Get The Knowledge – a collation of online articles by the people at Techdept. » Research

Here’s how people look at your facebook profile, literally

TechDept — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:57:07 +0000

When potential dates, employers and friends glance at your online social profiles, what do they see? EyeTrackShop, a startup that runs eye-tracking studies for advertisers, helped Mashable find out by applying its technology to the profile pages of popular social networks.

The study used the webcams of 30 participants to record their eye movements as they were shown profile pages fromFacebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Klout, Reddit, Digg, Tumblr, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Pinterest at 10-second intervals. What participants looked at on each page and in what order is recorded in the images below.

By Sarah Kessler for Mashable, 30 Nov 2011.

What people love and hate about the iPhone 4S

TechDept — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:22:47 +0000

Here’s a look at what people love and hate about the iPhone 4S from ChangeWave Research.

As you can see, people love Siri, the ease of use, and the nice camera. They hate the battery life and the fact that it doesn’t have 4G.

By Jay Yarow and Jon Terbush for Business Insider, 01 Dec 2011.

Trend report: is the industry ready for mobile?

TechDept — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:00:45 +0000

Since 2007 the media industry has been proclaiming it as the “year of mobile”, however it looks like 2012 might finally prove to be the “year”. Mike Fletcher speaks to some leading agencies to find out how the industry will finally take advantage of mobile.

There’s an in-joke that’s been doing the rounds for a while now among people who work with mobile.

As far back as 2007, influencers and analysts have pinpointed each subsequent year as “The Year of Mobile”, the year when finally, the mobile market will explode and marketing spend on the mobile device will rocket in line with consumer behaviour.

As each ensuing year came and went, the prediction carried increasing ridicule, while the medium continued to struggle into maturity.

By Mike Fletcher for Media Week, 10 Nov 2011.

Facebook ‘may be changing brains’

TechDept — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:00:54 +0000

Facebook may be changing people’s brains as well as their social world, research has shown.

Scientists have found a direct link between the number of “Facebook friends” a person has and the size of specific parts of the brain.

The regions involved have roles in social interaction as well as memory and at least one is implicated in autism.

It could be that the differences seen are due to the effects of online activity on the brain.

By Google News, 27 Oct 2011.

The world at seven billion

TechDept — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:00:52 +0000

The world’s population is expected to hit seven billion in the next few weeks. After growing very slowly for most of human history, the number of people on Earth has more than doubled in the last 50 years. Where do you fit into this story of human life? Fill in your date of birth to find out.

Visit site

For BBC News: World, 27 Oct 2011.

The digital economy

TechDept — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:00:40 +0000

Digitization is creating a second economy that’s vast, automatic, and invisible — thereby bringing the biggest change since the Industrial Revolution.

In 1850, a decade before the Civil War, the United States’ economy was small — it wasn’t much bigger than Italy’s. Forty years later, it was the largest economy in the world. What happened in-between was the railroads. They linked the east of the country to the west, and the interior to both. They gave access to the east’s industrial goods; they made possible economies of scale; they stimulated steel and manufacturing — and the economy was never the same.

Deep changes like this are not unusual. Every so often — every 60 years or so — a body of technology comes along and over several decades, quietly, almost unnoticeably, transforms the economy: it brings new social classes to the fore and creates a different world for business. Can such a transformation — deep and slow and silent — be happening today?

By W. Brian Arthur for McKinsey Quarterly, Oct 2011.

What you shouldn’t post on your facebook page if you want a job

TechDept — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:00:45 +0000

Kashmir Hill, Forbes’ indispensable privacy blogger, posted this chart today, drawn from a survey of employers. Three things to note. 1) 95 percent of employers say they use social media sites to ferret out more information about job candidates. 2) If these employers informed these job candidates why they were dropped, Facebook as we know it might not exist.

That’s not because social media is bad for job candidates, per se, but rather that the sense people have that they are just talking with their homies would evaporate. It would become clear that Facebook is, in fact, a quasi-public forum in which what you say attaches very strongly to your identity. It’s the persistence that makes it different from “real life” and it’s the persistence that Timelines is going to highlight.

By Alexis Madrigal for the Atlantic, 03 Oct 2011.

AIDS puzzle solved by computer gamers

TechDept — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:00:29 +0000

Computer game skills could help save lives, and not just virtual ones.

As fanciful as it may sound at first, gamers onFoldit, a crowdsourced, online protein folding simulator from the University of Washington,actually managed to solve a longstanding problem in AIDS research that has vexed scientists for more than a decade. And they did so in about 10 days.

Three players in particular were able to build upon each other to establish the most accurate model to date of an elusive protease enzyme in the AIDS-like Mason-Pfizer monkey virus.

By Carl Franzen for TPM Idea Lab, 20 Sept 2011.

The twelve attributes of a truly great place to work

TechDept — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 09:00:50 +0000

More than 100 studies have now found that the most engaged employees — those who report they’re fully invested in their jobs and committed to their employers — are significantly more productive, drive higher customer satisfaction and outperform those who are less engaged.

But only 20 per cent of employees around the world report that they’re fully engaged at work.

It’s a disconnect that serves no one well. So what’s the solution? Where is the win-win for employers and employees?

By Tony Schwartz for Harvard Business Review Blog, 19 September 2011.

Web surfing helps at work

TechDept — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 09:00:41 +0000

Don’t feel guilty about browsing the Internet at work—turns out it may actually improve your performance.

According to a new study, Web browsing can actually refresh tired workers and enhance their productivity, compared to other activities such as making personal calls, texts or emails, let alone working straight through with no rest at all.

The study, “Impact of Cyberloafing on Psychological Engagement,” by Don J.Q. Chen and Vivien K.G Lim of the National University of Singapore, was presented last week in San Antonio, Texas, at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, an association of management scholars.

By Rachel Emma Silverman for The Wall Street Journal, 22 August 2011.