It’s not surprising that the first paragraph on a web page is the one part that gets read the most. And that’s not just because the Internet has done away with whatever little attention span we have left. There’s more to it than the fact that we’ve gotten used to 140 bite-sized nuggets of information. According to astudyby Jakob Nielsen, when we read a page, our eye automatically traces the text in an F-shape....
Scientists at UC Berkeley may have figured out why humans and other species with Y chromosomes tend to have shorter lifespans than their XX-chromosome counterparts. According to their research, our DNA is toxic. What?Traditionally delineated intomaleandfemale,many species can be split into two majority groups consisting of those with XY chromosomes and those with XX chromosomes. Scientists have long suspected that either the presence of the Y chromosome orthe absence of the Xwas responsible for an observed difference in lifespans between the two DNA types....
AtTechweekin Chicago I caught up with Jodee Rich and Andrew Grill from social media anylitics toolPeopleBrowsr. The team previewed Playground for us which analyses 1000 days of data to understand exactly what is being said about you and/or your brand across the web. Having seen quite a few social media anlytics dashboards in the last couple of months I was a little dubious about Peoplebrowsr but after being given a demo it’s far more complex and intricate than other social media analytic tools on the market....
Talking to yourself has a bad reputation, but it doesn’t always mean you’re going mad. Studies show that thinking out loud can helpyou manage your emotionsandcomplete tricky tasks— and it isn’t only humans who are doing it. A group of Italian researchers recently programmed Pepper therobotto “think” out loud sothat users can understand what influences its decisions. They suspected that this would improve its interactions with humans. They tested their theory by asking people to set a dinner table with therobotaccording to etiquette rules....
There are few things that jump start one’s day as swiftly as a strong cup of coffee and a serving of news. But how do you find and enjoy the perfect cup of hand picked news? “The Internet has created a lot of content, which is why everyone today is talking about curation and filtering. We think filtering is great but it’s a feature not a product. The real opportunity is for people to contextualize, and to be able to create content around that content,” saysNoah Brier, the co-founder ofPercolate, New York City’s newest media company, currently in “double secret alpha” mode, which he describes as “a blog platform that tells you what to blog about”....
