Opinion: Happy People
A week ago, there was a news article published in the New York Times on the effects of television (TV) on a person’s happiness. The article mentioned that:
“… the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy… TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less”
The study acknowledges that it does not conclusively show that the watching TV is the main cause unhappiness. It only shows the negative correalation. So even if you turn off your TV, it may not neccessarily make you any happier.
After doing some thinking about TV in my life, I realize that I seem to watch more TV shows when I am unhappy or bored. Rather than TV being the source of unhappiness for me, it is actually a avenue to “cool” myself off. I wonder if there are others who would use TV to the same effect though….
At this juncture, I guess most people would tell themselves the over-used line: “balance is the key”. I doubt we can go without TV. Especially since TV has gotten more “alive” with reality shows, movies and other kinds of entertainment. Moreover, TV may be the only source of news for some people who doesn’t read the newspaper much.
It would have been more helpful if the study had shown, how much TV is too much. But I think that’s another area that is hard to come up with a conclusive judgment.
Humour: A Thanksgiving parody
Saw this comic in one of my Google Reader feeds. It was posted on All Things Digital and first published by Geek Culture’s Joy of Tech. Its a Thanksgiving parody by Nitrozac and Snaggy. I actually found it quite interesting even though it was drawn up 2 years ago… Hope its not too distasteful to some….
Thanksgiving Parody published by Geek Culture
Source: http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1180b.html Cheers!
Thoughts: Deviation
I guess I should deviate from my usual tech-focused posts once in a while…
It’s been a while since I have stopped keeping my blog as a personal diary of my life, opting instead to blog about things that are of interest to me or issues that I can’t seem to get off my mind… Frankly, after stopping personal posts for a while, I am now a little puzzled as to how to go about writing a post that is personal and documenting my personal life.
This change in attitude to blogging was probably due to reading too many privacy related articles and spending too much time online that it became hard to resist the instinctual urge to have my posts redacted.
Looking back to the time when I started my first blog at blogger on October 14th 2004, writing about personal feelings and thoughts, I can see the transition my posts had in terms of content. I can vaguely remember which post I had written more, but had it cut before posting. All seems well then, but after a substantial amount of posts, I began to wonder if its worth my time to write something only to have it cut. The essence of the posts seems to be lost. Furthermore, as time goes on, I began to question the rationale and the need to post it online. Shouldn’t your thoughts be kept in the good ‘ol locked diary
However, I must admit that having posts that are closer to the heart (and less in the head…) does have some perks. Reading them again (like now) really brings back memories. Its something like engraving your history on a piece of the web…
Unlike dairy pages which would oxidize over time and thus become unreadable, putting thoughts on the web is like immortalizing your thoughts as it will be kept there and not expire as long as the web exists.
Anyway, from my previous blog… 10 memorable entries for me (these aren’t necessarily the top 10 as there are a few more…)
- Emotions: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2007/12/troubled.html
- Losses (Family): http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2007/11/douse-of-flame.html
- Economics: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2007/09/economical-savings.html
- Crowding a crowded train: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2006/11/scene-from-nel.html
- Abolish Homework!: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2006/11/news-article-abolish-homework.html
- Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2006/09/back-to-normal-and-imcb-photos.html
- So-called holidays: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2006/05/start-of-so-called-june-holidays.html
- Graduation: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2005/10/153rd-anniversary-speech-graduation.html
- Christmas ecstasy: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2005/12/haha-yea.html
- Exam Withdrawal Syndrome: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2005/11/exam-withdrawal-syndrome-ews.html
Reading the aforementioned entries had me re-living the emotions and thoughts I had at the point of time — events which I seemed to have forgotten… It actually felt quite refreshing…
Although moving to this current blog on December 22nd/23rd 2008, I had limited myself with regards to the posting of personal information because of future concerns, maybe its time again to let myself a little loose and reintroduce some of the personal aspects I had in my old blog…
However, these type of personal post would most probably not appear as frequently as they do on my old blog, but I guess once in a while, its good to take the monotony out of the usual stuff.
I.N: Facebook’s Money Pot
Main Story: Most technology websites and news sites would already have announced that Facebook has recently rolled out a “verified apps program”. According to Techcrunch, the “program was first announced over the summer at their F8 Developer Conference”. From now on, Third party facebook applications will be categorized into into “Great Apps”, “Verified Apps” (trusted apps), and everything else.
So how to get in? You pay. After going through facebook’s initial vetting process, you have to pay $375 to get the verified badge… However, that’s not the end. The badge is only good for a year. In order to retain it, you pay again.. annually.
Reading the details of the program, one would no doubt have to agree that the scale is tipped very much in Facebook’s favour. There is a huge money making potential in this program, especially since many developers put many hours into developing the application.
It is still early to say whether this program will be successful as some applications are already used by so many that the developer doesn’t really need to get it verified unless FB steps in and decides to take them out till they get verification. However, if FB were to do that, it may backfire.
Over to Microsoft, the Windows Live SkyDrive Team announced that Window Live Skydrive storage limit will jump “soon” to 25GB. Furthermore, new features like, downloading of photos directly to your Windows Live Photo Gallery, downloading an entire folder in one compressed file will be made available.
For those who store lots of files online and are running out of space, I guess we’ve got one new service to store them. Coupled with Office live workspace and Live Mesh, we can comfortably store a substantial amount of our lives online (not that we aren’t already doing so… with facebook, flickr and our blogs…).
On the issue of having our lives online, the recent move by youtube may put our lives in a clearer, and sharper view. YouTube was reported to be testing a even higher resolution videos. Up till now, YouTube already provides an option to view higher quality versions for some videos and you can also append “&fmt=18″ to the URLs. However it seems that if you add “&fmt=22″, some YouTube videos are now available at an even higher quality.
Looking up the web, it is reported that the difference in quality are as follows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID (standard format – mono, resolution: 320×180)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID&fmt=18 (stereo, resolution: 480×270)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID&fmt=22 (stereo, resolution: 1280×720)
The higher resolution videos aren’t available for all videos yet. But is something to look forward to for those frequent YouTube video viewers..
Cheers!
FTI: Google Mail (Gmail) has themes!
Google Mail a.k.a. Gmail has been improved under the hood far too many times to count. However, one feature often neglected is the color scheme of gmail which cannot be changed. Long time users of Gmail has created plugins in browsers like firefox to enable the theme-ing of gmail.
Up till now, I’ve been using Stylish plugin for Firefox and Cascading Style Sheets to theme my gmail. One problem with this is that it is only available on my personal computer, and the styles aren’t resistant to Gmail Code changes.
Following in the direction taken by Google;s Personalized Homepage, Google has implemented themes on Gmail also.
According to the Gmail Blog, the developers
“wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we’re launching today, there’s a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time…”
“…We’ve also done a minor facelift to Gmail’s default look to make it crisper and cleaner — you might notice a few colors and pixels shifted around here and there.”
It is definitely a step in the right direction for the gmail theme to provide customization options for users. At least now, the theme changes aren’t limited to your own personal computer.
Maybe Gmail can now go a step further and allow users to upload a theme? However, I guess that will be a security issue.
Gmail Theme Settings
To apply the new themes, go to the Themes tab in the Settings page..
To read more about the themes, head over to Gmail’s Help Center.
Anyway, my current favourites for now are “Graffiti” and “Desk”. What are yours?
Opinion: Can you give up your email?
According to BBC News, the new U.S. President Elect, Barack Obama may be giving up his email during the course of his presidency as “transparency laws would open his correspondence to public view.” In fact, I was surprised that that neither Bill Clinton nor George W Bush used their email duing their presidency.
Reading that report, I wondered how things would be like to actually give up your email. This question got me thinking for quite a while…
Would I be able to do it?
My Conclusion: It is possible… Only for a short while.
I thought of a few possible scenarios after giving up email. Yes, we can stop using our emails and depend solely on new web trends like Facebook Private messages, Twitter or FriendFeed messages. Going one even further, we can create a private blog on services like WordPress.com or Blogger and get your friends to direct any messages there. WordPress.com also has a theme like the prologue theme which would be perfect for such usage.
However, if we look further into all the “solutions” I came up with, the essence of all these “solutions” is still the act of sending and recieving of messages a la email..
So, physically, you might seem to have given up on using the email, but psychologically, you did not…
At this juncture. one may start to ask about other services such as Instant Messaging (IM). However, unlike email, IM does not have the benefit of allowing the recipient to be absent at the point where the chat is being initiated. Sure, you can use offline messaging, but email is still more suited for large amount of text per message compared to IM.
Reading through this post, it seems that I am just finding reasons to hold on to my email… This may be true to a certain extent, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is an addiction. Rather. it is because email is just crisp and simple.
So…. What do you think?
Articles mentioned in this post:
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I.N: Microsoft and Google.. updates on services.
Google and Microsoft has been pushing constantly into the domains of one another. Microsoft has been playing the catch up game with Google’s online services while Google is trying to use its online services to encroach into Microsoft’s desktop territory. It is an unspoken competition for users.
I.N. this week
