Yahoo Shareholder Finds Worst Possible Way to Hit On Marissa Mayer [Updated]

Ugh.

On account of being a stylish and confident woman in the male-dominated tech world, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is no stranger to gross dudes treating her like some kind of exotic animal. But at a Yahoo shareholder meeting today, a shareholder reached what is (hopefully?) the apex of skeezy objectification.

"I have 2,000 Yahoo shares, I'm Greek, I'm a dirty old man and you look attractive," one shareholder told her, according to numerous Twitter reports, in a preface to what I'm sure was a thoughtful and probing question about Yahoo's dividend.

Mayer reportedly brushed the remark off and kept going, which is admirable. Lesser CEOs would have smacked him with a Lean In hardcover and had him escorted out by security.

Update: Greek tech investor George Polis is apparently the culprit.

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Routehappy Finds the Best Flights Based on Much More Than Prices

By Seth Fiegerman2013-05-04 03:01:23 UTC

The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Routehappy

One-Liner Pitch: Routehappy helps you book the best flights based on the in-flight experience, rather than just by the price and schedule.

Why It's Taking Off: The startup has a team of dedicated data experts who have put together a comprehensive database to find out seat layouts, plane types, travel time and amenities for any flight in the world.

There's no shortage of websites to compare prices and schedules for flights, but what if you want to go beyond that and compare factors like the amount of legroom or whether there's Wi-Fi on the plane? You might have been able to find some of that information spread across different travel sites, but it hasn't all been available in one place until now.

Routehappy, an online service that launched out of beta last week, lets travelers see a "happiness score" for economy and business class flights from every major airline, which factors in everything from how spacious the seats are to the quality of in-flight entertainment. You can also sort flight results by price and arrival/departure times, as you might on traditional travel websites.

For more than a year, a team of data experts at Routehappy have been collecting information about seat layouts, plane types, amenities and more from press releases, company pages and frequent flier websites, among other sources. The result may be the most comprehensive guide to date for comparing the in-flight experience across airlines.

"Flight search has not evolved in years. It's all based on price and schedule," Robert Albert, founder and CEO of Routehappy, told Mashable. "There is this entire category of information that is hidden from users and it's about the actual experience of flights."

Albert worked at Site59, an online travel agency, and then at Travelocity after it acquired Site59. A frequent flyer himself, Albert became frustrated with the lack of comparison tools for this kind of information online and decided to build his own. The startup raised $1.5 million in a seed round last year and currently has eight people on staff, half of whom work on collecting data and half of whom work on the technology side.

Routehappy attracted "tens of thousands" of users in the first few days after launching last Friday, according to Albert, 10% of whom came from abroad, which is impressive considering the startup hasn't even begun to market itself outside the U.S. Routehappy is now working on a new feature that would let users simultaneously filter flights by price and the happiness score.

While the service is certainly useful for consumers interested in learning more about particular flights before booking, Albert notes that it's also helpful for airline carriers. Right now, he says, airlines feel like they've been "commoditized" by price and price alone, but Routehappy may give them a way to compete based on the planes and amenities that they have invested in.

"The airlines are spending billions of dollars enhancing their planes, but when you go to search for flights, there is nowhere for airlines to promote their differentiators," Albert says.

Routehappy plans to generate revenue from referrals to flight booking websites, as well as through advertising on site and eventually selling data about users searches and preferences for flights.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Fields of View

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Study Finds Voice-to-Text Apps Don't Increase Driver Safety

Andrea Smith2013-04-24 00:00:23 UTC

In an effort to be a safer driver, many people, myself included, have started using voice-to-text mobile apps like Siri to keep two hands on the steering wheel.

However, a new study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute finds using voice-to-text apps to send and receive text messages while driving don't increase driver safety.

Christine Yager, who headed up the research, tells Mashable there were no distinguishable differences between manual texters and voice texters.

"We did not find any differences between manual texting and the two voice-to-text apps that we tested in terms of driver response time and the amount of time looking at the forward roadway."

The study [PDF] is the first to compare voice-to-text and manual texting on a handheld device on the road.

Researchers — testing participants driving an actual vehicle on a closed course — had drivers use one of two mobile voice-to-text apps, Siri for iPhone and Vlingo for Android. They first asked the drivers to go through the course without any mobile phone use. Participants then drove the course three more times, once using each of the two voice-to-text applications, and one texting manually on a phone.

Yager says there was no difference between the texting methods that were used; the manual texting and both voice texting apps were equally as distracting.

The goal of the study, she says, is not to say don't use Siri, but to caution and educate drivers about the dangers of texting while driving. (We've seen numerous stories of drivers who've lost control of their car while texting.)

The study shows even formulating and dictating a message takes concentration away from the driving task at hand. "The amount of time that drivers spent looking at the roadway ahead was significantly less when they were texting, no matter which texting method was used."

Yager says if a texting driver is watching the road less often, then that driver is less able to take action when faced with something like a road hazard or a pedestrian.

The real issue may be that drivers seem to believe they’re being more careful when they use the voice-to-text apps even though they appear to offer no real safety advantage over manual texting.

The study found "drivers felt less safe when they were texting, but felt safer when using a voice-to-text application than when texting manually." So, even though we feel like we're doing the right thing by using an app, driving performance suffered with both methods.

And it's not just texting that distracts drivers. A California court ruled last month that checking GPS maps on your phone while driving is a violation of the state’s distracted driving law.

The new study is published in part to raise awareness during National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke

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