Facebook Only Shares What You Tell It

5/10/10 4:16 PM

I’ve been reading a lot of complaints lately about Facebook and how everything is so public. I’m still trying to figure out why people are angry. Why would anyone think that anything they put online, regardless of what a website says, could actually be kept hidden? A recent post on Wired was another in the long list of issues with Facebook, “How can it fall to users when most of the choices don’t actually exist? I’d like to make my friend list private. Cannot. “I’d like to have my profile visible only to my friends, not my boss. Cannot. “I’d like to support an anti-abortion group without my mother or the world knowing. Cannot.” If you don’t want your mother to know that you are anti-abortion, than how anti-abortion are...

Sprint Understands What Teens Want

5/6/10 3:47 PM

Reuters reported yesterday that Sprint is putting forth a new cell phone plan where users receive “unlimited texting and Web surfing for $25 a month but limits phone calls to 300 minutes a month.” While ten minutes of talking on the phone each day may not seem like very much, the Beyond Talk plan is absolutely genius because many people, specifically teenagers, hardly ever talk on the phone anyway. Earlier in the day, Flowtown released the findings of a study that shows the percentage of 12-year olds who text is more than double that of those who actually talk on their cell phones. While the percentage of those who talk on cell phones increases with age, 77% of 17-year olds text while only 60% will talk on their cell phones, texting is still the preferred way of...

More Good Than Bad in Texting In and Out of the Classroom

5/4/10 1:27 AM

Even as a big fan of technology and someone who thinks that it’s only going to get bigger, I was still skeptical when I read about texting being used in the classroom. While I think that it is a good way to get students to communicate, it’s a little different when lessons are being taught via text messages. In Teaching by Texting Starts to Take Hold one study shows that utilizing texts to teach significantly improved students’ test scores. Though at this point it only seems to be just that—one study. The positive is that some teachers are realizing that the technology students are using anyway can be used to help them learn. Trying to get students to stop using their phones is fighting a losing battle, phones and texting are just too prevalent in today’s...

How Big Ben Can Win Back the Fans... Off the Field

4/22/10 4:26 PM

There’s one thing that Ben Roethlisberger can do that will win most people over again: Win football games. Winning solves everything. Kobe did it, Tiger is doing it already and it’s only been a few weeks. Heck, the Pirates win three games in a row and people are more likely to bring up this year’s World Series than the past 17 years. When Big Ben is back he’s got the Steelers on the verge of the playoffs, what are you going to talk about? Being the first team to win seven Super Bowls or this whole situation? It’ll be months, however, before Ben even has a chance to get on the field. He should start improving his image right now. In order to do that, Ben needs to communicate with his fans. He could do it by getting on TV, have a big press... 2 comments

Baseball 2010 Is Here!

4/5/10 12:28 AM

A few weeks ago I wrote about how this is my first season playing fantasy baseball, and if the rest of the season turns out to be anything close to opening night it will be the first of many. The first player on my fantasy team, the Asgard Assassins, to bat was Yankees’ catcher Jorge Posada. He hit a home run! It doesn’t take long to figure out that home runs are big in fantasy baseball because it scores in four of the five offensive categories. The next batter was new Yankees’ center fielder Curtis Granderson and pretty amazingly he cranked one out too! What a start! Unfortunately I missed these because I didn’t get home in time from the Easter party that I was at, but on the bright side there are 2,429 games remaining to watch this season. I had three Yankees...