The New Cigarette Break

A whooping 500 million people worldwide use Facebook – and are on the site 700 billion minutes per month. Professor John Templeton, who teaches an accounting class at Houston Community College, is asking his students how they think social networking sites such as Facebook will affect the businesses of tomorrow. “Just last month, 57 million Americans visited social networking sites from a work computer,” said Templeton. Facebook may very well be a new generation’s version of a cigarette break. Studies say it’s the most commonly visited website at the workplace, twice as popular as Google and three times as popular as Yahoo. But how do bosses feel about it. According to CareerBuilder.com, 10% of employers have had problems with employees violating social networking policies and 8% have fired someone for it. However, employers are also using Facebook to market themselves. And those millions of users also represent millions of potential customers and clients.

10 Most Overpriced Products You Should Avoid

WalletPop’s list of the top 10 overpriced products you should avoid if you want to save money:

 

1. Text messages: 6,000% markup	6. Coffee shop coffee: 300% markup
2. Bottled water: 4,000% markup	7. Restaurant wine: 300% markup
3. Movie theater popcorn: 1,275% markup	8. Greeting cards: 200% markup
4. Brand name drugs: 200% - 3,000% markup	9. Hotel in-room movies: 200% markup
5. Hotel mini bar: 400% markup	10. Pre-cut vegetables and fruits: 40% markup

Best Geek Movies

Mark Zuckerberg may be the focus of the new movie “The Social Network,” but the Facebook founder is by no means the first geek ever portrayed in film. Hollywood has a long history of demonizing and celebrating geeks. Here is Forbes list of the best movies about nerds:

 

“The Social Network”	“Sneakers”
“Pirates Of Silicon Valley”	“The Matrix”
“Iron Man 2”	“Fanboys”
“21”	“Johnny Mnemonic”
“Pi”	“Code Rush”
“WarGames”	“Revenge of the Nerds”
“Steal This Film”	“Short Circuit”
“Hackers”	“Tron”

Top 10 Safest Cities for Kids

According to a new study by Underwriters Laboratories, where a child is raised can impact his chances of being involved in a serious accident. U.S. kids sustain 14 million potentially debilitating accidental injuries every year. Sadly, many of these accidents could have been prevented. Using 25 different criteria, the 50 largest U.S. cities were evaluated to determine which ones do the best job of preventing needless accidents. The criteria included accessibility to hospitals and response time for fire and police personnel as well as regulations regarding smoking, home inspections, smoke and CO alarms, pool safety and bike helmets. In addition, crime rates, air quality and incidence of child pedestrian accidents, injuries and drowning were taken into consideration. The 10 safest cities for children are:

 

Boston, Massachusetts	Portland, Oregon
Columbus, Ohio	San Francisco, California
Louisville, Kentucky	Seattle, Washington
Minneapolis, Minnesota	Tampa, Florida
New York, New York	Virginia Beach, Virginia

Most Digital States

Every state has been pushing to expand its digital landscape, building online services and using IT to streamline its internal operations. But which states are doing it best? The 2010 Digital States Survey, produced every two years by e.Republic’s Center for Digital Government, ranks Michigan and Utah at the top of the heap, each with a score of A. The states ranked by grade:

 

A	Michigan, Utah.
A-	Pennsylvania, Virginia.
B+	California, Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee.
B	Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Dakota, Texas, West Virginia.
B-	Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Washington.
C+	Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin.
C	Alabama, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Wyoming.
C-	Idaho, Indiana, South Carolina.

 

Find out more at www.centerdigitalgov.com/survey/61.

Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey

The U.S. Census Bureau has released the results of the 2009 American Community Survey, which provides data about the nation’s socioeconomic, housing and demographic characteristics. Some of the highlights:

 

Median Household Income:

·       Real median household income in the U.S. fell between 2008 and 2009 – decreasing by 2.9% from $51,726 to $50,221.

·       Between 2008 and 2009, real median household income decreased in 34 states and increased in one: North Dakota.

Poverty:

·       31 states saw increases in the number of people living in poverty between 2008 and 2009.

·       No state had a statistically significant decline their poverty rate.

Health Insurance:

·       Between 2008 and 2009, the percentage of insured children in the U.S. increased from 90.3% to 91.0%, with an additional 1.1 million insured children in 2009. Nevada has the highest percentage of uninsured children, at 18.4%, while Massachusetts had the lowest percentage, at 1.5%.

·       Between 2008 and 2009, the percentage of uninsured increased from 14.6% to 15.1%, with 2.2 million more people uninsured in 2009. The percentage of uninsured increased in 26 states, decreased in three states (Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico) and did not change in 22 states.

Industry and Occupation:

·       Work hours in the U.S. fell by about 36 minutes per week from 39.0 hours in 2008 to 38.4 hours in 2009.

·       Work hours fell in 46 of the 50 most populous U.S. metro areas between 2008 and 2009.

·       Self-employed workers experienced a greater reduction in work hours between 2008 and 2009 than workers who worked for an employer.

Journey to Work:

·       In 2009, the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island metropolitan area had the highest percentage of workers who commuted by public transportation (30.5%), followed by the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro areas, where 14.6% of workers commuted by public transportation.

Hottest DUI Hot Spots

Insurance.com has released a study ranking the top 20 cities with the most DUI offenders. The study used insurance quotes and calculated the percentage of people who reported at least one DUI violation. Cities with poor public transportation and strong DUI enforcement ended at the top of the list. The rankings:

 

1. San Diego, CA	11. San Antonio, TX
2. San Jose, CA	12. Dallas, TX
3. Charlotte, NC	13. Houston, TX
4. Phoenix, AZ	14. Fort Worth, TX
5. Columbus, OH	15. Memphis, TN
6. Indianapolis, IN	16. Philadelphia, PA
7. Los Angeles, CA	17. New York, NY
8. San Francisco, CA	18. Baltimore, MD
9. Austin, TX	19. Chicago, IL
10. Jacksonville, FL	20. Detroit, MI

Books Most-Often Left Behind In Hotels

Have you ever stayed a hotel and then left without remembering to get everything? Most of us have. But some of us, especially vacationers who like to just hang in the hotel room, have purposely left behind a book they’ve finished reading when they check out. A survey by Travelodge conducted an usual survey to find out what books are most likely to be left behind.

 

1. “Simon Cowell: The Unauthorized Biography” by Chas Newkey-Burden

2. “Ooh! What A lovely Pair: Our Story” by Ant & Dec

3. “The Storm: The World Economic Crisis And What It Means” by Vince Cable

4. “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown

5. “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson

6. “Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga)” by Stephenie Meyer

7. “The Girl Who Played With Fire” by Stieg Larsson

8. “Eclipse” by Stephenie Meyer

9. “The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest” by Stieg Larsson

10. “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert

 

A Travelodge spokeswoman said more than 20,000 books have been left behind in rooms in the last 12 months, while only 7,200 books were left behind in 2009.

Most Expensive ZIPs

 

Forbes magazine has released its list of the country’s most expensive ZIP codes. California accounts for two-thirds of the list. Duarte, California, tops the list with its 91008 ZIP code. The top 10:

 

1. 91008, Duarte, California	6. 90210, Beverly Hills, California
2. 94027, Atherton, California	7. 10065, New York, New York
3. 90274, Rolling Hills, California	8. 94920, Belvedere, California
4. 07620, Alpine, New Jersey	9. 10012, New York, New York
5. 10014, New York, New York	10. 93108, Santa Barbara, California

 

See the full list at Forbes.com.

Satisfied Sex Life

 

A new AskMen.com and Cosmopolitan.com online survey finds women are more satisfied with their sex life than men. The survey asked respondents to choose whether they were “completely,” “somewhat,” “not at all” or “I have no sex life.” Here’s what they found:

 

Completely Satisfied:		Somewhat Satisfied:		Not At All Satisfied:		I Have No Sex Life:
Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women
13%	25%	41%	45%	23%	13%	23%	17%

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Candy Lovers!

 

Americans love their candy! Census Bureau stats found Americans ate 24.3 pounds of candy in 2009, up from 24 pounds per person in 2008. And candy is big business for candy makers.

 

Year:	Candy Spending Per American:	Year:	Candy Spending Per American:
2005	$61	2008	$61
2006	$61	2009	$62
2007	$60

Cooking More Keeps Kids Off Drugs

U.S. teens that eat fewer than three family dinners per week are more than twice as likely to say they expect to try drugs in the future, new research shows. Scientists at the University of Florida College of Medicine found that 72% of teens think eating dinner frequently with their parents is “very” or “fairly important.” Eating frequent dinners was described as five to seven times per week. Those who have infrequent family dinners are:

 

·       Twice as likely to have used tobacco.

·       Almost twice as likely to have used alcohol.

·       Are one-and-a-half times more likely to have used marijuana.

Recession Affecting Marriages

Fewer couples are tying the knot – and the recession may be to blame. For the first time in at least a century, the percentage of U.S. adults between 25 and 34 who have never been married last year exceeded those who are married. In 2009, the proportion of adults 25 to 34 who had never been married was 46.3%, compared with 44.9% for those who were married, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing Census data. The marriage drop cuts across races and gender, but is more pronounced among those with less education. Although marriage rates among young adults have been dropping for years, the economic downturn may have sped things up, as people choose to delay marriage – or forgo it altogether – until they are better off financially. Even though marriage rates have fallen, the number of adults shacking up together has jumped. Between 2009 and 2010 there was a 13% increase in opposite-sex couples living together.