Soon Change Your Password with Your Thoughts

You may be spared from typing pesky passwords in the future! 

Instead of typing your password, you may only have to think about it, thanks to a new wireless headset device developed by researchers. 

Remembering passwords for all your sites can get annoying. There are only so many punctuation, number substitutes and uppercase variations you can recall, and writing them down for all to find is hardly an option. 

Researchers at the University of California Berkeley School of Information developed the device that explores the feasibility of brainwave-based computer authentication as a substitute for passwords. 

By measuring brain-waves with bio-sensor technology, researchers are able to replace passwords with "passthoughts" for computer authentication, website 'Mashable' reported. 

A USD 100 headset wireless connects to a computer via Bluetooth, and the device's sensor rests against the user's forehead, providing a electroencephalogram (EEG) signal from the brain. 

The NeuroSky Mindset looks just like any other Bluetooth set and is more user-friendly, researchers said. 

Brainwaves are also unique to each individual, so even if someone knew your passthought, their emitted EEG signals would be different. 

"Other than the EEG sensor, the headset is indistinguishable from a conventional Bluetooth headset for use with mobile phones, music players, and other computing devices," according to the researchers. 

Participants, in a series of tests, completed seven different mental tasks with the device, including imagining their finger moving up and down and choosing a personalized secret, the report said. 

Simple actions like focusing on breathing or on a thought for ten seconds resulted in successful authentication. 

"We find that brainwave signals, even those collected using low-cost non-intrusive EEG sensors in everyday settings, can be used to authenticate users with high degrees of accuracy," the researchers concluded.

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10 Biggest Social Media Irritants

The 10 most annoying types of social media updates have been revealed in a new survey. The survey by Sweatband.com has found that diet and exercise boasters are the most annoying thing about social media.

The top 10 includes updates that most social media users will have published at some point. According to the Telegraph, the list of top 10 most annoying types of social media updates is as follows:

1. * Diet and exercise boasters: Those who tell you how far they've cycled, how fast they ran and how many pounds they've shed.
2. * People who tell you about every meal are boring enough.
3.  * Cryptic status writers.
4.  * At number four is game invitees. Those who bombard their friends with requests to play virtual farmers or digital mobsters or whatever game they are playing on Facebook.
5.  * Proud parents. Of course your child is special and amazing. To you. The rest of us don't need to know about every step, sniffle or funny saying.
6.  * People who share very personal details.
7.  * Checker-inners.
8.  * Event spammers. While it's great that you're hosting a hackathon to save badgers, you probably only need to tweet about it a couple of times.
9.  * Constant engagers who like and comment. Liking a status update or commenting on a post can be supportive and engaging. It can also feel a bit like stalking if you do it too much.
10. * Self-promoters. I would really like your business to succeed. I would like that almost as much as I would like you to stop talking about it.

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Load Social Widgets Conditionally

The technique is simple. We calculate the width of the user’s screen /browser and if the width exceeds a particular value (say 480 pixels), we load the associated social widgets.

To implement conditional loading on your blog /website, first add all the necessary social widgets to your blog using the usual procedure. 

For instance, you can visit facebook.com to generate code for the Like button while dev.twitter.com will provides codes the Tweet and Follow widgets of Twitter.

Remove the JavaScript from these generated codes – everything that’s between the <script> tags – and add everything else to your website template. Then copy-paste the following snippet before the closing </body> tag of your website template.

<script type="text/javascript">
 
(function(doc, script, minimum) {
 
   // Calculate the width of the user's screen
    var browserWidth = window.innerWidth 
        || doc.documentElement.clientWidth 
        || doc.body.clientWidth;
 
   // Load JavaScript only if the site is being viewed on a wide (non-mobile) screen
    if (browserWidth > minimum) {
 
    var js, frag = doc.createDocumentFragment(),
  
    // Credit : Stoyan Stefanov of phpied.com
    js_queue = function(url, id) {
        if ( ! doc.getElementById(id) ) {
            js = doc.createElement(script); 
            js.src = url; js.id = id; 
            frag.appendChild(js);
             }
         };
       
    // These are the most common social widgets, remove the ones you don't need     
    js_queue ("https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js",      "googleplus-js");
    js_queue ("//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js",          "twitter-wjs"); 
    js_queue ("//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1","facebook-jssdk");
    js_queue ("//platform.linkedin.com/in.js",              "linkedin-js");
    js_queue ("//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js",         "pinterest-js");
 
    var fjs = doc.getElementsByTagName(script)[0];
    fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(frag, fjs); 
    }
 
// Set the minimum width here (default is 480 pixels)
} ( document, 'script', 480 ) );
 
</script>

The above JavaScript code asynchronously loads all the popular social widgets – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest – but you may remove the js_queue calls for widgets that you do not plan to use on your website. Save the changes and you are done.

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Cure Social Media Addiction

Social media has slowly crawled into our lives to become one of the most vital aspects of it in the past few years. Social media addiction has now become an emerging issue

and it may soon turn into a grave one if not curbed at the right time. Let’s take a look at few measures that’ll help you out in the long run!

1. Understand the Issue

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Do you sit on a social media site like Facebook, Twitter, etc. endlessly at a stretch of 4-6 hours refreshing the page over and over again? Do you have no idea why you indulge in that meaningless task for hours without anything productive coming out of it? Beware; you’re slowly turning into a social media addict. The first step is to understand the issue and its magnitude.

2. Understand the Repercussions

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Has something that has occurred on the medium affected you gravely at an emotional level? Have you been pondering over a certain altercation that went down between you and an accomplice on a site which has disrupted your thought pattern? These tend to be the symptoms that point towards social media addiction. Having it affect your day-to-day life reaffirms the impact it is causing over your thinking.

3. Set a Routine

Image Credit: Thinkstock

The first step towards bringing the addiction to a halt is to keep a tab on the amount of time you spend on the sites. Usually addiction is detected when your surfing time starts eating into your work-time or family-time. To avoid that, dedicate a specific time-span that you’d spend on the social networking site on a daily basis. Going ‘Cold Turkey’ and completely shutting out social media networking may not work well and may backfire. To avoid that, set up a timetable and stick to it!

4. Substitute Social Media with a Hobby

Image Credit: Thinkstock

The next step would be to create an equally captivating distraction for yourself, so that you deviate your mind from social media. Pick up a new hobby; revive a hobby that you once cheerfully cherished. Dedicate some of your networking time to it and go ahead. This’ll help you in keeping your mind busy and focused towards something useful and productive and will also assist in slowly easing you out of the social media addiction.

5. Don’t Prioritize

Image Credit: Thinkstock

Never prioritize social media over anything else. Social media has to be the lowest on the priority list. The minute you start prioritizing social media over your job, your family, or your personal health, things start turning ugly. Avoid that. Social media is only a source of entertainment and should be done in your leisure time.

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India Spends 1 Of Every 4 Online Minutes In Social Networks

The online population of India literally lives inside social networks, as it is revealed that more than 25 percent of the total online Indian minutes were spend on social networking activities. Indians are also fond of Google sites as it turned out to be the destination of more than 95 percent of them.

The findings came out on a latest report from ComScore on top online sites and activities in India. Google stand as the most popular site in the country followed by Facebook and then Yahoo sites. Microsoft sites have finished in the fourth position. Adding to it, many local websites secured spot in the top 10 ranks.

Considering the engagement in websites, the difference was huge between the best of local brands and the topper, Facebook. People spent an average of four hours on Facebook in June whereas Network 18, the local leader engaged people for an average 31.6 minutes during the month. The Google sites, including YouTube had visitors spending an average of 2.5 hours.

In India, social networks have turned to be the primer driver of daily digital Media Consumption followed by the entertainment sites. The time spent on online retail shops in the country grew 0.5 percent as the trend is gaining momentum within the country.

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Microsoft launched Research Social Network So.cl

Microsoft’s famous FUSE labs launched its most hyped product So.cl (pronounced as social) last week. Contradictory to the previous statements, So.cl won’t be a rival to the Facebook or Google+.

According to Microsoft, So.cl will be an experimental social search project, focused on social search for the purpose of learning. The primary target will be students since it will give them a chance to share and collaborate the ideas from various web pages and other resources.

The main features of So.cl include social search, which is usually public and can be made private on demand. The search interface is made with the help of Bing. Users can create communities with like minded people around them and post pictures or data. The video chat room facility helps the community members to watch a video together.  It also offers public file sharing, with the most searched topic having the high priority. The interesting feature is that users with a Facebook or twitter account can collaborate their account with So.cl and start Searching! But for the time being, new users trying to login to the So.cl are greeted back with the message that the site is overcrowded.

Even though Microsoft says that So.cl won’t be a rival to Facebook, we cannot forget the fact that Facebook also began its journey as a small community search for a college.

What is So.cl?

So.cl (pronounced "social") is an experimental research project, developed by Microsoft’s FUSE Labs, focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning.

• So.cl combines social networking and search, to help people find and share interesting web pages in the way students do when they work together.
• So.cl helps you create rich posts, by assembling montages of visual web content.
• To encourage interaction and collaboration, So.cl provides rich media sharing, and real time sharing of videos via "video parties."

We expect students to continue using products such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other existing social networks, as well as Bing, Google and other search tools. We hope to encourage students to re-imagine how our everyday communication and learning tools can be improved, by researching, learning and sharing in their everyday lives.

Who can join?

We are formally partnering with selected schools (including University of Washington, Syracuse University, and New York University).

However, anyone can participate in the FUSE Labs research community as several of our experiments are available for use on the web. For those who wish to be more involved with FUSE, please e-mail Socl@microsoft.com.

More Projects of Fuse Lab

So.cl

So.cl combines social networking with web browsing and search, for the purpose of learning.

CompanyCrowd

CompanyCrowd collects stories, media and content to create a living newspaper about the companies that are most important to you.

Montage

Explore Montage, a flexible web-based service. http://getmontage.net

Kodu

Kodu lets kids create creating games on the PC and XBOX via a simple visual programming language.

Spindex

Your entire social world in one page - find what's new, search, see your friends' trending topics.

Docs for Facebook

Discover, create, and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends.

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India is the 4th Country to use Social Network the Most

Brazil use Social Networks the Most,while India is in the 4th Position with 14% of Internet Users and also in a survey an Indian User spent more than 20 minute in Facebook as an average.

Experian Hitwise has released some new numbers about social network use around the world. It found that Brazil and Singapore are the top two countries for overall social networking use. But Facebook is not the network on which Brazilians are spending their time. 

The study also measured the length of the average user's Facebook session and found that Brazilians spent comparatively little time on Facebook. While Singapore users spend nearly nearly 39 minutes per Facebook session on average, Brazilian users spend less than half that, just over 18 minutes.

Where are the Brazilians if not on Facebook? They're using Orkut, owned by Google. Orkut owns 43% of the social networking market in Brazil, but it's losing ground to Facebook. Orkut fell by 18% since last year, while Facebook gained by 16%. Still, for the country that uses social networks the most in the world, it uses Facebook less than half as long as Singapore, on average, and only 2/3 as long as the U.S.

The Hitwise study measured market share of social networking sites versus total Internet usage as its metric of overall social Web use:

Market share for social networks and forums:

1. Brazil -- 18.9%
2. Singapore -- 16.4%
3. U.S. -- 15.4%
4. India -- 14.0%
5. New Zealand -- 13.9%
6. France -- 15.1%
7. Australia -- 13.1%
8. U.K. -- 12.2%

Hitwise also measured the length of the average user's Facebook session around the world. ReadWriteWeb's loyal Kiwi supporters will be proud to know that New Zealand wins the silver medal, at 30 minutes and 31 seconds:

Average time spent on Facebook in August 2011 per session:

1. Singapore -- 38 mins 46 sec
2. New Zealand -- 30 mins 31 sec
3. Australia -- 26 mins 27 sec
4. U.K. -- 25 mins 33 sec
5. U.S. -- 20 mins 46 sec
6. France -- 21 mins 53 sec
7. India -- 20 mins 21 sec
8. Brazil -- 18 mins 19 sec

Other interesting takeaways:

• India had the fastest growth in Facebook use since last year, increasing in market share by 88%.
• Facebook gained in market share by 5% in the U.S. since last year.
• 18% of Singaporeans jump directly from one social network to another during their browsing sessions.

Posted by Azziet Singh follow me on twitter

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Social Networking Website like Facebook for Education

Fed up of your child logging into Facebook at the cost of studies? The Rajasthan government has hit upon a remedy - a social networking site that will also help brush up a youngster's academic knowledge.

"The idea is to utilise the popularity of social networking sites among students. Most of them spend a lot of time on such websites every day," a senior official of the state's information technology department, which is developing the portal, told IANS.

Social Networks for Education

The government portal will give tips to students on subjects like physics, chemistry and mathematics. Experts will be roped in to answer the academic queries students post on it.

"We thought why not make it a bit educational so that students can not only enjoy the fun that these sites offer but also get to learn something," the official said.

Students will be able to open up their individual accounts, add friends, upload photographs, play games and interact among themselves just like they do on Facebook.

"What makes it stand out is the fact that there will be subject-specific links on the home page. We will store e-books, objective questions and coaching material related to each subject," the officer added.

The development of the portal is in the final phase, he said.The government should popularise the website by approaching educational institutes across the state, including schools, colleges and coaching centres, said Abhishek Sharma, a volunteer working with a local NGO.

"The students should be encouraged by the institutes to use this portal," Sharma told IANS.

"It will be fun to have such a social networking website. I usually get distracted by these sites, but fun and studies going together must be great. I am eagerly waiting for the site to be launched," said Manu Mishra, a Class 11 student.

Parents have also welcomed the initiative.

"My son spends half of his time on social networking websites which could be utilised for sports or studies. I will definitely encourage him to use the portal being launched by the government as it will at least have some study or course and subject material," said Ramkumar Joshi, parent of a Class 12 student.

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Is Microsoft going to launch a social networking site

Tulalip Home

Is Microsoft geared up to launch a social networking site? This has become the hottest question of the month. If rumors are true, the fight of the three giants, Facebook, Google and Microsoft will be an interesting war to watch out for. However if the speculations comes true it would not be very surprising as far trend goes.

Inception of the speculation:

A writer from Fusible reportedly found out that the site Socl.com had been bought by Microsoft and the site Socl.com hosted a teaser page for a service called Tulalip. Members of the Google+ network were also among the ones who witnessed it. Tulalip, the name of the Native American tribes near Microsoft's Redmond office, seems to be a social search feature integrated with Twitter and Facebook.

The project, entitled Tulalip, advertised itself in the splash as a service that lets users "find what you need and share what you know easier than ever" and there appear to be the options to connect via Facebook or Twitter. It also showed a link which said "See how it works."

Contradiction:

However if you go to Socl.com now, you will witness a whole contradictory affair. It will flash a message saying: "Thanks for stopping by. Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn't mean to, honest."

Hence, for now Tulalip and Socl.com will remain unsolved mysteries only. However this leaves room for many unanswered questions like, what made Microsoft remove the splash and replace it with a briefing message? Are they really going to join the league of social networking sites?

 

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