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Facebook & Twitter tab & the Aftermath!

I found these articles interesting because of the potential that the social networks have right now are nearly limitless. I’d like to discuss briefly on the Hot Dish application and then of course the Newsmixer application. Then briefly detal why I didn’t get this article posted last night, and how that lead to me needing to let my computer sit for a few hours as it regressed itself back to the state it was before I started reading these articles haha!

First off, my own lack of caring… I realized the ability to log onto other sites with Facebook, but didn’t see the full potential behind it when it first happened to me. It was interesting to note also how social networking used to be part of a site, but now has completely shifted into it’s own site of internal connections. Now shifting the idea of a website hosting networking, to the networking hosting the websites! That’s pretty interesting and I don’t think that even 6 years ago this would have been predicted to turn out as it has.

As was stated in the article, you can now log on Facebook with your Xbox. Well, guess what I did today, yep, logged onto Facebook and Twitter via my Xbox! It was pretty interesting, I actually was able to add some old friends from Warsaw, IN on Xbox today thanks to the new feature.

Now, getting into the applications that were spoken of. I noticed the use of Newsmixer, I think that this app has great potential and I’m planning on getting it installed on my Facebook. I loved the way that they were able to take news and put it together in a socially connected way, truly unique and very intriguing idea. Then of course there was the Hot Dish app that works somewhat the same way, with incentives added for interaction. I think that was mostly just a good way they saw to get kids more interested in the app. It spread its goal of environment knowledge very well. They had some good questions that the app was able to seek out answers for fairly well also. In the end though, they just ended up having more questions then solutions.

As I read through the articles I was thinking about what I want out of news. When I watch or read something what’s the first thing that I, and I’d be willing to guess, others do? Go straight for the headlines, seeking out the topics that concern them the most.

So then I set out on my journey to look more into the factors behind creating these apps. I looked into how Hot Dish was developed mostly. Finding the source that it used “NewsCloud.com” and then noticing that I could build my own app! Heck yes, if I get instructions I can toss in my creativity that was developed through reading these articles!

So what hit me as I went through this? It was mostly the concept of “stumbleupon.com” and then integrating that with a social network, Facebook, and starting to try and figure out how the heck to get an app that could pull from maybe a few different news sources, gathering headlines, collecting the most frequent topics of the day, having different topics to choose from (like stumbleupon) and then producing one app on Facebook that would allow you to go to it, choose what topics you like, most recent, most frequent, and most of all, the most appealing news to YOU! So that this news source wouldn’t be one that you go to, but it would be a news source that comes to you. You only have to set it up once, you can change it up, and it can offer other topics you might like. Well, I will admit that I really thought if I spent enough time trying to figure the app junk out I would, but it was like I was trying to learn a different language and it took up about 10+ hours of my life ha! However, I will say that I think I was starting to learn quite a bit. At 3am when I realized class was in 6 hours I decided to call it quits, and then next morning return my hard drive back to it’s original state before I started messing with terminal (don’t ever do that unless you know exactly what you’re doing!!!).

So all in all, these articles ended up meaning a lot more to me then I really thought they would. To bad I was working all weekend or I could have spent it developing that app! Anyone know how/ wanna help?!

How is technology flattening the world?

Here's a few links that I'm a personal fan of, but there's so much more.
Mobility of the internet is constantly increasing and our ability to have access across the world is at our finger tips every second of everyday!

http://onebigtorrent.org/about.php

http://whistleblower.org/

http://mirror.wikileaks.info/

An industry favorite of mine:

http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy/