The next time you go out to dinner, look around. Depending on the restaurant, there will be anywhere from a few people with their heads buried in their phones, to a ton of people in that position. If you don’t see any, keep watching, you will.
This topic of discussion came up this past weekend when I took a trip outside of the Bay Area bubble to go visit my parents. My mother has the stance that I can only assume most mothers do: you shouldn’t check your phone at the dinner table. So naturally, to comply with her request, every few minutes I would check my phone under the table.
I’d pretend to read the menu or fix my napkin to just be slyly looking straight down at my device beneath her line of sight — you know the drill. And while I was doing that, I would look around. Sure enough, there were a half dozen other people at the tables around me doing the same thing.
Love it or hate it, this is becoming the norm. And when it fully becomes the norm, there will no longer be the same stigma attached to checking your phone at a restaurant. Naturally, my mother refuses to believe this will happen, but it’s happening already. Go out to dinner with people in their 20s or 30s. Or worse, go out to dinner with teenagers.
When I go out to dinner with my peers these days, it’s not considered weird at all to pull out your phone. In fact, the situation has sort of reversed itself: you feel awkward if everyone else is using their phones and you’re not. It happens. A lot.
Obviously, at a fancy restaurant this behavior is less prevalent than at a bar. But it’s still increasingly happening all around you.
And it has made going to dinner so much better.
I shouldn’t have to state the obvious, but I will: using your phone in this context does not mean talking on the phone. That is still very frowned upon in restaurants for a very good reason: it’s annoying. A person talking on their phone is making noise, a person using their phone (as in surfing the web, sending texts, using apps, etc) is often doing the exact opposite.
Of course, the stigma around using the phone at the table stems from the same idea: it’s considered rude. But again, it’s not rude as in annoying, it’s rude as in you’re ignoring those around you. It challenges the social norm that when you go out to dinner with people, you’re supposed to have conversations with them.
That itself is a bit odd since it’s also considered rude to talk and eat at the same time, but I digress…
Here’s the thing: the common misconception that my parents and others have about using the phone during dinner is that it’s antisocial. But increasingly, it makes dinner even more social.
In the situations where I go out to dinner with my peers, use of the phone often augments the conversations being had. Don’t know who won game 3 of the 1995 World Series? Don’t know who directed that movie you all saw? It’s all right there in your pocket.
But even more fascinating is when the topic of conversation now often revolves around the phones themselves — or more specifically, what is on them. Tweets, Instagrams, Belugas, etc. These all now spark new conversations or tidbits of personal connection.
And then there are the shared experiences of doing things like checking-in or Foodspotting. One person at a table doing it often trigger everyone else to as well.
Forgive me, but it’s Dinner 2.0. And again, I’m having more fun at these dinners than I ever have.
Is part of it antisocial? Sure. Can it lead to distractions if you read a work-related email that you need to respond to? Of course. But this is the way the world works now. We’re always connected and always on call. And some of us prefer it that way.
What’s annoying to me isn’t someone using their phone at the table, it’s the people who really believe I shouldn’t be allowed to use my phone. Why? So I can repress the desire I have to check the phone while failing to engage in a conversation so I can be able to quickly excuse myself to go to the bathroom to check the phone?
My mother’s answer: yes.
Makes sense. It’s exactly why things are changing. Get with the program, or get out of the way.
What’s more likely? In ten years, everyone goes to a restaurant and talks to one another without pulling out their phones at the table — or in ten years, the table is designed in a way to enable you to more easily use your phones? That’s an easy one.
Earlier today we received a tip to check out the blog Chrome OS Site for the details on the first official Chrome OS device. Obviously intrigued, I clicked through. There, I read about not a notebook or netbook running the OS, but rather a monitor! Specifically, the report has Acer supposedly unveiling this “monitor”, or perhaps all-in-one PC, called the DX241H, as the first actual Chrome OS device. Several other reports along these lines followed.
Last week, we got a Scion xB to drive. Our initial impression was that it looked “tastefully tuner” and was very spacious inside. A quick glance over its tech and we quickly realized that Scion probably added the gear as an afterthought. A lot of the gear doesn’t work together; instead they’re all separate, like what you would get from installing different aftermarket parts. Scion says that’s the whole image it brings the younger generation, but we think it could be done better.
Alibaba.com CEO David Wei and COO Elvis Lee have resigned this morning after an internal probe found that more than 2000 sellers on the e-commerce site were committing fraud, in some cases to the knowledge of Alibaba staff. The Hanzhou, China-based Alibaba told the WSJ that more than 100 sales staff (out of 5,000) were allowing fraudulent suppliers to fake the business registration papers needed to set up shop on the site. In some cases buyers never received items already paid for.
Earlier today there was quite a bit of commotion in the tech press over a Verizon ad that stated that Flash wouldn’t be making its way to Android tablets until Spring 2011. Which has the potential to be pretty far off (as late as June), especially given that the Motorola Xoom — the first tablet to run Android Honeycomb — will be coming out in a few days.
Hipmunk is one of those things that sells itself. You look at it side-by-side with the alternative ways to search for airline travel and it’s a joke. And that’s exactly why it’s so awesome that they’ve been able to translate that experience over to the iPhone — and perhaps make it even a little easier.
From the folks that brought you FlickSquare now comes 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo, a simple app that emails you with a reminder of where you’ve checked in on Foursquare from a year ago. All you need to to is sign into the app on FourSquare and the app will email you with last year’s checkins. That simple. And if you didn’t check-in on any given day the email skips.
On a dusty summer day in July 2009, I taught a young, impoverished refugee in Dadaab, Kenya, to earn money online.
In a perfect world, the fax machine would have taken the hint by now and made a graceful exit as it was supplanted by superior (and more environmentally friendly) technologies like email and e-signatures. Alas, faxes are still around, and some businesses insist on using them on a daily basis. Fortunately companies like eFax have sprung up to serve as stand-ins for fax machines, and now there’s a new Y Combinator-funded startup that’s looking to make life even easier. Meet HelloFax.
Since AOL’s acquisition of the Huffington Post, we know many of you have been looking for signs that TechCrunch has adopted our new editorial overlady’s approach to SEO. This seems like as good a time as any to assure loyal Why Is This News? viewers that we will never – ever – stoop to such cheap linkbaiting tricks, no matter what financial incentives we’re offered to do so.
1000Memories has raised a $2.5 million round led by Greylock Partners, with the participation of some high-profile angel investors including Caterina Fake, Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, Mike Maples, Paul Buchheit and Chris Sacca. Greylock’s David Thacker is joining the board.
A company called Audience Productions has filed to go public with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and are selling $10/share preferred stock to people who want to invest in the movie they’re creating.
The American labor market is as schizophrenic as I’ve ever seen it. While the bulk of the country struggles with 9% unemployment, in Silicon Valley the ease of starting a new company and huge hiring goals of companies like Google and Facebook have lead to a war for talent that’s driving up salaries and threatening the future of some smaller startups who just can’t find people.
In my previous post about Apple’s new subscription plans for the App Store, I offered up three possibilities. With the move, Apple is either: brilliant, brazen, or batsh*t crazy. But reading over the comments on that post (admit it, you did — it’s okay, I do too, sometimes), you might think there was a fourth option: evil.
Looking ahead, the more I think about it, the more I think that may be the one (potentially) big vulnerability in Apple’s plan. The requirement that prices must the the same or less than they are elsewhere on the web might have to be altered eventually. But that will only be the case if rival products by competitors fail to produce an paid app ecosystem to compete with Apple’s.
We all knew it was coming, but the details of the App Store subscription model, which Apple outlined today, are fascinating on a number of levels. Simply put: this is one of the boldest bets Apple has ever made. And it could backfire. Or it could be huge beyond belief. Either way, it’s going to be very controversial.
But all of this is also a double-edged sword.
Imagine if Apple started giving customer data to publishers to be used for sales calls, mass mailings, etc. The user trust that Apple relies on would start to erode. To get the publishers on board, this would be the most obvious (and seemingly small) concession to make. But Apple will not do it. Though Google might.
Intuit raised eyebrows in early January when it rolled out a free version of its Square-competitor, GoPayment, which is a mobile payment application and small credit card reader that attaches to smartphones. The caveat to the free version, as reported by Fortune, was that businesses had until mid-February to sign up for the free service, whereas Square is and always has been free to users (minus the credit card and processing fees). Today, Intuit is announcing that it will continue to offer GoPayment with a free credit card reader and no monthly fee for an indefinite amount of time (the offer was originally scheduled to end yesterday). The company also says that since the initial free offer, Intuit’s customer acquisition rate for GoForward has more than tripled. 
“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned” - William Congreve
Israel has had an amazing track record of producing startups and raking in returns– better than most countries many times its size. The problem is the returns have fallen off dramatically in the last ten years as industries Israel excelled at have become mature. Meanwhile, it’s failed to generate many big consumer Web hits, aside from MyHeritage and a few others.
Early-stage VC Javelin Venture Partners has closed a second, $105 million fund. The firm expects to use the money to fund around 20 companies over three years in seed and Series A rounds ranging from $500K to $3 million, and will reserve some of the funds for subsequent rounds raised by these portfolio companies.
Today, Philips announced that their Philips Ambient LED 12.5 watt light bulb — which gives off as much light as incandescent 60 watt bulbs, using less energy — attained Energy Star qualifications. It’s the first LED light bulb of this type to gain approval in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sponsored program. Energy Star sanctioned products are usually eligible for utility rebate programs that can lower the cost of a product for consumers, while allowing a company to keep their margins strong. 
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