There are two main reasons, experts say, for the increasing frankness of the language in everyday advertising. One reason is that it reflects the increasing frankness of the American vernacular, as evidenced by the swear words that are uttered by characters in television series and that appear on the covers of mainstream magazines.
The other reason for the trend is the greater efforts being made by marketers to appeal to the younger consumers, in their 20s and 30s, who are known as millennials or Generation Y. Because those consumers are generally more accepting of such language than their parents or grandparents, marketers say they believe that including those words will help the ads appeal to the target audience.
Read more here
Friday, January 18
Tuesday, January 15
Tracking children has never been easier
An early offering, in 2003, was Wherify, a tracking device which locks to a child’s wrist. Devices invented since then protect autistic children, who easily get lost, or into danger. Youngsters on Canadian farms wear radio tags on bracelets to signal their proximity to adults operating heavy machinery.
Longer battery life and miniaturisation are making tracking cheaper and more practical. The easiest way is to use smartphones. Many mobile operators offer child-tracking at extra cost, but the number of free tracking applications is growing fast. These services and devices can provide children’s location, or send alerts about their behaviour: when they return home, or stray beyond an agreed boundary, or go out late. Speed detection reveals when somebody is in a vehicle—and whether it is breaking the speed limit.
Critics say tracking does not really protect children. Savvy kidnappers will dispose of phones or other devices (implantable tracking chips are, so far, the stuff of spy movies only). And strangers rarely attack children anyway: parents are the most likely murderers, and accidents are a far graver danger than assault. “Location tracking won’t stop your child falling into a river,” says Anne-Marie Oostveen, who studies surveillance at Oxford University. For fretful parents the new devices may just mean still more grounds for worry.
Read more at The Economist
Longer battery life and miniaturisation are making tracking cheaper and more practical. The easiest way is to use smartphones. Many mobile operators offer child-tracking at extra cost, but the number of free tracking applications is growing fast. These services and devices can provide children’s location, or send alerts about their behaviour: when they return home, or stray beyond an agreed boundary, or go out late. Speed detection reveals when somebody is in a vehicle—and whether it is breaking the speed limit.
Critics say tracking does not really protect children. Savvy kidnappers will dispose of phones or other devices (implantable tracking chips are, so far, the stuff of spy movies only). And strangers rarely attack children anyway: parents are the most likely murderers, and accidents are a far graver danger than assault. “Location tracking won’t stop your child falling into a river,” says Anne-Marie Oostveen, who studies surveillance at Oxford University. For fretful parents the new devices may just mean still more grounds for worry.
Read more at The Economist
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)