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Digital Social Grooming (Ed Batista)
And while I agree with Boyd’s basic premise–i.e. social grooming is an innate behavior so of course it’s going to find expression within social networks–I also agree with Haque’s critique that those networks are devalued when too much content takes the form of ritual displays of grooming behavior. Some amount of digital social grooming is inevitable and healthy, but in excess it turns our interactions into formulaic protocols…
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Do Happier People Work Harder? – NYTimes.com
In a 2010 study, James K. Harter and colleagues found that lower job satisfaction foreshadowed poorer bottom-line performance. Gallup estimates the cost of America’s disengagement crisis at a staggering $300 billion in lost productivity annually. When people don’t care about their jobs or their employers, they don’t show up consistently, they produce less, or their work quality suffers.Â
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Three-dimensional printing: An image of the future | The Economist
GE, a large American conglomerate, is now proposing to make ultrasound transducers by “additive†manufacturing—or three-dimensional printing, as it is also known.
The gains include less waste and the ability to make bespoke parts more easily. But one of the most compelling advantages is freeing designers from the constraints of traditional production. Those constraints include having to design things not in their optimal shape but to be machined, often as a series of pieces. Additive manufacturing can combine parts into a single item, so less assembly is needed. That can also save weight—a particular advantage in aerospace. These new production opportunities mean manufacturers, big and small, are about to become a lot more inventive.
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Analysis: Are We Ready to Become Friends With Things?
“I’m a friend of Coca-Cola on Facebook,” he started out, standing two feet away from the machine, “and I come up to this Coca-Cola machine which was probably created before Facebook. How am I going to connect to this machine?” His hand was within striking distance of the dollar slot, but rather than engage in some impersonal exchange, he reached for his iPhone. “I just put my iPhone in front of the Coke machine, my iPhone knows where it is, it’s got geolocation! It just gave me a point for being in front of this Coke machine, a loyalty point! It knows it’s got these six products. If I choose ‘collateral’ for any of these six products at this time, I get another loyalty point. I’m connected to Coca-Cola.” “We have to ask that question: How do all of our products become social? How do all of our cars become our friends?” Mark Benioff, CEO, Salesforce.com The wonders only begin from this point. “Then Coca-Cola updates my Facebook page. It says, ‘Ah, Marc likes Diet Coke!’ It’s right here, and it starts to work with me. It starts to have a relationship with me. We can bring the offline world online. We can have more customer intimacy.”
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Flickr Nails Photo Privacy With New Geofence Feature
Geofencing is a term typically used to refer to the drawing of a line on a map where some kind of pre-determined action is triggered, it’s most established in the business of transporting goods in trucks and triggering tracking actions when those trucks enter into certain geographic zones. Flickr’s new privacy geofences are something everyone is likely to enjoy using though. I, for example, have already set up a geofence around my house prohibiting anyone but my approved contacts from seeing the location of the photos I upload from home.
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The Hive Mind Needs More Women
groups with more women and more democratic discussion is just as important as casting your crowdsourcing net far and wide.