WE had all the ingredients for a campfire. We had the wood, the kindling, the newspaper. We had the graham crackers, the marshmallows and the chocolate bars. We had the songbook. We even had T-shirts my mother-in-law had made with the nickname we voted on for the campfire nook behind her house on Cape Cod, “Snug Harbor Hollow.”

But one thing was missing. So when my time came to occupy the “story rock,” I stood in front of a circle of 13 people and pulled out my secret ingredient: my wife’s iPad.

I didn’t set out to spend my summer vacation online. A few things conspired to give me the idea. The first was the insistent finger wagging one now encounters that the only way to spend quality time with one’s children is to disengage from technology.

One of the major fights in the debt ceiling battle is how much top earners should contribute to efforts to close deficits. Australian economist John Quiggin makes an eloquent case as to why they need to pony up:

My analysis is quite simple and follows the apocryphal statement attributed to Willie Sutton. The wealth that has accrued to those in the top 1 per cent of the US income distribution is so massive that any serious policy program must begin by clawing it back.

Carr — “wellness warrior,” best-selling author, prominent green-juice lover, emerging force on the motivational circuit, a woman Oprah has called a “crazy sexy teacher”— said it’s easier here in Woodstock, where she lives. She said that sitting here, in the Garden Café on the Green, with Bob Dylan warbling through the speakers, she was sure that nobody cared who she was. She was being humble. In truth, Kris Carr could be no more famous anywhere else on the planet than in the orbit of Woodstock vegan cafes. This is changing quickly, however, as the self-described “healing junkie” looks to ascend to the rarefied air where health and pop culture and marketing all intersect, a realm where names like Dr. Oz and Andrew Weil currently reign.

Payment startup Jumio revealed a new technology Tuesday that turns a standard webcam into a secure credit card reader.

The technology, called Netswipe, uses secure video streaming to recognize and verify credit card information. Hold a credit card up to the camera, wait for it to initialize and then enter the 3-digit CVN number.

We think Jumio’s ideas are interesting, and for businesses that have a hard time with traditional payment processors or for consumers who are iffy about typing their credit card details into a form, this might be a solution.

 

SEE ALSO: How Mobile Payment Systems Are Redefining Commerce

 

We have to wonder though how much traction this idea will really have. Credit card readers were once built into computer keyboards and that trend never took off, partly because convincing businesses to adopt alternate payment technologies is difficult.

Still, for online purchases, this could be a better, potentially faster and safer way to make payments.

Photo by Douglas Lyle Thompson

On a sticky summer day in New York, I walk east on 29th Street. My destination: the Ace Hotel. As I pass the expansive windows of the John Dory--the mod oyster bar that's part of Ace's ecosystem--I notice Norah Jones at a window table, having lunch. This is the place. The bellboy on duty, who looks exactly like Keanu Reeves (circa Point Break), opens the hotel's weighty double doors, and I enter the cavernous but intimate lobby and find a seat. To my left, several well-coiffed thirty-somethings, speaking Italian, assemble camera equipment. To my right, at the long wood table outfitted with vintage library-carrel lamps, sit an array of people, earbuds in place, eyes glued to laptop screens. An intense young guy with the veiny hands of a strongman appears to be playing Japanese video games. Another dude logs on to the North Carolina Medical Board's website. At the dining table across the way, a gaggle of boisterous young women in sweater sets make calls and assemble mysterious packets from boxes of photocopies. Who are all these people and what are they doing here all day?

Quick Pitch: Browse, order and pay for local goods and services from your smartphone.

Genius Idea: Letting mobile users skip in-store lines.

Just-launched startup Pago presents you with a convenient alternative to waiting in line at your favorite coffee joints and restaurants — skip the line and order via mobile app instead.

Pago launched Tuesday with apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry, and more than 50 venue partners in Mountain View. The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas is also a venue partner.

Americans work too much. Herman Miller’s new Envelop Desk doesn’t pretend otherwise and is designed to make it comfortable to park in front of a computer for hours on end.

Americans work longer hours than people in most other developed countries. More than 10 million employees log 60-hour workweeks. Thirty-four percent of the workforce doesn’t take vacations. Barring dramatic shifts in the cultural and political landscape, Americans will continue to work themselves into the ground. So Herman Miller has unveiled a desk that -- while no month-long holiday in the French Riviera -- promises to make life a touch more tolerable for workaholics everywhere.

 

 

Envelop Desk has a flexible table top ergonomically designed to make it comfortable for people to park in front of a computer for hours on end (or as comfortable as that can be). Typically, when workers sit at a computer, they contort their bodies to ensure that their eyes stay focused on the monitor. Cricks, ungodly back pains, and the like inevitably result.

Envelop is meant to help your body adjust naturally with your eyes. The soft, molded urethane surface slides toward and away from you with a simple tug or push and tilts 7 degrees so that your laptop or computer always rests comfortably in your sightline. “When people slouch over their laptop, we call this the ‘turtle’ position and it’s very bad for your back,” says Herman Miller’s Wayne Baxter. “You want to get that laptop in a semi-reclined position so your reach and eyesight are the right distance from it, regardless of whether you're sitting or in a forward recline.”

In short, Envelop lets you move around in your chair, as you’re wont to do in the course of a grueling work day, without having to twist yourself into all kinds of awkward positions to keep your eyeballs on the screen.

Sounds great, but we worry about our papers (yes, we still have papers) slipping off the desk. Tables are parallel to the floor for a reason. “It's a slight 7 degree downward slope, so you can maintain a cup of coffee and papers on it as long as you're cautious,” Baxter assures. “Works fine with a wireless mouse. There is also a flat surface [behind the slope] to keep things horizontal.”

 

 

Envelop was conceived of to complement Herman Miller’s Embody Chair (Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber designed the two together), though you can buy the desk as a standalone item for $960 here.

Yale economist Dean Karlan may be best known for starting Stickk.com, a site that aims to help you achieve personal goals by forming "commitment contracts" in which a liberal Democrat might be forced to forfeit $1,000 to the Tea Party, let's say, if he or she falls off the wagon. But Karlan has amassed weightier accomplishments as the protegee of pioneering development economist Esther Duflo, who I write about in this month's Life in Beta column. Like Duflo's Poverty Action Lab at MIT, Karlan's Innovations for Poverty Action is dedicated to evaluating various poverty interventions using randomized controlled trials: the rigorous, scientific gold standard, like a doctor conducting trials of a new drug. His new book More Than Good Intentions--written with Jacob Appel--is full of surprising insights on what really works to fight global poverty. It's also full of funny, human stories about the people that Appel and Karlan have met around the world in the course of this research.