Study: Rumors of Written-Word Death Greatly Exaggerated

Americans' print consumption has declined since 1960, but words delivered by computer have more than made up the difference. (Image courtesy of the University of San Diego's Global Information Industry Center)

Conventional wisdom holds that YouTube, videogames, cable TV and iPods have turned us away from the written word. Glowing streams of visual delights replaced paper and longhand letters shrank to bite-sized Facebook status updates, the theory held. Conventional wisdom, in this case, is wrong.
A large-scale study by the University of San Diego and other research universities revealed what some of us have long suspected: We’re reading far more words than we used to as we adopt new technologies.
“Reading, which was in decline due to the growth of television, tripled from 1980 to 2008, because it is the overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet,” found a University of San Diego study (.pdf) published this month by Roger E. Bohn and James E. Short of the University of San Diego.
Americans consumed 3.6 billion terabytes of information last year, averaging 11.8 hours of information consumption per day. Video and videogames constituted 55 percent of those bytes, but on average, Americans read 36 percent of the 100,500 words they consume each day, according to the San Diego study, which analyzed more than 20 data sources. The study doesn’t cover writing, but a simple glance at Facebook feeds reveals that we’re almost certainly writing more than we used to, as well.
Admittedly, posting “OMG best pizza ever C U l8r” to a mix of strangers, friends and acquaintances is not the same as carrying on a lengthy epistolary relationship.
“The Internet is about the death of the written word as a means of exchange and a store of value,” writes Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., in a typical criticism. “As a method of conveying information, written words are inefficient and ambiguous…. Sounds and images are far superior … thus, textual minimalism is replacing books and periodicals.”
However, that “textual minimalism” sure adds up fast — especially considering that a decent percentage of status updates include links to longer blog posts and articles. No matter how you slice it, this San Diego study found text to be a bigger part of our lives than it was 30 years ago, when much of the internet was a mere gleam in Al Gore’s eye.
In addition, longer formats continue to be popular, despite increases in textual minimalism, competing sources of information and the general shrinkage of print magazines and newspapers — see Ars Technica’s 23-page review of Mac OS X 10.6 (1,447 Diggs, 142 on Reddit), or Glenn Greenwald’s lengthy opinion pieces (430 comments), neither of which would likely have been published by a print publication.
Meanwhile, Amazon, which seems to sell everything under the sun — including videogames, cameras and television sets — announced on Saturday that the Amazon Kindle, an eBook reader, became “the most gifted item ever in [Amazon] history” during this year’s holiday season.
The most gifted item during next year’s holiday season could well be Apple’s “iSlate” tablet, assuming rumors of its impending 2010 release are true. Say what you will about the literacy level of tweets or texts, but the position that literacy is on the decline is untenable when the most-hyped device of next year is said to be designed with free and paid-for electronic text — especially magazines — in mind.
If you’re reading thousands of words a day on a variety of devices, paper included, you need as much help as you can get in deciding which words to read. Ironically, the same technologies derided by some for contributing to a lack of literacy — Facebook and Twitter — are full of recommendations of things to read.
Technology may have truncated and warped the written word in some cases, while increasing competition for our time. But as borne out by this new data, technology hasn’t found a substitute for the written word as a means of conveying certain types of information. And, in fact, it has made reading and writing even more essential parts of everyday life.

Sadness talking

19:40
and why u always look so sad?
is it part of the acting... or is one of those things
that u cant get rid of it?
19:40
'dunno...maybe there's something that i carry around...and that is already a part of myself
19:41
or that is what u want to believe to do not have to think of it... right?
19:42
yep maybe you're right
maybe i just don't want to go and search for the source of sadness

Mezcal mondays

there they are, there they go...
So small when they are in God's hands,
traveling across the sound, sounds of love,
taking all this greyness and becoming softer.

Suddenly over the frequency of humans,
percussions, dark percussions over the caribbean,
Songs of love and forgiveness.

This is a start, that was a start over and over again,
now i'm fine,
no nights... just daylights,
no mistakes, just another monday.

Allá va

Y allá va la hermosa vida de alguien,
asfixiada por los prejuicios de otros,
gozando tanto como ese cuerpo se lo permite,
como un horrible raton que se cuela por las ventanas de la cocina,
asi le negamos el queso a la vida.

Se va lejos y se apaga de a poco,
entre ballenas y focas se vuelve el mar tan loco,
las vidas de tantos corren mientras otras se ahogan,
y aquellas que vuelan las recordamos todos.

Que se acaben las rosas sin espinas,
que lo innecesariamente dulce se quede sin sabor,
pero que las manos se nos llenen de tierra,
y la frente de sudor,

que Viva la Vida y sus colores,
y que no se vaya como si fuera de alguien más.

Let's Party yeah!!!

Alcoholic Monkeys - Awesome

3 presents.

1. Cuando el atardecer se va,
y sólo queda su calor,
sentimos su amor como si estuviera ahi...

Por favor vuelvete Luna,
para que cuando abra los ojos,
te vuelva a ver a ti.

2.- Busco de entre todas las estrellas una que me de luz...
Y sólo tus ojos y tu amor brillan desde la tierra,
entonces vuelvo mis ojos a la tierra,
y sólo tú la haces girar,
el calor que emana de ti me mantiene vivo.
de noche te amo tal vez más.

3.- Tengo ese sabor a miel en los labios,
que no entiendo de donde viene...
cuando recuerdo el amor vivo q ilumina mis tardes,
y mis noches...

Entonces sé que son tus memorias vivas en mi boca,
las que su dulce sabor pronuncian tu nombre,
mi amor de miel.

+.- Las estrellas se enojaron por mis palabras,
y esta noche salieron todas a brillar,
no saben que es tu celebración,
y en su envidia te hacen brillar aún más.

10 +1 Trends and changes for the social web 2010

(By; customerthink.com) 

1) Twitter becoming the leading NEWS system
Twitter will change quite dramatically. It will become the world's dominant News aggregator and distributor. As such the personal "chit chat" will get more and more just background noise and some of the Twitterer will look for alternatives. But for every leaving tweople 50 new ones will join. Twitter users were the social media avant-garde - that will change and twitter user will be the masses. That will finally lead to a business model that may have been always there ;-) Twitter may become the final nail on the publishers’ coffin.

2) Advertising avalanche
while we argue and am disappointed about all the advertising that gradually moves into the social web, we will experience an avalanche that may almost break the social web. With a soon aggregate number of a Billion users, it will be the most sought after place to advertise for the almost 1 Trillion $ advertising industry. Google will make substantial changes to their advertising model to not only participate but lead the intrusion of the space. Advertising will get more and more subtle - not the primitive sponsored links saying "buy my stuff" but highly sophisticated "targeting" based on an omnipresence social graph of close to 1 Billion individuals. Automated yet individual adds based on our own profiles, friends.... Anecdote: On facebook my wife was introduced to me as a hot chick in my neighborhood.

3) LinkedIn's break through
LinkedIn was always not very social. Managed with an iron fist in regards to: what user can and cannot do, how you get to other people's data and more. But exactly that behavior will pay off as users compare the platforms they want to deal with. Already LinkedIn gains 10 times as many new users then the European Xing - in part because Xing became a social version of Craig’s List without the business benefits. It will be up to the group managers who manage the professional discussion groups, whether or not the qualities of the posts keep up with the expectation but there are already good indicators that many will. And as businesses finally find their ways and strategies into the social web, LinkedIn will grow more than average. That may lead to the actual break through - unless they come up with yet another management change.
4) The Social Business
Businesses will enter the social web - but this time not with "social media marketing" but with a rather cohesive customer experience strategy where social media is only an underpinning for the strategy. What many people won't believe, companies will change their culture - simply because they have to. "Who says elephants can't dance" may come to mind. Of course this will not be true for the majority of companies, not in 2010 - but the leaders will surprise with models that will please a large portion of their customers. The more social business will span across the companies departments including service, product management, sales, HR, procurement & logistics and marketing. The "let go" strategy as indicated by Cisco's John Chamber in an interview with Washington Post will be turned into reality. Primary benefits for the consumer will be better access to services and knowledge, a saying in the product development and product road maps, faster access to other customers to share and accelerate learning and similar benefits. Advocacy for a brand and its team will be the biggest return on investment - which actually will demonstrate measurable decrease in sales and marketing cost.
5) IT Department conquer the Social Web
Finally IT Departments will be confronted with the social web. Vendor driven initiatives to invest in Social CRM may overshadow the good intent to make a company more social and instead make it more complicated. Heated and controversial discussions around sCRM will help IT managers defend their security concepts, data integrity and data privacy models and more reasons not to connect with the outside world more than necessary (from an IT point of view). Department managers in sales, marketing, service… will again need to fight and circumnavigate IT like they did in the 90’s when Internet came into businesses or in the 80’s when Personal Computers dared to push mainframes and minis aside. With an all new culture and new processes required by the market, new systems will enter the corporations. This time open systems, directly connected to and with the market and democratization of information will consequently end up in democratization of data. Again this will not be true for the majority of companies as most wait and see what the leaders do and then just follow but this IT shift will be very notable in 2010.

6) The end of Social Media Marketing
After hundreds and thousands of “Social Media Marketing” attempts to push the message in this new “channel”, businesses will realize that this is not very successful and not resonating with the target group that is supposed t be “attracted: not “annoyed”. Unfortunately even so many did it right it will be overshadowed by the failures. Social Marketing instead will have a fine but notable difference: “Media” is out of the equation. What maybe semantics for some may be an important difference for others. Social marketing will change the way social media is used in marketing. The focus on social will bring sales and marketing closer than ever (OK it is an old dream and may never happen) but at least the social interaction model with the market only can work if the marketing part and the executing sales part is in synch. The biggest change will be noted by companies refraining to overly advertise their wares – knowing that a customer satisfaction can never be reached by not keeping the promises.

7) Social Mobility Evolution
In 2010 mobile devise page views will be similar or even higher than computer based page views. The only issue: they are not measured – just estimated. But this will come as a wakeup call to many product and content provider to adjust their strategies. Social mobility will more than ever demonstrate that the lines of corporate strongholds (offices) will more and more vanish away. I think it will be interesting to watch that it will not be “the final break through for the home office” but unleash a whole new concept of the distributed enterprise. A new version of outsourcing will make way to a collaborative engagement with the hundreds of thousands of experts in all kinds of industry field who just don’t want to be hired as an employee any longer but work as an individual contractor. The missing link, the social bond, will further shortened with social media.
8) Social media denial
The dark side of the social media evolution may lead to denial in a larger order. I expect Google engaging in a rather substantial opening of social graph information in a similar way as it made books publically available opening up very controversial copyright discussions. Social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn for that matter who subscribe to the OpenSocial concept will pay some price for that by losing users. However the critical users will be outnumbered by a flood of those followers who finally enter the social web simply because everybody else does without digging deep into the consequences of privacy concerns – or the lack thereof. Primarily the very early adopters of social media who claim for them they made it all happen will be massively frustrated in 2010.
9) Listening 2.0 & Monitoring
Listening, in particular listening to customers will have a new dimension in 2010. What started in 2008 with interesting monitoring systems will come to a boom in 2010. Mass-Listening to better understand what customers saying, what the sentiment of the discussion is and what companies need to learn from that information will contribute to the entrance of businesses in the social web. Finally there are measurable results, that lead to actionable items. Listening will also no longer be the old way of listening to a person in a conversation but listening the relevant people in an ongoing manner – using monitoring software that works 24x7x365. It will surface what is really on their customers’ mind and will answer questions no survey can answer – all in real time. Also in 2010 it will again bring up the question of “too much transparency”. It will suggest don’t say anything anymore because not only it could be found – now it is actively watched for. See social media denial.
10) Social convergence
One of the biggest, most promising and most stupid trends of 2010 is the convergence of social with everything else. Starting with stupid, I’m sure we will see more and more things social. It started with Social CRM, we may see Social ERP, maybe social office and even things like a social washing machine – it talks to you and tells you who else in your neighborhood is washing jeans right now. But social media will more and more converge with other social activities like co-participating in online events where an online participant can share their emotions with the physically present participant, we see this already today happening. We will see a lot of announcements of social convergence like FINALLY integrating the user voice into the TV channels or further more integration into mobile devices where I can see if any of my contacts is in my vicinity.

11) Tools and gadgets
GAMES:
Social media is unique in many ways. One is that in all technical evolutions the gaming industry led the development. That was true for processors, memory, graphics cards… Not really in Social Media. OK MMORPG games are as old as social media – but only in 2010 we will see a more dramatic breakthrough of the gaming industry into the social world.

TWITTER
Twitter will become finally the pace maker for application interfaces. Unlike the thousands of gadgets on Facebook, the more than 2,000 applications for Twitter are actually integrated applications - more than twice as many as for Salesforce.com in just 2 years.

ADDONS
Real time gadgets will become more and more important to see people online here and now as well as contextual search gadgets.

SEARCH
Search engines haven’t changed in the past 10 years. The only thing search engine providers cared about was advertising. An ironic parallel to publishers who after they discovered the advertising model cared less and less about independent content. Context, relationship and geo based search may redefine search already in 2010 and drill a big hole in the old search engine provider.

BUSINESS TOOLS
A lot of tools for the business social web will be developed and surface in 2010, maybe even more than for what we have today.

SOCIAL NETWORK CONSOLIDATION
I guess social networks will NOT consolidate in 2010. The diversity of individuals, their needs and conversations, geographic and cultural relations as well as contextual focus will actually bring more social networks than ever to the surface.

ONLINE COMMUNITIES
The disaster with online communities will go in 2010 business will want to create them, then find out it is really work and the communities will die out 6 month later. Way too many of the 1.8 Million Ning communities are empty. But this is not Ning’s fault their community is as good as any other but people still don’t know how to run them and that will continue in 2010.

THE TLF GROUP + YOUTUBE
In 2010 the trend of this year will further solidify itself. The leading trio is Twitter LinkedIn Facebook, at least when it comes to business. While MySpace reports higher numbers of users, on the business side we can’t identify any significance from the MySpace side. And while not really a social network YouTube’s relevance in the mix will be increasingly important as a media to introduce, explain, teach, communicate. Yet the most active trigger to point to the YouTube clips will remain to be through the TLF group.

LINKEDIN GROUPS
LinkedIn Groups will go through a big test in 2010. It’s the good old quality or quantity discussion. But not so much because of anything LinkedIn does but because what group owners will do. It is either “I want to have the biggest group” (for whatever reason) “and I don’t care what people post” – or “I am going to carefully monitor the posts and try to keep a high degree of discussion quality” – not necessarily censoring the discussion but the level of advertising.

GROUNDBREAKING & EARTH SHATTERING NEW INNOVATIONS
Yes there will be some but they won’t be new in 2010 if anyone would be able to talk about it in 2009. However managing social relationships in the overwhelmingly complex social web will be some that will surface in 2010. Maybe we see attempts to replace email – not because email is bad but because spam effectively destroyed it and no anti spam software ever managed to fix the problem. My personal goal – be off of email by end of 2010 – personally I’m off already but next year also business wise.

Axel

http://xeesm.com/AxelS

(my social map)

Esos sonidos que piensan que son ruidos

Estremeciendose suavemente con fino temblor,
ante la cercanía de un cuerpo conocido,
camina con lentitud y parece deternse,
juguetea en el dintel sin meterse por la ventana.

Los acordes en frecuencias inaudibles suenan,
y sólo vibra el silencio en mis oídos,
de nuevo lanzan sus llamaradas al aire,
y lentamente vuelven al mundo en forma de flores.

Entonces se escuchan estruendos,
fuertes sonidos de destrucción y estridencia,
claman los oídos de los no humanos por sosiego,
y los muertos parecen volver.

Son ciegos y sordos,
no se entienden y chocan entre si,
buscan correr entre las ondas del viento,
y se clavan torpemente en mis oídos.

Asustados y hartos.
se revuelven en los ojos fríos de aire sin movimiento,
caen y desaparecen sin ser escuchados,
crujen por siempre esos extraños ruidos.

Before midnight...

No puedo dormir, Me duele el estomago,
Estoy algo inquieto,
Y ya no puedo fumar.

De entre las nubes,
Como los rayos de luz,
Caen miles de lagrimas,
Llorando por algo.

Silencio,
La espera por mañana,
será suficiente excusa,
para volver a volar.

Do not believe on this...

Sacar la cruda con cerveza tiene muchas cosas positivas, sin embargo algunos de los efectos no positivos por no decir negativos, es que es muy posible que uno pueda volverse a emborrachar. Pero en realidad no es algo malo ni grave, solamente es parte importante del tiempo que parece detenerse. Es tan distinto el tiempo que uno piensa y el que corre en realidad.

Señores es buen momento para hablar con claridad, claro que tenemos superpoderes, y que en nuestras manos se escriben las siguientes pinceladas de nuestra vida, nosotros creamos nuestro futuro, me queda tan claro que ya no puedo más callarlo.

Ayer tuve más de una premoniciónn sobre el mundo que me espera y que quiero vivir, emprendimos un viaje desde el viernes y hoy domingo no me puedo bajar de la alfombra mágica voladora. Al final sé que todo está estallando por dentro y las luces de colores estan por salir.

Entre tantos ojos estan los ojos que miran absolutamente todo. Pero en vez de provocarme miedo me provocan preguntar que es lo que estan mirando. A un segundo de desaparecer y dejar de existir quiero confesar que el suave frio en mi s piernas me recuerda que aun soy un ser terrenal y que no puede vivir sin un poco de realidad de la que sabe a chocolate.

Sigue el sorteo en vivo por Mediotiempo.com

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

Checa el simulador del sorteo aquí

Quiero ir al antro...

Download Your Own Robot Scientist

 (by:Wired.com)



Ever wanted to have a robot to do your research for you? If you are a scientist, you have almost certainly had this dream. Now it’s a real option: Eureqa, a program that distills scientific laws from raw data, is freely available to researchers.
The program was unveiled in April, when it used readouts of a double-pendulum to infer Newton’s second law of motion and the law of conservation of momentum. It could be an invaluable tool for revealing other, more complicated laws that have eluded humans. And scientists have been clamoring to get their hands on it.
“We tend to think of science as finding equations, like E=MC2, that are simple and elegant. But maybe some theories are complicated, and we can only find the simple ones,” said Hod Lipson of Cornell University’s Computational Synthesis Lab. “Those are unreachable right now. But the algorithms we’ve developed could let us reach them.”
Eureqa is descended from Lipson’s work on self-contemplating robots that figure out how to repair themselves. The same algorithms that guide the robots’ solution-finding computations have been customized for analyzing any type of data.
The program starts by searching within a dataset for numbers that seem connected to each other, then proposing a series of simple equations to describe the links. Those initial equations invariably fail, but some are slightly less wrong than others. The best are selected, tweaked, and again tested against the data. Eureqa repeats the cycle over and over, until it finds equations that work.

What took Newton years to calculate, Eureqa returned in a few hours on a decent desktop computer. Lipson and other researchers hope Eureqa can perform the same wizardry with data that now defies scientists, especially those working at the frontiers of biology, where genomes, proteins and cell signals have proven fantastically difficult to analyze. Their interactions appear to follow rules that traditional analytical methods can’t easily reveal.
“There’s a famous quote by Emerson Pugh: ‘If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.’ I think that applies to all of biology,” said John Wikswo, a Vanderbilt University biophysicist who’s using the Eureqa engine in his own lab. “Biology is complicated beyond belief, too complicated for people to comprehend the solutions to its complexity. And the solution to this problem is the Eureqa project.”

Lipson made Eureqa available for download early in November, after being overwhelmed by requests from scientists who wanted him to analyze their data. In the meantime, he and Michael Schmidt, a Cornell University computational biologist responsible for much of Eureqa’s programming, continue to develop it.
An ongoing challenge is the tendency of Eureqa to return equations that fit data, but refer to variables that are not yet understood. Lipson likened this to what would happen if time-traveling scientists presented the laws of energy conservation to medieval mathematicians.
“Algebra was known. You could plug in the variable, and it would work. But the concept of energy wasn’t there. They didn’t have the vocabulary to understand it,” he said. “We’ve seen this in the lab. Eureqa finds a new relationship. It’s predictive, it’s elegant, it has to be true. But we have no idea what it means.”
Lipson and Schmidt are now devising “algorithms to explain what our algorithm is finding,” perhaps by relating unknown concepts to simpler, more familiar terms. “How do you explain something complicated to a child? That’s what it involves,” said Lipson. “It’s machine teaching, rather than machine learning.”
One set of incomprehensibly meaningful discoveries comes from Eureqa’s analysis of cellular readouts gathered by Gurol Suel, a University of Texas Southwestern molecular microbiologist who studies how cells divide and grow. But even if Eureqa can’t yet explain what it found, it’s still useful, said Suel.
“You can use this as a starting point for further investigations. It lets you think about new ideas of what’s going on in the cell, and generate new hypotheses about the properties of biological systems,” said Suel.
Sometimes Eureqa will require more data than it’s given before finding answers. In those cases, the program may be able to identify information gaps, and recommend experiments to fill them.
That functionality is included in the latest build of the program, and is being taken even further in a new Lipson-Wikswo project. They’re hooking a version of Eureqa directly to Wikswo’s experimental gadgetry.
“The program is going to adjust the valves, feeding different nutrients and toxins to the cells,” and it does this faster than any researcher, said Wikswo. “It comes up with the equations, plus the experiments needed to come up with the equations. It’s Eureqa on steroids.”
According to Wikswo, who studies the effects of cocaine on white blood cells, Eureqa can propose experiments that researchers would have difficulty imagining.
“In most of science, you try to keep everything constant except for one variable. You turn one knob at a time, and see how the system responds. That’s wonderful for linear systems,” he said. “But most biology is complex and non-linear. Emergent behaviors are very hard to understand unless you turn many knobs at a time, and we can’t figure out which knobs to turn. So we’re going to let Eureqa pick them.”
The Cornell team hasn’t counted downloads of their program, but it’s likely being used by researchers outside biology. As long as data fits on a spreadsheet, Eureqa can analyze it.
“In the past year, people have contacted us with some wild application ideas,” said Schmidt. “Everything from predicting the stock market to modeling the herding of cows.”
Images: 1) Hod Lipson running Eureqa in his office. 2) Diagrams of information flow through one of Lipson’s self-repairing robots (left) and Eureqa (right).

Un Angel triste

Sus hermosos luceros turquesa se quebraron,
en rios de tristeza y angustia fugaz,
sus alas se abrieron y en sus manos se quedaron,
sin fuerzas en las garras del dolor voraz.

Su hermoso rostro no iluminó los caminos,
su tristeza de nubes lleno el mar,
con ella millones de sueños perdidos,
no quedo ya el rostro de las madres al amar.

Un angelito de ojos turquesa esta llorando,
a sus manitas les duele el tiempo pasar,
en una nube esponjosa me está esperando,
no sabe que en mis sueños por siempre le he de abrazar.

En un punto cercano a los dos mundos,
donde el cielo y la tierra se quieren mirar,
entre colores claros y cariños profundos,
el consuelo del alma podrás alcanzar.

Llora angel angelito,
recuerda que el tiempo no puede parar,
si de ti no nace otra vez la fuerza,
todo en el mundo universo tendrá que acabar.

Cuando salga el Sol

Hoy me caí de los brazos de Dios,
y me he golpeado la espalda al aterrizar,
me duelen los ojos, los brazos y mis lagrimas al caer,
siento los huesos rotos y el espiritú quebrado.

Pero me das un abrazo que me cura los dolores,
tus besos me saben a la medicina de mi alma,
me pones un manto protector,
que se desvanece cuando te vas.

Son tantos los clavos de esta trampa,
que si respiro me entierro miles por doquier,
si guardo la respiración me asfixia en la espera eterna por tu piel.

Pero mañana cuando salga el Sol,
y las cicraticez se cierren,
cuando los niños griten y canten en el parque.
y los viejos sonrian condescendientes,
secarán mis lagrimas definiendo un nuevo día.

Con el carácter más grande,
y los sueños gigantescos,
con tu mano y la mia fundida por siempre,
descansarán todas nuestras pesadillas.

Cuando salga el Sol.

Carta abierta de Mark Zuckerberg, fundador de Facebook

(By: Mark Zuckerberg)

Facebook acaba de alcanzar los 350 millones de usuarios y vamos a hacer algunos cambios para dar un mejor servicio a esta comunidad en crecimiento. Para leer la carta de Mark, haz clic aquí.

A todos los usuarios de Facebook:

Este ha sido un gran año, durante el cual hemos hecho del mundo un lugar más abierto y conectado. Gracias a vuestra ayuda, más de 350 millones de personas utilizan Facebook en todo el mundo para compartir sus vidas online.

Para que esto fuera posible, nos hemos centrado en daros las herramientas necesarias para compartir y controlar vuestra información. Desde la primera versión de Facebook, creada hace cinco años, hemos desarrollado herramientas que os ayudan a controlar qué información compartís y con qué individuos o grupos. Pero esta tarea no está acabada y nuestros esfuerzos por mejorar la privacidad continúan.

El modelo actual de privacidad de Facebook gira en torno a las “redes”, es decir, comunidades vinculadas con tu centro de estudios, tu empresa o tu región. Este planteamiento funcionaba bien cuando la mayoría de usuarios de Facebook eran estudiantes, ya que era lógico que quisieran compartir contenido con compañeros de estudio.

Con el paso del tiempo empezamos a recibir peticiones para que añadiéramos redes para empresas y regiones. En la actualidad, tenemos redes incluso para países enteros, como India o China.

No obstante, puesto que Facebook ha seguido creciendo, algunas de estas redes reginales tienen hoy en día millones de miembros, y hemos llegado a la conclusión de que este formato no es el más conveniente para que nuestros usuarios tengan el control de su privacidad. Casi la mitad de todos los usuarios de Facebook pertenecen a una red regional, por lo que se trata de un tema importante para nosotros. Si construimos un sistema mejor, más de 100 millones de personas tendrán aún más control sobre su información.

Nuestro plan es eliminar totalmente las redes regionales y crear un modelo más simple para el control de la privacidad mediante el que podáis decidir si el contenido estará disponible para vuestros amigos, los amigos de vuestros amigos o todo el mundo.

Hemos añadido una función que muchos nos habéis pedido en más de una ocasión: la posibilidad de controlar quién ve los contenidos que creáis o cargáis en Facebook uno por uno. También vamos a satisfacer otra petición que hemos recibido de muchos de vosotros: simplificar la página de configuración de la privacidad combinando varias de las opciones. Si recordáis, empezamos a hablar de estos planes en julio pasado. Si queréis más información, podéis consultar el siguiente mensaje de blog.

Esta actualización eliminará las redes regionales y creará algunas opciones nuevas, por lo que en las próximas semanas os pediremos que reviséis y actualicéis vuestra configuración de privacidad. Os aparecerá un mensaje que explicará los cambios y os llevará a una página donde podréis actualizar la configuración. Cuando hayáis terminado, os mostraremos una página de confirmación para que podáis comprobar que habéis seleccionado las opciones que más se ajustan a vuestras preferencias. Como siempre, podéis cambiar la configuración cuando queráis.

Hemos trabajado muy duro para ofreceros el tipo de control que creemos es el más adecuado, pero también entendemos que las necesidades de cada persona son diferentes. Por eso, a pesar de que os sugeriremos una configuración basada en vuestro nivel de privacidad actual, la mejor manera de encontrar la configuración ideal para vosotros es que leáis todas las opciones y la personalicéis según vuestras preferencias. Os animo a todos a que hagáis esto y a que reflexionéis acerca de con quién estáis compartiendo información.

Gracias a todos por hacer de Facebook lo que es hoy y por contribuir a que el mundo sea un lugar más abierto y conectado.

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook: The Guardian To Integrate Facebook Connect & More

(By: The Next Web.com)

Facebook announced this morning at a briefing in which they covered  off recent site and user stats in London, that The Guardian newspaper will be integrating Facebook’s Connect across their site in the near future.

It’s a feature that has has to an extent been left to the blogging community and various web based companies such as Digg but now looks to be adopted by more mainstream media services and companies.
Globally Facebook has recorded 25,000 implementations of Connect which on the face of is a minimal amount considering they also announced Facebook now has 350 million users worldwide.
With the UK now having 23 million of those, there is a substantial audience which would be able to conveniently login to services such as the one the Guardian will be introducing.
Users data being seems to be compromised on a common occurrence of late and websites being able to pull a users data from a central location such as Facebook would surely increase security.
The Guardian Jobs third party databases were hacked back in October and it would be great to see the newspaper using this as an opportunity to use Facebook Connect for this and other services instead of just commenting.
Facebook also went through various other statistics and targets including CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanting to reach 1 billion users.

• The average Facebook user spends 25 minutes a day on the site.
• Facebook now has 90,000 apps
• X-Factor Facebook Fan Page pulled in 875,000 fans in 4 weeks.
• SkySports recorded 400,000 fans in the same period.
• 10 million users a day become a fan of a page.

The colossal amount of usage the fan pages are seeing is being met with equal investment in the development of them by brands such as the ones feature here.  The ability to communicate so closely with users exposed and using the brand is unparalleled by any other service at current.

Triple condicional o Triple IF en Excel

	Espero que encuentren esto útil, saludos
	Para poder tener una triple condicion o triple IF
	o triple SI en español
	lo que tienes que hacer es:
	tener 3 variables distintas en este caso:
	1.-cars or vans
	2.-diesel or magna
	3.-public or private
	quien te pide el triple IF te tiene que dar una regla
	como en este caso:
	Rule: cars, with diesel and private needs a check up
	entonces comienzas la formula de la siguientes forma:
	=SI(
	y te pide la prueba logica, que es:
	la celda donde esta la primer categoria en este caso es D9
	y esta debe ser igual a "car" (en excel cuando
	hagas referencia a letras debes
	ponerlas entre comillas). La prueba logica queda F9="Car"
	Una vez que pones la prueba logica, pones coma
	y te pide que hacer en caso
	de que la prueba sea positiva osea: si es car entonces que hace
	ahí pones el siguiente SI
	entonces te pide la siguiente prueba logica
	que debe ser si la siguiente columna cumple
	con la regla dada, en este caso es que sea diesel, entonces
	pones E9="diesel" pones coma y te pide
	que hacer en caso de que la prueba logica
	sea positiva y ahí pones el tercer SI.
	Vuelves a poner la prueba logica que en este
	caso es F9="private" y en respuesta correcta
	"check up" que es lo que pide la regla, pones
	coma y te pide el valor en caso de que sea falso
	y ahí pones "ok".
	Como todo lo anterior es solo en caso de que el
	valor de la primera condicion sea verdadero
	(que sea un auto, que tenga diesel y que sea
	privado) debes poner, el valor falso
	que es "ok" para las dos pruebas logicas que
	dejamos abiertas como se muestra en la formula:
	Esta es la formula completa como debe quedar con triple IF
	=SI(D9="car",(SI(E9="diesel",SI(F9="private","Check up","ok"),"ok")),"ok")
	Rule: cars, with diesel and private needs a check up
	Type	Gasoline	Status	Query	Aquí esta la
					formula aplicada
	Car	Diesel	private	Check up
	Van	Magna	private	ok
	Car	Diesel	public	ok
	Van	Magna	public	ok
	Car	Diesel	private	Check up
	Van	Magna	private	ok
	Car	Diesel	private	Check up
	Van	Magna	private	ok
	Car	Diesel	public	ok
	Van	Magna	public	ok
	Car	Diesel	private	Check up
	Van	Magna	public	ok
	Car	Diesel	private	Check up
	Van	Magna	public	ok
	Car	Diesel	private	Check up
	Van	Magna	public	ok
	Car	Diesel	private	Check up

Engineer Weight Loss

(By: Wired.com)

Do the math

Want to drop 10 pounds in two months? All you have to do is the math, says Autodesk founder and Hacker’s Diet author John Walker. Here’s the skinny:

1. Multiply the pounds you want to lose by the number of calories in a pound of fat: 10 x 3,500 = 35,000.
2. Divide the total by the days you’ll diet: 35,000 ÷ 60 = 583.
3. Calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate 100 calories per ten pounds of body weight
4. Calculate your calories expenditure from exercize
5. Then use the formula (BMR+Exercise)-diet=total allowed calories

Recalibrate your sensors

Try this: One night, eat only half the amount of food on your plate. Wait 30 minutes, assess your feelings of satiation, and then wait 90. If you're still not hungry, you've probably been overeating. Most people grossly overestimate the amount of food they need to feel full, says Dr. David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating. A sensible meal will keep you full for four hours, and a sensible snack, for two. Experiment with reducing your portion sizes, and serve yourself those meals on smaller plates or bowls.

Identify your danger zones

Then avoid them. Overeating is a compulsion like any other. It would be a bad idea for a shopping addict to go near a mall on Black Friday, or for a chronic gambler to book plane tickets to Vegas. Likewise, are you always pulling into the drive-through on your way home from work? Try taking a different route. Replace your clear glass cookie jars with fruit bowls. This goes for friends, as well. If you find yourself commiserating about dieting difficulties over your third beer, suggest meeting for coffee instead. Or a walk.

Don't deprive yourself

Think of long-term weight loss as a long, pleasant stroll, instead of a sprint to the finish line. Concentrate on accruing good habits slowly and painlessly. If you can eliminate 100 calories per day, that can add up to about 11 pounds a year, says Dr. Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating. 100 calories - that's less than the calories in a can of Coke! Substitute one glass of water for one can of soda a day, and you're well on your way to permanent weight loss.

Use peer pressure

Let your significant other know your intend to lose weight - they will help by suggesting that you skip dessert and by keeping the cookies out of the house. If you are really a exhibitionist you can now automatically Tweet your weight and your goal every time you step on a scale with WiThings scale

Exercise

A little exercise regularly can go a long way into helping you shed some pounds. At least 10 minutes of exercise a day can do you a world of good. If your workplace is close by, walk or use a bicycle to get to work. If it's too far, a combination of public transportation and walking could get you there; and in the process, you'll also earn points for being concerned about the environment!