Results tagged “facebook” from 60 Second Science

A couple goodies for geeks that the new year has ushered in...

1. SciBook—Social Networking for Life Scientists. After you've improved your image by deleting all the unattractive friends from your Facebook profile, you can lower your reproductive fitness again by adding this fun application. SciBook matches scientists with prospective friends and collaborators on Facebook based on their research interests, favorite journal articles, disciplinary training, research methods, "favorite proteins," and "favorite scientists of all time." I'm unsure whether to describe it as "a breakthrough tool for collaborative research," or "kind of like eHarmony for people who don't get out much." You be the judge.
2. io9.com—Strung Out on Science Fiction. Gawker Media, the people who brought you Wonkette and Lifehacker, has officially acquired io9.com, a snarky blog that threatens to do for science fiction what engadget did for technology. The site is full of snarky and incisive commentary, along with plenty of random and hopelessly inside jokes. It also contains a healthy dose of science writing alongside science fiction, and according to the site's editor, Annalee Newitz, it aims to celebrate the blurring of the line separating the two. She told the New York Times, "The present is thinking of itself in science-fictional terms. You get things like George Bush taking stem cell policy from reading parts of Brave New World. That’s part of what we are playing with. We are living in world that now thinks of itself in terms of sci-fi and in terms of the future." Whether you buy Newitz's idea here, enjoy snarky humor, or you're just one of those people whose subscription to Omni got canceled every time the magazine went under, io9.com is probably worth checking out.

I am immediately revamping my Facebook profile. Anyone with goofy, personality-filled (read: "ugly) pictures is being expunged. It's me and the models from here on out.

In an article on online impression management, the New York Times notes that everyone is doing it, but not everyone knows how. It's increasingly more important to manage your online identity, but here's no solid set of best practices for using your MySpace profile to hook up--though I think there's now a book deal out there with my name on it. One trick, though, is to surround yourself with hot friends.

Continue reading 'Your sexy online friends make you look even sexier' >

In a world where America has fallen deeply, physically in love with the Internet and the rest of the world has fallen even more deeply and sexily in love with robots, there are two ways to go about identity theft. You can set up a chat bot to trick lonely people into giving you your information, or, in a more straightforward move, you can hack Facebook.

The social networking giant is now alleging that a group of 17 people and one Canadian porn company made over 200,000 requests for personal information stored on Facebook in June.

Continue reading 'Canadian pornographer wants to be your Facebook friend/identity thief' >

I'm kind of a Facebook hater, so I enjoy slight schadenfraude from this latest "burned by the internet" story. University of Michigan Student Assembly president Zack Yost is resigning because of a Facebook group he started to vent his frustration with another assembly member, who has Aspergers syndrome. The not-so-subtle title:

"I'll give that kid a f*cking disability he can write home about if he keeps sending these code amendments to everyone"

According to the DSM-IV [paraphrased by Wikipedia], "People with Asperger syndrome display behavior, interests, and activities that are restricted and repetitive and are sometimes abnormally intense or focused."

And, scene.

[via Gawker]

Related:
Intense, man... new theory of autism
America's Next Top Model has Asperger's

Or so concludes a new study by Northwestern University that found the social networking site college freshmen prefer correlates with their race, ethnicity and the level of their parents’ education.

So much for the Internet bringing us all together.

Continue reading 'Social networking sites are divided along lines of race' >