Users can decide what happens with their email and other accounts after they die.
Google has launched a tool that lets users decide what happens with their email, Google Plus and other accounts after they die – or become inactive online for any other reason.
Called “inactive account manager,” the feature lets users of Google’s services tell the company what to do with email messages and other data if their account becomes inactive.
For example, Google says, users can choose to delete their data after three, six or 12 months of inactivity. Or they can choose specific people to receive the data.
Besides Gmail and Google Plus, other services covered include YouTube, the photo-sharing service Picasa and Blogger. Google Inc., based in Mountain View, California, says it will warn users through a secondary email address or a provided phone number before taking any action.
It’s always a useful task to put some perspective onto the rate of technological change over the last decade or two.
I have talked about Generation Y and the millenials in an earlier post, with the video of the toddler using an iPad with ease, but being dumbfounded by a magazine, illustrating perfectly how the children of the internet age are true digital natives.
What’s really interesting to look into is the way the new ‘totally mobile’ generation are using the internet, social media and connectivity in different ways to the rest of us.
Just this month the Pew Research Centre released a new study into smartphone adoption among American teens. One of the key findings was how a quarter of teenagers from the study are now ‘mobile-mostly’ internet users, with their smartphone the primary way of going online versus a desktop PC or laptop.
The survey looked at technology use among 802 12-17 year olds and their parents. Here are five key findings from the study.
78% of all teens now have a mobile phone (up from just 45% in 2004).
37% of all teens have smartphones (up from just 23% in 2011).
23% of teens have a tablet computer, a level comparable to the general adult population.
95% of teens use the internet.
74% teens ages 12-17 say they access the internet on mobile phones, tablets, and other mobile devices at least occasionally.
The statistics also reveal how the ‘totally mobile’ generation use their devices to create content (photos and video) and share more widely across social media. It’s also worth noting how little teens use voice relative to text and internet services to communicate with each other. Here’s the full breakdown from Pew of what teens use their mobiles for.
83% take pictures.
64% share pictures with others.
60% play music.
46% play games.
32% swap videos.
31% exchange instant messages.
23% access social networks.
21% use email.
11% purchase things.
These figures are based on studies of US teenagers but many of these trends will be similar to teens in Western Europe and other developed parts of the world. As Mary Madden, senior research for the Pew Research Centre’s Internet Project concludes: “In many ways, teens represent the leading edge of mobile connectivity, and the patterns of their technology use often signal future changes in the adult population.”
The challenge for the future is to ensure that users are fully educated about how to run their mobile lives safely and responsibly, and that there are the necessary measures in place to ensure safety without shackling creativity and opportunity.
I’ll leave you with some interesting food for thought for future discussion. These statistics only cover the US but last year one in five of the world’s mobile phone owning youth lived in India.
I’d love to hear any other statistics or anecdotes about the evolution of this ‘totally mobile’ generation and the future impact.
Search terms implied that people are 24 percent less likely to consider suicide in the summer, among other seasonal fluctuations that may be useful in epidemiology for illnesses that are difficult to track.
PROBLEM: Google overhyped the flu this year, which seemed to be a blow to the company’s claim that it can track disease in real-time. Not to mention, the CDC was doing a fine job monitoring the virus’s spread without the help of Google’s search-based analysis. Traditional epidemiological surveillance techniques are less reliable, though, when it comes to mental illness, which remains complex and stigmatized enough that there’s reason to believe people may be more comfortable consulting the Internet than their doctors.
METHODOLOGY: Public health experts at San Diego State looked at every mental health query made on Google between 2006 and 2010 in the U.S. and Australia. They identified searches that used “language suggestive of mental health matters,” which usually involved people either attempting to self-diagnose or treat themselves, or looking up information on behalf of a friend or family member. When it comes to ones skin, they should be aware of what needs to done in case of a fibromyalgia rash.
The researchers specifically analyzed this data in terms of seasonal changes: shorter, darker days are known to increase symptoms of depression, but little is known about possible patterns for other mental illnesses. They adjusted for big news stories, to avoid the effects of media hype like that which caused Google to suggest that the flu was more widespread than it actually was.
RESULTS: In the U.S., inquiriesabout mental health dropped by 14 percent from winter to summer. The seasonal differences, for major mental illnesses, were as follows:
Eating disorders: 37%
Schizophrenia: 37%
Bipolar: 16%
ADHD: 28%
OCD: 18%
Suicide: 24%
Anxiety: 7%
Similar drops were seen in the Australian dataset. In fact, peaks and troughs in search volume between the two countries closely reflected one another — while Americans enjoyed the decline in mental illness that appeared to come with lengthening days and warmer weather, the Australian winter signaled a rise in the very same:
IMPLICATIONS: “We can figuratively look inside the heads of searchers to understand population mental health patterns” by analyzing Google searches, said lead researcher John Ayers in a statement. There are obvious limits to this supposed omniscience: it doesn’t allow us to zero in on any specific demographics, and even if more people were searching for “OCD symptoms,” “OCD tests,” and “medications for OCD,” there’s no way of confirming that those the trends correspond to actual, diagnosable cases of OCD. The data also doesn’t help us to understand why these seasonal patterns exist. But it’s the very least, as the authors write, “a stigma- and cost-reducing venue to help screen and treat those who search for but may not bring problems to the attention of their clinicians.”
by Leslie Meredith, TechNewsDaily Senior Writer
April 18 2013 04:29 PM ET
Are you dying to know who’s viewed your Facebook profile? Scammers bet you are and will tempt you with fake apps promising to reveal who’s been stalking you on Facebook.
In a study released today (April 18) by security software firm Bitdefender, about 25 percent of all Facebook scams detected over the past six months promise to show Facebook users who has looked at their profiles. But what they get instead is trouble.
“The most common path after clicking on the scamming links is either landing on endless surveys and fraudulent websites, where you may have your credentials stolen, or on a page loaded with malware such as banking Trojans,” Catalin Cosoi, a security strategist for Bitdefender, told us. “A malicious app can post on your behalf, and spreads on your friends’ timeline[s] as well.”
The research also offers a glimpse into the hidden desires of many Facebook users, Cosoi said.
Second to stalkers (and remember, a stalker can also be an admirer, depending on a person’s feelings for the viewer), the sexy antics of celebrities appear as lures in most scams. The promise of a Rihanna sex tape was used in almost one in five Facebook scams. Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Megan Fox, Justin Bieber , Selena Gomez and Chris Brown followed in order as the celebrity names most frequently abused by scammers.
The Facebook security team has made a lot of improvements to reduce the complexity and number of scams, Bitdefender said. But the scams persist. Prevention is the best protection: Don’t click on links that make tempting promises, even if they appear to be from a friend.
Damage control
But what should you do if you’ve already clicked on a harmful link? Cosoi recommends removing the malicious posts from your timeline or deleting the app from your account in the AppCenter. Also, warn your friends and have them do the same. Finally, run a security check on your computer with an antivirus scanner, and consider a Facebook security app to protect your account in the future. Of course, Bitdefender recommends its own Safego app.
Facebook’s aim, it selflessly claims, is to reduce the amount of spam in celebrities’ mailboxes, but in tacitly purporting to provide a direct route to Jessie J’s eyeballs, it disregards the reality of social media for even the remotely famous. A celebrity‘s experience of social media is completely different from our own, bombarded as they are with praise, fury, demands and inanity with each hour that passes. Also, many of the miniature missives pinged at notable names come from desperate fans who are so obsessed that £11 will seem like a small price to pay.
Even traditional fanmail has historically been hard to keep up with, and the volume of that medium is naturally subdued by the effort associated with pens, paper, stamps and postboxes. Yet still it comes, by the sackload. It’s harrowing to witness the piles of letters, cards and gifts that pile up in the dressing room of any moderately successful chart act as they tour from city to city. This mail is frequently never even glimpsed by the intended recipient and is often swept, unopened, into a black binbag by a tour manager at the end of the night. In it all goes: poetry, lovingly sketched artwork, teddies and trinkets on which pocket money has been trustingly spent.
It’s a predicament that hit Taylor Swift a month ago when a box containing hundreds of her unopened fan letters was found unceremoniously ditched in a Nashville dumpster. Now, before you become too angry, the act wasn’t completely uncaring – the letters had at least been placed in the recycling section. But it’s hard not to feel a twinge of heartbreak when faced with the spectacle of hundreds of trashed communiques which, as the Daily Mail noted, were “covered with pictures, hearts and sparkles”. HEARTS AND SPARKLES. In the aftermath of bingate, a Swift spokesperson noted that Taylor received thousands of fan letters daily and that these were opened, read and recycled. If true, this is certainly an impressive commitment to fan relations: opening and reading 2,000 letters daily would be a full-time job for four people, and that’s before a single reply is sent.
Boost your brainpower with Bejeweled. Spending a few minutes gaming on your phone can make you smarter, finds new research published inPLoS ONE.
After 4 weeks of playing phone-based games for an hour a day, 75 people significantly improved their working memory, focus, spatial memory, or multitasking ability, the research shows. At the end of the study period, the participants’ scores in multiple areas of cognition jumped by as much as 40 percent compared to pre-videogame levels.
Just as weight training pumps up your biceps, some video games are a workout for your brain, the study suggests. And you don’t have to bury your face in your phone for a full 60 minutes a day to experience the benefits, says study coauthor Michael Patterson, Ph.D., of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. A few minutes whenever you can squeeze them in should be enough to do the trick, he says.
That brain boost can last from a few months to 2 years, says study coauthor Adam Oei, a graduate student at NTU. But you have to choose the right game to match your desired brain benefit:
First-person shooters and action games like Modern Combat: Sandstorm ($4.99, iOS and Android) enhance your brain’s ability to quickly assess and disregard irrelevant information or distractions, according to the study. Referred to as “cognitive control,” this skill will help you ignore all the time-wasters in your inbox—or the 95 percent of that quarterly report that isn’t relevant to your job.
To improve attention and multi-tasking ability, try shape-manipulation puzzlers like Bejeweled ($.99, iOS and Android). These games involve complex tasks that hone your brain’s ability to store and retrieve short-term memories, and also switch quickly between challenges without losing focus, the study authors say.
Hidden-object games like Everest: Hidden Expedition (Free, iOS) improve visual search ability, the study finds. This will help your eyes more quickly locate and recognize what they’re searching for, whether you’re playing outfield and trying to hit your cut-off man or hunting for lost keys.
Memory games like Matrix Brain (Free, iOS), boost spatial working memory. You use that brain function to remember your way around a new neighborhood or city—or to break down complex diagrams or visual data, the study explains.
Facebook and Twitter users suffered withdrawal symptoms when forced to go cold turkey as part of a scientific study into the addictiveness of social media, academics have found.
Going cold turkey caused many of the participants to suffer withdrawal symptoms Photo: CORBIS
In a study by researchers at the University of Winchester, ten self-confessed Facebook “addicts” and ten prolific tweeters were asked to stop using their accounts for four weeks. Many quickly became isolated from friends and family and reported feeling “cut off from the world”.
One female participant from Yorkshire said: “So much of my life was organised via Facebook. I haven’t communicated with my family all week.”
Another volunteer said: “I’ve felt alone and cut off from the world. My fingers seem to be programmed to seek out the Facebook app every time I pick up my phone.”
But Dr David Giles, a reader in media psychology who led the study, said that heavy use of social networks is not necessarily dangerous. “Some people would argue this addiction to social media is eating away at people’s lives, but what most of these so-called addicts are doing online is profoundly social,” he said.
“The average internet user today is not the bedroom hermit of the 1990s but a savvy individual with a smartphone who openly manages his or her entire social life and personal relationships online.”
Moderation could be key, however. Complete abstinence caused many of the participants to suffer withdrawal symptoms, but not all of the effects were negative. One woman from Wales said being forced off Facebook allowed her to catch-up on household chores, while another volunteer confessed that the ban had allowed her to spend more time with her daughter.
The study, commissioned by first direct, also showed that those who had avoided social media in the past could find it useful and enjoyable. Researchers took ten people with inactive Twitter and Facebook accounts, and ten who had never used social media at all, and asked them to regularly tweet and update their Facebook status for four weeks.
One participant said: “I thought I would find using Facebook every day dull and pointless, but I’m finding that I’m quite enjoying it. I’m actually seeing my friends more now.”
The research showed that Twitter users coped better than their Facebook counterparts with being cut off from their accounts, which researchers put down to Twitter’s less “social” nature.
Dr Giles believes that more people will eventually be forced to accept using social media as a fact of life. Life is getting more difficult for people who lack an email address or Facebook profile, and companies increasingly treat them as the “vagrants of the digital age”, he said.
The research also highlighted 12 distinct types of social media users, from occasional “dippers” who only occasionally log-in to post an update to full-blown “ultras” who are habitual participants. Click here to see which tribe you belong to.
High-school student Muhammad Akbar has never dated a girl in real life, but he’s got plenty of girlfriends on Facebook.With social and religious taboos restricting face-to-face contact between unrelated members of the opposite sex, Facebook’s popularity has skyrocketed as a virtual meeting place in Afghanistan.Akbar spends nearly an hour every evening in a packed Internet cafe near his home in Kabul’s Shah Shahid area to chat with his female “friends.” To pay for his online habit, which costs about 100 afghanis ($2) an hour, he has taken a part-time job as a garage assistant.”In Afghanistan, we don’t have disco clubs to meet with girls. It’s not allowed here to go on a date with girls, to meet and talk with them face to face,” Akbar says. “Marriage is the only way to have a relationship with a woman, but many people can’t easily afford to get married. Facebook has solved that problem for many.”
Bright Spot
Akbar says chatting with girls online has made life in the war-torn, poverty stricken country “a lot less frustrating.”
While being seen chatting to an unrelated boy in public can tarnish a girl’s reputation, “with Facebook, there is no risk of being beaten up by your female friend’s relatives,” he reasons.
Such advantages have fueled a sharp rise in new Facebook accounts.
According to the Communication and Information Ministry, there are now more than 470,000 registered Facebook accounts in Afghanistan, compared to 6,000 in 2008.
Some 2 million of Afghanistan’s 30 million people have access to the Internet, according to the ministry, mostly through Internet cafes and mobile phones.
About two years ago, Ahmad Sipehr learned about Facebook when a classmate at a Kabul university helped him join the social network. The revelation prompted him to open up his own Internet cafe.
“I would travel several kilometers to the nearest Internet cafe just to use Facebook,” Sipehr says. “Then I decided to open an Internet cafe myself. It was Facebook that prompted me to open this business.”
The 21-year-old journalism student now runs one of the busiest Internet cafes in downtown Kabul. Sipehr frequently helps visitors open Facebook accounts for the first time, and before long they are regular customers.
London schoolboy Nick D’Aloisio, who’s just sold his smartphone news app to Yahoo for a reported $30m. (Pic: Forbes.com)
London – Got a tech idea and want to make a fortune before you’re out of your teens? Just do it, is the advice of the London schoolboy who’s just sold his smartphone news app to Yahoo for a reported $30m.
The money is there, just waiting for clever new moves, said 17-year-old Nick D’Aloisio, who can point to a roster of early backers for his Summly app that includes Yoko Ono and Rupert Murdoch.
“If you have a good idea, or you think there’s a gap in the market, just go out and launch it because there are investors across the world right now looking for companies to invest in,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview late on Monday.
The terms of the sale, four months after Summly was launched for the iPhone, have not been disclosed and D’Aloisio, who is still studying for school exams while joining Yahoo as its youngest employee, was not saying. But technology blog AllThingsD said Yahoo paid roughly $30m.
D’Aloisio said he was the majority owner of Summly and would now invest the money from the sale, though his age imposes legal limits for now on his access to it.
“I’m happy with that and working with my parents to go through that whole process,” he said.
D’Aloisio, who lives in the prosperous London suburb of Wimbledon, highlights the support of family and school, which gave him time off, but also, critically, the ideas that came with enthusiastic financial backers.
He had first dreamt up the mobile software while revising for a history exam two years ago, going on to create a prototype of the app that distils news stories into chunks of text readable on small smartphone screens.
He was inspired, he said, by the frustrating experience of trawling through Google searches and separate websites to find information when revising for the test.
Trimit was an early version of the app, which is powered by an algorithm that automatically boils down articles to about 400 characters. It caught the eye of Horizons Ventures, a venture capital firm owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, which put in $250 000.
MELBOURNE: Your popularity on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn may help you bag a job as companies are increasingly looking for well-connected and influential people, experts say.
Digital experts say social media and recruitment now largely go hand in hand.
While at the most basic level, companies check up on prospective employees to see if they make unsavoury postings online, they are also using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to find new employees – both by listing opportunities and by increasing the chatter between recruiters and the people looking for jobs, website stuff.co.nz reported.
“Social media has become an essential part of any organisation’s recruitment strategy. It is easier to generate talent through social media. A lot easier than it was four or five years ago,” said Hays RecruitmentNew Zealandmanaging directorJason Walker.
Walker said in a recent survey of 270 employers across New Zealand the company found that 64 per cent of employers used LinkedIn to find new employees, 50 per cent used Facebook and 10 per cent used Twitter.
Of those looking for jobs 74 per cent use LinkedIn, 24 per cent used Facebook, and 7 per cent used Twitter, Fairfax NZ news reported.
Tom Bates, the social influence director for digital strategists Contagion, said employers would look at a prospective employee’s social media presence to validate what the candidate was saying about their online profile.
“If someone says that they are influential and they are not even on Twitter, or don’t use social media well, then they are not being authentic or honest,” Bates said.
“When I am recruiting I look first and foremost on LinkedIn. I look at the experience people have, their connections, because it gives a really open, transparent, easy way to source relevant people,” Bates added.
“I also look at all their other social media identities to get more of a sense of who they are, outside of the one-hour interview I may have with them. I look at their Facebook and Twitter and potentially Instagram and beyond to make sure there is a good cultural fit,” Bates said.
