Time's Person of the Year = Mark Zuckerberg

Hey everyone!

Mark Zuckerberg is Time Magazine's Person of the Year!

Here's a link to the article
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037183_2037185-1,00.html

It's 10 pages long but totally worth the read! It goes over many things that we talked about in class such as privacy, the depth of relationships on Facebook, the movie The Social Network and more!

Some things you may not know:
Mark Zuckerberg was a Psych major and a CS major...
Facebook has been blocked in China and other countries have blocked FB from time to time too

Seriously...read the article...its amazing!

Hope everyone's finals went good/are going good!

ENJOY BREAK! :)

Final Thoughts for Cyberpsyc

hey guys, hope you arent stressing too much about exams this weekend and hopefully still checking up on cyberdukes..
i had a video i wanted to show during my presentation but given that I went over my time by about 10 minutes i didn't get to show it ... its about the whole "pool's closed" thing i mentioned about Habbo.
here's the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQGQYx84iPM&feature=related

i also wanted to share another video... this one was shared to me by Miss Yip.. if you remember from my presentation she was the very vulgar friend i met online. the video is very informative but it's about an hour long so give yourself some time.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/view/?autoplay

the website for this is:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/

let me know your thoughts

Programs Blocking Social Networking On Your Computer!

So I came across this article on Psychology Today's website and I thought it was really cool and definitely applicable to our (now finished *tear*) class!

  I don't personally own a Mac but this article discusses some programs that are available on the Internet that can block out social networking sites completely until you reboot your computer--they appeal to professionals and students by saying that you will get WAY more work done using their programs because if the program is running, most people are not going to want to reboot their computer just to check if anything new happened on Twitter.

 I think this could definitely be effective because I know the Internet plays a huge role in my procrastination habits. I mean, hello, Netflix + Facebook +Online window shopping = no work getting done! If these programs were available to you, do you think you'd use them? Why?

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-digital-self/201012/does-blocking-your-social-networking-sites-make-you-anti-social

ACTA and you (part 2)

Recently there have been some actions taken against file sharing over the internet. ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) has been going through legislation this year in an attempt to establish a set of standards for punishment for counterfeiting goods which includes (but is not limited to) file sharing of copyrighted material over the internet. File sharing started in the 1980s through the use usenet and other forms of communication like internet relay chat (IRC). More recently, programs like Napster appeared and made sharing mp3 files quick and easy (and free). However, after many lawsuits they had to change their policies. As file sharing gains popularity, we are seeing more and more lawsuits and more file sharing sources being shut down. One of most popular programs, Limewire, was shut down permanently just a couple months ago. While Limewire allowed the downloading of individual files, torrents appeared and allowed for the download of entire albums, full length movies, even an artists' entire discography at one time. And while the existence of torrenting sites is not illegal currently, (e.g. having the files uploaded on a site) downloading them is. This has been cause for many lawsuits against torrenting sites, and people have gone to jail for it. Just a few weeks ago, one of the most popular torrenting sites - The Pirate Bay - came under attack once again, and has allegedly been shut down "for good." I put this in quotes because the domain still exists, although after several trials will not load the home page. Starting in January, it will be a lot more difficult to access torrent sites due to the legislation that is going through currently. I feel like there will always be ways to share files, but if ACTA passes, there is going to be a lot of pressure on ISPs to monitor their clients' internet usage.

here's some links:
http://www.anti-acta.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
theres a ton of information if you Google file sharing lawsuits etc

Will Facebook Ever Stop Evolving?? I think not..

While we seem to talk about Facebook and its role in our lives, the privacy issues, and what personality types tend to use it more, I came across yet ANOTHER article on CNN about the ever changing Facebook. As much as it is informative, and yes there are some cool features brought about by various changes, it got me thinking...Will Facebook ever exist where it is not always being updated, or new features being added? It seems as though every other week I stumble across an article that details the upcoming changes Facebook is going to make. Recently, Facebook has had a lot of privacy issues being questioned, and if it continues to change day after day, its almost impossible to keep track of anything.

The article I read talks about the most recent change on the site, where users have the option of "revamping" their profiles. You should definitely read this article, as I am sure most of us will update our profile in the near future! Nothing exactly stands out as a negative in terms of the changes, but its just hard to keep up with (at least for me it is! haha) The article also mentions future plans that the Facebook creator has in store. Very interesting!

I am curious to see what you all think about this! Any thoughts?!

http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/05/technology/facebook_profile_overhaul/index.htm?hpt=T2

Study Blue, research proposal, and blogging, Oh my!

So I have a few things on my mind I'd like to share with you all.

FIRST! If you haven't tried Study Blue yet, you should! Facebook has been advertising it on the side of my page for months now and I finally broke down and gave it a try. Just in time for finals week! It's a website that lets you make flashcard and save you class notes so you can access them from anywhere (including on your phone!). You can make it private it or share it. I'm using it right now for my biopsychology final and it shows me that one of my classmates is using the website as well AND sharing her class notes. I used my school email so it immediately knew the university and I just put in my class title and bam! It found her. I'm not really sure how or where she's getting some of her material like practice test but I haven't looked at them. She includes study material Stolloff has provided so I'm not sure what the rules are there but.....Anyway! It's great! I love being able to look at my flashcards on the go when I have like 10 minutes before a class or 5 minutes awkwardly waiting for a friend to show up for lunch on campus. Also, it's easier than keeping up with paper flashcards...I know I've dropped more than a few around the halls of miller. I have horrible handwriting so typing flashcards is way easier for me to read. Oh and it happens to be free! Hope you guys enjoy it! Just thought I'd share my experience with this.

Research Proposal. My topic is Facebook usage and how your life changes once you stop. I'll be honest, I'm still working out some major kinks. I started out with a HUGE hypothesis that was really all over the place so I had to narrow it down to this:

College students with high Facebook usage will see an increase in the quantity of their face-to-face social interactions after deactivating their profile for 30 days.

High usage is defined as checking the site more than 4 times a day or staying on for over 3 hours. Originally I was going to do quality of face-to-face interactions but that's hard to judge. I also considered general life satisfaction but....I dunno, what do you guys think? When I made the graphs for those results it just seems so...plain. My idea was to see if people felt closer to their friends and happier without Facebook. Or miserable. I keep going back and forth with this paper so any feedback is welcome, even if you think this is a horrible topic!

And to close, I'd like to throw in a little shameless self-promoting. I was so inspired by all of my classmates' blogging experiences and Rachel's description of 365 Project that I'm going to start picture blogging! But not until New Years day. BUT! If you want to follow it (which I think would be cool) I think this is the link. Be sure to check it out January 1st!