Yahoo Shine
Yahoo Shine

2 Followers 2 Following
About
Yahoo Shine's Lists
Yahoo Shine's Stories / All
digital culture

How to Avoid Burning Your Popcorn: The Perfect Pop App

Tired of blackened kernels instead of your crispy snack?




Tired of blackened kernels instead of your crispy snack? There's an app for that. We're happy to present this post from our friends at Yahoo! Shine.

Ever since microwave popcorn became popular in the early 1980s, fans of the whole-grain snack have faced a familiar problem: if you don't stop the microwave at exactly the right moment, you end up with either too many tooth-shattering unpopped kernels or a bag of scorched popcorn and a smoke-filled kitchen.

Also on Shine: 25 Ways to Flavor Popcorn Without Using Salt

"Our consumer services team found that this is the most frequent difficulty that consumers have," Craig Tokusato, vice president of marketing for Diamond Foods and the person in charge of its Pop Secret popcorn division, told Yahoo! Shine in a phone interview. "It's a highly frequent and annoying problem."

Read on to learn how to pop the perfect bag of popcorn every time.

digital life

Tetris' Surprising Health Benefits

We're happy to present this post from our partner site Yahoo!

We're happy to present this post from our partner site Yahoo! Shine:

Scientists at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, have confirmed what kids have been insisting for ages: playing video games can be good for you. Specifically, playing block-building games like Tetris can do more to fix lazy eye than traditional treatments.

Lazy eye (medical name: amblyopia) is a condition in which vision doesn't develop properly in one eye. It can cause permanent sight problems if left untreated, since the brain eventually just stops processing the blurry images coming from the underfunctioning eye. According to The Eye Digest, about 3 percent of people in the United States have amblyopia.

Find out how doctors use video games to improve lazy eye after the jump.

community

Charm School Teaches Social Graces to the Tech Savvy

We're happy to present this article from our partner site Yahoo!

We're happy to present this article from our partner site Yahoo! Shine:

Tech-savvy students, faculty, and staff members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may be superadvanced when it comes to science, but a campus-only charm school — where megaminds get to hone their social skills — is one of the most popular things on campus right now.

Forget high-end etiquette like whether Americans need to curtsey to queens (they don't). In the MIT program, students who usually spend their lives in the labs learn about social niceties like how to shake hands properly, how to make small talk, and the basic dos and don'ts of table manners.

Read on to find out more about this geek-chic charm school.

digital life

Do You Think Emoticons Are :) or :( ?

We're happy to present this article from our partner site Yahoo!

We're happy to present this article from our partner site Yahoo! Shine:

The young folks may not believe it, but emoticons — those silly strings of symbols that are supposed to illustrate emotions — have been around for 30 years.

Experts attribute their creation to a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, who, in 1982, told his students that the class needed a way to label jokes online.

"I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: Smiling Read it sideways," Scott Fahlman wrote on an online bulletin board (the precursor to what we call forums today).

PHOTOS: Pets Pretending to Be Emoticons

But some point to a New York Times transcript of an 1862 speech by Abraham Lincoln, in which "applause and laughter" is followed by a winky smile ";)".

Read on to learn more about emoticons and how they are used today.

community

Steve Jobs's Iconic Turtleneck Flying Off Shelves

We're happy to present this article from one of our favorite sites, Yahoo!

We're happy to present this article from one of our favorite sites, Yahoo! Shine:

Steve Jobs was famous for Macs, iPods, iPads, and black turtlenecks. The Apple co-founder loved his St. Croix mock turtlenecks and often wore them with Levi's 501 jeans, and New Balance 991 sneakers to keynote addresses when unveiling exciting new product launches to the public. That was his uniform. There’s no doubt of that Jobs was a beloved figure who had a major impact on society, still, we were amazed to learn that sales of his brand of black tops went through the roof after he passed away on Wednesday. In fact, the tech leader may have inspired a bona fide fashion trend: the return of turtlenecks! Keep on reading to find out how much they cost.

community

Are You Allergic to Wi-Fi? Strange New Illness With Even Stranger Cure

We're happy to present this article from one of our favorite sites, Yahoo!

We're happy to present this article from one of our favorite sites, Yahoo! Shine:

What is this now? An acute Wi-Fi allergy is plaguing five percent of Americans? EHS, or Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, is a condition defined by headaches, muscle spasms, burning skin and chronic pain.

The cause: over-exposure to mobile phones, wireless internet and the satellites and cell phone towers that keep them pumping. 

One sufferer, Diane Schou, described her symptoms to the BBC this way: "My face turns red, I get a headache, my vision changes, and it hurts to think. Last time [I was exposed] I started getting chest pains — and to me that's becoming life-threatening."

To alleviate her discomfort, her husband built her "radio-wave resistant" wooden cage lined in wire mesh to sleep in. When that didn't work, she moved from her Iowa farmhouse to Green Bank, West Virginia. Population 143. 

For 13,000 square miles around the town wireless networks are obsolete. The Radio Quiet Zone was originally designed for scientific research, but it's becoming a haven for EHS refugees. 

Come on, is this really about radio waves and electromagnetic frequencies?

productivity

Do We Multitask Too Much?

We're happy to present this article from one of our favorite sites, Yahoo!

We're happy to present this article from one of our favorite sites, Yahoo! Shine:

There's a really interesting piece at Work It, Mom!, about unitasking instead of multitasking, and it got me thinking. Maybe part of the reason my stress levels are off the charts right now is because I'm multitasking too much?

Unitasking is kind of at the root of the whole Fly Lady way of cleaning and decluttering — focus on one task, do it for a set amount of time, and then move on to the next thing. I can see how easily it works in terms of doing the laundry or tidying up the house, but could I apply it to my to-do list? Or, better still, my hours at the office? Keep reading to hear how I fared.