Office by Alex Penny
My name is Bill, I am a recent graduate in Information Sciences and Technology from Penn State University and this is a place for me to post or give my 2 cents on the fascinating world of technology. I am now working for a pretty big technology related company whose name I will leave out just to avoid any possible complications, however far-fetched them happening may be. Music gets included from time to time as well.
App of the Day: Bang With Friends
Bang With Friends is an iPhone app that will anonymously match up people who are already Facebook friends for casual sexual encounters. Created by three anonymous Californian college students, the app only notifies both people when there is a match in the system. Within a week, the app’s user base has exceeded 30,000 with its creators claiming that five people are signing up per minute. But don’t delete your Grindr account! There’s no option for same-sex hookups at the moment, but it is apparently in the works. Hat tip toMashable.
Sure it’s a topic that always catches our interest, but what is up with all of these dating/sex applications lately? Is it a sign of growing acceptance that we are now specifically differentiating between the 2 for each application?
Have you ever desperately texted your friends for advice during a date? “He just complimented me on my embarrassing beauty mark, what do I say now?”
Artist and programmer Lauren McCarthy is working on a solution for us less confident daters with an app called Social Turkers.
McCarthy used her phone to broadcast her dates live.
The video stream is viewed by the task-rabbits who take part in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, the crowdsourcing service where you can post small tasks requiring human intelligence that people around the world complete for just a few cents.
Turkers have been asked to transcribe podcasts, search satellite maps to find missing persons, or to rate the emotions expressed in Tweets—but probably never before to help someone’s date go better. For each of McCarthy’s dates, over the course of January, Turkers could earn up to $0.25 for tuning into the live video and audio stream. Throughout the date, the “social Turkers” answered polls, wrote reviews of what they are seeing, and sent text messages to her iPhone suggesting what to say or do next—advice came quick enough for McCarthy to actually put it into action.
So someday you may not have to go on that awkward date alone. And maybe, with the help of your global network of ‘Turkers,’ it won’t even be awkward.
I feel like they’re not differentiating social media from crowd-sourcing enough.
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Single Topic Blog of the Day: Actual Facebook Graph Searches
Actual Facebook Graph Searches is a single-topic blog launched by British comedian Tom Scott to highlight some of the more interesting combinations of localities and interests he’s uncovered while testing Facebook’s in-depth search engine Graph Search that was released earlier this month.
actualfacebookgraphsearches:
“Spouses of married people who like [cheat-on-your-partner dating site] Ashley Madison”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/2f9455a3a0567d09e1ae00ce2b295129/tumblr_mh2j1dz8wp1s47y72o1_500.png)
Single Topic Blog of the Day: Actual Facebook Graph Searches
Actual Facebook Graph Searches is a single-topic blog launched by British comedian Tom Scott to highlight some of the more interesting combinations of localities and interests he’s uncovered while testing Facebook’s in-depth search engine Graph Search that was released earlier this month.
“Spouses of married people who like [cheat-on-your-partner dating site] Ashley Madison”
Another article that explains so much about us.
Five Social Media Tools to Fight the Flu
Good use of crowd-sourcing to track outbreaks.
Alina Turgend writes about bragging and the way it stimulates the part of our brains linked to stimulation from sex.
Alina Turgend, The Etiquette of Celebrating or Bragging About Achievements
Last year, two Harvard neuroscientists published a paper, “Disclosing Information About the…
I find the psychological implications of this astounding.
Urban Prototyping is a global movement exploring how rapidly-prototyped design, art, and technology projects can improve cities. UP Festivals are being held around the world to inspire and showcase the next generation of creative projects that address local issues.
(Source: gaffta.org, via poptech)
Surprisingly, I found my sister’s insights on Tumblr most interesting.
First off, she described Tumblr as a photo service: “It’s photos only.” I mean, she knew that it supported text posts — after I cried, “You know it’s a blogging platform, right?!” — but couldn’t remember a time when she saw anything but a photo in her Dashboard.
Second, despite knowing many active Tumblr users, she said she didn’t know anyone who actually posted on the service. Rather she said the majority of her friends merely consumed content, with a tiny minority reblogging stuff that reflected who they wanted to be (more on that later).
Third, she said most of her friends stopped using the service once they reached high school: “Tumblr is mostly middle schoolers. Especially hipsters. They just reblog stuff.” (Note: we’re from Santa Monica and my sister would be considered “hipster” by Northeast standards.)
Finally, whereas Instagram is a place you follow “celebrities and bands,” she mentioned that on Tumblr her friends follow people who they aspire to be. Cobra Snake was her quintessential example of the type of Tumblr user that is idolized on the service. These “idols” are the ones who post most of the content (photos) on Tumblr, content that is then reblogged by kids who aspire to be what the photos represent.
My takeaway: I can’t get over the “middle schoolers use it” comment, especially since they use Tumblr as an identity tool. That’s exactly how my friends and I used Myspace in middle school, and we too abandoned it (for Facebook) once we reached high school. So in middle school you care a lot about your personal presentation (themes and cultural images on your Myspace or Tumblr page), but once you reach high school you care more about the people you present yourself with (photos on Facebook and Instagram)? Maybe I’m reading into this too much. Maybe not.
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This is from an article this guy wrote based on what his 15 year old sister said about social media sites. I found the Tumblr section the most interesting.
I have been seeing this article passed around a lot this past week, so I finally took the time to read through it. While I certainly don’t disagree with the writer or his conclusions, I definitely have issues with it which is surprising considering how much it is being passed around. Even though he alludes to it, I feel like Mr. Dash for the most part overlooks how necessary the techniques of the prominent social networks now were for them to garner the massive amount of users they have. The open tools of the early 2000’s and late 90’s may have looked great to those that actively seeked them out, but before the rise of web 2.0’s popularity most users had no interest in such applications. While these were not technically challenging tools the vast majority of users need an overtly simple, targeted product being pushed to them. This required the investing and deals that, as he put, made a “very few very rich.” I do agree that everything works in cycles and now that even the technologically illiterate are learning how to work these products fairly well we will see some of these services start to return.
I could see this being fun
