There Are No Prizes For Second Place

Image via Wikipedia

I have seen many motivational posters online, interpreting personal milestones, ambition and the strong desire for advancement. Although many won't admit the driving force for success, everyone wants to finish, I always want to achieve first place. A chance to be admired, and gain the rewards that follow. Definitely! I achieved this today like consuming the recommended intake of at least five portions of fruit or vegetables. Soon destiny will provide milk and it will be glorious! There are no prizes for second place...

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We're All Monkeys, What's On Your Mind?

Image by Balakov via Flickr

I'm sure that most people have encountered an array of experiences online, especially considering that many of us maintain an online presence. Facebook hosts over 400 million active users, that's more than I can count and for the majority - everyone they know uses the social network.

Considering the amount of hours that people spend interacting with peers on Facebook, the impact our online actions have affect those offline. I have written about relationships recently but Facebook applies a layer across our many social connections. It has become the default social network and integral to how people conduct themselves.

Rather than making phone calls to see how everyone is doing, it can be a lot easier to check one's Facebook status, read their Wall, and see what other friends of theirs are saying. And when we do meet face to face, we can reference what we've seen on Facebook, instead of starting with an empty slate.(louisgray.com)

Not everyone shares the same views on what should be the social norms, how we should behave and how much information we should share online. The requirement to constantly update our friends, family and fans with our latest actions. It's a process that has become too automated and we're spending more time online than ever. Are we eventually going to reach the point where we are slaves of both technology and our own base appetites, and lose what makes us human. Just like how humans are portrayed in WALL•E, the 2008 computer-animated science-fiction allegorical romance film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Quite the mouthful, blame Wikipedia! I'm not an early adopter, trend setter and I don't even have the biggest hair but I think technology has definitely taken away humanity's need to put effort into relationships. We're all monkeys, what's on your mind?

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Go On Boy

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

I participated in an intriguing conversation with friends yesterday evening, the topic being a program about people with tourettes! Although I sympathise with those with the condition, the situations that materialise can provide entertainment. I was basically out in Dartford to interact with the locals, recruiting friends for my birthday arrangements and listen to the latest stories! The following few weeks should be intense because there is so much planned that I'm considering the need to retire. After Dartford I travelled to my partners for a night of Thoughts & Crosses and alcohol consumption.

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Then You Should Say What You Mean...

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Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is a unique interpretation of the classic Lewis Carroll tale. I have been full of anticipation for the movie since it was announced, does it live up to the hype and will audiences appreciate this darker version?

In the film, Alice is now nineteen years old and accidentally returns to Underland, a place she visited thirteen years previously. She is told that she is the only one who can slay the Jabberwocky, a dragon controlled by the Red Queen that terrorizes Underland's inhabitants.

Burton had stated that he wanted to make it feel more like a story than a series of events and that he does not see this as a sequel to previous films. I'm surprised because neither statement I would associate with the movie because it certainly feels like a sequel and the Jabberwocky wasn't exactly a core character. Anyway, this is still a decent movie, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter were impressive, the CGI was awesome but my partner and I both expected so much more.
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• Alice In Wonderland Movie Review: A Bitter Underland [Review] (kotaku.com)

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

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The Facebook relationship status, how much can we read into it's significance? It's almost become a passive-aggressive way to define that you’re ready to become exclusive, to announce to your friends followers that you’re off the market! So does it make it more real if it appears on Facebook? I have had a relationship that’s gone in the opposite direction so I could be apprehensive but I feel comfortable to announce to my network that I have met someone that makes me really happy.

Love 2.0 is the definition of love told through the medium of Web 2.0 services. I believe that not enough is known about this to be able to present what the social norms should be but for many people, the manner in which they present themselves on Facebook has come to mirror how they see themselves in real life. Admittedly 'It's Complicated' only indicates that you should consider reflection instead of announcing that there's uncertainty involved.

The social network helps us connect and share with the people in our lives. Providing the functionality to distribute every aspect of our lives through Photos, Videos, Status Updates, Imported Items, Groups and Pages. I don't share the view that the relationship is not legitimate if it's not announced on Facebook, if you're comfortable and want to share your commitment then it serves a purpose. Beats the usage of a group text message to announce to your close friends that your expecting another child! I heard about this recently and there's an opportunity for Facebook here, although I truly hope it's not considered!!

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Location Based Camping

Image by gigaman via Flickr

I'm considering travelling the country to attend several festivals this year, in fact I'm going to them all, every last one of them needs attention. At festivals it would be an injustice not to participate in camping, I have envisioned that it's probably going to be difficult to locate every temporary living accommodation at each location.

Here's the proposition, the Google Maps navigation points, I need life-sized versions of those for assistance although I suspect that will be an attractive acquisition for the opportunist camper. I can imagine walking a distance, only for the conclusion to be another site or the toilets!

"I thought we were camping in the red area"

On the subject of location, Google has been awarded a patent on location-based advertising. Now anyone who wants to add GPS-based relevance to their mobile ads will likely have to go through Google. Hopefully that will be applied before the festivals, especially considering I will have on my possession a life-sized navigation point for convenience! Anyway, more on that in another post!
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I Know This Because...

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We have front row seats for this theatre of mass destruction. The demolitions committee of Project Mayhem wrapped the foundation columns of a dozen buildings with blasting gelatin...

Twitter recently outlined changes to its geo-tagging API, Tweets are tagged with specific GPS coordinates but support for only latitude and longitude coordinates was considered a bit rubbish. Now they have introduced context, turning them into locations and providing the ability to compete with location-based services such as Foursquare or Gowalla. Now if you want to inform more than your imaginary friend about your location on Twitter you can do so, now for the credit-card records...

our goal is to provide a few more options to API developers (and the users they are servicing) through this contextual information. people, we find, inherently want to talk about a "place". a place, for a lot of people, has a name and is not a latitude and longitude pair. (37.78215, -122.40060), for example, doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people -- but, "San Francisco, CA, USA" does. we're also trying to help users who aren't comfortable annotating their tweets with their exact coordinates, but, instead, are really happy to say what city, or even neighborhood, they are in. annotating your place with a name does that too.

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