Open up your mind and say, ahh...

New research shows the majority of both Baby Boomers and Millennials are concerned about becoming the victims of online fraud. The study, released exclusively to Mashable, finds 77% of Baby Boomers (ages 55 and older) and 62% of Millennials (ages 18 to 24) are concerned about their information’s misuse online.

The majority of both groups do not feel “very secure” shopping online (only 34% of Millennials and 19% of Baby Boomers feel “very secure”), the ThreatMetrix study conducted by The Ponemon Institute reveals. However, only half of Millennials — a generation of digital natives — and 41% of Baby Boomers say they consider the security of an online merchant before making a purchase.

“It’s interesting to note that while the younger generation is less concerned about online fraud in general, when they do question the fraud prevention measures of an online merchant, they say it adversely influences their experience with that particular brand,” says Bert Rankin, ThreatMetrix’s VP of marketing. “It’s a big concern if online retailers are losing out on potential sales simply because consumers can’t trust the security of the transactions on the website.”

The equipment’s been purchased, the drivers have been trained and AAA is about to roll out the nation’s first fleet of mobile electric vehicle quick chargers.

The company, which serves more than 52 million members, has spent three months lining up chargers, installing them on trucks and teaching its drivers how to properly charge an EV. With all of the I’s dotted and Ts crossed, AAA says the trucks are poised to hit the road.

“We’ll be rolled out in six cities by the end of the year,” John Nielson, the company’s national director of auto repair, tells us. “These trucks will be out on the road just like any other AAA service vehicle.”

AAA announced the program in July, one month after Nissan and the Japan Automobile Federation deployed a truck in Tokyo. AAA will deploy one truck in each of the EV-crazy cities you’d expect: Portland, Oregon; Seattle; the San Francisco Bay Area; Los Angeles; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Tampa, Florida.

The Obama administration loves cars with cords and wants 1 million on the road by 2015. As other automakers follow EVs like the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i to market, AAA says the program will roll into other cities.

“I think we’ll see rapid expansion to other cities with electric vehicles,” Nielson says. “But right now the goal is to make sure the proof of concept is durable.”

Each truck will have a conventional 220-volt Level 2 charger and a 440-volt direct current Level 3 charger — the so-called “quick chargers.” Although quick charging can “fill” a depleted battery in as little as 30 minutes, not all cars are equipped for it. The trucks have 25 kilowatt generators manufactured by Aerovironment and Green Charge Networks.

“Our goal is to provide 15 miles of range in 10 minutes of charging,” Nielson said.

That may not sound like much, but Nielson said AAA believes it should be enough to get people to a safe place to plug in — home, a dealership or one of the 1,300-plus (and growing) public charging stations in the United States.

“Our hypothesis is that we’re not going to have an out-of-energy situation because someone tried to drive from Los Angeles to Sacramento,” Nielson says. “We expect that most of the people will have missed their mark by just a short distance, where they’ve made an extra stop and find themselves just a few miles short of their destination.”

As for those generators, two will run on compressed natural gas, two will be powered by lithium-ion batteries charged by a dedicated high-amperage alternator and two will use hydraulic power take-off from the truck’s transmission.

“We want to do our best to power it with something clean,” Nielson says. “We want to avoid pulling up to an electric vehicle and firing up a diesel generator. We want to do this as cleanly as possible.”

Photo: AAA

Boeing is upgrading its best selling model with larger, more efficient high-bypass jet engines. The new 737 isn’t expected to go into service for several years, but Boeing says the new airplane will be 10 to 12 percent more fuel efficient thanks mostly to the bigger engines. The company hopes the efficiency gains will help it compete with the hot selling A321neo from Airbus.

The size of the engines was one of the big questions when Boeing announced the new 737 Max in August. Any frequent flier of a 737 today probably notices the flat bottom on the engine nacelles that house the 61 inch fans on the current engines. The flat bottoms are necessary to provide enough clearance between the ground and the engines. The new engines will have 68-inch fans. The size is the best compromise between providing more thrust, while not being too big according to 737 program manager John Hamilton.

“When you look at drag, fuel efficiency and weight, the 68-inch fan is really the optimum solution for the 737 airplane going forward” Hamilton said during a teleconference with reporters.

Hamilton said it’s not necessary to raise the landing gear on the new 737 to provide more clearance because of the new engines. But engineers found some improvements were available with a taller gear, so Boeing will extend the nose gear on the new airplane. The larger fan provides a larger bypass ratio. Only a portion of the thrust from a modern jet engine comes from the hot exhaust gas being pushed out the back of the engine, while a large amount of thrust comes from the fans seen at the front of an engine. Those fans blow air like a propeller, bypassing the actual engine, providing more efficient thrust than the pure jet engines on airplanes like the original Boeing 707.

The current Airbus A321 also uses 68 inch fans, but it is expected to move to larger engines as well.

Hamilton claims the 737’s lighter, more efficient structure means it doesn’t need as big as engines as the A321, something Boeing says will save customers in fuel costs as well as maintenance.

Airbus is about two years ahead of Boeing with its new A321neo. The European company’s top seller is also a more fuel efficient version of the current A321 line. Airbus believes Boeing won’t be able to achieve the efficiency gains it claims with the new engine because of the ground clearance constraint. With a higher wing, the A321neo may have engines with 81 inch fans. The company has received over 1,000 orders for the new airplane, giving it a big head start on the new Boeing 737.

In addition to the new engines, Boeing will also make small aerodynamic efficiency improvements to the 737’s tail cone as well as adding fly-by-wire control for the spoilers used during descent and landing.

The new Airbus single aisle jet is expected to enter service in 2015, while Hamilton said the 737 Max will enter service in 2017.

Image: Boeing

How long are you willing to keep pushing on a good project until you give up?

How hard is it to get you to change your mind when you’re wrong?

How much do you learn from failing?

How long does it take you to learn something new?

How hard is it for you to let someone else take the lead?

How much do you care?

The rest is merely commentary, either that or they’re interviewing you for a job that’s not as good as you deserve. For those jobs, the only question they’re really focusing on is, “will she fit in around here?”

At face value, identity feels so simple. I’m just me, and you’re just you. But, enter the world of the web and everything becomes exponentially more difficult.

Will we ever have the equivalent of a “driver’s license” (i.e., a ubiquitous ID that everyone seems to have)? And, how much control do we, as users, want over how much of our identity is shared to third-party sites when we connect with our Facebook, Google or Twitter accounts?

I’m joined by esteemed panelists Tim Dierks (SVP of Engineering at the Huffington Post Media Group), Patrick Harding (CTO of Ping Identity), and Andy Mitchell (Strategic Partner Development at Facebook).

Join our live blog below to follow the action with Mashable editors!

Google, enormously successful in online advertising, might be casting an envious eye toward the $150 billion-per-year pay television market. Such a venture has the potential to turn today’s business of television advertising and distribution upside down.

The company’s already announced plans to build a fiber-optic high-speed Internet service in Kansas City, Mo. and Kansas City, Kan., and according to The Wall Street Journal subscription required, now Google might be thinking about ways to expand that into pay video and telephone services.

That would put Google in direct competition with cable companies and phone companies that have expanded into what’s called the “triple play” of communications: cable television, telephone and high-speed Internet.

The Wall Street Journal said “no final decisions have been made,” but added Google has talked about including content owned by Disney, Time Warner and Discovery Communications. Further evidence would be the rumored hiring of cable TV executive Jeremy Stern, who is said to be leading those discussions with the media conglomerates.

This would put Google in a position where it could not only sell subscriptions to the pay TV channels, but sell ads on those channels as well. It would also put its video-on-demand services in a sweet spot, perhaps moving many of its video capabilities over to the streaming-video Internet side, rather than the conventional cable TV business model.

Google might even be able to turn YouTube into a sort of “virtual cable TV,” where customers could pick and choose the programs they want, and it might be available on a national, or even international scale.

And, as its Google TV continues its current expansion onto a variety of hardware platforms (including, perhaps something manufactured by Motorola Mobility, which Google now owns), the Android-based Google TV might make it easier for customers to search and sort through the tremendous numbers of programs that could be available on such a service.

Google’s negotiations with content creators could also give Google TV an advantage it has never enjoyed before, where the biggest weakness of the company’s potentially groundbreaking TV service was the lack of cooperation of content creators. If it puts itself on equal footing with the other pay TV providers, it might be in a better position to offer its Google TV service as a hub for video, no matter where it comes from.

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: SideTour

Quick Pitch: SideTour lets you experience the world with like-minded people.

Genius Idea: Provides a place to host and discover new authentic experiences.

The world is full of boundless experiences, some cultural and others educational or adventurous. The problem is, not all of us are unencumbered and many of us just don’t have the money to travel the globe for these experiences.

But what if we didn’t have to travel or spend excessive amounts of money? What if we could experience these worldly events with the click of a mouse? Well now we can, at SideTour.

SideTour is a place to discover and explore parts of the world through experiences hosted by interesting, creative and talented people.

Want to have dinner with a banker-turned-monk at a monastery in the East Village? If that doesn’t interest you, how about a hands-on look inside New York City’s prominent graffitti culture? Or if you’re an aspiring chef, learn to cook a three-course, French farmhouse-inspired meal that will leave your guests in awe.

“If we think about life being a collection of experiences, our mission is to make those experiences more remarkable,” said Vipin Goyal, CEO and one of four co-founders of SideTour.

SideTour works by offering high-quality experiences in New York City provided by different hosts. Each experience is built as an appointment-based platform, and is designed with a specific date, time and number of available spots. The site enables participants to meet new people and partake in remarkable experiences.

If you’re not sure if a specific experience fits your interests, you can review comments on SideTour by people who have met the host or attended the event before.

For example, “Dine with a Banker-Turned-Monk at an East Village Monastery” is one of SideTour’s popular and postively-rated experiences right now. If you want to know more about the experience, you can check out the comments left by people who had dinner with the monk, Rasanath Dasa, before. Here’s one comment:

Google announced further integration of YouTube and Chrome into its Google+ social network.

The search giant made the announcement in its official Google blog on Thursday, showing how it has continued its integration of YouTube into Google+.

Last summer, Google incorporated the ability to play YouTube videos in Google+ Hangouts. Now it takes that a step further, offering a YouTube icon on the top right of the Google+ interface that does a cool slide move when you mouse over it, asking “What would you like to play?”

Once you’ve entered the name of a video, topic or your favorite musician or band, a pop-up window appears, displaying a list of related videos that might interest you. I tried it by entering “Beatles,” and a Beatles video started playing in a dynamically re-sizing window, while offering more like it underneath.