsoft customer service and found an 866 number. However, when I called that number there was no option to connect with a Hotmail CSR nor one to connect with a live body. Considering all the criticism that Microsoft has been getting in the techie world during the past several years, I was amazed as well as frustrated.

Fortunately, when my brother returned home on Monday night, he received an email from Hotmail which helped him to change his password. As far as we’re aware, no harm was done however we still find it astonishing that it was such as hassle and took five days to rectify a pretty simple problem. Given 21st century CSR technology, we would have been happy to talk with a live body in the Philippines or Mumbai rather than to just go round and round with an automated customer response system.

What’s your customer service horror story?

During 2010, the oldest Baby Boomers turned 64 and, no doubt, wistfully hum the Paul McCartney tune while the youngest boomer will celebrate their 46th birthday. It’s got to be pretty discouraging to those younger boomers that HR departments now consider anyone older than 40 to be over the hill.

The original name for this blog was Buzz4Boomers and its intent was to provide information was to serve a translator of information about new technologies and social media for those Baby Boomers who tend to be intimidated by change. One thing I know about myself is that I am not an early adopter. But I am fascinated by new discovery and tend to be optimistic about the future. So, I frequently find that I fall halfway between those folks who are always using the hottest new technology or social media tools and those who are at the other end of the bell curve.

My challenge is that I tend to be a dilettante with a range of interests that’s a mile wide and a base of knowledge that’s an inch deep. So a review of my blogs over the past couple of years shows diverse topics such as the story of my customer experience using social media in negotiating with a large chain store, rants about musicFirst and the Performance Rights Act, and stories about augmented reality.

When I evaluated my professional broadcasting career after I left the industry in 2007, I realized that what I really enjoyed most about my job as a program director and on-air personality was helping people find ways to cope with the challenges in their lives. That could happen when I was able to provide important health or consumer protection information during a public affairs show or by simply playing a song that provided a listener with a brief distraction, sense of joy or peace of mind.

My ultimate goal for this blog is to make you aware of ideas/ events/ discoveries that are impacting our world and that a reader might not have encountered in hopes that it will provide some assistance in coping with change.

The social networks that Nicholas Christakis discusses in his TED presentation this past summer aren’t the high-tech internet-driven social media which that term now tends to infer but actual interactions between live human beings.

What can we learn from these insights?

Thanks to Daniel Anstandig at McVay Media for making me aware of Nicholas Christakis’ TED talk.

This week was our wedding anniversary so I was in our local Saratoga Springs, NY Hallmark store looking for a card for my wife. While I was perusing their selection, I noticed a video display and was amazed to discover that Hallmark is embracing Augmented Reality.

Here’s a video posting from MommyReporter:

I first discovered AR last summer around this time and have been fascinated by its potential. Most people are still unaware of Augmented Reality but now that a mass appeal company like Hallmark is employing this technology, I expect to see a lot more market penetration for AR during the next 12 months.

Here’s a link for the Hallmark website:

http://bit.ly/86tjXH

Your thoughts?

Earl N. Brindle died on a Saturday night in early December, 2006 just a few weeks shy of his 87th birthday He and my mother started dating when they were 16 and had been together for 71 years. The only time they were apart was for four years during World War II. They were married 66 years ago this month.

Dad was born in Raynham, MA., the son of the late Thomas H. and Gertrude (Smith) Brindle. He was a resident of the small Rhode Island village where I grew up since 1947 where he had owned and operated the former Earl N. Brindle Insurance Agency.

Dad served as the Treasurer of the Greenville Vol. Fire Dept., a trustee of the Greenville Baptist Church, he was the first chairman of the Smithfield Sewer Authority (He was amused that the town named the sewage processing plant after him), he served on the Board of Directors for the Greenville Public Library, and in 1999, was inducted into the Smithfield Heritage Hall of Fame. He was also a WWII Army Aircorp Veteran serving in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater as part of the ground crew which took care of the cargo planes which flew over the hump from India to China.

That’s my father’s official bio. But it doesn’t really tell you much about the man.

Something I discovered after my father’s death was that in the summer of 1929 when he was 10 years old Dad and his best friend hitchhiked from Cranston, RI to Raynham, MA and then back home again. That’s a distance of more than 30 miles. And it was back in the day when cars were still relatively rare and most roads were either dirt or two lanes. Today’s equivalent would probably be a couple of 10 year olds hitching a couple of hundred miles from home.

When Dad was a boy, some kid threw a rock which hit my father in the head and all but blinded him. From that day forward, he had to wear glasses with lenses as thick as Coke bottle bottles and his dream of becoming a pilot was ended. Dad didn’t complain about it. He just “made the best of it.”

My father was in the insurance business but he wasn’t a hard-sell kind of guy. Dad was a little ahead of his time because his approach was what would be described today as “consultative”. Of course, he wanted to do a good job for his company but he felt that the best way to accomplish that was by doing what was right for his customer. It wasn’t uncommon while I was growing up to have the phone ring at midnight or 2AM with someone calling to say that they had been in an accident or that there’d been a fire at their home. When that happened, Dad would help them through it and make sure that his customer got what they were owed from the insurance company.

Dad wasn’t really a social kind of guy. He was friendly, amusing and a good conversationalist in a social setting when he had to be. But my sense is that he was somewhat of a loner and, given the choice, would have avoided social scenes. Nevertheless, Dad was generous with his time and several people became his clients when he stopped to give them a helping hand with a flat tire or some other car problem.

When he was a young man, Dad had joined a local Providence insurance firm and had been a rising star in the company. After 20 years with the firm, Dad asked for a raise. My brother and I were heading off to college and , although Dad appreciated some of the perks and small salary increases that he’d been given over the years, he still felt that he was being underpaid. His employer interpreted Dad’s request as ungrateful and impertinent, fired him and then sued my father for potential business he might take away. Amazingly, the judge upheld the company’s position and ordered my father to pay the company $10,000 (approx. $ 100,000 in 2010 dollars) for potential business that he might take away. It was an unjust and devastating decision, especially with two kids about to head off to college, but Dad just hunkered down and started his own business.

My father was a man who had the courage of his convictions. He tried to be open-minded and just. And he tried to accept others on their own terms as who and what they were. Nevertheless, he wasn’t afraid to speak out about what he considered to be right and wrong.

When Dad was chairman of the Smithfield Sewer Commission, an unpaid position, he devoted a lot of time and energy to make sure that the town got the best and most economical system available. Some cynical folks accused him of being corrupt because they assumed that anyone in that position must be taking bribes. I’ll always remember one meeting which I decided to attend when I drove home for a visit. My father didn’t know I was there but during a break in the meeting he went to the lobby for a drink of water. While he was there alone, a group of 7 or 8 men who were about half my father’s age approached him menacingly. They disagreed with his position on whatever issue was being discussed and they were trying to bully him. As I watched, the group started closing in on my father and I thought I was going to have to step in. But Dad just stood his ground, stayed calm, explained his opinion and walked away. It was quite a performance and I was proud to be his son.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve started to notice similarities between myself and my father. Our body types are more alike than I’d once thought. I like learning new things and sharing information with others that might help them to increase their understanding or improve their life. Although perceived by some to be an outgoing socializer, my nature is to be somewhat of a loner. At home, I’m not handy. Neither was he. But I know it and hire experts. He tried to do it himself. Then we brought in the experts!

Through his actions and his words, Earl N. Brindle taught me about being a generous and compassionate friend and neighbor, about being a trustworthy and equal partner in marriage, about being a good parent and about being focused on getting the job done right.

My dad. His life ended three years ago but his spirit is with me on this Father’s Day.

Earlier this year, I showed you how augmented reality can be used as part of the clothes shopping experience. Now, YOUReality and metalio have created an Online Retail Visualization 3D tool to help you see how furniture, appliances, electronics or other accessories might look in your current living space.

And for your iPhone:

How soon do you think it will be before you start taking this type of technology for granted?

Have you ever been at a large event and become swept up with the crowd in the emotion of the moment? Have you found yourself choking up while watching someone cry on TV? Or have you suddenly found your mood lightening when someone enters the room in a happy mood?

Recent research has shown that the human brain contains something called “mirror neurons” . When we see or hear someone else experiencing an emotion , these “mirror neurons” cause us to experience that emotion, too.

I envy Robert Krulwich his ability to make science interesting.

Here’s my question. If your brain can’t tell the difference between whether YOUR body is doing something or instead you’re watching someone else do it, why would you put yourself through the stress of watching a horror movie?

Dr. Nick Morgan, author of Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma , believes that by understanding the concept of mirror neurons you can become more effective in communicating your ideas to others.

And here’s some animation which does a great job of explaining how “mirror neurons” were discovered.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts about this research.