Kids are hooked in, too

A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation comes with some pretty unsurprising news: kids are media fiends. But even already knowing this, the numbers are startling.

According to the report, kids (ages 8 - 18) are spending, on average, about 7 and a half hours per day interacting with some form of entertainment media. Television, movies, music, Internet, video games, etc. Kids are logging a lot of screen time.

And since most of us are multitaskers (for example, checking email or sending a text message while watching t.v.), the number could actually be as high as a combined total of almost 11 hours of media consumed each day.

This is a continuing trend. Five years ago, the same study estimated approximately six and a half hours of media consumption per day.

The question- how consumed with our media will we become? How long will this trend continue? Are we too addicted?

Apple's new swag

Apple is a fun company. iMacs, Macbooks, iPods, iTunes, etc. Apple makes a lot of cool products.

And this month, it looks like another new product may join Apple's lineup. Apple's long-awaited and highly anticipated tablet computer is likely going to be released later this month. Although Apple has yet to officially announce the tablet, some writers are already declaring dates when it will be officially unveiled. For example, Fox News journalist Clayton Morris has already "confirmed" the tablet will be released January 27th (read his full article).

As for the tablet itself, it will probably look much like the iPod/iPhone, only bigger. With Apple already owning a easy, reliable, and profitable way to distribute media, the iTunes store, the Apple tablet is poised to compete fiercely with e-readers, such as the Nook and the Amazon's Kindle. The tablet may even offer models with 3G wireless service, allowing users to search the web on the go.

The Apple tablet will be a truly on-the-go machine. Although the device will likely sport USB 2.0 ports to support mouse a keyboard use, the tablet should come with a new type of on-screen tactile keyboard, allowing users full mobility. Some writers even believe the tablet has the potential to revolutionize several fields, ranging all the way from healthcare to finance (read the article). The price will likely be moderately accessible to consumers, probably costing around $800- between the price of an iPhone and a Macbook.

This all sounds pretty cool, right? Still, it's all speculation. We'll just have to wait.

i love netflix.

Hey. Welcome to the Brew, my social media/tech/anything-cool-that-I-want-to-talk-about blog. My name is Jack.

Tonight, I want to talk about Netflix.

For those of you who don't know (but who hasn't at least seen those commercials?), Netflix is a business that, for a monthly fee, sends you movies to watch and return through the mail. Pretty cool, right?

I found myself using the free trial as a (poor) college freshman to get my hands on movies for my film class, and check out some of the harder to find foreign 'flicks. Recently, my parents started up a subscription as well and they're nuts about it. They love always having a new movie to watch.

About a year or so ago, Netflix stepped up their game when they started offering streaming movies online. This opened up an entire library of movies Netflix members could watch instantly on their computers. The bad new- who wants to watch a movie on their computer screen? BUT THEN! The brilliant people at Netflix decided to let Xbox and Playstation owners stream movies directly from their gaming consoles. The great thing about this- these gaming consoles are already attached to your television! Voilà! You've got an instant decked out media center with tons of movies to watch on demand!

And now it gets even better, as Netflix is just beginning to allow owners of the Nintendo Wii game console to stream Netflix movies as well. This is big news for the popular Wii console, which is the fastest-selling home console in history. In fact, Nintendo sold over 3 million of them last month alone. If you ask me, it won't be too long before we're all streaming movies right into our living rooms. Netflix is changing the way we watch and receive movies.

And I couldn't be happier.