Now Television is Social, too...

And I didn’t even know about it, since I’ve stopped watching TV to better fulfill my online media addiction. But last night, I re-visited my college years and watched some re-runs of The Hills at a friend’s house. After the credits rolled, comments began appearing all over the screen as the episode played, like Tweets! At first I thought it was a bit annoying and distracting. However, since I couldn’t avoid reading the comments on the screen, I realized they were actually somewhat humorous. I also realized that this new addition of viewer comments adds to the essence of the show itself- girls talking about their friends and discussing all the drama… the show’s basis is talk, and way too much of it. So why not add some more? This is probably old news, but still felt it was worth a post. Are there any other social TV happenings that I don’t know about? And how long has MTV been doing this?

Social Networking, huh

What’s going on now with social networking sites applications is similar to what happened with email. The signal to noise ratio is rapidly becoming more noise than signal, and it’s frustrating to watch happen. Let’s take Twitter for example: like any form of communication, it has it’s uses for some people, but like most new forms of communication, it gets abused at first – kind of like when your mom first gets email and she spends the first year forwarding you jokes and urban legends. I think we’re at the high-water mark of Twitter abuse and maybe 2009 is the year when people stop twitting everything they do/see. Or maybe Twitter will just die – they have no business model after all – and this will all be moot. Back to Facebook: I went through my “friends” list and removed about two dozen people. I thought I could be all clever and create a list and move some of my business contacts into it, but it seems with lists you don’t get much control over what they see…so it seems that putting people into the limited category is still the only option if you want to have your real friends see what’s going on in your life, and your business acquaintances see a simpler, more sanitized version. I can’t be the only one that wants to share more of my life with my friends than with people I know in a professional capacity, but Facebook sure doesn’t seem to understand that.

Red Bull is an energy drink that currently dominates the U.S. market and is sold around the world. Red Bull claims to boost metabolism, improve performance, increase concentration and reaction speed, and increase endurance. Red Bull is used mainly as a performance enhancer but is frequently used by those trying to lose weight as the caffeine provides a thermogenic benefit. Thermogenesis is a process in the body that speeds up metabolism and burns adipose (fat) tissue. The stimulant effect of the caffeine also increases activity levels which help to burn calories. Red Bull has had a checkered history since it was first produced in 1997 on a large scale. It has been incorrectly condemned for its high caffeine content which is actually about the same as the average cup of coffee. Small scale clinical studies have been performed on Red Bull and have had mixed results. Some of the studies link the product to heart disease and high blood pressure, but why I am talking about Red Bull here which it is not related to the digital media at all is because I did not sleep last 72 hours regarding to the finals and this is my magical friend for tonight. God bless you buddy.

Digital School Locker

This is a website that offers the teachers and schools to rent a space that will allow their students to submit, store and share their assignments and files. It will show the name of the student and date of submit and even check the file for things that are allowed or forbid by the teacher. Teacher and students can interact through this website.

Home Buying in the New Area

Have you ever thought that how was home buying like twenty years ago? Now a day you will contact a realtor or yourself sign in one of the websites. If you have a realtor, he/she will send you hundreds of links according to your criteria, where you want the location, how many bedroom, bathroom, … even if you are using the website you will have the option to narrow down whatever you want and then you will be there with tons of pictures, virtual tours, online descriptions, and even the Google map of the house to show you the neighborhood. In this way you may visit many houses without even leaving your chair and then if and only if any of them appeals to you, you may visit that in person. Just compare this to pre-digital era or even many other countries!!! You must contact several realtors because none of them has access to all the listing! Then you have to visit any house that you think might be close to your criteria and it may mean visiting hundreds of houses without even finding the one. Maybe it sounds strange and silly and unbelievable, but the use of digital technology, especially the media made it possible for us to sit in our chairs and buy and sell even expensive stuff like houses.

Another Digital Dentist

Maybe we do not realize that how technological advances affects other careers. It is not easy for the entire career to use the technology in an effective way. Using new technology and even the daily tools and instruments that once has been analog and everybody was easily working with that now has become digital and needs training to learn how to work with it!!! A smart guy in dentistry world had realized that and designed a website that advertises that he may help other dentists to corporate new technology in their offices. The Dental Technology Consults is the name of the group owned by a dentist and they offer consultations about choosing and installing new computers, dental softwares, networks, digital radiography and even web page design. This is true that any new technology will provide new job fields, but this is extraordinary and if you think there might be many dentist especially from old school that need help for the transition, and here is a guy who is willing to help and charge!!!.

Digital photos and Email

One of the first things new digital camera owners want to do is start sharing their digital photos with friends and family. Of course, the easiest way to do that is by email. Often, the new digital camera owner will take their enormous multi-megapixel files straight from the camera and attach them to an email. The unsuspecting recipient may not appreciate this, especially if their ISP puts a small limit on the size of email attachments they can receive. Many times, these large attachments will clog the recipient's inbox, making it impossible for them to access their remaining mail. There are two solutions to this:

The easiest is to simply scale copies your photos down to a reasonable size that will fit on most screens and take less time to download. (You can delete these smaller copies after emailing them.) Users of Windows XP have a way to do this built right into the operating system, and many photo-cataloging programs have a send email feature that will also resize copies of the pictures before sending them. If you need a free program to resize many photos, try Easy Thumbnails. Alternately, you could scale copies of the photos down and post them to a photo-sharing site or to a personal web site. Posting photos to the Web is a better solution if you have many photos to send, or when you want to share the same group of photos with many different people. Most photo-sharing sites will automatically downsize very large images or offer a choice of sizes to the viewer. If you already have personal Web space (check with your ISP), you will find lots of free or inexpensive software to build a web photo gallery for yourself.