Weekend Reading - July 25
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
Text messaging hazardous to your health? It could be if you are texting and not paying attention. According to a report from Fox News, people walking while texting are ramming into walls and doorways, falling down stairs and bumping into lampposts, parked cars and garbage cans. Read the whole piece here.
Women get their game on. New research from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) reveals that forty percent of gamers are women. Additional findings in the ESA’s annual survey of consumer demographics and usage behaviors indicate that the average age of game players has risen to… 35! This research, says the ESA, shatters the stereotypical image of gaming having, say, a sole audience of slacker male teens.
Other findings of interest:
- Sixty-five percent of American households play computer and video games;
- Thirty-eight percent of American homes have a video game console;
- The average game player is 35 years old;
- One out of four gamers are over age 50;
- Women age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent); and,
- Forty-one percent of Americans expect to purchase one or more games this year
Generation Why. A great piece appeared in last week’s edition of Seattle Post-Intelligencer that offered tips on how to communicate with co-workers, across the enterprise and generations. From the article:
In general, boomers (1946-64) still prefer the phones they grew up with, Gen X (1965-82) is big into e-mail, while the youngest members of today’s work force, the “net generation” or the Millennials (1982-now), strongly prefer real-time communication technologies such as IMing and texting.
Interesting. Here at MoPR HQ, we sit mere feet across from each other and do we talk to each other? Yes, of course we do. But, we IM up a storm too. It just seems….easier. On the other hand, if we really want to get in touch with a reporter or writer, we usually pick up the phone to call them. It all depends on the scenario.
Frankly, we think email could be completely extinct in the coming years – many of the generation of youngsters coming up in the ranks will demand Facebook-like apps to communicate with each other and their co-workers. What do you think?
Former Googlers launch their own search site. Called Cuil [Cuil is the Gaelic word for both knowledge and hazel and rhymes with "cool"] the new site generated a ton of buzz, but has gotten tepid responses from the media and users who have actually tried it. We tried it out and were a bit perplexed on the results, but can see the site gaining users. We did like the rollover definitions and imagery that accompanied each search. Our only question… When’s the mobile version?
