Personally I am always very skeptical regarding any scientific studies. Currently, there are so much data & journals exist that one can easily prove anything that goes in any direction. I think the author is looking at this from a different perspective. Social media I believe might have caused more internet usage by young people and therefore contributed less time spent with their familes. Previously, after school, kids will have no choice but to stay at home and communicate with their parents. Now, they are still hooked with their friends easily after getting home, thanks to facebook & twitter.

Therefore, it caused some distance within the family relationship, which is not a good thing but it didn’t make them egotistically obsessive bunch of rotten kids. There are always good things and bad things about everything. Social media influenced kids positively as well. It made information sharing much easier among peers.

Maybe parents should think of creating their facebook and twitter accounts more. Here is the link to an article talking about the study.

The only problem I have noticed though that sometimes it tends to freeze my computer.

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Companies like International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and EMC Corp. (EMC) are targeting analytics as a key growth area, but they’re also running up against a problem: There aren’t enough people capable of interpreting the data in the quick, predictive manner now required in the field.

This is not surprising. Increasingly industries are getting aware of the importance of understanding user behaviour to offer better service to the customer. Without a strong analytics system it becomes hard to implement and track marketing initiatives. This branch of the industry I believe would continue to grow.

Twitter Search

A few days back, I decided to use twitter for the first time in months. I have been on and off with twitter. I have a good number of followers and I should really maintain it properly. Anyways, so, to check what people are saying about Worldcup I decided to start tweeting again.

Then I decided to do a search on what’s being said about Yogananda. I came across one of the most amazing feeds and power of community. This feed if you have checked already you would see contains people posting various quotes of Yogananda. All these quotes of him I find are very relevant to me personally. Therefore, even if you are not into twitter even then you should bookmark this link and take a look once in a while when you need some guidance.

Computer World Magazine

Blogging after a long time to inform you guys about a nice promo. ITW0rld Canada is currently giving away free subscriptions to Computer W0rld, Network W0rld, CDN and CIO Magazine. They also have one french magazine. There is no catch really. They just want to increase some Canadian readership. If you sign up now then you are up for free subscription forever.

I think in terms of my visitors, computer world would be the most attractive of all. The reason is because this magazine talks about overall industry news. I have gone through these magazines and I find them to be an excellent read.

Sometimes internet has too much information and you are not sure where to begin if you are looking for some ideas on current industry. These magazines are great read for that purpose. Anyways, check them out. They are currently free only for Canadians. This promo will last until the end up April.

Click on the following links to sign up

Computer World
Network World
CDN
Direction Informatique (French Language)
CIO Magazine

Chrome
Firefox
IE
K-Meleon
Safari
Opera

I would say in terms of the “startup” speed, Chrome is the best. After that K-Meleon/Opera, then IE, Firefox and then Safari

Chrome is a cool looking browser with a high speed. I really like the incognito feature. However, I think in terms of stability Chrome definitely sucks. It freezes a lot. I found firefox, K-Meleon and Opera to be really stable. Safari, IE and Chrome crashes and freezes a lot for me.

I am coming across a bunch of articles analyzing Chrome as Google was able to create a huge buzz around Chrome. Here’s an article that tries to remind IT on certain things regarding Chrome.

This obviously won’t work with everyone. Can you imagine if TurboTax or H&R Block made their tax preparation software open source? The IRS (and Canada’s CRA, for that matter) would have a backpack of audits a mile long. Want a new deduction? Just program it in. Imagine what that would do to to the entire tax system. I guarantee, we’d have a new, no nonsense tax code in a jiffy!

Therefore, a lot of people in IT should also keep open source in mind for their career choice. I came accross this small quiz that asks you a series of question to see how much you know about Open Source.

I got a 85%. Check how much you can get….

MagicJack After a Week in Toronto

Using MagicJack from Toronto, Canada

I was really excited about MagicJack at the beginning. I did make a few calls. Once I talked with a customer representative in the US for like an hour using this. The experience was good and was pretty cool. However, as time goes on I am really losing interest on MagicJack. At this point, I have the magicjack unplugged because I need that USB port to connect my external HDD. 

I know people who use Magic Jack a lot. However, if you like me and have a cell phone and a landphone and a phone at work, I don’t understand when you would be using this device. Yes, when you make long distance calls, then it does become handy. However, I don’t make that much long distance calls. The reason is because you cannot have people call you.

If we had a local number for Toronto, then it would have been really good. However, we don’t have it. Therefore, people cannot call us, we have to call people. This is very stupid. They have been saying that we will have a local number soon and we haven’t got it. I don’t want to be cynical but the owner of MagicJack sounds like a shady person to me. When have you seen people promoting the owner as well as the product? 

The lack of improvements with MagicJack and constant lies about making magicjack available for Toronto make me feel like as if MagicJack was created for a short-time project. 

Please don’t get me wrong. I do understand it helps a lot of people. However, I don’t understand why isn’t there any improvement with this device. The sound quality isn’t that great for the non-MagicJack people you are talking to. There is no proper customer service. For no reason sometimes it stops working. 

I don’t want to complain because I paid only 40 dollars for a year. I have had nothing to lose to invest that amount and that’s why I did. However, I really got what I paid for nothing more. Sometimes you pay some money and feel you got a way more. However, this was definitely not that case.

It’s not living up to my expectations to tell you the truth. I do have the 30 days money back guarantee. Should I return in? Well, I decided not to return this because as I said in my previous post I got what I paid for. I cannot expect a smooth connection with 20 bucks/year. I will leave this. I am also currently doing some research to figure out if there is any way I would be able to use this device with skype. This VOIP service from canada is really good as I have heard and I will try this out in the future.

Also, I am thinking that MagicJack will improve their services along the road. If that happens then that would be great. Until then I am not sure how much I would be using this.

Yahoo walks away from Microsoft negotiations
Yahoo is nearing an agreement with Google involving its search advertising business

Today there is an internet monopoly by Google. I am not against Google. I cannot live without Google as I said before. However, I really do not like the Monopoly that Google currently has over the internet. Similarly, I cannot live without Microsoft but I do not like the Microsoft monopoly over the Operating Systems and softwares.

Therefore, an agreement with Microsoft would have meant the rise of stronger competition against Google. Now, Yahoo made Google more powerful over the internet. I wished Yahoo! made a bit more smarter choice.

http://www.adobe.com/

http://www.energy.gov

http://www.macromedia.com

http://www.nasa.gov

http://www.nsf.gov

http://www.real.com

http://www.usa.gov/index.shtml

http://www.whitehouse.gov

http://www.w3.org/