| Distracted pedestrian laws could come to city near you |
| MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — Admit it: You often look at your phone when you cross the street. I do it all the time. I'm sure you do, too. |
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| Should this be an illegal act, such as jaywalking or running a red light? |
| Reaction has been heating up online to a new law, just signed by the mayor of Honolulu, to ban looking at your cellphone when crossing the street. |
| Yet it's still OK to talk on the phone while walking. |
| The new law is controversial, but sometimes what starts in Hawaii spreads to the rest of the nation, as with a recent ruling against President Trump's travel ban. |
| "Government should only ban behaviors that threaten other people, like smoking or driving distracted," Honolulu resident Bryan Mick said on Facebook. |
| The question is, does it matter? Can a law banning people from staring at their phone truly be enforced? And will citizens take it seriously when fines start at a paltry $15? (And how much would it take for you to actually stop looking at your phone--$100, $200, $300, $500? Would you stop for a $1,000 fine and jail time?) |
| Even after all these years, we still jaywalk. And despite most states banning texting in the car — and 15 states making it illegal to use our phones outside of hands-free mode while driving — how about a reality check? When's the last time you looked next to you and people didn't have phones to their ear in the car? |
| With a new law curbing the use of looking at the cellphone while crossing streets, "I would hope that people would stop, but the likelihood and chances of that will be low until something drastically changes," says Erik Bull, 22, a student from Denver. |
| We asked tourists this week about how governments should respond to our worldwide smartphone obsession and the havoc it's playing with society. |
| Claire Martin, 23, a student from Texas currently living in Australia, said if law enforcement got serious about enforcing the laws, people would pay attention and change. |
| Texting in the car is illegal Down Under, and "nobody even changes the music there, you just don't do that in Australia, they're very strict on it," Martin said. |
| Our view here is that the law is well intended, but using threats to wean people off their smartphones won't get very far. The genie is out of the bottle, and there's no going back. Unless there's serious hard time involved. |
| And I'm a whole lot more concerned about drivers cruising through intersections while checking their Facebook and texting than I am about a pedestrian checking their phone. The driver has all the power. |
| But let's give Honolulu some respect and admit it — the idea is a noble one. We are tired of bumping into people on busy streets. |
| Maybe if we all get sick of it, we'll wake up and opt for a voluntary cellphone time out when crossing. City life is pretty cool to look at, especially in Honolulu with all those amazing palm trees and island architecture, right? |
| Meanwhile, in other tech news this week: |
| — Apple announced earnings and surprised many analysts with a stronger-than-expected quarter. The spring quarter usually is dull as consumers hold onto their wallets in anticipation of a new iPhone in the fall. Some notable tidbits — for the first time in three years, iPad sales rose thanks to a lower list price ($329) on the entry-level model and a push to get iPads to schools. The Services division — iTunes, the App Store, Apple Music and iCloud — surged 22% to $7.3 billion. |
| — This week's hack attack victim is pay-TV network HBO, which had 1.5 terabytes of data stolen, with several episodes of its hit series Game of Thrones showing up online before their official release dates. Still, HBO downplayed the effects of the hack, saying email survived and that HBO was hiring an outside firm to help employees monitor their financial accounts. |
| — They got chipped. In last week's newsletter, we asked the question, "Who wants to get chipped?" This week, a small Wisconsin firm, Three Square Market, made good on its vow to embed microchips in its employees. It did so in the name of convenience, to ditch company badges and corporate logons for the ability to have their hands read by a digital reader. The move was controversial, at least according to comments on our Facebook page. Boomers will be fine in fighting such advances, but "younger or future generations are going to have to move to an Amish community or Borneo to escape these trends and innovations," Alabaman David Hoeltje said. |
| — Shopping for a new phone? Wait another few weeks, please. Per our Eli Blumenthal, "With the new Galaxy Note 8 set to be announced later this month and potentially three new iPhones on tap for September, now is probably the worst time of the year to buy a new phone." |
| Our week in Audio: |
| — How to shoot the Eclipse in Time-Lapse mode. Getting shots of the sun on Total Eclipse day (Aug. 21) with a smartphone is going to be tough. But a time lapse of the day turning to night and back to day again would be awesome. And we've got the tips for how to do it. |
| — Saying so long to the iPod. Saying goodbye to the iPod era, a 16-year-ride that changed the music business and our lives forever. |
| — Creating a website in 2017. I tell of my adventure putting my new http://www.jeffersongraham.net website/blog together and why I chose SmugMug over SquareSpace, Wix and other platforms to showcase personal photography, photojournalism, video and audio reports. If you have a chance, check out our fun gallery of street life from Venice Beach. |
| — Sneak peek at Apple's plans for Augmented Reality. AR is coming to the iPhone in the fall, with animated figures entering real life. What does Apple have in store? We get a sneak peek at some examples. |
| — This week's accompanying audio to the newsletter on distracted walking. (TK) |
| Finally, ICYMI, take a look at what getting chipped actually looks like. Our Gannett reporter Laura Schulte was on the scene, and she filed this cool #TalkingTech video showing employees getting chips embedded at Three Square Market in Wisconsin. |
| If you haven't subscribed to the newsletter yet, what are you waiting for? Just click this link and sign up: usat.ly/2qaIVVQ. We also invite you to subscribe to the #TalkingTech podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Tunein and wherever else you like to hear great online audio. And please follow me on Twitter and on Facebook. |
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