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Facebook announced today that it would convert all users profiles into the “timeline” version.

Up until today, users naturally had the standard profile that would get tweaked and updated once every so often. Once Facebook developed Timeline, Mark Zuckerburg’s profile famously got “Timelined” as shown below:

Following Zuckerburg’s transition, users started voluntarily switching their profiles to the timeline version. It was adopted by many users and it also started bothered some users to the point of quitting Facebook.

Today, Facebook announced that all profiles will be converted into the timeline version. I am sure there is an inevitable mixed reaction that is waiting to happen. What do you think? Leave comments below

The most influential person in my life is Rebecca Black. Just last week, she instilled great insights about the world into my brain.

At first, I did not think that such a young person could know so much about the world but after being shown her hit video “Friday”  in my Comm 365 class, I gained valuable information about our world that I will use to the end of my days.

One of the most groundbreaking discoveries was that Thursday  precedes Friday. At first this seems obvious, but, upon closer inspection, the statement presents an arena for debate on the grounds of its legitimacy.

The modern calendar’s roots are based on observations of planetary movements by early astrologists. Using modern technology, scientists have concluded that a year is exactly 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds long. Divided into 7 day periods  known as weeks, each day was assigned an arbitrary name ranging from Sunday to Saturday.

Going back to Rebecca’s statement, she claims that Thursday precedes Friday, is this actually true? Which Thursday is she referring to? this Thursday or the next one? To simplify this I decided to use the time of year as a range of time for this analysis.

Early in the year, there are many Thursdays that are yet to come and comparing them to a single Friday, in January for example, would mean that the relevant Friday precedes many of the Thursdays that are yet to come.

Coming to this conclusion definitely made me question conventional truths that are assumed by many every day. It is this youthful perspective and the critical thinking that comes with it that helps us as Humans to evolve and develop our knowledge of the world around us by questioning conventional truths.

I really liked David Li’s post.

Ever since the iPhone took the world and ensured that not a single minute of free time is not wasted

I recently read Myles’ product review about the HTC Desire, when I saw him next time, he told me that he had actually bought this beautiful smartphone.

After reading the specifications and the review, I imagined the phone would make me dinner and dispense $100 bills. It didn’t but I must admit that the product did not fail to impress.

This experience taught me two things:

1. Even though most of these blogs that I’ve read, are very opinionated and do not have a lot of hard facts, but I found useful information that I could trust.

2. Writing about other people’s blogs is hard and I now know why we are required to refer to other student’s blogs.

I recently discoved a new function on facebook.

It allows you to view something called a “friendship” which shows a friend’s historical relationship with yourself or any other mutual friend you have.

I think the idea stemmed out of the “wall-to-wall” function which shows your and a friend’s back and fourth wall posts.

The reason i find this creepy is because facebook can pretty much keep track of all the people a user socializes with. This of course excludes people that aren’t on facebook, but that number is decreasing every year.

Facebook stores all the information, photos, etc. every user creates/uploads. This can be a very big privacy issue if this information gets into the wrong hands.

One scenario would be the government passing legislation giving it access to all of Facebook’s data. This information can be used to see which individuals associate with who.

Another scenario is someone hacking into Facebook’s servers and saving a lot of information.

Thankfully, Facebook is commited to security and privacy (at least according to their PR).

I really like how this video breaks down a commercial and exposes some interesting elements of commercials. The girl in the video states that she is “racially ambiguous” which I guess would make women from different cultures relate to her. This is an interesting point. Is she implying that if a commercial portrays a white woman of a certain age using a certain product in some setting, are women from other backgrounds less likely to form intentions of using the product as a result of watching the commercial? Wow, that was a long run-on sentence. What I loved most about this commercial is the last few sentences the girl says:

“buy the same tampons I do. Because I’m wearing white pants. And I have good hair. And you wish you could be me.”

That was a really awesome way of exposing what commercials are trying to do.. Buy what I use if you want to be whoever is promoting the product in the commercial.

I did some research about how the marketing department is viewed in corporations and found out some interesting facts and notions. It seems as marketing has been undervalued by the other departments. Maybe the other departments were not well trained to identify value (ha ha). According to my research, marketing has been undervalued within organizations in the past. When cutbacks are required in order to sustain a business during a downturn, the marketing department was usually the primary target for cuts in the past. Marketing was often seen as being an auxiliary force in a business. It is not directly involved in producing the good/service or providing it. It is more about finding out what customers want, communicating the benefits, and portraying the product in certain ways all with the goal of increasing sales and customer satisfaction. During an economic downturn, firms tend to compete more fiercely for a diminishing market demand. Cutting the marketing budget during a time of increased competition doesn’t sound like the best idea.

Who would have ever thought that under all that expensive equipment is a nice tidy whitey diaper?

I stumbled upon this very interesting article about astronautics wearing diapers in space. I guess NASA has been trying to hide this fact from common knowledge, but apparently they do wear them.

This made me wonder why didn’t Pampers offer to sponsor this diaper and help pay for flights/equipment. Coupled with a baby astronaut commercial, this would be awesome!

Of course I am sure it will take away some of the prestige of being an astronaut and spawn lots of jokes.

Here’s an example from another blog:

“They call it the Maximum Absorbency Garment. I call it the Space Pooper. But why do astronauts use them?”

My own personal joke would be “Is it so scary to fly through the atmosphere that you guys demanded diapers?”

There is an informative video about these so called “space diapers” in the following link:

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5679558/why-do-astronauts-wear-space-diapers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+gizmodo/full+(Gizmodo)&utm_content=Google+International

Over the summer, I used the washroom in the north side of Park Royal. While washing my hands and humming “twinkle twinkle little star…” I noticed this in the mirror:

To this day I am still unsure whether that was placed there by accident or whether it was targeting women through men. Both sides have strong arguments. From one side, such a sentence is clearly targeting women. Mostly because no good reasons come up right away of why on earth would anyone think its a good idea to put something like that in a men’s washroom. Was it some sort of joke?

On the other hand, this ad surprised me and made me stop and think about it. I have to confess I reread it a couple of times to make sure I am not missing something. I did realize that I posted this picture on Facebook and told at least 10 different people about what I have seen. Essentially, I was using word of mouth to increase awareness about this “side-walk” sale in Park Royal even though I did not come there for the sale, nor did I buy, nor had an increased intend to buy something due to the sale. Yet, I was still spreading the word about this sale just because I thought it was placed in a ridiculous spot.

Park Royal

I am sure everyone has seen those “don’t mess with karma” commercials where an innocent looking stick man gets squished by something after failing to recycle his empty plastic bottle. For those who haven’t, here is an example:

Fear of the Supernatural … Augmented

Playing on people’s fears of supernatural forces in order to mold their behavior isn’t a new concept. The Christian Church was infamous for utilizing this method to extract donations from citizens in the medieval ages. According to priests at the time, anyone who sinned had to come to church and pay a “penance” and the priest would grand them forgiveness. This would lead the sinner to cease feeling guilty and relieve him/her of the fear of the impending punishment and the church would get a cut in the process.

The following ad has taken the same concept except instead of playing on fear of supernatural forces, the following ad takes on a more “direct” approach. It suggests that if you choose not to join the sustainability movement, whether you’re a celebrity, an office worker, or a student, your life will be abruptly ended by someone around you in a gruesome way. It was quite effective at reaching a wide audience by targeting people from different walks of life in the ads. It included planting the idea into future generations and notified celebrities that they are no exception.

An aspect of the ad which I thought could be improved is having someone who didn’t put up their hand explode. This would expose group-think dynamics and show that the “button sees through your lies.” We all know that even if we haven’t fully committed to sustainability, in any particular situation where we are asked for a show of hands of who did, most of us would put up our hands.