This Is What It Really Looks Like When The Coal Industry Targets Kids

We recently looked atCoal Cares, a parody site that imagines what it would look like if Peabody Energy--the world's largest private coal company--launched a pro-coal website for kids (Bieber-themed inhalers for everyone!). But the coal industry's actual marketing for kids is much more insidious, and markedly less funny.

Friends of the Earth launched a campaign this week asking Scholastic to"stop selling elementary school students on coal."What exactly is Scholastic doing? The American Coal Foundation recently hired the company to produceThe United States of Energy,a set of pro-coal materials intended to teach fourth-grade kids about the different energy sources used to power the U.S. The materials were distributed to classrooms around the country.

At first glance, the coal-sponsored worksheets seem benign enough. But the materials fail to mention any of the disadvantages of coal--like the fact, for example, that coal burning is linked to numeroushealth problems, including asthma and bronchitis. Take a look at the map below (larger PDFhere).This would be fine for coal marketing materials. It's less acceptable when it's what we're teaching our kids as fact.The map seemingly runs through all the benefits of different energy sources. But Bill Bigelow, Curriculum Editor of Rethinking Schools magazine, reads between the lines (PDF):

The map’s subtext is that we’d be lost without coal:"Coal is produced in half of the 50 states, and America has 27 percent of the world’s coal resources. In fact, America has more coal than any nation has any single energy resource... Coal is the source of half of the electricity produced in the United States..."The only solar icon on the map is in the Mojave Desert, implying that solar may work in deserts, but the rest of us need to rely on more conventional sources of power, like burning coal. The mapping exercise treats all sources of energy as fundamentally equal: One is as good as another, except that coal is a lot better, students will infer, because we have so much of it.

TheRelated Resourcessection of the United States of Energy website is even more blatant, recommending that teachers supplement their curriculum with information from the American Coal Foundation, Women in Mining, the Colorado School of Mines, and the American Coal Council, among other similar sites.

It's not surprising that the coal industry would attempt to spawn a generation of coal-cheerleading kids, but why is Scholastic getting on board? The company emailed us a statement explaining that it works with a number of non-profits, government agencies, and corporations on supplemental educational materials; a program with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for example, teaches teens about the science of drug addiction. Which would be comparable if it taught them that all drugs, from aspirin to heroin, were roughly the same.

As for the ultra-simplified explanation of the coal industry in the United States of Energy, Scholastic says:

Since the program is designed for elementary schoolchildren, the materialsdo not attempt to cover all of the complex issues around the sourcing andconsumption of energy. Rather, they focus on grade-appropriateinformation about the geography of energy sources in the U.S. and provide links toadditional resources, including those provided by the federal government, forteachers who want to pursue a deeper, more complex discussion aboutenergy.

Kyle Good, Scholastic's Vice President of Corporate Communications, tells us that there are no plans to repeat the program. But in ablog postfrom late last year, Alma Hale Paty, Executive Director, American Coal Foundation, seems enthusiastic about the prospect of turning kids pro-coal through educational materials:"We are in the third year of our commitment to the partnership with Scholastic. Our success is the result of taking significant risk to substantially increase our outreach--to reach that 'critical mass' of teachers."This success includes an increase in traffic to the American Coal Foundation website from about 8,000 visits per month before 2008 to over 24,000 visits in late 2010. Paty's post suggests that this is the result of its partnership with Scholastic.

The Scholastic program is probably not the last we'll see of the coal industry attempting to preach the wonders of its toxic product to kids. Can we at least have theBieber inhalersinstead?

Update:Scholastic offered up another statement today admitting that it wasn't"vigilant enough"when thinking about the potential effects of the sponsorship:

"Scholastic's children's books, magazines, reading programs and website content are used in most American classrooms - a responsibility and trust that we built through painstaking work through 90 years of service to teachers and schools.  A tiny percentage of this material is produced with sponsors, including government agencies, non-profit associations and some corporations. This week, Scholastic came under criticism for an 11"x 16"poster map which displays different sources of energy--coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind and natural gas--not so much for the content of the poster but primarily its sponsorship by the American Coal Foundation.  We acknowledge that the mere fact of sponsorship may call into question the authenticity of the information, and therefore conclude that we were not vigilant enough as to the effect of sponsorship in this instance.   We have no plans to further distribute this particular program. Because we have always been guided by our belief that we can do better, we are undertaking a thorough review of our policy and editorial procedures on sponsored content, and we will publish only those materials which are worthy of our reputation as 'the most trusted name in learning.'"

 

{Image: Flickr userTimothyJ}

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Read More:Coal Cares Site, A Brilliant Hoax Of The Coal Industry

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iFive: LimeWire Pays Out For Piracy, Square Hires Apple Engineer, Cisco's Worst Job Cuts, Sony's Sales Suffer, Winklevii Sued

1. AttentionGoogle--this is what happens when you anger the record labels: LimeWire and its former CEO Mark Gortonhave agreed to pay$105 million to close a legal suit alleging LimeWire encouraged users to share pirated music. It's a result of a court ruling last year that the P2P service and CEO could be liable for the illegal sharing actions of its users, and is one of the biggest music settlements yet.

2. Square, the novel mobile credit card reading solution, haspulled offa small hiring coup. It's confirmed that Mike Thole, previously anAppleengineer with responsibilities for the UI of Safari on the Mac desktop and in iOS implementations, has now joined Square's team. Thole also developed a search app called iSeek, available on the iOS App Store. and though we don't know what he's doing at Square, we can imagine its user experience may get a lot slicker.

3.Ciscois braced to deal with the worst everround of job cutsin its history. To meet an ambitious goal of slashing $1 billion in costs, up to 4,000 jobs may go in the next few months--or about 4% of its workforce. The company has been mismanaged, according to its CEO, and ventures in expansion like the ill-fated Flip camera purchase need to be more controlled in the future.

4. Sony's ongoing PlayStation Network outage, after a series of high-profile and potentially damaging hack attacks, is having anunfortunate halo effect: It's now reported that retail sales of PS3 consoles are suffering, and more users than normal are returning them to stores to swap for Xboxes. Game-buying habits are also changing, with more sales seen on non-Sony systems. The pressure to get the PSN back alive is mounting.

5. The ongoing IP and compensation lawsuit overFacebook, driven by the Winklevoss twins just took an interesting twist: Boston developer Wayne Chang hasbeen granted court timefor a suit alleging his company is owed a share in the $65 million settlement the twins were awarded by Facebook. Chang says he had an MoI for 15% of ConnectU, the Winklevoss' company, thanks to code work he did for them.

Chat about this news withKit Eaton on TwitterandFast Companytoo.

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Google Would Like To Wirelessly Control Your Lightbulbs With Android@Home

Googlehas already made its intentions to dive bomb into the energy spaceclear, but so far, it has left out how this relates to its Android phones. But at this week's Google I/O developers conference, the company announced its new Android@Home technology will allow users to control appliances directly from their phones--starting with a wirelessly connected LED bulb next year.

This is not entirely new territory. Companies likeControl4already allow users to control appliances--lights, sprinkler systems, air conditioning, and more--from their cell phones and in-home touch screens, but the technology is pricey. Google and its thousands of Android developers will presumably bring prices down to Earth and make remote appliance control cheap, or perhaps even free. The company is relying on its thousands of developers to make accessible home automation a reality.

First up for Android@Home: a wirelessly connected LED bulb from Lighting Science Group that can be controlled via an Android phone or tablet, all using Google's own wireless protocol to connect home devices. The bulb will be released later this year, according toEarth2Tech.

This isn't just a boon for the lazy among us; it also makes it easy to save energy at home. If you forget to turn off the air conditioning while you're at work, for example, you can quickly do it with your phone. The same thing goes nearly every other home appliance. You'll never have to get up from your couch again--but if you want to, you'll probably control that from your tablet, too.

{Image: Lighting Science Group}

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The Human Genome Project: How 23 Chromosomes Made An $800 Billion Economic Impact

The Human Genome Project--a $3.8-billion international human genome mapping project that ran from 1988 to 2003--wasn't just a money-sucking vanity initiative that only reaped profits for personal genetic testing companies like23andMe. The project has, in fact, driven $796 billion in economic impact and generated $244 billion in total personal income, according to a new report fromBattelle. Sometimes, pricey long-term science projects are well worth it.

According to the report, the nascent genetic research industry generated $67 billion in U.S. economic output and created 310,000 jobs in 2010 alone."We were surprised by just how large the economic impact had been,"says Greg Lucier, CEO of Life Technologies (the foundation that sponsored Battelle's research)."What was even more interesting for me is that we're just getting going. The ability now to read genes quickly and economically is opening up entirely new vistas of opportunity."

Lucier points out that it is already commonplace for pharmaceutical companies to do DNA sequencing for developing new drugs, and companies likeMonsantoare using gene-mapping technologies in crop development (which may or may not be a good thing). The HGP evenhelpedauthorities to confirm Osama Bin Laden's death with DNA testing.

And that nearly $800 billion is just the start of the money that will start rolling in as technology improves."In my view, DNA sequencing will become as ubiquitous as the stethoscope in medicine,"says Lucier. This could happen sooner rather than later; the same sequencing services that cost billions of dollars 10 years ago cost only thousands of dollars today.

"Companies like ours have been investing hundreds of millions of dollars in development {of DNA sequencing technology. Our knowledge of chemistry and computing have been combined to where you can do things at the molecular level quickly,"explains Lucier.

This may mean radically improved drugs targeted at patients with specific genes--or aGattaca-like future where everyone is judged on their genetic makeup. At the end of the day, we'll bet the $3.8 billion turns out to be a fantastic investment.

{Image: Flickr userMichab37}

Reach Ariel Schwartz viaTwitteroremail.

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SCVNGR, American Express Make It Less Awkward To Redeem Daily Deals

Have you ever had the experience of buying a deal from Groupon or LivingSocial, getting to the merchant (a restaurant, let's say), and awkwardly giving the server a crumpled piece of paper to prove that you deserve $20 worth of food for just $10?LevelUp, a recently-released app from Google Ventures-backed game platformSCVNGR, wants to lower the daily deal embarrassment factor, courtesy of a partnership with American Express that allows users to redeem deals without having to show a printed-out piece of paper or hold up their cell phone to merchants.

LevelUp is similar to other daily deal sites, but with one big difference: instead of providing one-off deals, the six week-old service provides three levels of deals (good, better, and best). So a user might unlock the first deal at a rock-climbing gym, for example, by purchasing a discounted introduction to rock-climbing class. Once that deal has been unlocked, the user would gain access to a second deal (an intermediate class and gear rental), and once that is purchased, the user gets the level three deal of a discounted membership to the gym.

Whereas sites like Groupon and LivingSocial get a 50% commission when a user cashes in a deal, Scvngr gets no commission from users who unlock a level one deal--instead, the company gets a 25% commission from both the level two and level three deals."If we can't get customers back on time two and three, we haven't done our job,"  Seth Priebatsch,Scvngr's founder and"chief ninja", tellsFast Company.

Enter LevelUp's partnership with American Express. In addition to the promise of getting ever more enticing deals from merchants, LevelUp users can now paperlessly redeem their deals. In practical terms, this means that users can send purchased deals directly to their American Express cards through a one-time linking process, give the card to a participating merchant, and get an instant digital receipt via email and a cell phone push notification.

"For a card member, this means no more coupons, no more printing anything out, no more showing your phone at the point of sale,"explained David Wolf, Vice President of Global Marketing Capabilities at American Express, at a press conference. It is, in other words, the end of the awkward print-out. And for merchants, it means no more dealing with the hassle of daily deal coupons at the point of sale--AmEx does all the dirty work behind the scenes.

The AmEx partnership is only available at the moment for a LevelUp deal at select Levi's stores in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston (one store in each city)--and the LevelUp app itself is only active in Boston and Philadelphia, with the exception of the San Francisco Levi's deal.

But LevelUp is expanding to new cities this summer, and if all goes as planned, the American Express partnership will also expand in the near future.

{Image credits: Scvngr}

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Facebook Director Of Local:"We're Not In Direct Competition With Groupon"

WhenFacebooklaunched their new Deals service last week, they were inevitably accused of tromping onGroupon’s territory. (Groupon likely saw it that way.) But Facebook Director of Local Emily White said that's not the case. Facebook wasn’t so much interested in deals for deals’ sake, she said. Instead, the company was interested in deals that enabled people to do things together. This is the company, after all, who says its mission is to make the world more connected.

Fast Companycaught up with White on Thursday to learn more--and understand what Facebook’s entrance into this space does indeed portend for Groupon and others in the deals industry.

“For us it’s around sharing commerce experiences with your friends online and off,” White toldFast Company, sticking close to Facebook's vision.“We are going for social experiences that are distributed, and shared, and happen in a social manner. We believe that people come to Facebook to interact with their friends. To the extent that we can make that happen even more easily is really cool for us and for the users.”

White described how placing Deals in the Facebook ecosystem creates a cycle, the company believes, that both produces high-quality experiences for users but also benefits merchants.

The system does a lot of filtering for users, White said, so that, when a user decides on a deal, they have greater confidence that it’s one they’re going to like. While some users rely on Deals emails to learn about opportunities, most discovery, White said, happens either in the Newsfeed--when a friend posts a Deal they took advantage of--or when a friend shares a deal with another friend--both of which offer a measure of validation. (It's the sharing power, we'vesaidbefore, that's the true power behind deals.)

“The best conversions for us are when I find a deal, and I share it with my friends. Which is not a surprise, because that’s what people come to Facebook to do,” White said.

Added to that, when a Facebook user runs across a deal at a merchant that a friend of theirs already frequents, that friend’s check-in will appear in the deal message (assuming they’ve given permission for check-ins to be shared)--providing further validation that this might be a worthwhile experience.

White also said the social nature of the deals that Facebook offers increases the chance that merchants are going to reap users with the potential to become loyal customers, rather than people solely on the hunt for a discount.

“Maybe you like a restaurant and you see a deal for it, and you want to go,” White said. “And you bring {two other friends} who have never been there before. What better new customers to bring to a restaurant than the friends of a fan?”

“And then it’s about taking a photo at that dinner, of the three of us, eating together and uploading it {to Facebook}, and eventually tagging the business, and that showing up on the business’s Wall, and the owner being able to see that and get that feedback,” she continued. “And it builds on itself. Another friend of yours goes and looks at that {business’s} page and sees that you had an interaction with that place.”

Given Facebook’s focus, White said, the company isn’t necessarily competing with other deal companies.

“If you look at the deals that we are running and the way we’ve constructed it, you can tell that this is not in direct competition with Groupon,” White said. That compay is in a wide variety of spaces, including “Home& Garden, selling window cleaning. That’s just not {what we’re focused on}.”

Read More:Most Innovative Companies 2011:FacebookandGroupon

{Image: Flickr userqianshuo}

E.B. Boyd is FastCompany.com's Silicon Valley reporter.Twitter.Email.

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Face The Nation: How Sensory Logic Sees Secrets In Candidates'Mugs

Although President Barack Obama is substantially boosted by the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and a relatively unknown fewRepublicans debatedlast night in Greenville, South Carolina, Campaign 2012 nevertheless is starting totake shape. During the campagign, many Americans will meet GOP contenders for the first time. Butwhatthe presidential hopefuls say may not matter that much. Their faces may be doing the heavy lifting. A scientific, emotional“facial coding” of the candidates and their expressions may determine who gains traction and who gets the nomination.

Campaigns and the public will soon be inundated with information on how candidates are tracking and their odds for success ("the horse race"). Politicians and the populace will turn to social media to influence and gauge our opinions and moods. But few candidates and voters are likely aware of“facial media” (you heard it here first) and the science of “facial coding.”

After the 2010 the midterm elections, more campaigns than ever began usingneuromarketing techniques, that is, studying the brains of voters in order to craft messages that would appeal to them and win votes at the polls. Turning the tables in 2011, neuromarketing researchers can now measurecandidates’ own brain-driven facial movements and emotions, in order to assess their performance, fine-tune campaign marketing, or even predict election outcomes.

Dan Hill, president ofSensory Logicand author ofEmotionomicsandAbout Face, is a facial coding expert who works with leading Fortune 150 companies, professional sports teams, and government agencies (e.g. TSA). Sensory Logic helps clients who market to consumers by measuring their emotional facial responses to various stimuli in an effort maximize appeal. Companies also hire Hill to assist in employee recruitment and talent management.

Hill has been diagnosing candidates and predicting elections since 2004. In October 2007, he had Obama 2-1 emerging as the Democratic presidential nominee when a famous former White House advisor and current GOP pundit had him at 20-1. He was ahead of the pack in predicting the demises of Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. Historically, Hill says, the happier candidate triumphs (think frowny Dole, Kerry, McCain, etc.). Sensory Logic uses proprietary Cartesian Graphs to measure and score the impact, appeal, and engagement, emoted and emitted, by the candidate’s face. A person can show four types of smiles but a “’true smile’ which is a strong natural smile seen around the eyes and mouth” is more rare, distinctive, and powerful. Hill’s analysis suggests when a politician should drop out or not even enter the race (when his heart, or face, isnot in it).

Fast Company, exclusively, met with Hill to understand his methodology and get an initial read and deconstruction of the Republican faces of 2012. This first-ever facial coding of the full presidential field is based on Hill’s methodology, which correlates 23 Facial Action Units to 7 Core Emotionsplusthe widely accepted Big 5 Personality Traits model producing Sensory Logic’s EmoTraits®. {Themethodologybuilds off of a 19th century foundation laid by biologist Charles Darwin and refined more recently by Paul Ekman.}

Several of Hill’s conclusions drawn from the candidate analysis:

•"Chris Christie (who says he won't run for president) is the most negative, making him a logical VP choice to tap into the Tea Party's anti-establishment anger."

•"Mitch Daniels and John Huntsman are the antithesis of Trump: Trump is most intense, while they are the least intense and the most understated."

•"If Romney wins the nomination, Buddy Roemer could be a natural VP choice--fellow businessman and the same emotional profile while adding regional diversity.”

For our own visualization of Hill's full analysis of the current crop of prospective candidates--and what their faces are saying about their mood and their odds, click here.

But how reliable and useful are the analyses and findings? Hill tells Fast Company he has not been hired by political campaigns; but his client list is growing, diversifying, and becoming more global, he says. Recently Sensory Logic clients asked that their names be removed from the firm’s Web site due to project confidentiality and competitive reasons. With the assistance of Ekman, theCIAuses their own facial coding and“microexpressions” analysis in recruiting and conducting espionage. What did they recently glean from Bin Laden’s facial gestures? Hill also revealed he was asked though the BBC by an unknown sponsor to interview and code people in Karachi, Pakistan (he declined).

Fred Davis, a seasoned political consultant who has advised George W. Bush and John McCain on their presidential campaigns (he will soon work for former US Ambassador to China,Jon Huntsman, Jr., whose entry into the presidential race is all but assured), extols the tactics of neuromarketing and has confirmed their use in his past campaign work. He thinks Hill’s facial coding approach and findings are interesting but says perhaps just a"clearly written analysis of what people feel in their gut when they see a candidate… I'd put this technology in the category of extensive focus groups on demeanor and personality. Nice to have, but quite a luxury. {It} probably never would be given significance."

Hill concedes some challenges and limitations of political facial coding. The data is based on his own observation and coding and using other (not as proficient or expert) coders might mean less reliability and consistency. Also, the analysis and findings derive from a limited sample of candidate speeches. What if the sample pool happens to be based on a candidate’s few bad hair days? And while politicians cannot fake their facial muscle movements and those corresponding “core emotions,” they could fudge to a degree and manipulate the"personality traits"they want to project.

Darryl Howard,who has applied the neuromarketing methods of"muscle, pupil, and skin response"on a number of successful GOP campaigns, finds Hill’s facial coding approach useful and the data valuable."Hill’s understanding of how the human body gives information both voluntarily and involuntary is brilliant. And this {facial coding} information can be very helpful to the voter in making their choice in an election."

Hill thinks the data can also help a candidate understand how he or she can differentiate from the field--as a brand, (e.g. if the pack shows anger, then stand out as bright), or to assess the competition, strengths, and weaknesses. The coding may point to the need for a candidate to be truer to his or her authentic emotions versus being staged (think Gore), or to be more singular and polar emotionally and personality-wise, instead of all over the map and bland.

The 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debates famously underscored the power of mass media and ascendant television to shape elections and shined a harsh light on candidate facial expressions. In 2008, no one exploited the power of emerging social media channels more effectively thanBarack Obama. In 2012, who can turn facial media and smiles into victory?

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