Facebook is a social networking website dedicated to user-generated content and global connectivity. At its heart is the individual user, who creates a profile and then searches for friends already on the network. Complements to that initial concept include groups dedicated to a multitude of interests including religion, sport or even profession. Applications on Facebook created by users, and more and more by companies, allow users to add even more interactivity into their profiles. An entire software development industry has sprung up supporting these applications, which allow for greater participation and often as a ‘get to know you’ for strangers who meet on Facebook.
Ramon Thomas
Psychology of Technology Blog
5 basic steps of personal computer security
After almost 20 years of using computers I have come to appreciate the importance of computer security. That irritating obligation you may feel to run an anti virus check on your system once a day just to feel more secure. The wish to eliminate those nagging spam emails permanently from your Inbox. And more recently those unsolicited requests to update your online banking information also known as phishing.
If you are like most people and want to avoid the loss of important information on your computer or laptop, I suggest your implement the following suggestions asap:
- Respect Your Personal Privacy: Most people register for websites left right and centre. This is encouraged by people who invite all their friends to join the latest social networking websites. And with the proliferation of niche social networking websites this trend is set to continue. However, personal privacy is being ruined by simple behaviour like forwarding jokes or chain letters. Start to protect your email address and other personal information. If you’re just exploring a new website, register a free email address, and use that one to avoid receiving spam at some later date. When you send out emails to more than one person consider using BCC.
- Install a Personal Firewall – One of the things I did for the first 8 years of my professional career is to install and maintain network firewalls. Personal firewalls are smaller versions of this same concept that protect your persoal computer or laptop. The purpose of the firewall is to prevent unsolicited attempts to hack your information. Cellphones do not have such a facilite just yet but will require one in the near future, especially those smartphones. As broadband explodes in South Africa, more and more people simply leave their computers permantely connected to the Internet. The risk of an attact on your computer is compounded so remember to switch it off. Even if you information is NOT valuable, your computer can potentially used as a gateway to cause problems for other people. And that will eventually come back to you causing more unecessary headaches. There are many pieces of remote scanning software and remote management software which allows you to take over a desktop seamlessly. I recommend ZoneAlarm or Sygate.
- Anti-Virus: This is actually the most basic compontent of computer security because computer viruses have been around since the earliest days of the Internet. Once again Microsoft products are the main culprits period. So protect yourself using one of the following recommended free anti virus programs: PC Tools, ClamWin or AVG. It is important your anti-virus also checks your emails before sending and before receiving because today, this is the #1 method by which they spread.
- Anti-Spyware: Spyware is similar to computer viruses but different. The prolifiration of spyware can directly be correlated to the rise of interactive websites, and to some extent ecommerce websites. These website primarly use files like cookies to track user behaviour across the Web. Besides being a invasion of personal privacy, sometimes small little applications are installed, with your permission, to give you certain functionality. I strongly advocate you turn your web browser settings to the highest privacy settings and it will go some way to reducing this problem. On the other hand you must run a weekly scan for spyware using one of the following software applications: Ad-Aware, Windows Defender,
- Operating Systems updates: This is probably the most irritating part of maintaining good computer security. If you are running WindowsXP or Windows Vista you are downloading updates constantly. This not only uses bandwidth but over time adds so many layers on top of your existing installation that it reduces the time to boot your computer. Even if you are running Mac OS X or Ubuntu Linux, my favourite alternatives to Microsoft Windows, they both require weekly or at least monthly updates from the Internet. These updates fix security loopholes often discovered by white hat hackers or by ordinary users. Remember that software applications often update themselves on a regular basis as well and programs like Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Office can be your archihilles heel, so consider moving to Open Office.
iTxt a bad MXit clone going nowhere slowly
At the end of 2006 I was contacted about a new mobile message company iTXT that claimed to launch safer chat rooms on cellphones. This was at the height of MXit’s initial negative publicity. I investigated the company and signed up on my cellphone to evaluate the service.
I immediately found some usability problems and reported this to the PR company who contacted me. The model was flawed to begin with because of a small weekly fee. The MXit business model was always no monthly or weekly fees because everything is pre-paid via Moola, and therefor on a pay-per use bases. A monthly fee for ringtones or access to a chatroom is like those irretating debit orders for insurance policies on your bank account.
Anyway I have since removed the iTXT application from my cellphone but like clock work I get the monthly SMS: “iTxt Monthly Reminder- Have you tried iTxt on your PC? www.itxt.co.za”
And so every other month I diligently go their website, email them a request to remove my account and stop sending these SMS messages to no avail. Now if they only had a landline or at least a cellphone I could call someone to resolve my dilemma.
So just a word of caution. If you come across a website, especially an ecommerce website just take a moment to check if they have a landline or at the very least a cellphone number. If their contact page looks like this one below…run! Avoid them because they are not making it easy for you, a potential client, to engage with them. This was one of the earliest criticisms I had of MXit i.e. no telephone number on their website. And it’s maybe no surprise they also do not have any telephone number listed on their website. So I
f you have any customer support issues with MXit call them on 0861 00 6948.
Let me know if you have had any hiccups in having your user accounts removed from a website or cellphone wireless application service provider in South Africa.
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Brent Smith on Allowing Yourself To Be Bored
I believe that one of the biggest reasons that you do things that you know you’re not supposed to do is because you feel bored or you fear feeling bored.
For most of you, your lives are so filled with stimuli, not to mention responsibilities, that it’s almost impossible for you to sit still and do nothing, much less relax-even for a few minutes. What I’d like you to do is allow yourself to be bored. I’m not kidding. If you allow yourself to be bored, even for an hour-or less-and don’t fight it; the feelings of boredom will be replaced with feelings of peace. And, after a little practice, you’ll learn to relax.
The Psychology of a Player interview
This is an interview with Ramon Thomas for Destiny, a new women’s business magazine, that was never published so I’m posting it here:
1. Why do some men decide to become players?
Most players don’t decide to become players. They just find they are naturally good with women i.e. they understand how to make a women feel good and this naturally creates attraction. Players make up a small, very small fraction of men. Those who are motivated to become pickup artists (or players) do so out of frustration and lack of success with women growing up. For example, Mystery, the most revered pick-up artist in the world was a nerd, introverted and into computers growing up. He transformed himself by becoming a stage magician and using this to launch his career as a professional pick-up artist. He is the mentor of Neil Strauss, author of The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artist (2005).
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Peter Diamandis on Stephen Hawking in zero gravity
It feels like yesterday that I met Professor Stephen Hawking in Cape Town at the AIMS 2008 graduation and the launch of the Next Einstein project. While at this event I spoke at length with Pik Both, former minister of Foreign Affairs and he related how he had met Stephen Hawking in the 1990s. And they struck up a friendship around science and exploration. Pik told me that when Hawking was in his 20s he was lying in a hospital bed and another person opposite him died. And at that moment I realised how precious life was and dedicated himself to exploring the most complex problems facing humanity. And as is the nature of all true scientists he has never stopped working on these challenge of understanding the universe. And what really inspires me, having read his book 10 years ago without understanding what I read, is to re-read a Brief History of Time and his follow-up The Universe in a Nutshell.
Anyway here’s a video from TED 2008 where X Prize founder Peter Diamandis talks about how he helped Stephen Hawking fulfill his dream of going to space — by flying together into the upper atmosphere and experiencing weightlessness at zero g. It is no coincidence Stephen Hawking played himself in a Star Trek TNG episode.
Women feel bad about one-night stands and casual sex
The sexual and feminist revolutions were supposed to free women to enjoy casual sex just as men always had. Yet according to Professor Anne Campbell from Durham University in the UK, the negative feelings reported by women after one-night stands suggest that they are not well adapted to fleeting sexual encounters.
These findings are published online in the June issue of Springer’s journal, Human Nature.
Men are more likely to reproduce and therefore to benefit from numerous short-term partners. For women, however, quality seems to be more important than quantity. Also for women, finding partners of high genetic quality is a stronger motivator than sheer number, and it is commonly believed that women are more willing to have casual sex when there is a chance of forming a long-term relationship.
As Professor Campbell explained: “In evolutionary terms women bear the brunt of parental care and it has been generally thought that it was to their advantage to choose their mate carefully and remain faithful to make sure that their mate had no reason to believe he was raising another man’s child. But recently biologists have suggested that females could benefit from mating with many men—it would increase the genetic diversity of their children and, if a high quality man would not stay with them forever, they might at least get his excellent genes for their child.”
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How to use Skype in the classroom
Here’s an excellent video tutorial from a teacher in America on how to install, configure Skype and use it. The cool cat teacher demonstrates how she sets up and uses skype in her classroom. This is a good video for beginners and for teachers using it in the classroom. It is about 11 minutes and you can download it from here.
UCT GSB study shows youth entrepreneurship improving but still room for improvement
The latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) study, conducted by the UCT Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), based at the UCT Graduate School of Business, has found that more South African youth are developing the confidence and potential to become entrepreneurship superstars.
The key findings show that the youth (categorised as those in the age categories of 18-24 years and 25-34 years) have a positive attitude towards opportunity-oriented business activities and a willingness to work with others towards achieving their objectives.
According to Dr Mike Herrington, Director of the UCT CIE and research team leader of GEM South Africa since 2001, the window of opportunity is open and ready for accelerated youth entrepreneurship development.
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