Facebook knows you better than your friends do.

As much as Facebook seems to annoy my peers, you’ve got to hand it to them–Facebook has collected a lot of data about a lot of us. And I’m pretty sure advertisers would like to believe that Facebook can use this information to understand us. But how well is that working out? How well does Facebook understand us and our personalities, compared to, say… our Facebook “friends”? Well, it turns out that all those “Likes” really do add up. Apparently, computer predictions based on participants’ clicks were more accurate at judging personalities than the participants’ actual Facebook friends. Not only that, but these computational predictions were also better at predicting things like substance use, political attitudes, and physical health. So go ahead and share this on Facebook… if you dare.

“Judging others’ personalities is an essential skill in successful social living, as personality is a key driver behind people’s interactions, behaviors, and emotions. Although accurate personality judgments stem from social-cognitive skills, developments in machine learning show that computer models can also make valid judgments. This study compares the accuracy of human and computer-based personality judgments, using a sample of 86,220 volunteers who completed a 100-item personality questionnaire.We show that (i) computer predictions based on a generic digital footprint (Facebook Likes) are more accurate (r = 0.56) than those made by the participants’ Facebook friends using a personality questionnaire (r = 0.49); (ii) computer models show higher interjudge agreement; and (iii) computer personality judgments have higher external validity when predicting life outcomes such as substance use, political attitudes, and physical health; for some outcomes, they even outperform the self-rated personality scores. Computers outpacing humans in personality judgment presents significant opportunities and challenges in the areas of psychological assessment, marketing, and privacy.”

Read More

OnePlus One

Here's why OnePlus-One equals 4.5:

OnePlus-One

Introduction:

Our OnePlus One has just received a software update which should address some of the issues experienced in this review. We're currently going through the new software and will update this review with our findings soon.

The Google Nexus 4, the Google Nexus 5, the Motorola Moto G, and now the OnePlus One; this 5.5-inch bolt from out of the blue (well, China) joins an exclusive list of smartphones that offer an awful lot of smartphone for not a lot of money.

But having used the OnePlus One as my primary phone for several days now, I'm wondering whether it needs to be placed in a category all of its own.

Here is a device that rivals the HTC One M8 and the Samsung Galaxy S5 for raw specs, but at a cost of just £229, $299. That's less than half the price of those aforementioned big hitters.

As such, much of my early time with the phone was spent warily turning it around in my hands, like some kind of mysterious artefact of unknown origin, not quite ready to believe what was being promised of it. There has to be some compromise here, right?

Well, yes there is. In fact, there are several. But it's staggering how small they seem when weighed against that double-take-inducing price tag.

However the OnePlus One is a pleasure to hold and to use. Okay, so it lacks the HTC One M8's gorgeous metallic sheen, and you won't turn any heads when you take it out of your pocket like you would with a golden iPhone 5S. But show me the phone that does.

The OnePlus One nevertheless feels great in the hand. It's primarily made up of a quality matte plastic shell that extends around the back and sides of the device. This isn't a unibody construction, and this rear panel can be removed for customisation purposes, but it's firmly fixed in place with minimal creaking or flexing.


There's a metal-effect plastic rim that separates this rear cover from the glass front, which cheapens the effect ever-so-slightly, but it's thin and unadorned. It does mean that the aforementioned glass frontage appears to stand out rather than melding into the body of the phone, but it's not an unpleasant effect.

Read More

Xiaomi's smartphones taps into the US market

Xiaomi Corp, the world's third-largest smartphone manufacturer, will launch its new smartphone in Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that falls in January 2015 in Las Vegas, the first-ever appearance of the fast-growing Chinese IT company in the US market.
According to the Economic Daily News in China, Xiaomi might launch its newest flagship smartphone Mi5 their newest flagship that has high-end specifications but with a low-end price, like most of the smartphones that have come out of China.
It was reported that the new smartphone will may pack a Quad 5.7-inch HD display, a powerful Qualcomm chipset as well as fingerprint scanning tech by default.
According to a report from International Data Corporation (IDC), Xiaomi's smartphone shipment in the third quarter 2014 ranked the third after Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
Lei Jun, Xiaomi's founder and CEO, dubbed as "China's Steve Jobs", said the company might become the world's largest smartphone maker in the next five to ten years during a forum of World Internet Conference held in November in China.
Xiaomi stepped into global market by entering 10 new markets India, Brazil and Russia this year. It also set a goal of increasing sales to 100 million phones in 2015, according to an April 23 report from Bloomberg News.
The company recently has been making a series of aggressive investments for entering the global and US market. Analysts point out that Lei has started to make Xiaomi's own ecosystem to challenge Apple.
On Dec 1, the company announced its participation in the $40 million fundraising for Misfit, a Silicon Valley-based start-up. It is the first time that Xiaomi has taken a stake in a US mobile-device maker.
Misfit, which claims to make the biggest-selling activity and sleep tracker in China, said on Tuesday it had raised new financing from Xiaomi, e-commerce company JD.com Inc., and venture-capital firms GGV Capital and Shunwei, a VC firm set up by Xiaomi.
Xiaomi Corp, and Kingsoft Corp., announced on Dec 4 that the two companies will invest $1 billion for cloud services in next three to five years.
Lei, co-founder of both companies, revealed details of the first-round $222 million investment in the NASDAQ-listed 21Vianet Group Inc., the largest carrier-neutral Internet data center service provider in China. Temasek Holdings of Singapore also agreed to inject $74 million into 21Vianet.
"Cloud service will become one of the prime costs of IT companies in the future," said Lei on Dec 3.
"For instance, at the current data upload speed, Xiaomi after next year will have to pay an annual $488 million fee for the data storage, most of which are the pictures and videos from users of Xiaomi's smartphones and other mobile technology products," said Lei.
"Sixty-eight million Xiaomi users are uploading 90 million pictures and 2 million videos every day," said Lei.
On Nov 19, Xiaomi also made a $294 million investment in online video provider iQiyi, a unit of search giant Baidu Inc.

Read More

Merry Christmas in India

Many Christians in India celebrate Jesus Christ's birth on on Christmas Day, which is annually held on December 25. The celebrations are most noticeable in states where there are many Christians. Christmas Day is a gazetted holiday in India.

What do people do?

Many Christians mark Christmas Day by attending special church services, spending time with family members, wearing new clothes and eating a festive meal. Some families exchange gifts or give small presents or sweets to children. They may display small electric lamps or small clay oil-burning lamps and decorate their homes with banana or mango leaves. Some also put up a nativity scene with clay figures or a Christmas tree. Christmas trees in India are usually imitation pine trees or branches of native trees or bushes.

Some stores and malls may put up Christmas decorations and have actors playing Santa. Christmas celebrations in tourist areas and hotels may be created to emulate how Christmas Day is celebrated in the countries where tourists and travelers are from.

Public life

National, state and local government offices, post offices and banks are closed on Christmas Day. Christian stores, businesses and other organizations may be closed or have reduced opening hours. Those wishing to use public transport on the day may need to contact the local transport authorities to check on time-tables.

Background

Many Christians remember Jesus Christ's birth when they celebrate Christmas Day, which is on December 25 in the Gregorian calendar. His actual birthday remains unconfirmed. Scholars think that Saint Thomas the Apostle introduced Christianity to the area that is now India around 52 CE. There are now around 24 million Christians in India. The states with the largest percentages of Christians are:

Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland in north-west India.

Goa on the west coast.

Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the south.

Christmas Day is widely celebrated in these states, but may be barely marked in others.

Symbols

Symbols of Christmas in India include:

Small electric lights and oil burners.

Decorations made of banana or mango leaves.

Artificial pine trees or branches of native tree and bushes decorated with Christmas themed ornaments.

Nativity scenes with small clay figures.

Statues of or actors playing Santa Claus.

These are just some examples how Christmas is symbolized in India.

Read More

Gmail update brings Ms-Office document edit directly from your inbox

G-mail

If you peek inside your Gmail inbox today, you might notice a feature that wasn’t previously available. Google has added an option to edit attachments containing Microsoft Office documents with one simple click, making it possible to start the editing process directly from your inbox.

Users that have already received the update will now notice an “Edit with Google Docs” option on the far right side of the attached document when hovering over it. Pressing it will convert it to the appropriate Google format, and redirects you to Google Docs where the file is automatically opened and ready for editing:

For those that require the option of editing an Office file without changing the actual extension, Google recommends downloading the “Office editing for Docs, Sheets, and Slides” Chrome extension, which can be downloaded here. Keep in mind that all of the mentioned changes are relevant to the desktop version of Gmail, not for the mobile application.

The Google+ page from the Drive team also stated that 15 new Microsoft Office formats have been added to the list of supported file types that can be edited within Google Docs. You can find out more about editing options in Google Docs via Google’s support page here.

Read More

Not getting enough "likes" on your posts?... Try this....

The Plague: An app that spreds information like a virus on social networks.

A new social networking app called Plague gives you power to decide what posts should go viral in your circle and beyond. 

We all know what the term ‘viral’ means in relation to the Internet, but what if a social network took that idea literally? No, I’m not talking about a social network that somehow infects your devices with viruses: rather, I’m talking about a new social network called Plague that literally tries to infect the world with your content.

Plague works like this: once you share a simple content (i.e. simple text, a link, photo, or a video), the content will find the first four mobile devices with the Plague app installed that are closest to you. Once found, your content will be delivered to the recipients, and if they like your content, they can choose to pass the content along to the next four recipients closest to them (that also have the Plague app installed) or ignoring the content (which will ultimately hurt the spread of the content).

This cycle continues until people stop spreading it. Each content displays its ‘patient zero’ – where the content originated from – and comments on the content as well. Other than that? There is no option for following a user or even sending a message to an individual user. There’s only one goal: to pass along interesting content to four people in your proximity or ignore content you don’t find interesting.

This is what is so great about Plague. There’s no emphasis on ‘Liking’ this or ‘Following’ this person: instead, the sole focus is on sharing awesome content. Every user on Plague is on equal footing, and each person has the opportunity to spread great content just like every other person.

 Plague is a fantastic concept that tweaks the way we think about social networking, but it could also have dire consequences if Deep Sea isn’t careful.

Read More

Why Teens Prefer Tumblr and Ditching Facebook?

When Facebook was first developed in 2004, a lot of people (including myself) were skeptical. Many viewed the online platform as a way for teenage boys to keep tabs on their friends and potential girlfriends, send pictures of themselves posing in the latest fashion, and share an endless stream of useless information about their daily lives. Facebook was seen as a toy for the under 25s to develop their voyeuristic and narcissistic tendencies. However, if there is one thing capable of changing its stripes in record time, it's the internet. While in 2004 Facebook was primarily a tool for youth, it quickly transformed into a mutigenerational platform used for everything from keeping in touch with far-away relatives to career oriented self-promotion. It also revolutionized the way people communicate and made us excruciatingly aware of two very important phenomena: people love to observe other people, and they love to be observed.

The same phenomena that made Facebook so popular will also be its downfall. Just like with any addiction, one eventually needs more of the desired product in order to find satisfaction. In the case of the internet, people need better and updated versions of the same type of product. This is where Tumblr steps in.

Tumbler gives teenagers the ability to reach more people, share more pictures (and GIFs), and create their own online content. This means that they get a lot more visibility, and consequently, more dopamine. As one online blog so aptly pointed out, "Tumblr beats Facebook in everything. People spill their hearts out on Facebook and no one gives a s*it I spill my heart out on here and get props for it. You post something on Facebook, zero likes. Post it on Tumblr, 2,000 reblogs."

 According to a recent survey by Posterous co-founder Garry Tan....

              Tumblr was the favorite social network for the two age groups surveyed, ages 13-18 (teens) and 19-25 (young adults).

Here’s the breakdown per platform:

• Tumblr dominated, used regularly by 61% of teens and 57% of young adults surveyed.
• Facebook drew in 55% of teens and 52% of young adults.
• Twitter was used regularly by 22% of teens and 17% of young adults.
• Instagram drew in 21% of teens and only 11% of young adults.
• Snapchat (the newest of the platforms) earned 13% of teens and just 4% of young adults.

Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+ grew faster than Facebook as well. 

Read More