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If
you can Google it, why bother remembering? Being able to access facts
with just a few keystroke definitely improved our lives, but it has actually
changed the way our memories work.
A study of 46 college students found lower rates of recall on newly-learned facts when students thought those facts were saved on a computer for later recovery.
If you think a fact is conveniently available online, then, you may be less apt to learn it.
As ominous as that sounds, however, study co-author and Columbia University psychologist Elizabeth Sparrow said it’s just another form of so-called transactive memory, exhibited by people working in groups in which facts and expertise are distributed.
“It’s very similar to how we use people in our lives,” said Sparrow. “The internet is really just an interface with a lot of other people.”
Like Einstein said, never memorize what you can look up: Link
Catching up on the new posts at NeatoBambino today, I learned that:
1. Offending parents of small children is a great way to gain national publicity.
2. Some schools will no longer teach cursive handwriting, and the preferred alternative is not “typing,” but “keyboarding.”
3. I will never dance as well as this kid.
You’ll probably learn even more than that. Link
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Is it getting less spammy in your inbox? It’s not just your imagination – according to Symantec, the volume of spam email sent decreased by over 80%:
There are many different factors that appear to be working together to make sending spam more difficult and less profitable for criminal gangs. In September 2010 the Spamit web site announced that it was ceasing operation due to “numerous negative events”. Spamit provided affiliate marketing services, allegedly helping to pay spammers for promoting many spam advertised web sites, notably the “Canadian Pharmacy” operation which was one of the most spam advertised brands.
The demise of Spamit corresponded with a large drop in spam volumes, from approximately 100 to 75 billion spam per day from the end of September to mid November 2010. It is not known exactly what the “negative events” are referred to by Spamit, but it is thought that these may be associated with increased attention by regulatory bodies and law enforcement in the activities of the group.
Even though the level of spam has decreased, it still accounts for more than 70% of all emails sent. Martin Lee of Symantec’s Security Community blog has more: Link – via Mashable and Cubiclebot
You can find a Tumblr picture blog for almost any subject under the sun. Starbucks Spelling is dedicated to the custom of baristas writing a customer’s name on a cup, for which they sometimes get the spelling wrong. What makes this worth a look is 1. there are so many misspellings, and 2. how can anyone keep track of all the venti and grande lattes and espressos and then spell Joe G-I-O? Shown here are four different orders Omar recorded. Link -via Gorilla Mask
HEYHEYHEY, the studio behind Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine (or just Melvin the Machine, or just Melvin) designed this Rube Goldberg machine with a bit of a twist–instead of just performing simple tasks with mind-bending inefficiency, Melvin’s also in the business of self-promotion. While Melvin is performing, he takes pictures, makes videos of his audience, then uploads them to his blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts. He also screen-prints merchandise. All of these things can be found on Melvin’s site. Link
via G.TDW
Good magazine has a post entitled The Eternal Shame of Your First Online Handle, in which people share how they selected their first internet pseudonym. In the last few years, more and more people are using their real names online instead of anonymous identifiers.
Those of us who came of age alongside AOL must contend with something even more incriminating than a lifelong Google profile: A trail of discarded online aliases, each a distillation of how we viewed ourselves and our place in the world at the time of sign-on. The dawn of the Internet was an open invitation to free ourselves from the names our parents gave us and forge self-made identities divorced from our reputations IRL.
Here at Neatorama, every author either uses their real name or a made up name that sounds like a real name so they don’t have to explain it (except for me, which means I am a dinosaur in internet terms). However, the majority of our commenters use pseudonyms. Would you like to share with us the story of how you selected it -or the story of some abandoned name you once used? Link -via Metafilter
YouTube took the original Nyan Cat video down, and in its place there is a notice that “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by PRguitarman.” However, PRguitarman says he did not file a copyright claim. He is having trouble straightening this out.
Funny how someone can easily make a complaint but to actually prove it the owner has to jump through all of these hoops. FUN TIMES! But seriously, there is a lot of work involved here and it’s pretty stressful.
Meanwhile, people are flagging my videos on Youtube and giving me death threats just like upstanding Internet citizens usually do. Good job.
Anyway, I’ve been working at this for about two or three hours and have done the most I can for now. Saraj00n, Daniwell, and Youtube have been contacted and I am just now waiting for each of their replies so we can work on getting the video back up.
The cat is still available in the original .gif format at his site. Link -via The Daily What
It’s not the first zombie-centric dating site, but it does have the best commercial.
Gravedate.com is a real site set to launch “soon”. If you’d like to be notified when undead folks just like you are looking for someone to talk to over a few brains, maybe a little uncoordinated running through town square, then sign up on the site.
via Kuriositas
With the Lulzsec recent post of email addresses and passwords, along with all the regular hacking that occurs on a regular basis, it can be really hard to know if your email password has been compromised. Fortunately, Should I Change My Password can help automatically scan a variety of these info leaks to check if your password has been hacked. This way, you only have to change your password if it actually needs to be updated.
Update: Just to be clear, you don’t have to enter your password on the site, just your email.
Did I miss a meme? Apparently so, as there seem to be quite a lot of photo manipulations of birds with human arms floating around on the Internet. Some of them are cute, like the one above, but ‘shop some arms on a bird eating from a person’s hand and it gets weird pretty quickly. There’s a massive gallery of just this sort of thing over on DamnHot. Link
Chase Mitchell has pretty much nailed it in this piece, right down to the appropriate profile pictures. Read the rest at the link. Link -via QA Hates You
I’m having a hard time deciding which is worse, here: the fact that BeautifulPeople.com, a dating site built on a set of arbitrary aesthetic standards, even exists, or that people join it. At any rate, there are fewer official Beautiful People as of today; according to The Guardian, the site was infected with the Shrek virus last month, disabling the screening application to allow just any old person in. Today, BeautifulPeople.com started culling those new members undeserving of membership, a move that the company claims is an upholding of standards.
“We have to stick to our founding principles of only accepting beautiful people — that’s what our members have paid for,” BeautifulPeople.com’s Greg Hodge told The Guardian. “We can’t just sweep 30,000 ugly people under the carpet.”
The website works on a system under which members are able to rank applicants on a beauty scale. The decision to reject 30,000 cost the company more than US$100,000 in refunds and Hodge sent a regretful email to the distressed dumpees.
Hodge said the company was investigating the cyber attack, adding he suspected a disgruntled former employee may have planted the virus.
The ugly members cull is not the first time the site has courted controversy, news.com.au reported. In January this year it asked 5,000 users to reapply after they posted pictures of themselves looking chubbier than usual celebrating the festive season.
And earlier this month it sparked controversy in Ireland by declaring that Irish men were among the world’s ugliest.
This Twaggie was a Tweet illustrated by artist Zach Rodis.
If I ever commit a murder and need to somewhere to hide the body, I
have the perfect place in mind…MySpace. – @JordyHamrick
I get it, no one would ever look there. Hmm, isn’t it the nature of social networking for one social site to poke fun at another? Link
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If you spend your days writing Trojan code or sending malware to thousands of hapless email address owners, you’d better steer clear of the Land of the Rising Sun. Otherwise it could cost you $6,200 in bail or three years in jail.
[T]he bill that criminalizes the creation or distribution of computer virus was finally enacted last Friday by Japan’s parliament. The law also includes provisions regarding punishment that will be meted out to people who have been caught sending pornographic images to random people.
These laws are meant to crack down on the dirty web of cybercrime; however, some parts of the law border on infringing the privacy of communications as it allows data to be obtained or subpoenaed by authorities from servers for investigation when necessary.
Japan is the first country to enact and implement such a law. Hopefully, we’ll be able to gauge the effectivity of passing the law a few months down the line.
“Computer, search for recipes on great barbecue ideas for the Fourth of July.” This may be how you search items on the web from now on with the launch of Google Voice Search. The new application will now be available for desktop computers.
The first of the features will enable users to search the web simply by speaking their requests. Called Voice Search, the speech-to-text application will be activated by clicking on a microphone icon located next to Google’s query box. Voice Search has already gone mobile as an App for Android phones, but Google wants to enable its users to search via speech recognition on their laptops and desktops as well. In addition to the convenience of not having to type, Voice Search will be a helping hand in those hard-to-spell searches. It’ll also be easier to, as Google puts it, enter “long queries, even really, really long queries, just by talking.” Initially, Voice Search will only be available on Chrome browsers, but they plan to make it compatible with other browsers in the future.
It is very important to read those long, tedious license agreements — especially from Apple. But that doesn’t have to be a boring activity. For a podcast, Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss read the iTunes user agreement in several different, dramatic voices. You can listen to excerpts at the link. My favorite is ‘irritable German professor’.
Link -via Lowering the Bar | Photo by Flickr user Llima used under Creative Commons license
Writers are constantly told of the importance of editing: say it in fewer words. At the Webby Awards ceremony last weekend, the representatives of the winning websites were limited to an acceptance speech of only five words. Each had to really think about what was important to say. Some speeches were funny, some political, some designed to leave a memorable impression of the website behind. And they came up with some gems, like this speech from Scott Beale of Laughing Squid (pictured):
“These tentacles go to eleven!”
TIME magazine made of list of what they considered the ten best speeches.
3. Kids, we’re going to Disneyland.
—Jetsetter won a Webby for Best Travel website.8. Person of the Year. Ironic.
—The Webby Person of the Year Award went to IBM supercomputer Watson, who cracked wise with the audience.
What if you were given the opportunity to speak before a large audience, but could only say five words? What would you say to leave an impression? You can read all the winners’ 5-word acceptance speeches at the Webby Awards site. Link
“Two Boys”, a new opera at the ENO London Coliseum, highlights the profoundly weird behavior we engage in online. Watch as this guy takes his Facebook and Twitter activity to the streets. “Do you want to be my friend? Can I poke you? What’s your comment?” If you’re going to be London-bound sometime between June 24 and July 8, you can pick up tickets to the show on the Two Boys website.
via Gizmodo
What happens when you rescue over a quarter-million books from the incinerator? You have to buy another house to live in, first. Then you have to figure out what to do with all the books when they start to tear your house apart.
When Shaunna Raycraft learned that her neighbor planned to burn 350,000 books, she decided to take over the collection herself. After all, her neighbor’s husband was a collector and many rare books–including a first edition of Black Beauty–could be found in the sprawling stacks. But now Raycraft and her husband might be forced to burn the books themselves because they don’t know what else to do with them.
They tried selling them on eBay. They tried selling them to other collectors. They even tried selling them to used bookstores. But no one wanted to endure the arduous task of sorting through the books.
Apparently they never seriously considered donating the books, though, because now the plan is to burn them anyway. Bookworms all over are unimpressed–a #savethebooks tag has been tracking the debate on twitter.
A very internet video, indeed! This collection of clips features just about every video meme that ever hit the ‘net, edited into appropriate places to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Some language NSFW. -via BB Spot
Facebook lets me keep in touch with colleagues, friends and my grandma. But one pair of divorcees used everyone’s (least?) favorite social media site to destroy one another from afar in what turned out to be a pretty sneaky double-cross.
Angela Voelkert, 29, set up her ex by creating a false Facebook identity, 17-year-old “Jessica Studebaker.” (By the way, that’s a big no-no with Facebook’s terms of service.) She used the profile to exchange messages with the ex, David Voelkert, 38 of South Bend, Ind. On June 1, Angela Voelkert used the information to apply for a restraining order against her ex-husband, who spent four days in custody until a judge dismissed charges yesterday.
The charges against David Voelkert focused on him allegedly placing a GPS device on his ex-wife’s car to track her, for purposes of finding someone to “take care of” and “put a cap in her ass” for $10,000 — as revealed by these Facebook messages.
But, it seems Voelkert was onto his ex-wife, and knew she embroiled him in a sting operation. And just as she was trying to use the information against him in the fight for custody of their kids, he did the same by feeding the faker with an elaborate plan.
Federal prosecutors were prompted to drop the charges after an affidavit emerged filed by David Voelkert days earlier, on May 25, that revealed he knew “Jessica” wasn’t a real person.
“I am lying to this person,” he stated, “to gain positive proof that it is indeed my ex-wife trying to again tamper in my life. Anything said in the chat to her from me cannot be held as the truth and I am chatting to this person in attempts to prove to my court that my ex-wife will not leave my personal life alone … In no way do I have plans to leave with my children or do any harm to Angela Dawn Voelkert or anyone else.”
He, in turn, wanted to use this as evidence in their ongoing custody case. His ex-wife used exchanges between him and “Jessica” dated May 31 as her evidence in obtaining the restraining order.
The charges were dropped and Voelkert no longer lists a “Jessica Studebaker” as a friend on Facebook.
Link | Image: iconfactory
Joshua J. Romero discovered that much of his daily life was dominated by Google. He used its myriad services for so many tasks, and worried that it gave Google too much ability to control him. So as an experiment, he decided to completely disconnect from the company:
In general, quitting Google was easier than I thought. One of the biggest lessons for me was that Google’s not the best at everything. I’m thrilled to be rid of Google Tasks. I realize now that I was always dealing with its deficiencies; it’s not even supported on Android, and it had a tendency to undo my recent changes. I now use a site called Todoist, which I find vastly superior. I had never bothered to research alternatives before, and I ended up falling for the inferior product out of what I thought was convenience.
It’s easy to get seduced by the lure of a single sign-on. But managing multiple user accounts actually isn’t as much of an annoyance as we think it is. For me, it quickly became clear that my single Google account had mixed and muddled my personal and professional services and data. There are many online services that make sense to link together—but there are plenty of others that don’t. Calendar and e-mail might be a good fit, but do you need to use the same company to manage your social contacts, RSS feeds, and to-do lists? What about your phone and computer operating system? Even in the midst of the experiment, it was hard to remember to sign-out of the Google account; I was signed in by default, just as I’m also often signed in to Twitter and Facebook without realizing it.
Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo by Flickr user orangeacid used under Creative Commons license
You thought you left behind popularity contests when you graduated high school, right? Think again. The World’s Most Exclusive Website lets you “in” to their virtual club on levels based on your number of followers on Twitter.
I didn’t even get through the front door because I don’t have a verified account. “Verified Twitter accounts are reserved for the famous or otherwise socially significant,” the site informed me, and redirected me to a “less discriminating” site – Olive Garden.
To get past the first page, you need to have a verified account, obviously.
The second page requires 5,000 followers. It also tells you who else has been able to access that level so far, so you can compare your popularity. You know, just for that added kick in the gut. (“What do you mean @BronxZoosCobra has more followers than me?”)
Door three requires 25,000 followers.
You’re stopped at Door four unless 100,000 people care about your Tweets.
The fifth entrance means you need to have half a million followers to proceed through.
The secret entrance of door six must have made Ryan Seacrest (who posted photos of his progress) really excited that he has more than a million people hanging on his every Tweet.
But the stone door frame on the seventh page is where he got stopped for lacking the required five million followers.
If you’re not a celebrity, don’t worry… apparently the terribly exclusive site is also terribly easy to hack. You can view every room (even the ones no one has accessed yet) right here without so much as ever Tweeting a single character.
Hello Neatoramanauts! I’m excited to announce that Neatorama is now on Flipboard.
If you’ve got an iPad, then chances are you already know about Flipboard. It’s a really neat app for browsing selected newspapers, magazines, blogs, as well as any Facebook and Twitter feed.
Neatorama joins a cadre of other neat "Cool Curators" like Maria Popova’s Brainpicker, Boing Boing, The Cool Hunter, Cute Overload, and GOOD Magazine, amongst many others (be sure to add ‘em to your Flipboard section)
If you have Flipboard for your iPad, it’s easy to add us: simply Add a Section, then find us on the Cool Curators category.
Happy Flipboarding! (Thanks Mia!)
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France has finally gotten around to banning the something truly offensive to its populace. No longer will French television and radio broadcasters be allowed to mention the words “Facebook” and “Twitter” on air.
In a move based on legislation from 1992 that decrees mentioning services by name is a form of advertising, use of the words “Facebook” and “Twitter” will not be allowed on French radio or television, unless part of a news story. France’s Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) says the reason for the ban is to avoid giving the American social networking giants an edge over smaller sites.
Though the move does not restrict use of the Facebook and Twitter sites in any way, critics of the legislation argue that banning mention of Facebook and Twitter will confuse the public. “Like us on our social networking site” just doesn’t have the same clarity as “Like us on Facebook.”
Did you ever have to write your apology on the blackboard 100 times in school for something you did wrong?
Well, think of this as the social media equivalent:
Social activist Fahmi Fadzil has been ordered by a court in Malaysia to apologize on Twitter 100 times, after claiming in a tweet back in January that one of his friends, who was pregnant, had been poorly treated by her employers at a magazine run by BluInc Media. [...]
The case was settled this week, and it seems he has escaped a heavy fine, but he has agreed to apologize 100 times over three days on Twitter. Fadzil has around 4,500 followers, a figure that will probably swell significantly as news of this case circulates across the Web.
At the time of writing, he had completed 19 of the tweets, which must say: “I’ve DEFAMED Blu Inc Media & Female Magazine. My tweets on their HR Policies are untrue. I retract those words & hereby apologize.”
Paul Sawers of The Next Web has the story: Link
The crudely-drawn faces that constitute rage face comic memes may seem vague and random, but they actually represent very specific emotions. This chart from the scholars at Know Your Meme explains the comparative relationships between them based upon depression-elation and bliss-rage axes. You can view a larger image at the link.
Link via The Mary Sue
Hacker group The Lulz Boat pirated PBS.org and posted an article claiming Tupac Shakur–who was shot four times and died in September, 1996–is alive and well and living in New Zealand. They also claim rapper Biggie Smalls (Notorious B.I.G.) was housed in the same resort for a time after his death.
LulzBoat created a new page within PBS.org and posted the passwords of PBS journalists, login information and “sensitive information” about PBS stations.
According to CNN:
The Lulz Boat claims it was “less than impressed” after watching the network’s program “WikiSecrets” and “decided to sail our Lulz Boat over the PBS servers for further… perusing.”
The “WikiSecrets” documentary, which aired last week on the PBS show “Frontline,” talked to U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning’s father and close friends.
Manning, a military intelligence analyst, is suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents that ended up on the WikiLeaks website — one of the largest leaks of classified material in U.S. history.
Whether PBS has gotten their security issues under control is debatable, but the article and any LulzBoat references have been removed from the site.
Link | Image credit: Kurt Strazdins/NewsCom
Are you an Internet junkie? Do you constantly check your smartphone for email updates, tweet incessantly, and post the smallest details of your life on Facebook? Then you need to go on a diet. A digital diet.
New York techonology reporter Daniel Sieberg explains in his book The Digital Diet
For Sieberg, this awareness started in the winter of 2009 at a holiday get-together. His 1,664 Facebook friends and 866 Twitter followers didn’t offer much solace when he could barely remember details about the family and friends standing right in front of him.
“I thought I was this super, uber productive guy who had all the social network profiles, all the devices, and was constantly connected,” says Sieberg. “I realized I had lost the connections that mattered most.”
It was time for something drastic: detox. Sieberg quit all his social networks – his “primary poisons” – and began his own version of the digital diet, which would serve as the basis for the book. The detox phase might be the scariest, he admits, but it’s also just a tiny part of the whole plan. The point is to give people a chance to take a break, get some perspective, and start a discussion.
Lena Groeger of Wired has the story: Link | The Digital Diet
Remember the Chinese hackers who hacked into gmail last year? Turns out they were able to do that because Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts for the US Government.
Security expert Bruce Schneier says it’s not just Gmail that’s affected:
China’s hackers subverted the access system Google put in place to comply with U.S. intercept orders. Why does anyone think criminals won’t be able to use the same system to steal bank account and credit card information, use it to launch other attacks or turn it into a massive spam-sending network? Why does anyone think that only authorized law enforcement can mine collected Internet data or eavesdrop on phone and IM conversations? [...]
In Greece, between June 2004 and March 2005, someone wiretapped more than 100 cell phones belonging to members of the Greek government: the prime minister and the ministers of defense, foreign affairs and justice.
Ericsson built this wiretapping capability into Vodafone’s products and enabled it only for governments that requested it. Greece wasn’t one of those governments, but someone still unknown — A rival political party? Organized crime? Foreign intelligence? — figured out how to surreptitiously turn the feature on.
