work

"Goals will find time for you and block it off," he told TechNewsWorld. "You'll also get reminder notifications."

Users can choose to defer the task to another time, which Google will find for them.

"Google learns your schedule based on your confirmation and deferment patterns, and will stick around to motivate you to achieve your goals," Hocog explained.

Users who are pressed for time are very likely to try out the feature, "especially if they're already using the Google Calendar app," he contended.

The purpose of Goals "is to help you spend more time on the things you care about, and so far we see compelling evidence that scheduling time on your calendar is the best way to do that," Hocog said. "And we want to make this as easy for the user as possible."

Hope Springs Eternal

"This sounds amazing since I'm always busy and want more time to work out," Leon McDaniels wrote in response to Google's blog post about the feature. "Can't wait to see it and try it."

"When can I use this?" asked Sly Shippy. "Honestly, it sounds like just what I need, as skill and zen building are important to me and often ignored. I don't see this yet in my Google calendar, though I have a Nexus 5."

Goals "could be an interesting feature, especially if they allow developers to tap into it for other devices and applications," said Jim McGregor, principal analyst atTirias Research. "Everything I do these days is electronic."

Planning for a goal is "sometimes the most difficult thing to do," he told TechNewsWorld. If Goals "is already on your phone and it helps you track your status, I think there are many people that would try it. I would."

Now You See It - No, You Don't

Goals wasn't available to all users immediately, some commenters noted.

"This doesn't seem available to my Google Calendar app yet," wrote Johnny Commenter. "I hate it when you announce something and then only give it to some markets. "

"Updated the Google Calendar app. But the 'goal' option is not showing," Akash Sarkar wrote.

Privacy Implications

"At what point does it cross over from being a helpmate to being a nuisance?" asked Laura DiDio, a research director at Strategy Analytics.

Privacy issues are a red flag, she told TechNewsWorld. "Sometimes it does get to be that you give [apps] too much information and they have too much power."

Facebook spied on people who shared private health information on several cancer-fighting organizations' websites, including the American Cancer Society, and used that data to generate profits, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.

Some people prefer paper-based day timers "because they're nonvolatile and don't use a battery," and "I like the ability to ideate on it, [which] is hard to do in an electronic medium," said Mike Jude, a program manager atStratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

Process is more important than goals, he told TechNewsWorld.

"Goals can be limiting and inflexible," Jude said. "A process can deliver results over time that deliver goals." Also, a process "typically drives behavior in a more measurable wa

Facebook Envisions Virtual Social Future

Facebook on Wednesday demonstrated at its F8 developer conference how socializing could take place in a virtual world.

Two employees some 30 miles apart -- Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer in San Francisco and Product Manager Michael Booth in Menlo Park, California -- showed how they could share the same virtual space.

In that space, through the use of 360-degree photos, they visited London and the hangar where Facebook's unmanned aerial vehicle is housed, drew together with virtual pens, and took selfies and posted them to their Facebook news feeds in the real world.

"This is just the beginning of our exploration into how people can connect and share using today's VR technology," Booth said.

"There's a lot more work to do and many more challenges to solve," he continued, "such as how to better model ourselves within VR, so we can elevate presence from a disembodied head and hands to a more expressive model of a person."

Impressive Demo

"The demo was impressive," noted Greg Sterling, vice president of strategy and insight for the Local Search Association.

"The avatars -- the graphical images of the two guys doing the demo -- were crude, but they were able to change the environments they were in, interact with virtual objects and respond to each other's avatar," he told TechNewsWorld.

"People began talking about the death of distance with unlimited mobile phone calls," Sterling added. "This is the death of physical boundaries that separate people."

However, before real socializing can occur in virtual space, computers are going to have to get better at reading humans.

"Humans are really good detecting the subtle cues that other humans put out. Computers are not," GartnerResearch Director Brian Blau said.

"We have to teach computers to have those kinds of perceptual capabilities," he told TechNewsWorld.

Past Curated Experience

The Facebook experience is managed largely by Facebook's algorithms. That could end once VR enters the equation.

"You'll be able to go past a curated experience," said Cliff Raskind, an analyst with Strategy Analytics.

"You can draw your own conclusions rather than have something served to you," he told TechNewsWorld.

"It's going to be fantastic that you can share experiences and visit people without traversing huge swathes of geography in a way that was never possible before," Raskind added.

The social VR demo at F8 reveals some valuable insights into the motives behind Facebook's purchase of VR headset maker Oculus for US$2 billion in 2014.

"They bought Oculus because they recognized the potential of the technology," Sterling said. "There are multiple applications for it, one of which is some sort of virtual reality version of Facebook, or a broadly defined social network based on virtual reality technology."

Dark Side of VR

As with any immersive technology, there's opportunity for abuse, and social VR is no exception.

"Many technologies can be used for good purposes or can be abused," Sterling noted.

"If the virtual reality scenarios become very believable, one can imagine people becoming really addicted to these virtual experiences," he continued. "They may have trouble disengaging from virtual reality the same way that people become addicted to their smartphones or the Internet."

In addition, there will be opportunities for abuse of users.

"Every kind of abuse you see on Facebook today can be amplified in the virtual world," Raskind said.

Virtual Government

What's more, even virtual worlds may need to be managed, which could lead to more problems.

"These managers will be getting into the realm of what governments do," Raskind noted. "There will probably be debates about how much control should be exercised over your virtual freedoms."

When can we expect to see virtual interaction supplanting face-to-face interaction?

"If it ever happens," Blau said, "it's a long way down the road." 

Google Calendar Offers Life-Coaching Goals Feature

Google last week rolled out Goals in Google Calendar, a feature designed to help users achieve their personal goals.

Users set a goal, such as working out more often, and answer relevant questions, such as how often they want to work out and the best time for them to do so. Calendar then will sift through their schedules and select the best time to allocate for the task.

Calendar uses artificial intelligence, so it will get better at scheduling the more often it's used, the company said.

"With this launch, Google is bringing machine intelligence to our calendar app to help users make the most of their time," Google spokesperson Brooks Hocog remarked.

Time Management

"Goals will find time for you and block it off," he told TechNewsWorld. "You'll also get reminder notifications."

Users can choose to defer the task to another time, which Google will find for them.

"Google learns your schedule based on your confirmation and deferment patterns, and will stick around to motivate you to achieve your goals," Hocog explained.

Users who are pressed for time are very likely to try out the feature, "especially if they're already using the Google Calendar app," he contended.

The purpose of Goals "is to help you spend more time on the things you care about, and so far we see compelling evidence that scheduling time on your calendar is the best way to do that," Hocog said. "And we want to make this as easy for the user as possible."

Hope Springs Eternal

"This sounds amazing since I'm always busy and want more time to work out," Leon McDaniels wrote in response to Google's blog post about the feature. "Can't wait to see it and try it."

"When can I use this?" asked Sly Shippy. "Honestly, it sounds like just what I need, as skill and zen building are important to me and often ignored. I don't see this yet in my Google calendar, though I have a Nexus 5."

Goals "could be an interesting feature, especially if they allow developers to tap into it for other devices and applications," said Jim McGregor, principal analyst atTirias Research. "Everything I do these days is electronic."

Planning for a goal is "sometimes the most difficult thing to do," he told TechNewsWorld. If Goals "is already on your phone and it helps you track your status, I think there are many people that would try it. I would."

Now You See It - No, You Don't

Goals wasn't available to all users immediately, some commenters noted.

"This doesn't seem available to my Google Calendar app yet," wrote Johnny Commenter. "I hate it when you announce something and then only give it to some markets. "

"Updated the Google Calendar app. But the 'goal' option is not showing," Akash Sarkar wrote.

Privacy Implications

"At what point does it cross over from being a helpmate to being a nuisance?" asked Laura DiDio, a research director at Strategy Analytics.

Privacy issues are a red flag, she told TechNewsWorld. "Sometimes it does get to be that you give [apps] too much information and they have too much power."

Facebook spied on people who shared private health information on several cancer-fighting organizations' websites, including the American Cancer Society, and used that data to generate profits, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.

Some people prefer paper-based day timers "because they're nonvolatile and don't use a battery," and "I like the ability to ideate on it, [which] is hard to do in an electronic medium," said Mike Jude, a program manager atStratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

Process is more important than goals, he told TechNewsWorld.

"Goals can be limiting and inflexible," Jude said. "A process can deliver results over time that deliver goals." Also, a process "typically drives behavior in a more measurable way." 

LXLE Gives Aging Hardware a New Lease on Life

LXLE is an ideal distro for out-of-the-box functionality to handle your everyday computing needs.

It's a well-oiled lightweight distribution based on Ubuntu's long-term support releases for Debian and Lubuntu Linux from a community originating in the U.S. The latest version is 14.04.4, released last month.

It runs an optimized LXDE, or Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, that has a comfortable look and feel with plenty of system settings to tailor its performance to your way of working. LXDE shares a close kinship with the appearance and performance of another lightweight desktop environment, Xfce.

However, LXLE -- short for Lubuntu Extra Life Extension -- taps fewer system resources than Xfce, making it just as fast and a bit more compatible with aging hardware.

It features security fixes, updated SeaMonkey (the default Web browser) packages and various small visual improvements. It is an easy-to-use alternative to other Linux derivatives.

LXLE comes with an impressive selection of default applications. It adds useful modifications and tweaks to improve performance and functions, and has several design changes and tweaks that make it even more suitable.

Problem Solver

I last looked at this distro about two years ago. It performed well then. I was even more pleased with LXLE this time around -- so much so that it now runs on my secondary desktop computer as my preferred Linux OS.

I gave this release my tried-and-true test. I installed it on a problem-plagued aging computer that nine times out of 10 gives me trouble with compatibility issues.

I run several Linux lightweight distros on this box. The distros all have passed its hard-to-please test. That monster box has rejected most heavier-weight desktops environments that I like, such as Cinnamon.

It survives from the early days of Windows 7 when that was the latest Microsoft OS. Windows 7 still runs and shares the hard drive with several Linux distros. Adding LXLE to the hard drive collection with multiple partitions already in place went smoothly. The installation routine modified the boot manager configuration file flawlessly.

The legacy lemon failed Microsoft's upgrade criteria to Windows 10 thanks to Nvidia graphics no longer being supported. It has an Nvidia C61 GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 integrated graphics card.

Like other Linux alternatives the legacy loser box rejected, the default open source video driver locked up the system repeatedly. Unlike most other lightweight Linux distros, LXLE's stock proprietary drivers loaded from the system menu solved that problem.

Super Stupidity

Despite how well LXLE performed once installed, I had a teeth-gnashing episode over a seemingly stupid sequence in the installation process. Otherwise, I found its installation to be straightforward, especially on older computers that do not have to bypass Legacy Boot security issues built into hard drives.

Why do Linux developers insist on default settings that require username and password to unlock a sleeping screen display on the live session DVD/installation disk? At least provide potential users with that information. Keeping it a secret makes no sense.

The help forums for the current release on the developer's website made no reference to this username and password fiasco. User comments from previous releases indicated two things: One, that problem does not exist on LXLE. (It did then and does now!) Two, the Querty username with no password required was the answer. (It isn't!)

During the installation process, I saw the default username listed as Querty with a blank password field. However, that did not work from the live session.

By the way, the username "Querty" populates the settings window during the installation process. Be sure to change that to your preferred username when that panel appears on the screen during installation.

LXLE comes in the standard edition and a netbook edition. I would try the standard edition live session first. If you have trouble loading LXLE with it, switch to the even lighter-weight netbook edition.

Desktop Details

The main panel by default is at the top of the screen. It also has a panel on the bottom. This is a bit redundant as it had none of the notification and system icons already present on the top menu. I deleted the bottom panel and moved the top panel to the bottom.

The LXLE distro has default settings placing the main panel at the top of the screen. A second panel hides below the bottom edge of the screen.

The LXDE environment has much of the panel configuration that I prefer in my main desktop setup with Linux Mint's Cinnamon desktop, but the controls for configuring the panel are spread among a few menu entries (such as Openbox Configuration Manager and the Panel Settings applet).

By comparison, a little bit of configuration effort lets you re-create the panel performance and look of the Cinnamon desktop panel at the bottom of the screen.

The main menu lets you add an application launcher icon directly to the desktop. It lacks a similar option to place the launcher on the panel bar, however. The trick to doing that comes with using a convoluted applet called the Application Launch Bar that is only accessible from the panel settings control by right-clicking the panel bar.

One glaring weakness is the lack of keyboard shortcuts to move from one virtual workspace to another. Adding the workplace switcher to the panel makes that navigation a one-click process, but I miss being able to keep both hands on the keyboard.

Another missing usability feature is the ability to place frequently used apps on the panel bar. That leaves the slightly inconvenient choices of clicking the main menu button at the far left of the panel or moving the open window out of the way to expose the launch icons I placed on the desktop.

A better workaround is resizing a full-screen window or repositioning an open window slightly away from a screen edge. That leaves just enough space to right-click on the desktop to open the menu. I still have to scroll around to launch the desired app, but it works.

Yet another missing usability feature for me is the lack of scale and expo displays as well as desktop effects that add visual displays when switching virtual desktops and opening or closing windows. Those features are my comfort zone from the Cinnamon and KDE desktops, so not having them in LXLE is simply a matter of adjusting my routine.

Applications Aplenty

The LXLE distro offers an impressive mix of features. For a lightweight distro, it packs a hefty list of included applications. For typical users, every program you need is preisntalled. LXLE comes with included applications that match what I usually add to other desktop distros that are not so lightweight. This includes GIMP, Shotwell and LibreOffice.

This list of included software is almost a contradiction in terms. Typically, lightweight Linux distros scale down the software that tends to be resource demanding. Often, users get lighter apps such as AbiWord instead of LibreOffice, for instance. LXLE comes with the latest version of the LibreOffice suite.

Games and accessory applications often are lacking in even the hardiest and most bloated Linux distros. Not so with LXLE Linux. Earlier versions offered some 28 game titles. The current release is closer to 16 titles. LXLE is not intended to be a gaming fanatic's panacea, but you will not be disappointed in this collection of diversionary and entertaining games.

The accessories menu includes 16 Linux standards. The system tools menu has two dozen more. Many of these I routinely add to whatever distro I install.

Dropbox Dilemma

The default file manager is PCMan. It does not work with the standard Dropbox utility installation. Using Dropbox is essential to my workflow, which involves accessing files on multiple computers in several work locations.

The Dropbox app that directly downloads from the cloud storage website caters to the Nautilus file manager. The Lubuntu Software Center and the Synaptic repository did not have a package for PCMan.

I had to install the needed alternative files to set it up manually. There are two quick commands you must enter into a terminal box. Once done, the problem is solved.

System Symmetry

The primary package management chores are provided through the Lubuntu Software Center. It has a refreshing plain and simple appearance.

Using it requires a two-step process. You search for the application you want to install, then you place it in the Apps Basket and go there to authorize its installation.

LXLE lacks its own software store but taps into the Lubuntu Software Center and the Synaptic Package manager to add/remove programs.

LXLE has the Synaptic Package Manager and the Lubuntu Software Center to maintain system files and add or remove software. It also has the Y PPA Manager utility, which is essential since there is no actual LXLE community repository software that makes adding or removing PPAs convenient.

Bottom Line

LXLE is an easy-to-use, lightweight desktop Linux distribution. It is an ideal OS to run on poorly endowed or aging hardware.

If you want a fast, low-maintenance Linux distro that will run well on any level of hardware, you can not go wrong with LXLE Linux.

Want to Suggest a Review?

Is there a Linux software application or distro you'd like to suggest for review? Something you love or would like to get to know?

Please email your ideas to me, and I'll consider them for a future Linux Picks and Pans column.

And use the Talkback feature below to add your comments! 

What the Traditional Car Companies Don't Seem to Get

Two interesting events took place this month. Tesla announced its Model 3, a relatively affordable electric car, and it attracted around 180K preorders on the same day. That was before the company actually revealed the car. There were more than 250K preorders in the first 36 hours. Oh, and the run rate is about 1,500 per hour of preorders for this car right now.

To be clear, that means a huge number of people now have deposits down on a car they likely won't get until late next year.

Ford opened preorders for its new Ford GT, and only 500 people actually will get to buy this US$400K car -- and as of right now, you still can order one of those 500. There have been no lines for this arguably even more amazing car.

It likely cost more to develop the Ford GT than it did to develop the Model 3, and assuming it sells them all, Ford will make a total of around $200M. By the time it ships the Model 3, Tesla should have at least 500K preorders at an average price of around $40K each. That's about $20B in revenue.

Considering that virtually no one who is in the market for a Ford GT would consider a Tesla anything as an alternative, but that just about everyone who is putting down a deposit for a Model 3 might have bought a Ford instead, you start to see a problem for Ford -- and likely the rest of the auto industry -- if and when Apple enters the competition.

Once they reach scale, Apple-like car companies could roll over the existing auto companies like Apple and Google rolled over then-dominant cellphone companies Nokia, Palm and BlackBerry. I'll explain and then close with my product of the week: a new Kindle from Amazon.

Tesla/Apple Business Approach

Tesla effectively copied Steve Jobs' business model when he built Tesla. What makes this model different is that rather than focusing on providing a choice, the Apple model focuses on driving a decision. You can see that if you compare Apple to pretty much any other tech vendor.

Particularly while Jobs was running the company, Apple provided little product variety but spent a relatively high amount on marketing, so people wanted the few products that Apple shelved. While Tim Cook has drifted away from this a bit, Tesla is still a company that has very few choices but creates a clear path to the one or two cars that it carries. The cars are made to order, but you get comparatively few choices.

As a result, Tesla builds to order and doesn't carry any inventory except for a limited number of refurbished used cars. This is very different from a typical car company that literally can have huge fields of unsold cars at any given time waiting for someone to buy them.

Tesla isn't fully profitable yet -- but if you look at Apple, it maintains the highest profits in the technology industry. It was the most highly valued company in the world at the end of last decade -- regardless of industry -- which speaks to just how well the Apple model can work with a mature company.

When Apple entered the cellphone and MP3 markets, those markets were dominated by firms far more powerful than Apple was at the time. Yet Apple rolled right over them. Two of the most powerful, Palm and Research In Motion, were so badly hurt that one went out of business and the other had to change its business model dramatically in order to survive.

In fact, both industries went through massive changes. Record labels were subordinated to iTunes, and there was a major shift in customer ownership from the cellphone carriers to Apple.

When all is said and done, Apple and Tesla customers are now the most loyal in their respective industries. With the Model 3, Tesla is showcasing that it can get lines for its new product, just like Apple could, and it is looking pretty scary at the moment.

That doesn't bode well for an industry that hasn't seen a line for a car since the 1991 Miata -- and never the kind of advanced demand the new Tesla is showcasing. Think about it. Rarely do you have to wait more than three months for a car you order, but these Tesla 3 buyers are, en masse, waiting more than a year for theirs -- with no certainty it will show up even then.

Granted, Tesla could stumble -- but so far, betting against Elon Musk (Tesla's CEO) has been a fool's game. Competitors believed Apple would stumble with both the iPod and iPhone, and that didn't turn out so well for them.

Ford's - and the Auto Industry's - Problem

Like the music industry before the iPod and the mobile phone industry before the iPhone, the car industry hasn't been very flexible. It still uses a dealership model, which tends to create a lot of separation between the customer and the car builder.

The dealers tend to own the customer, not the car company, and car companies put out lots of different cars that they generally can't afford to market very well -- at least, not individually. That increases costs associated with excess inventories, lowers customer satisfaction with the vehicles, and makes it increasingly hard to sustain customer loyalty.

Apple caught the cellphone industry napping and -- along with Google, which basically fielded a series of cheap iPhone knock offs -- changed that massive industry. Tesla and Apple have the same potential in the auto market.

I'm not sure the car companies even see it. They may look at the Tesla Model 3 preorder lines like the cellphone companies looked at the initial iPhone demand -- like a fluke. They may argue that this isn't the way things are done, and that Tesla will fail. Certainly, that is what was said about Apple -- but look how that turned out.

Wrapping Up

When an industry like the telecommunications industry or the auto industry has been around for a long time, the difficulty is that it tends to become inbred. In other words, the same people move from company to company. That creates a feeling of willingness to explore new things, but in reality they're just forming a large bloc of folks who can't see change and don't want it.

Tesla is using the same techniques Apple used to surprise the telecommunications industry. The huge preorder numbers for the Model 3 suggest a level of disruption -- once this new class of company reaches scale -- that could put firms like Ford and Toyota out of business, particularly if Apple and Google both join Tesla in the car market, as rumored.

Unless the traditional car companies step up their defenses substantially, they'll likely have a lot in common with Palm and BlackBerry at the end of this cycle, which suggests several of them will have to exit the car market as a result. That will be a shame -- particularly since they got nearly a decade's worth of warning.

I've been a Kindle fan since I bought the first Kindle that came out, and it is kind of strange the way this line has evolved. Originally it was just an ePaper product, but it came with lifetime wireless connectivity to cell data services -- slow but adequate for books -- that eventually worked nearly worldwide. That gave it a unique combination of massive battery life and free connectivity that nothing else in the market could touch.

Since then, Amazon has focused mostly on its Fire line, which is a more full-featured tablet, and moved away from its ePaper offerings. While we gained movies, better Web experiences, and color, we went from days to hours of battery life, and we lost the free ubiquitous connectivity.

With the Kindle Oasis, Amazon once again is refreshing the ePaper design. There's no color, but it offers hours to possibly months of battery life, as well as outdoor viewing capability. There is even an option that offers nearly unlimited data, so you can get an experience much more similar to that first Kindle.

Kindle Oasis

Except for the part that holds the battery, this version of the Kindle is exceptionally thin and light, and likely ideal for power readers. One loss I question though is that this version of the ePaper reader isn't water resistant like its lower-cost brother.

This, combined with the much higher price, suggests the older Kindle Voyage may be the better deal for any but the most avid reader, for whom the massive additional battery life and better night lighting would make a significant difference.

Personally, I think Amazon should have made this version larger and built in the water resistance, for the price, but this is still arguably the best ePaper reader in the market. For those who want that distinction, the Kindle Oasis should fit their needs nicely, and that's what makes it my product of the week. 

Sports Fans and Social Media, Part 2: Perils, Pitfalls and Best Practices

Sports Fans and Social Media, Part 1: It's a Brand New Ball Game

This fall will see a 10-game pilot of professional football streamed on social media -- Twitter, to be specific. It's a continuation of the National Football League's search for gold in the veins of digital broadcasting and an opportunity for sports brands to forge new and deeper relations with fans.

Initially seen as merely a way to connect with teens and texting lovers, social networks have permeated the Internet with a proliferation of like and share buttons. For sports teams looking to bolster their brands, social networks have evolved into a critical channel for drumming up loyalty.

For sports marketers, social media could be just as important as television ad space or even more so in about five years. That is about how much time is left on the NFL's broadcast contract, and the league, after inking the deal with Twitter, indicated that it would look at widening its footprint in the streaming media market.

Social media networks have the ability to engage fans beyond game day, encouraging them to buy tickets and merchandise, said Jackie Reau, CEO atGame Day Communications.

"Teams should be using social media to connect with fans all year long with fresh content, gamification and insights into the organization," she told TechNewsWorld.

The Potential

Social media followers of the Los Angeles Lakers and the Chicago Bulls outnumber the people living in those cities. Census data from 2013 put the populations of Los Angeles and Chicago at about 3.9 million and 2.7 million, respectively, while their basketball teams have followings of roughly 26 million and 21 million, respectively.

Those followers provide teams with a wealth of data and staggering marketing potential, all of which is for naught if sports organizations fail to use them effectively.

Some teams leverage real-time data to measure each fan's engagement and distribute loyalty points proportionally to that, according to Quinton Porter, director of business development and partnerships atZoomph. That can lead to organizations rewarding fans with discounts, which could compel the most loyal of the bunch to buy merchandise and tickets.

However, the larger strategy consists of sports brands engaging with influencers in their audiences. By default, that's "a loyalty push," he told TechNewsWorld.

"Because if you aren't engaging them, they will just die off and go away," Porter said. "But by engaging with your fans, you make them feel as if they are a part of something. Conversations always bring people back."

To reach new fans, teams often tout new players or groups of athletes, said Mary Ingram-Waters, honors faculty fellow at Arizona State University's Barrett Honors College. While it happens across all types of social media platforms, it's most common on sites such as Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

"But specific players, who may or may not be officially speaking on behalf of their teams, also use social media to connect with fans," she told TechNewsWorld. "They can do this for a variety of reasons that may not have much to do with promoting team fanship as much as individual player fanship."

Engaging Female Fans

Sports teams have asserted that they have been widening their fan bases to include more women, but their social media content doesn't reflect those assertions, according to Ingram-Waters.

"You see the same kinds of ads of men enjoying watching games with their male friends," she said.

Women account for about 34 percent of participants in fantasy sports, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

It's certainly the market with the most potential for growth, Ingram-Waters said.

"Where women fans show up, though, is through their following of individual players on social media," she said. "The women we interviewed over the last four years told us that they like to follow players who share stories and images of themselves."

Players typically aren't official spokespeople for their teams, so while they may be an effective means of bolstering women's loyalty, there doesn't appear to be a unified effort to use individual players to market to the demographic.

"It's possible that efforts to use individual players' social media accounts to appeal to women fans would be recognized as transparent marketing and thus would ruin what women are looking for: an authentic personal connection to the player," Ingram-Waters said.

Technological Pitfalls

Another possible pitfall for sports marketers on social media is more perilous: the sheer amount of content teams have to manage and the necessity to respond to fans in real time.

"So automation is difficult there, but fans understand there isn't a whole team of folks behind a desk typing messages to you," Zoomph's Porter said. "But having some sort of response makes the conversation feel authentic, which the fans like."

However, making conversations feel authentic is a tactic that is being used increasingly by those with bad intentions, according to Devin Redmond, general manager of social media and compliance at Proofpoint.

"Sports teams and the fans who follow them on social media really have to be wary of what happens on places like their Facebook accounts," he told TechNewsWorld.

Social media spam and phishing attacks are increasing in frequency and sophistication, according to Redmond. Scammers have been particularly interested in sports fan pages, where they can prey on people caught up in a major game.

Scammers often hop on team pages during or after a big game, commenting on content the sports organization has shared with its followers. The scammers will plug malicious content into comments on a team's post, using custom language to make it look both benign and authentic.

"They may look like they're participating in the conversation," Redmond said. "'Hey, Steph Curry made this great shot,' a team may say. A bunch of people talk about it, and then a scammer will jump in and say something like 'Hey, that's a great shot. Want to see more?' and then they post something that takes people somewhere bad."

The scammers know to pay attention on game night and they follow the action using things like listening tools, he said. They'll customize their content and distributed it across several accounts.

"If you can put up one comment that has the ability to reach all the followers of a page, and that page is now at 3, 4 million followers, that's a really good ROI compared to the traditional scams that might happen over email when you send a thousand emails to get one person to click," Redmond said.

Fans should not follow links from comments, and teams should employ a technology-first approach to dealing with spam, rather than attempting to manage it manually, he warned. "They'll never keep up with the bad guys that way." 

Lightweight metal foam turns armor-piercing bullets into dust

The researchers imagine the metal foams will provide more than just ultralight, bullet-destroying body armor (Credit: Judge Pera/CC 2.0). View gallery (2 images)

Composite metal foams (CMFs) are little-known materials that are beginning to show some big promise. Last year we saw researchers adapt these lightweight materials to stop various forms of radiation in their tracks, and now the same team has ramped things up to offer protection from something with a bit more force: an armour-piercing bullet, which was turned to dust on impact.

In its most simple form, foam metal is made by bubbling gas through molten metal to form a frothy mixture which then sets as a lightweight matrix. This leaves a material that offers a lighter alternative to conventional metals, while still maintaining a comparable strength.

Afsaneh Rabiei, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University, last year produced a foam metal shield that could block X-rays, various forms of gamma rays and neutron radiation, giving it potential as a lightweight alternative to the bulky radiation shielding currently available.

Afsaneh Rabiei with one of her composite metal foams

Building on this previous work, Rabiei then set about building high-strength armor. The shield was comprised of boron carbide ceramics as the strike face, with composite metal foam (CMF) as the bullet kinetic energy absorber layer and Kevlar panels as backplates. To test its durability, Rabiei and her team took aim with a 7.62 x 63 mm M2 armor-piercing projectile, which was fired in line with the standard testing procedures established by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).

"We could stop the bullet at a total thickness of less than an inch, while the indentation on the back was less than 8 mm," Rabiei says. "To put that in context, the NIJ standard allows up to 44 mm (1.73 in) indentation in the back of an armor."

But Rabiei imagines her work will provide more than just ultralight, bullet-destroying body armor. Other potential applications include space exploration and transportation of nuclear waste due to its aforementioned abilities to block radiation.

You can check out the bullet's demise in the video below, while the research was published last year in the journal Composite Structures.