Daily Bits

Facebook Killing the Christmas Card

by

christmascard
We have to face it – the popularity of the traditional way of greeting people during Christmas has slowly been declining over the years. You may say I am stating the obvious, but if you think about it, Facebook might not be the main thing to blame. Some guys at Mintel International actually points out that the decline in Christmas card sales started way back in 2005. Today, though, experts are pointing fingers at social media sites – not just Facebook, mind you.

One of the purposes of Christmas cards is to do some catching up, and with people being more connected on a daily basis these days, the need for the former is fast become non-existent. Think Facebook status updates – at least once a day for most people. Think tweets – definitely more than once a day for those who are on Twitter. Then there’s e-mail, instant messenger, text messaging, e-cards, and so on. All of these things are so accessible and do not take up much time. Compare that to having to purchase Christmas cards, writing notes (manually!), and posting them.

With the mindset and fast-paced lifestyle that people have these days, it is not such a surprise that Christmas card sales are way down, is it?

Enter Facebook card app Fun Cards. To be honest, I haven’t used this app even though they have been up since 2007. Christmas 2010 is not here yet, but 8 million cards have been sent so far.

Things do seem ominous for the Christmas card, don’t they? How about you? Are you going the Facebook card route or are you going to try for something more tangible?

Photo via SMU

The Web TV Battle

by

Recently the battle between Apple, Google and other companies such as Roku has been heating up, with other big hitters like Amazon also looking to take on established Web TV providers such as Hulu and Google’s YouTube. This battle will be heating up even more in 2011 with Microsoft looking to re-enter the fray with a subscription service for their Xbox 360 game console with an estimated Xbox Live user base of over 20 million.

Below is an Infographic from the guys at Infographiclabs looking at how this current battle is panning out.

Enjoy this great Infographic from our friends at Infographiclabs

Google: The Body Is a Wonderland

by

John Mayer may have become popular thanks to his bubblegum tongue-filled lyrics (I still don’t get what that’s supposed to mean, by the way), but Google is stepping things up a notch in this wonderland-body thingamajig. Google’s Body Browser was launched last week and is slated to be another of those Google creations that will keep you playing around for hours – well, maybe minutes, depending on the intensity of your interest in the human anatomy.

First thing you ought to know – you need a web browser with WebGL support. Google will try to make it easy for you and give you a link to download the new Google Chrome Beta (you have to admire the plugging). I didn’t have any problems making the application work on the first try, but it seems that in the early hours of its release, some people were not able to make it work.

Once you have the new Chrome Beta, just visit the Body Browser page, and you will see something like this.
Body Browser
The default 3D image is a fully clad female, which you can manipulate to learn more about the human body. You can peel layer after layer off – not clothing but skin, muscles, and so on. You can also rotate the body and make it smaller or larger, depending on your preferences.

I think it’s a pretty cool education tool, but squeamish person that I am, I didn’t last 10 minutes playing around with the 3D model. I am pretty sure lots of other people will find more use for the product, though.

Wikipedia a la Cubana

by

EcuRed

Here’s another wiki that has made the news in the recent days. While WikiLeaks has definitely garnered a large following around the world, there are other wiki sites that are worth talking about as well. Just the other night, my friends and I were talking about Cuba – the way of life there, tourism, etc. I didn’t think I would be writing about a Wikipedia-style web site focusing on this Caribbean island.

The web site is called EcuRed, and can be accessed at http://www.ecured.cu/.

It is basically an online encyclopedia which aims to “spread knowledge from a decolonizing, objective, and truthful point of view.” Unsurprisingly, the site received a massive amount of traffic, and due to this, it went down earlier this week. It’s been up since then, though, and visitors can read the articles – all 19,752 of them.

The whole site is in Spanish and is dependent on a government-run network. There are about 600 computer centers involved in the project as well as more than 1000 content developers. I do not speak or read Spanish, but thanks to Google Chrome’s translation feature, I was able to browse the web site.

If you are Cuban or have a love for this Caribbean isle, here are things you ought to know before joining the wiki fray:

  • Écuras is optimized for best viewing in the browser Mozilla Firefox , you can download by clicking here . We also put at your disposal a spell checker that integrates with Firefox to verify your spelling, install it by clicking here .
  • If you have connectivity problems downloading the offline editor .
  • It is imperative that before you begin, read What is Écuras .
  • Learn to appoint either an article with the title Conventions .
  • You can ask questions and provide knowledge on the corner of the FAQ .
  • There are models of articles that offer guidance on the structure of a particular item.
  • Look at this list of recommended templates .

That list was translated automatically so there might be some grammatical inconsistencies, but you get the picture.  What’s important, I think, is that it is a huge step towards Cuba’s opening up to the world.  Something to be excited about, don’t you think?

A is for Ackbar: THE Alphabet Book Your Kid Must Have

by

If you consider yourself a self-respecting Star Wars geek, then that title applies to you. It is no secret that I am not the biggest Star Wars fan out there, but I do recognize a cool thing when it stares me in the face; and what can be a cooler baby shower gift than a book that will forever shape an infant’s perception of what the letters of the English alphabet stand for?

A is for Ackbar is the masterpiece created by Brandon Peat, with lots of inspiration from his wife Emma. As the story goes, the idea came up when Emma was pregnant with their first child, Tycho. In the quest to decorate the nursery without having to paint the walls (yeah, renting can be a biatch sometimes), they stumbled upon the idea of creating “alphabet posters”, and being the nerds (his words, not mine) they are, Star Wars had to be the theme. Taking things one step further, the couple decided to collect the illustrations and put them together to create a baby book.

Here’s a glimpse of the artwork.

Ackbar

Non-Star Wars fan that I am, I had to look up Ackbar. Thank you, Wikipedia, for enlightening me.

Bossk

Bossk apparently means “devours his prey” – not exactly baby-friendly, but hey, we have to start them young, don’t we?

Chewie

Yes, even I knew that C would represent Chewie and C-3PO!

Nien

The narcissistic side of me would not shut up – I had to look at the letter N and share it with you all. Who the heck is Nien Nunb? Wiki says he is a smuggler…nice!

Now, how to get your hands on the book? I think they were giving copies to individuals who donated at least $15 to Tycho’s college fund, but the site now says that the drive has been closed. Here’s a ray of hope for us latecomers in the game: “If you missed out, bookmark this page, and check back in a month or two. We hope to find a new way to disseminate this collection to the masses!”

Brandon and Emma Peat: any chance copies will be out by January/February 2011? 😀

Twitter’s 2010 in Review: Justin Bieber, the iPad, and Android

by

If Google has Zeitgeist 2010, then Twitter has its own review of the year that is almost gone. Twitter recently released the top trending topics on 2010, and if you want to know if you were “trendy” this year (or if you have nothing better to do), you might be interested at poring over the lists.

It may be hard for technophiles to swallow, but there are only two technology-related topics in the overall trending topics list, and they are at the bottom five! Yeah, we have to face it – for some people, the world does not revolve around the iPhone and other gadgets. We can be thankful, though, that these two (Apple iPad and Google Android) still ranked higher than Justin Bieber. Seriously now, if Bieber had ranked higher, I would be doubting the quality of tweets! (Then again, the data does not say whether the tweets are positive or negative.)
Overall Trending Topics

Narrowing the trending results a little bit, here is the list for trending topics in technology. Now it really is not surprising that Apple has practically hogged the list, is it? I am surprised, though, that Call of Duty Black Ops has made it to number 5. If the reaction of friends are anything to go by, the game is really something else, but I thought that the New Twitter would have ranked higher.
Tech Trends

There are other subtopics listed – check them out at Twitter Year in Review.