September 3rd, 2010
Location-based services have are the new big thing in the world of techies, and while more companies jump on the bandwagon, would-be users are still wary.
Only about 4 percent of Americans have tried a location-based service of any kind, according to Forrester Research (as detailed in a recent New York Times story), while only 1 percent use Foursquare, Loopt, Yelp, Facebook Places, or other such apps on a weekly basis. That 1% is made up of mostly men between the ages of 19 and 35.
Women have more security concerns than men do, so I can see why this would be the case. But it could put a crimp in a guy’s dating life if he announces his whereabouts only to have three girls that he’s been secretly dating simultaneously show up at the same place. Here’s a story Yahoo Tech’s blogger Ben Patterson shared.
“…my wife and I begged off dinner with one couple to attend a last-minute going-away party for another pair of friends…and I (stupidly) shared my location at the Lower East Side lounge where our departing friends were holding court, and tagged my wife for good measure. (After all, I needed to give Places a thorough test, right?) Oops — turned out my better half hadn’t exactly come clean with Couple No. 1 on why we’d canceled dinner. Scrambling ensued as we hurriedly deleted the location tag from my wife’s Facebook wall, hoping that her friend hadn’t seen the incriminating tag yet. Ugh.”
While some apps offer coupons and special offers to log your location, Foursquare is a game where you earn badges and can be named “mayor” of a favorite hangout. But that doesn’t seem to be enough incentive just yet for most people to divulge their locations with the immediacy of internet speed.
Tags: Internet Speed, Location Based Services
Posted in News | No Comments »
September 1st, 2010
You probably heard of the Nintendo handheld video game called Love Plus, in which the player must work to maintain the relationship. One Japanese college student actually went so far as to have a wedding ceremony for his virtual girlfriend, and then broadcast it with internet speed for all the world to see.
Well this guy is not alone in his desire to combine fantasy with reality, and in fact, seems to be leading the pack as far these ventures go. Because Mashable tells us that:
“The most recent version of the game, which came out June 24, also includes a “field trip,” created in partnership with the seaside town Atami. In 13 locations around the town, players can find 2D barcodes to scan and call up images of the young women in the game. The girls wear different clothing from their typical in-game looks. One hotel has gone as far as putting a barcode in its rooms, allowing players to see their “girlfriends” in a more private setting wearing summer kimonos.”
It is such a popular game that it has actually boosted local tourism! You can’t deny it’s a creative partnership between a town and a video game. And it’s certainly a sign that there is an audience for this sort of promotion.
Wikipedia tells us that the new version also includes fitness modes and sick days, along with many new ways to interact with your girls. Yes, the only way to play is as the male character, who has his choice of three different characters to engage in a relationship. Can real girls compete?
Tags: Internet Speed, Virtual Reality
Posted in News | No Comments »
August 30th, 2010
It turns out that Facebook is an effective means of letting people know about a loved one’s passing… with internet speed. If you’ve created different lists with your Facebook friends, you have a network of contacts ready to go when you need it most. For this same reason, many funeral directors are turning to Facebook or other online means of sharing funeral and memorial service information, and allowing people to send condolences in a timely manner from anywhere in the world.
An article that discusses the Best Practices for Funeral Directors to use Facebook points out that in the days before online social networking, face-to-face networking was done by getting to know one’s community. This was done by being active in the organizations where people in your community might congregate. Then, when someone needed the services of a funeral director, they already knew who to turn to, and it was someone they knew and trusted.
Your Funeral Guy will walk you through how to set up a Facebook memorial from your loved one’s existing Facebook page. Or you can simply ask for the account to be closed. If you choose to have it memorialized, Facebook removes the deceased’s contact information, membership in online groups, and personal information like their favorite books, movies, quotations, etc.) Then for about a month, the user’s Wall, photographs, and basic info like the hometown and birth date remain. Then, already confirmed Facebook friends can leave messages on the user’s wall.
Do a search for “online memorials” to find several other ways to share condolences and stories online. You can also check with the chosen funeral home to see what they offer.
Tags: Facebook, Internet Speed
Posted in News | No Comments »
August 27th, 2010
Except in this case, Big Brother is not the government, a corporation or even the producers of a television game show. No, Big Brother is the collective –it’s everyone –at least everyone who has something to share with internet speed.
The latest example of why you should think before you act is The Cat Bin Lady. Go to YouTube and you can watch the security footage of a woman who pets a cat, then drops it into a garbage can and closes the lid.
The cat’s owners found their pet the next morning, and calculate the poor thing was trapped in there for about 15 hours, but luckily was otherwise unharmed. They then checked the footage on the security camera they use to monitor activity in front of their home and uploaded the video to YouTube to get help in identifying the woman.
Gawker reports that the video “went viral, eventually ending up on 4chan’s anarchic /b/ board. It was there that 4chan managed to identify the cat tosser ‘within a few hours …The culprit? A 45-year-old woman named Mary Bale of Coventry.”
Mashable explains that once she was identified, the full force of the internet came down upon her.
“Subsequently, Bale received death threats, and information like her address and her boss’s phone number were spread around the web….
Bale was placed under police protection (due to the aforementioned death threats)…Facebook was forced to take down a group titled “Death to Mary Bale.”
Bale is currently being investigated by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but that’s not enough for many Internet lurkers. No, Bale is currently subject to that most severe of modern punishments/forms of praise: Memeification.”
You have been warned!
Tags: Internet Speed, Viral Video, YouTube
Posted in News | No Comments »
August 23rd, 2010
Until recently, incoming students arrived at their college dorm rooms to find a perfect stranger waiting to share his or her space. But today, more colleges let incoming students take advantage of internet speed to find an ideal roommate, says the New York Times.
In some ways, social networking sites like Facebook have pressured colleges to relinquish control of the roommate process to their dormers. In the past few years, housing officers have been besieged by complaints from students and parents who looked up assigned roommates on the Internet and did not like what they saw, whether it was goth makeup or beer cans in the background.
While many colleges still insist on pairing roommates themselves, either randomly or carefully, a growing number are turning the choice over to students. Some universities have contracted with matchmaking companies like Lifetopia and RoomBug, which offer secure Web-based services. Others are acceding to a wave of roommate requests from students who use unrestricted sites like URoomSurf, and others have created Facebook pages to help students share information.
Matches made on URoomSurf.com do for dormitory life what eHarmony and Match.com have long done for romance. Each fills out a questionnaire covering study habits, overnight guests, tidiness, politics, sexual orientation and religion, among other topics, then received a list of other soon-to-be freshmen who had registered on the site, ranked by compatibility.
Housing officials say that “roommate self-selection,” as the process is known, empowers students while cutting down on irksome appeals to switch later on. But some worry that it robs young adults of an increasingly rare opportunity for growth: exposure to someone with different experiences and opinions. But isn’t going away to college stressful enough without finding yourself sharing space with someone wholly incompatible?
Tags: Internet Speed
Posted in News | No Comments »
August 18th, 2010
With the growing popularity and general ubiquitousness of the Facebook “Like” button, people have been talking about wanting a “Dislike” button too. That’s why when it looked like it was finally being offered, many responded with internet speed by clicking to download the application—only to discover it was a scam.
If you see a post of Facebook that says “I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts lol!!” with a link, you’d be better off not clicking it.
According to the security firm Sophos, “If you do give the app permission to run, it silently updates your Facebook status to promote the link that tricked you in the first place, thus spreading the message virally to your Facebook friends and online contacts.” That will give you something to dislike!
While Facebook works to block and remove this, and similar applications that promise to allow you the choice to dislike something, they’d like everyone to keep the following in mind:
“…there is no official dislike button.
“Also, don’t click on strange links, even if they are from friends, and notify the person and report the link if you see something suspicious”
Those tips are from Facebook company spokesman Fred Wolens.
The L.A. Times Technology blog reminded us that the Facebook Security Page has more information on how to protect your data on Facebook, and offers words of comfort.
“If you installed the fake app, don’t despair. Just click on the account button, then application settings and disable it. You can also delete the application’s posts to your Facebook wall.”
Facebook Security recommends you read the story from CNN.com to learn more.
Tags: Facebook, Internet Speed
Posted in News | No Comments »
August 16th, 2010
In the age of internet speed and social networking, you may want to be selective about how you quit—that is, if you want to be hired anywhere else.
We’ve lived vicariously through the man who quit his job by telling everyone off and sliding down a plane’s slide/raft, and now we can enjoy the idea of quitting like a girl named Jenny did — with a dry erase board and series of photographed messages, sent by e-mail to the entire office.
Fortunately for Jenny, she’s a figment of someone’s imagination. (Her lack of confidentiality is not likely to get her hired any time soon.) But, as an actress who has just gotten tons of attention online, Elyse Porterfield may just have a career ahead.
TechCrunch tells us the photo shoot was for an image board site called The Chive (which gets around 5.6 million unique visits a month, according to Google). It’s part of a network of viral sites run by brothers Leo and John Resig, who “have a storied history of manufacturing Internet hoaxes”.
They told TechCrunch:
“This story wasn’t primarily done to see how many people in the mainstream media we could hoodwink (though that was fun), it wasn’t done for the publicity, money, nor was it a slapdash reaction to some JetBlue clown; it was done purely for the entertainment of the people first and foremost. The purpose of the hoax was to entertain and inspire, not to inform, so what difference does it make if the story has a single ounce of truth?”
The Chive went from 15,000 uniques to 440,000 uniques in a single hour, and people wanted to share it so much that it got over 238,000 Facebook shares and 31,000 Tweets (and counting, we’re sure.)
Tags: Internet Speed, Social Networking
Posted in News | No Comments »
August 13th, 2010
Jet Blue, the airline that’s been getting a lot of press in regards to one flight attendant, seems to have expertly addressed the entire internet and perhaps therefore all media in one skillful stroke of using internet speed.
While the flight attendant, Steven Slater, was busy garnering the public’s support with his story, passengers began coming forward with a very different story. Jet Blue waiting to respond, only posting a comment to their blog 48 hours afterward.
It wouldn’t be fair for us to point out absurdities in other corners of the industry without acknowledging when it’s about us. Well, this week’s news certainly falls into that category. Perhaps you heard a little story about one of our flight attendants? While we can’t discuss the details of what is an ongoing investigation, plenty of others have already formed opinions on the matter. Like, the entire Internet. (The reason we’re not commenting is that we respect the privacy of the individual. People can speak on their own behalf; we won’t do it for them.)
While this episode may feed your inner Office Space, we just want to take this space to recognize our 2,300 fantastic, awesome and professional Inflight Crewmembers for delivering the JetBlue Experience you’ve come to expect of us.
Fast Company, a magazine about doing business creatively, said, “It’s a wily little post, expertly done—mixing cheeky self-deprecation, ostensible privacy concerns, an apt and funny YouTube link (to the Office Space movie), and only the tiniest dose of PR pablum. What’s fascinating, however, is that these 140 or so words constitute almost the entire response to a story that has had every media outlet scrambling all week. Better yet: it did the trick.”
Tags: Internet Speed
Posted in News | 2 Comments »