Think Green (by Earl-Wilkerson)

The local council announced that “kids could have unlimited salad, fruit, and bread.” Thanks to the 9-year-old clever girl, Martha Payne, who decided to start a blog with photos and vital statistics about her daily school lunches. Almost immediately, Martha’s school lunch blog got international attention, including from prominent school lunch busybody Jamie Oliver.

I’m starting to believe SocialCam is just a glorified phishing app infecting Facebook. The popular video-sharing app better close its privacy loopholes before people get turned off and never use it again… So, why you should turn it off »

When you click on any SocialCam link on Facebook and accept their app, every Socialcam video you watch from then on is shared to your Facebook friends automatically. […] The content can be questionable, the titles of the videos are often very salacious, and embarrassment can ensue with the images it posts on your timeline, all without any notice to you and your account.

srdash:

Prometheus - “Quiet Eye”

In front of the quiet, unblinking eye of a camera lens, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw makes her case to lead a mission that will answer our greatest questions and trigger our ultimate fears.

The forthcoming Ridley Scott movie, Prometheus, is all about “A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.” See PROMETHEUS in theaters June 8.

The Facebook Offering

While it may not be quite as compelling as The Liz Lemon Hair Timeline, there’s certainly something engaging about this Facebook IPO Infographic. Namely, it that it shows Facebook surpassing Google in terms of value and likely being valued around $135 billion by the end of day on Friday. If that number doesn’t blow your mind you aren’t thinking about it hard enough.

Exactly. Another fact that can blow-your-mind: As the trading began, two of the top three search terms on Google Trends were “Facebook stock” and “Facebook IPO.”

Further reading: The Internet at the Dawn of Facebook

theatlantic:

The Internet at the Dawn of Facebook

Facebook launched in 2004. Today, it has more users than the entire Internet had in 2004.

Before Facebook roamed the web, the digital world was dominated by big, bulky websites that assumed they’d stay big and bulky: Microsoft and its Hotmail, Time Warner and its AOL, Ask and its Jeeves. It’s striking how much the Internet has changed since Facebook sprinted onto the scene — and more striking still how Mark Zuckerberg’s production changed the course of that scene.

Back in 2004, 

• the web had some 50 million sites. (Today, it has more than 600 million.) 
• the most popular brand on the World Wide Web was Microsoft’s MSN.
• Google was the fifth most popular brand on the World Wide Web, ranking below Yahoo and AOL.
• people still talked about the “World Wide Web.”
•  ”blog” — defined as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks” — was chosen as Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.

Read more. [Image: Thefacebook, lol]

‘Information’ To ‘Knowledge Agent’: Google Changes The Way It Does Search  (via courtenaybird)

Further reading: Google Gets Back to Its Roots With New Search Update

(via courtenaybird)

theatlantic:

Google Gets Back to Its Roots With New Search Update

How good is Google at both guessing what you want to know and having that information in its databases? In some cases, the company is really good. “Based on the other things that people are looking for when they are looking for Tom Cruise, our knowledge graph is going to show you 39 percent of the answers to the next thing you might be looking for,” said Joanna Wright, director of product management for The Google Knowledge Graph, which is what the company is calling this new feature.

To me, this update is the epitome of what Google does best. The graph makes the process of Googling something faster, easier, and better. The corporate imperative to keep people searching on Google in the face of renewed competition matches up very nicely with consumers’ desires for the best, fastest search experience. That hasn’t always been the case with the company’s social search integration, so this update feels so refreshing. It’s like a friend in the midst of a midlife crisis returning the Porsche and embracing a trusty new four-door.

You may not have Google Knowledge Graph yet, but you will soon. The company is rolling it out this week, so get ready to see your right column transformed. 

Read more. [Image: Google]

Getting back to (one’s) roots is always the safest option in case you’re already misdirected. Google is often prone to go beyond its root to do something differently and that often cause irritation to its users. Have you ever felt that punch-to-the-stomach feeling of clicking “Google Search” and/or “I’m Feeling Lucky”?? As one James Blair points out:

It [Google] interferes with search results half the time giving me what I *DONT* want to see. It pushes more and more advertising (explicit or implicit) at me. Now it wants to throw more garbage in the way of my searches. […] I use google to seach the internet for information. Thats what its purpose was. The more google tries to second-guess what I’m trying to do, the more frustrating and useless the entire search process becomes.

STUDY: ONLY 36% OF TWEETS ARE WORTH READING! Also read: What makes a great tweet? (Harvard Business Review)

parislemon:

As much as I hate email, this is a fun way to explain what happens when you hit send on that Gmail message.

onearth:

Read David Gessner’s toon and then turn off your computer and get the hell outside: Slaves to the Screen: A Cartoon Caution

thenextweb:

Geektivism is what geeks do when they are fed up with the current status of their environment. Drawing from their resources, they find ways to tackle problems in a creative and engaging way (of course this usually involves games…). In our search for geektivists, we came across five new projects that can really make a difference. Both trying to solve important problems, they turned to gaming and technology to inspire people and help them do something, rather than just complain or click on a form.

thisistheverge:

Ashton Kutcher tries on Steve Jobs’ signature outfit for new film

Tentatively: Jobs: Get Inspired

infoneer-pulse:

However, Facebook also clarifies that “if you’ve removed an application and want them to delete the information you’ve already shared with them, you should contact the application and ask them to delete it.” This implies that, even if you change Facebook’s privacy settings since beginning to use a third-party service, or no longer user the service at all, the service may keep your data on hand unless directly asked to delete it. That is, Facebook won’t be your middle man in data cleanup; however, Facebook does note in the policy that apps are contractually obligated to delete data if asked.

» via ars technica