As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
Jimmy Fallon Explains The Reason For Netflix's Countdown Between Episodes
Have you ever wondered why Netflix has that countdown between episodes? Well, that worrisome thought will never interrupt your binge-watching again.
While writing his weekly “Thank You Notes,” Jimmy Fallon finally explained the reason for the streaming service’s timer. Apparently, Netflix does it just to mess with us. The company knows we’re going to keep watching, and they want us to know that they know.
For the record, Netflix does give you the option to opt out of automatically playing the next episode. It’s currently available on a number of devices.
But if you haven’t heard, the new season of “House of Cards” is coming out next month, and Netflix has plans to premiere up to 20 new shows or new seasons of original shows a year. So really, why bother?
“The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on NBC.
Purposeful Transformation: Davos Conversations Advance the Journey
The following is co-written with Cheryl Grise, EY Global Head of Strategy, and Professor Marc Ventresca, economic sociologist, University of Oxford.
Listen carefully to the buzz during the World Economic Forum annual meeting this week and one thing is abundantly clear: Current global realities have changed the game for most firms. Today, corporate capacity for innovation and transformation is a critical imperative to survive – and to thrive. This is transformation beyond the delivery of better products or services. It is the ability to do business in fundamentally different ways, attuned to these new realities.
In Davos this week, Sir Richard Branson joined Barclay’s CEO Antony Jenkins, Mondelez CEO Irene Rosenfeld, Unilever CEO Paul Polman, Huffington Post President Arianna Huffington and EY Chairman Mark Weinberger for a discussion of purposeful transformation hosted by EY and the University of Oxford Saïd Business School in collaboration with the B Team. During the breakfast we unveiled initial findings from an EY – Oxford research collaboration, observing that senior executives are pioneering a portfolio of new tools and approaches that leverage purpose to spur and sustain innovation and growth.
Our initial results point to the following trends, challenges and benefits of purpose-led transformation:
1. There is an evolving view of the role of the corporation that increasingly emphasizes the corporation as a partner for societal well-being.
In this period of increased inequality and austerity, leaders speak often about the corporation as both a source of shareholder value and a tool for addressing challenges.
For many in our sample, the times point to a historically distinctive moment, when the institutional foundations of the corporation are contested. Their shared voice argues for a view of the corporation as a partner to address global challenges.
Across industries and geographies, this focus is a move beyond harm reduction, or the corporation taking responsibility for externalities, to now having an active role in creating well-being. This tracks key shifts in the role of the corporation: from “value creation for its own sake” to “value creation without harm,” to now actively “building value for and with a wider set of stakeholders.”
2. The corporate dialogue on purpose is louder and is changing.
While “purpose” is certainly not new to conversations about commercial activity, more than ever it is dominating the conversation. Our initial findings reveal that pioneering executives are talking about purpose more and more and in different ways. This idiom is new, and consequential.
We also observe an expansion from the traditional mission statement that predominantly focused on products and services (what companies do) and attributes such as trustworthiness and timeliness (how they do it) to corporations also articulating a broader purpose that is their reason for being (why they exist).
This trend toward restating a corporation’s identity is grounded in an outward-facing declaration around their role in the global community. On the far end of a spectrum we observe companies fully restating their identity in the marketplace. We find this contemporary usage of “purpose” to be distinctive and promising as a source of corporate action.
3. Executives are using a common language of purpose to engage stakeholders for corporate benefit.
Pioneering CEOs and other senior leaders are speaking a language of purpose that engages employees and customers in new ways, inviting their insights for innovation. This is a language of open-sourced value creation among diverse constituents. It foregrounds “meaning” with an appeal to shared values that invite the extended group of stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers, regulators and others – to recognize a stake in the growth path of a corporation. Making (shared) meaning in this way is critical work for leaders today.
4. Purpose can be a lever driving innovation and transformation for growth.
These pioneering senior leaders use a language of purpose that links firm innovation and renewal with contributing to addressing significant challenges – or providing for human well-being in ways that go beyond product lines and traditional competition. Taking a view that “purpose drives profits,” they seek to involve existing and new product/service lines in ways that achieve this broader purpose. They are also initiating purpose-led transformation journeys in their organizations, spanning from the brand identity through the business model, across business units and functions.
5. There is an implementation gap: Purpose is underleveraged to focus and drive transformation.
A broad cross-section of business professionals and thought leaders recognize the importance of integrated, humane purpose as a core decision-making lens driving core functions like strategy, business models and talent management. But they also report a gap between this recognition and the policy and practice in their organizations. Our research points to still uncharted territory where purpose reinforces innovation in offerings, business models and governance.
Purpose has clear benefits
Today “purpose” and more generally “values” and “meaning” are being considered as a strategic resource. Our initial findings indicate corporations are at various stages of a journey that explores or expands their institutional purpose – and then aligns strategy, business models and processes to execute.
At the organizational level, executives recognize the more immediate benefits, such as providing competitive differentiation and increasing consumer sales and loyalty. It is also recognized as a useful tool to build trust in the wider marketplace.
Embedded into the structure and operating model, institutional purpose may also enhance employee morale, attract talent, increase productivity and decrease attrition.
Importantly, these CEOs anticipate that a purpose-led transformation will enhance organizational agility – i.e., their capacity to adapt to an increasingly dynamic, uncertain and interdependent macro business environment – and do so in a way that engages employees, customers and stakeholders to drive sustainable growth.
These trends and benefits beg two key questions:
Are we making the shift from a burning platform to a burning ambition enabled by a company’s purpose? Will this burning ambition be the new driving force helping corporations continually transform and innovate?
How The Uber Economy Can Become A Race To The Bottom
Growth in on-demand services helps customers improve their lives by finding somebody else to clear out the garage, put up the shelves or run errands. But do the people handling your to-do list benefit as well?
TaskRabbit founder and CEO Leah Busque is concerned that the deal may be one-sided. “In the last 12 to 18 months, I believe there has been a slippery slope of new companies that have formed in the name of on-demand services … that maybe aren’t having as much of a focus as they should on the worker,” she told The Huffington Post’s Jordan Jayson at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Saturday.
TaskRabbit is a website that links customers up with people ready to handle a wide range of small jobs.
“Our whole premise was empowering a new generation of workers to be their own entrepreneurs, to build their own schedules, to set their own prices and accept and decline work,” Busque said.
“If you build a services app without taking into consideration the quality of the lives you’re creating for those workers, then you’re completely missing the point of this whole industry,” she added. “I do believe it’s a slippery slope. It can become a race to the bottom, and we have a responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Below, live updates from the 2015 Davos Annual Meeting:
Fadi Chehade Explains The 'Powerful' Innovations Surrounding Domain Names Today
Fadi Chehade, CEO of ICANN, explained how we “went from twenty-something” top domain names to hundreds thanks to one simple change.
“The reality is, the more there are names, the less people will actually be hogging names in order to charge a lot for them,” Chehade told HuffPost Live at Davos on Saturday. “Because if somebody took your name on dot X, you can go get another name on dot Y now.”
Chehade also said the ability to type a web address in different languages like Arabic provides people with more power to obtain unique domain names.
“These are powerful things we did,” he said. “To globalize the domain name system, to open it up, to allow for a lot of new innovation.”
“Innovation will flourish on a broader domain name system,” he added.
Below, live updates from the 2015 Davos Annual Meeting:
Eugene Kaspersky: Cybersecurity Criminals 'Are Getting More And More Professional'
Eugene Kaspersky, founder of the Kaspersky Lab, said there’s both good and bad news about cybersecurity.
The good news is that leaders are starting to understand the issues with cybersecurity a bit more. The bad news is that cybersecurity issues do still exist and can cause major damage.
“It’s not the end of the revolution, and unfortunately the bad guys, the criminals — let’s say they’re criminals — they are getting more and more professional,” Kaspersky said.
Kaspersky specifically weighed in on the recent Sony hack, saying the incident is going to force the U.S. government to better understand cybersecurity “bad guys.” He said he’s not convinced North Korea was behind the attack, saying he doesn’t “have any hard data to prove” that’s true.
“It’s very easy to point a finger to the wrong direction,” Kaspersky said.
Below, live updates from the 2015 Davos Annual Meeting:
The Misery Of Facebook Stalking Distilled In Spot-On College Humor Music Video
Facebook stalking can be a miserable — and misleading — experience.
In this new College Humor music video, listen to the lament of a dude who stayed up (again) till 5 a.m. Facebook stalking his apparently “more successful friends.”
“Jack’s got a house, Jane’s in Tangier, I made 11 thousand dollars last year, your girlfriend’s a 10 and mine’s not even real,” croons comedian Pat Regan, who later makes the startling discovery that his friends’ so-called “success” stories may actually be similarly illusory.
See it all unfold in the music video above.
H/T Viral Viral Videos
Standalone HBO Could Inspire Millions To Ditch Cable, Survey Says
As many as 7 million people might cut the cord once HBO launches its new streaming service later this year. At least that’s how a market research firm read the numbers from its recent online survey.
Such a mass exodus, if it were to occur, would be a huge blow to pay TV companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable and DirecTV. About 100 million households in the U.S. subscribe to TV.
But don’t set your timers to mass cable exodus just yet. The report from Dallas-based market researcher Parks Associates is based on an online survey of 10,000 people in U.S. homes with broadband access from late last year. And even Parks Associates suggests this drastic scenario might not actually happen.
“Just because somebody says on a survey that they’re going to do something doesn’t mean they actually are,” Glenn Hower, a research analyst at Parks Associates, told The Huffington Post. “We have some doubts that 7 million households are going to say, ‘Well, I can get HBO so [I'm going to cut my cable] service.”‘
For one, the network hasn’t released many details about HBO GO — including the critical detail of how much it will cost. For the survey, Parks Associates put the price at $14.99 per month, roughly the amount you pay if you add HBO onto your current TV package.
Also, most people probably aren’t subscribing to a full TV package of hundreds of channels just to get HBO. They’re watching other programming like sports and on-demand programming they’d lose if they cut the cord.
And, of course, the company that you pay for TV is likely the same company that you pay for Internet access. Many people may find it’s a greater value to subscribe to TV and Internet together — the “double play” — than to pay separately for Internet and a handful of streaming services.
“It’s easy to say that you’re going to cancel your TV service, but then when consumers go and realize just how much they’ll be losing, I imagine they would balk at the loss of content,” Hower said.
ReCode’s Peter Kafka put it a bit more bluntly. “It’s also possible that people who participate in Parks surveys have literally no idea what they’re talking about, are drunk, or believe they’re in an alternate universe,” he wrote.
So 7 million cord cutters inspired by HBO alone might be a little high. But pay TV companies should still be concerned, Hower said. The cable bundle does appear to be loosening, and this year will be a banner year for streaming video. Online services from Netflix and Amazon continue to improve their programming and win awards. Netflix just reported another increase in subscribers, bringing its U.S. membership to over 37 million. Dish, the satellite TV company, recently announced that it will launch a $20-per-month online TV service with a slimmed-down package of channels that includes ESPN. And Showtime is expected to launch its own standalone streaming service later this year.
Although subscriptions to pay TV aren’t in free fall, an increasing number of people, especially millennials, are cutting the cord, choosing to get their entertainment from a mix of online services like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and iTunes.
The number of households in the U.S. that don’t subscribe to TV but pay for broadband Internet grew to more than 10.5 million in the third quarter of last year, up 16 percent over the same period in 2012, according to research firm SNL Kagan.
HBO, which declined to comment on the Parks Associates survey, has to find a tricky balance with its new service. The network makes a lot of money from people paying their cable company extra for HBO’s content. In 2013, it pulled in $1.68 billion in profit on $4.9 billion in revenue globally. The network also depends on the Comcasts and Time Warner Cables to market its channels to customers.
When HBO announced the new service at an investor conference last fall, executives emphasized that it was going after the growing number of broadband-only homes, not existing pay TV subscribers, and that the standalone service shouldn’t threaten TV subscriptions.
“I don’t think we’re going to cannibalize anything,” HBO CEO Richard Plepler said at the conference. “I think we have a tremendous opportunity to go after [new subscribers].”
Andrew McAfee: 'We Are In The Early Stages Of An Era Of Unbelievable Technological Progress'
Andrew McAfee of the MIT Sloan School of Management stopped by HuffPost Live at Davos on Saturday, where he spoke about the book he wrote with his colleague Erik Brynjolfsson called The Second Machine Age.
“We are in the early stages of an era of unbelievable technological progress, really that we haven’t seen since the first machine age, which was the Industrial Revolution,” McAfee said said. “And we should all be optimistic about that.”
McAfee did say he scratches his head wondering “as we get to a point where digital technologies acquire more and more abilities that used to belong to people alone, are we at a point where the destruction is going to outpace the creation, and if so, what should we do about that?”
See more of McAfee’s discussion above, and below, live updates from the 2015 Davos Annual Meeting:
Microsoft Exec Reveals 'Wow' Technology
Microsoft International President Jean-Philippe Courtois didn’t hesitate when asked what new technology makes him say, “Wow.”
“We presented something very cool. It’s called HoloLens,” he told HuffPost Live’s Alyona Minkovski at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Saturday. “This is the very first holographic computer, which enables you to be in this place … and have this wearable which is not just a pair of glasses. It actually provides you access to mixed reality,” Courtois said.
Mixed reality, he added, is “a way you can actually interact with 3-D holograms.”
HoloLens wearers will be able to use the device for everything from trying on clothing to exploring other planets, according to Microsoft. Through a partnership with NASA, the company said, HoloLens will let you virtually travel to Mars.
The HoloLens is “going to have a huge impact because developers are going to build a lot of new applications enabling people to do great stuff together,” Courtois predicted.
Below, live updates from the 2015 Davos Annual Meeting:
At Davos, Technology CEOs Discuss the Digital Economy
Davos: One of the most anticipated discussions at this year’s meeting was the plenary session on The Digital Economy. Given that I wrote the book that coined that term 20 years ago, I attended with great interest.
On the panel were Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Unfortunately, the group didn’t really explore the state of the digital economy, but rather centered on all the great things technology is doing around the world. The discussion started on this bright note when the moderator asked whether each panelist was optimistic or pessimistic about the impact of technology on society. To this group the question was a rhetorical one, and predictably all panelists expressed great enthusiasm for what has been accomplished and the great strides the future holds in store.
They said that digital technologies used in areas from education to farming to healthcare have transformed communities and raised living standards around the world. As broadband capacity is rolled out to the four corners of the world, standards of living will increase even more.
Facebook’s Sandberg talked about two brothers in a village in India where they could not go to hospitals, but once they got access to the Internet their lives improved. “There are many other stories and therefore I am optimistic. Technology is both creator and destroyer of jobs but I am a huge optimist,” she said.
Sandberg did warn that without the proper measures, there is no guarantee that the benefits of technology would be distributed evenly. Policy-makers must take action to promote inclusion, otherwise women will not get the same opportunities. She noted that currently more than half the Internet’s content is in English and that women typically receive access to smartphones later than men.
During the session I frequently felt that that neither the optimistic statements of hope or anecdotes of those whose lives have improved adequately dealt with the challenge of the digital economy. I was tempted to quote Bill Clinton: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The Digital Economy has become THE Economy. Yes, technology has created many wonders, but if we look at the macro level, the scorecard on economic results of technology are so far troublesome. Technology has unquestionably been at the heart of some negative developments including massive structural unemployment; growing social inequality where the benefits and wealth generated by technology have been asymmetrical; a fracturing of public discourse; and the loss of privacy and the rise of a surveillance society to name a few.
The panel touched superficially on several issues, such as unemployment. For the first time in history, economic growth is not generating a meaningful number of new jobs. Factor in the hangover from the financial collapse of 2008 and we’re witnessing youth unemployment levels across the western world from 15 to 60 percent.
But panelists said that this was a temporary problem and not a structural problem. Such creative destruction has happened at various junctures in history. Google’s Eric Schmidt argued that: “Almost all of the problems we debate can be solved by more broadband connectivity.” He cited broadband as the key public policy initiative that can promote social benefits ranging from good governance to education to human rights.
Microsoft’s Nadella agreed, saying that in the industry “there’s a consensus that low-cost bandwidth is a must.”
Vodaphone’s Colao likened the digital economy to a movie. “I can tell you that this is just the beginning of a great story, it is like a movie. We are at the beginning of something amazing. In Turkey, we have farmers who are using our technology and 50 per cent of them are women. Then there is education of teachers in Africa..
“The last scene of this movie should be around 10-15 years,” he added, but that steps must be taken to ensure all members of society benefit from technology’s arrival. “We need to see the benefit of technology and make sure that this movie gets a happy ending.”
Looking ahead, Schmidt offered one prediction regarding the future of the Internet, namely that “the Internet will disappear.” He predicted that the growth of smart devices and the Internet of things in the years ahead will eliminate the barrier between being online and offline.
Schmidt, a thoughtful observer of the big changes on the digital age compared the current disruptions to jobs and the economy with other convulsive technology revolutions in history that have caused massive, if temporary problems in society. “Is it different this time?” That would have been a great question to debate.
We need the leaders of the technology industry to step up and start to frankly address the big problems of the digital economy — problems that are rooted in technology. Enough extolling the virtues of technology. Let’s start to build the partnerships between business, government and the civil society that can forge a new framework and action plan for ensuring that the smaller world our kids inherit is a better one.
Introduction to Davos 2015 from Don Tapscott
Don Tapscott is with the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and CEO of The Tapscott Group. His most recent book is The Digital Economy: Anniversary Edition and he is a senior adviser to the World Economic Forum.
Achieving Inclusive Growth in the Digital Age: A Global Imperative
All around us, we can see how digital technologies are transforming the economies in which we live, the cities we inhabit, the way we learn, and the lives we lead. Experience shows that growth and change in the digital age are faster and more pervasive than ever before, affecting more people at greater speed than was possible with previous generations of technology.
However, as the global economic recovery continues, a concern has begun to emerge in countries across the world. It’s that while growth — supported by digital technologies — has returned, many people feel the resulting benefits are passing them by, and failing to directly affect them and their families. The underlying risk is that exclusion from digital advances may extend into exclusion from social and economic opportunities, leaving millions of people effectively locked out of the next phase of global growth and development.
In my view, ensuring that growth in the digital age benefits populations across the world is one of the biggest issues facing mankind today. It’s also a challenge that I believe global business and governments have a responsibility to address. Success will demand sustained effort from many parties worldwide, and while we at PwC don’t pretend to have all the answers, we’re determined to play our part. And our shared goal should be to create a world where everyone has the opportunity to benefit from the digital age on more equal terms.
It’s an objective that’s easy to state, but whose boundaries are hard to define — owing to the vast array of elements it involves. From microfinance to mobile communications in emerging countries; from eHealthcare to mobile banking; from smart cities to government services delivered over the web — all these components will play a role. But arguably the most important factor in creating equal access to digital opportunities is education, a space where technology is opening up new possibilities and capabilities by the day.
This is an area that we at PwC take extremely seriously — and where we’re devoting substantial time and resources worldwide. Take the US, where youth education is a huge issue. In 2012 our US firm launched ‘Earn Your Future,’ a multi-year US$160 million investment consisting of US$60 million in cash and one million service hours, devoting the time and talents of our 39,000 people across the US to benefit more than 2.5 million students and educators.
This is just one of many educational initiatives that we’re undertaking. And a common focus of these efforts is around finding new and better ways to harness, apply and fund digital technologies in education — and then to carry the benefits forward as students graduate into the workforce. With this latter goal in mind, our global ‘Adapt to Survive’ project has united the two most comprehensive sources of talent data in the world — the real-time behaviors drawn from LinkedIn’s 277 million members, and employer information from PwC’s Saratoga database of people and performance metrics — to create a ‘Talent Adaptability Score’ that evaluates a country’s ability to match talent with opportunity.
So, what have our efforts to improve access to education and opportunity taught us? I’d like to highlight three insights. The first is that the next step in the evolution of education will be the weaving-in of technology into the social fabric of the educational process, with all stakeholders — teachers, administration and parents — fully committed to improving access and outcomes through digital integration. This advance is more imminent in some countries than others, but needs to be pursued everywhere.
The second insight is around the resources needed to enable digital progress. As my ongoing conversations with people across education and technology consistently underline, the full power of digital technology to support learning and equality of opportunity can only be realized if sufficient investment is forthcoming. And this investment requires a clear and robust business case. So an ability to measure the tangible impacts of investments in education — including the benefits both for business and also for society as a whole — is critical. Again, this is an area where we’re actively developing new tools and approaches.
Third, as digitization continues to advance, the working environment that today’s students will join is changing radically and irreversibly — heralding sweeping change in employment opportunities and major dilemmas for employers. For example, millennial recruits are ambitious, tech-savvy and self-confident, expecting to advance rapidly to senior management positions. But their older colleagues are working longer. So, as companies grow and opportunities emerge, who’ll get the top jobs? Organizations need to work out how they’ll answer such questions.
As the world faces up to a new era of digitally-enabled growth, it’s entering uncharted territory — and the danger is that the benefits will flow to the few at the expense of the many. In my view, such a world would be neither fair nor sustainable. Across education and a host of other fields, let’s work together to ensure that growth in the digital age is inclusive — for the good of us all.
This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The World Economic Forum to mark the Forum’s Annual Meeting 2015 (in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, Jan. 21-24). The Forum’s Strategic Partner community comprises a select group of leading global companies representing diverse regions and industries that have been selected for their alignment with the Forum’s commitment to improving the state of the world. Read all the posts in the series here.
Ron Bruder: 'There's A Social And Structural Barrier' Toward Women
Education for Employment’s president and CEO Jamie McAuliffe, along with founder and chair Ron Bruder, sat down with HuffPost Live at Davos on Saturday where they discussed youth unemployment.
Bruder said EFE particularly aims to help women.
“We strive to have the majority of our graduates female,” he said said.
“I don’t think there’s an official barrier but there’s a social and structural barrier in a lot of these countries toward women,” Bruder added.
Below, live updates from the 2015 Davos Annual Meeting:
Microsoft's Brad Smith: U.S. Laws On Technology Are Outdated
Microsoft’s Brad Smith joined HuffPost Live at Davos on Saturday to discuss the importance of online security and privacy.
“2015 needs to be a year for new solutions, and that’s what we’re proposing. We do need new laws in the United States and in Europe,” Smith said. “We’re trying to manage 21st century technology issues with laws that were written in the ’80s and ’90s.”
Smith said people need to feel comfortable about their online privacy, noting users won’t put online data in a place they don’t trust, just like they wouldn’t deposit money at a bank they didn’t find stable.
“In some sense, we’re the next generation of banks,” Smith said.
Smith said lawmakers in the U.S. and Europe need to discuss how to increase online privacy while still providing law enforcement with information they need. He said the hardest part about dealing with a hacking crime is identifying and finding a hacker.
“Our prisons are not full of hackers,” Smith said, noting hackers are often in countries outside the U.S.
Below, live updates from the 2015 Davos Annual Meeting:
Best Tweets: What Women Said On Twitter This Week
There wasn’t much to laugh about this week after the House of Representatives passed an anti-abortion bill on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade on Thursday. But Jessica Misener lightened the mood a bit with a genius thought and potential coping strategy: “Free idea: capri suns filled with wine.” Take note, Trader Joe’s.
Sarah Miller threw one out for all the proud childfree ladies when she tweeted, “That lady who thinks life without kids is meaningless has clearly never watched downton abbey alone in the bathtub.” Preach.
For more great tweets from women, scroll through the list below. Then visit our Funniest Tweets From Women page for our past collections.
Kim Kardashian’s personal brand:
1) family first
2) sex is great
3) look fly 100% of the time
She is a perfect person + you all are NOTHING
— Jazmine Hughes (@jazzedloon) January 20, 2015
That lady who thinks life without kids is meaningless has clearly never watched downton abbey alone in the bathtub
— sarah miller (@sarahlovescali) January 20, 2015
So lazy I just Googled “should you sleep in bra” to see if it might be good for you. Looks like no effect either way so I’ll take it off now
— Caity Weaver (@caityweaver) January 20, 2015
free idea: capri suns filled with wine
— Jessica Misener (@jessmisener) January 20, 2015
1. Having drinks with a friend who insists ‘hasn’t killed people’ and ‘doesn’t call feminists cunts’ is too low a bar for who I will date.
— Elissa Shevinsky (@ElissaBeth) January 20, 2015
amazing discussion of “basic” vs Jane Austen’s “common” going on amongst English PhDs in my FB feed BE JEALOUS
— Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) January 20, 2015
i only go on ebay after i smoke pot that way i’m always the highest bidder thank you check please
— lauren ashley bishop (@sbellelauren) January 22, 2015
you: *goes ham in the club*
me: *eats prosciutto at home*
— Alexis Wilkinson (@OhGodItsAlexis) January 22, 2015
sex can be pretty enjoyable, once the other person stops laughing
— Mary Charlene (@IamEnidColeslaw) January 23, 2015
“Ask your doctor about how the Keystone Pipeline can help you.”
— Anna Holmes (@AnnaHolmes) January 21, 2015
17 years later, still relevant to my feminism. pic.twitter.com/f472O7efl0
— Ella Cerón (@ellaceron) January 23, 2015
The only people I know who have a totally different concept of how big an inch is would be every hairdresser and also all guys
— Michelle Markowitz (@michmarkowitz) January 23, 2015
You can tell how old people are by the number of sounds they make as they sit down
— Michelle Wolf (@michelleisawolf) January 18, 2015
k fine I guess “happy birthday, legal abortion!” isn’t ironic in a good way.
— Amanda Duberman (@AmandaDuberman) January 22, 2015
“I love being home. But I don’t like being left behind”– Beth in Little Women as she dies/me when I bail on dinner plans
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) January 21, 2015
Be a dear and pass me my shotgun, Sugar.
— Vodka n Tots (@Vodkantots) January 23, 2015
*Tries to blow breathalyzer*
breathalyzer: I have a girlfriend
— Amanda Hugnkiss (@caliluvgirl77) January 23, 2015
Sometimes when I’m eating a tub of ice cream and crying about being alone forever, I put on lipgloss because it makes me feel fancy.
— Sasshole (@RidiculousSheri) January 23, 2015
“If you love something set it free”
[Takes dog's leash off] Go on fella, you’re free now
[Throws a rock] GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE I LOVE YOU
— Brennadine (@brennadine) January 21, 2015
Fun drinking game: Have a drink, then put all of your feelings on the internet.
— moody monday (@mdob11) January 21, 2015
New #SOTU game: @ErnestMoniz or Beethoven? You decide. pic.twitter.com/alXnarCzkY
— Jess Ruzic (@ruzatar) January 21, 2015
Using Twitter To Track Down Heart Disease
By Tom Jacobs
Why does one community have higher levels of heart disease than another? Some of the reasons are obvious, such as income and education levels or local eating and exercise norms.
But as epidemiologists have long argued, other likely factors are more ephemeral. Among them: how angry or content the residents tend to feel, and whether the environment fosters a sense of social connectedness.
Measuring such things is tough, but newly published research reports telling indicators can be found in bursts of 140 characters or less. Examining data on a county-by-county basis, it finds a strong connection between two seemingly disparate factors: deaths caused by the narrowing and hardening of coronary arteries and the language residents use on their Twitter accounts.
“Given that the typical Twitter user is younger (median age 31) than the typical person at risk for atherosclerotic heart disease, it is not obvious why Twitter language should track heart disease mortality,” writes a research team led by Johannes Eichstaedt and Hansen Andrew Schwartz of the University of Pennsylvania. “The people tweeting are not the people dying. However, the tweets of younger adults may disclose characteristics of their community, reflecting a shared economic, physical, and psychological environment.”
The researchers analyzed 148 million messages tweeted from 1,347 American counties between June 2009 and March 2010. Emotional language was measured in two ways: the use of common terms associated with concepts such as anger, anxiety, and “positive and negative social relationships” and clusters of words reflecting certain attitudes and topics, including hostility and aggression, boredom and fatigue, optimism, and positive experiences.
This information was compared with county-level, age-adjusted mortality rates for atherosclerotic heart disease, as well as such factors as median income, high school and college graduation rates, and the prevalence of known risk factors like diabetes, obesity, and smoking.
The key results: “Greater usage of anger, negative-relationship, negative-emotion, and disengagement words was significantly correlated with greater age-adjusted AHD mortality,” the researchers report.
On the other side of the equation, “Greater use of positive emotion and engagement words was associated with lower AHD mortality,” they write. “Use of engagement words remained significantly protective after controlling for socioeconomic status.”
Similar associations were found for the aforementioned word clusters, with themes of hostility, aggression, hate, and boredom/fatigue associated with higher levels of atherosclerotic heart disease deaths, and references to positive experiences and optimism related to lower levels.
“Engagement (that is, participation in community activities), which has long been considered an important component of successful aging, emerged as the strongest protective factor in our study,” the researchers add.
These results support the notion that social media can be a very useful research tool. As the researchers put it: “The language of Twitter may be window into the aggregated and powerful effects of the community context.”
Perhaps more importantly to the average person, they also point to a truth we sometimes forget: Living among the perpetually enraged or chronically disengaged may be hazardous to your health.
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