Face-to-face time makes us happier than Facebook - News, Gadgets The Happiness Barometer, conducted in 16 countries across the globe, was based on the Coca-Cola Happiness Index, which surveyed between 500 to 1,000 people per country. Almost two-fifths, or 40 per cent, of those surveyed said catching up with their loved ones after work was the happiest time of their day, while more than 20 per cent said they were happiest when eating with their families. By contrast, only 5 per cent said they were happiest when connecting with friends online, and even less - 2 per cent - said the first text message of the day made them joyful. Families and partners were, by far, the biggest source of happiness for almost 80 per cent of those surveyed, with friends coming up next at 15 per cent. "Despite our celebrity driven culture, fame is not likely in itself to be a primary source of happiness. Instead, real happiness depends on our connecting with people, especially through love and kindness," the study said.
The 2011 TIME 100 Wael Ghonim embodies the youth who constitute the majority of Egyptian society — a young man who excelled and became a Google executive but, as with many of his generation, remained apolitical due to loss of hope that things could change in a society permeated for decades with a culture of fear. Over the past few years, Wael, 30, began working outside the box to make his peers understand that only their unstoppable people power could effect real change. He quickly grasped that social media, notably Facebook, were emerging as the most powerful communication tools to mobilize and develop ideas. By emphasizing that the regime would listen only when citizens exercised their right of peaceful demonstration and civil disobedience, Wael helped initiate a call for a peaceful revolution.
What payment options do retailers have for mobile sites, apps? Consumers can sign into their Amazon account to make one-click mobile purchases Mobile payments let retailers close the loop on their marketing initiatives and drive revenue via the mobile Web and applications. But what options are out there? As the world awaits the coming revolution that will result when near field communication technology is preinstalled in every handset and RFID readers are installed at every point of sale, retailers should consider launching mobile commerce-enabled sites.
DWP commits to major IT changes - 19 May 2010 - Computing DWP is to make wide-ranging changes to its IT infrastructure The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) is to make wide-ranging changes to its IT infrastructure in an effort to achieve efficiency savings equivalent to £1.4bn imposed by the previous Labour government, under the five-year Comprehensive Spending Review, currently in its final year. The Department has suffered from poorly executed IT projects in the past and more recently operations have been bothered by strikes by Unite worker at HP's EDS division. In its recently published business plan for 2010-11, the DWP is to negotiate a new contract for desktop services from September 2010 valued at some £200m per annum over six years, which the report says “will provide savings of some 20 per cent.” The department signed a desktop services contract with Fujitsu in February this year and an infrastructure contract with BT in the same month.
Introduction to the Middle Way Method I want to introduce you to The Middle Way Method, an organizational system I created and have been using to keep me and my projects on task. In 2006, I decided to learn how to be more effective with planning. I had tried a few planning systems, and while they all had something I found useful, not fit my lifestyle or personality perfectly. An Internet search about making planner pages brought me to D*I*Y Planner.
Digital exclusion: "Learning IT skills changed my lif 23 May 2010Last updated at 16:43 By Joanne Babbage Business reporter, BBC News, North London Annmarie Niles is about to start a degree in Digital Media In September, Annmarie Niles, 24, starts a degree in Digital Media at London Metropolitan University. Remarkable, really, given that just 18 months ago she did not know how to send an email. "If someone had said to me I'd be going to University and doing a degree using computers I'd never ever have believed them," she says. Ms Niles has been having free computer lessons at the Islington Computer Skills Centre based at Finsbury Library in London.
Government needed to take out botnets, says expert Government involvement is necessary in order to take out malware botnets, according to one expert. Sebastian Zabala, a security expert and senior project manager for the UK and Sweden for Panda Security, said if security firms take out botnets themselves then they become an 'attacker'. It follows the news that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has shut down a rogue internet service provider (ISP). Neal Stephenson to Bring His Metaverse To The App Store With “Th When people first started playing with the iPad, a common comparison was to the interactive, tablet-like book (, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer: a Propædeutic Enchiridion) featured in best-selling author Neal Stephenson’s steampunk sci-fi novel A Diamond Age, so it seems like a natural fit that Stephenson will soon be coming to iPad with an app of his own. The project’s called The Mongoliad, a wonderfully stupid title that sounds like a gag from the lost sequel to John Barth’s Sotweed Factor. But the idea is sound: Stephenson and a few fellow authors including Greg Bear and Nicole Galland will be releasing a set of serialized stories to the App Store, presenting “an ongoing stream of nontextual, para-narrative and extra-narrative stuff” that will allow readers to interact and create their own stories in the Mongoliad universe with some “pretty cool tech.” Related
YouTube's First Video Uploaded Five Years Ago Today Although YouTube's birthday is officially February 14, 2005, the first video was actually uploaded to the site exactly five years ago, on April 23, 2005. The video is titled "Me at the zoo." It was shot by Yakov Lapitsky and it's only 19 seconds long, showing one of YouTube's founders, Jawed Karim, at the San Diego Zoo. Top 10 YouTube Tips for Small Businesses This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. Video can be a very powerful tool for businesses of any size, but YouTube's free-to-use model, ease of use and mass market audience means it's a great channel for small businesses. However, like any tool, in order to get the most of it, it needs to be used well. We've pulled together ten top tips to help you get the most out of YouTube.
Why Retention Should Be Your Top Priority in Social Media Market Jeremy Richardson heads up Business Development at Mixpanel, Inc. a real-time analytics service that helps companies understand how users behave with web applications. Everyone in social media knows that virality is the number one metric to track if you want to be a success. If a game goes viral, then there’s no stopping it, right? On the surface, this may seem correct. However, I believe that there's a much better metric for businesses to pay attention to: Retention. How a 40,000+ Employee Company Trains its Employees on Social Me If you need further evidence that social media is here to stay in the corporate world, look no further than Telstra, the Australian telecom giant. The 40,000+ person company makes social media training mandatory for its employees and formalized a policy of “3Rs” - responsibility, respect and representation. Taking things a step further, today the company is trying something about as transparent as it gets – publishing their entire social media training guide online, so that anyone can check it out, learn and critique.We got a chance to take a look at the guide, which takes the form of a comic book but also includes narration from a speaker (in a cool Australian accent too). It starts with the very basics – like “what is Facebook?” – but eventually moves into much more complex issues like “what if my [personal] blog post is critical of Telstra?”
9 Tips for Enriching Your Presentations With Social Media Olivia Mitchell is a presentation trainer and blogger. Her blog has a wealth of presentation tips and she has written a free eBook, "How to Present with Twitter and Other Backchannels." Follow her on Twitter. Pioneer presenters are using social media to engage their audience and extend the reach of their ideas. Twitter, Facebook, and numerous custom online tools allow presenters to create a backchannel for their audience's ideas and feedback.
Content vs. Technology: What MySpace and AOL Have in Common The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space. When a group of people starts discussing social media, it usually takes only a few seconds until it becomes a discussion about the most popular and widely used social media tools. Twitter , Facebook , and YouTube dominate the discussion today.