Facebook and the New Interface

Click for clearer view. Blogspot won't resize nicely

On the technical side... yeah.. there's still some temporary problems with the new system like with the Twitter feeds and so on... They are on the way fixing it.

On the interface itself... many people says it sucks, actually because they are not used to it yet. Same case for me. All this is also new to me. But let's really look at it and compare with the previous. The arrangements are made more systematic and convenient. The most common activities we do on Facebook are now easily available at the left sidebar... all of them; News feed, photos, videos, messages, and most of all.. our most often played games... All available at the sidebar. Then, the notifications are now located at the top, as a drop-down. 

This arrangement is more tidy in the sense that, we no longer need to look at bottom left of the screen for the games, then run our eyes to the bottom right for the notifications, then run our eyes all the way to the top left for the messages, then top right to logout. Get what I mean? The previous design requires us to run our eyes everywhere to fully use Facebook. Now, we just need to focus on the top half of the screen, which is more natural to the eyes, because our eyes by nature is more comfortable looking straight than looking down. By looking straight we will see the top part of the screen.

And yeap, another systematic feature is that the things we do most often are now grouped together for better convenience. Cool.

So, the new design is indeed much simplified, systematic, and tidier. Great work, developers! Give us some time and we'll get used to it.

ADD::: SURPRISING news for my environmentalist friends. Just found out that Facebook is powered by coal plants, the number 1 cause of climate change.

or read the news here.

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Guns!

Amazing idea!

"...London is ramping up their own construction plans for the 2012 Olympics. And we just learned this exciting little tidbit about the super sustainable Olympic Stadium currently being built there that makes us even more anxious to see it – it’s going to be made out of recycled guns and knives! That’s right, confiscated weapons from the Metropolitan Police Department are being melted down into scrap metal and used to help build the stadium. That’s an anti-weapons and recycling program all rolled into one!"

How cool is that ?!

Read the full article here.

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Go Forth and Blog

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI has a new commandment for priests struggling to get their message across: Go forth and blog.

Extracted from AP news here.

Yay! Great news! It is good to make use of whatever medium of communications available at the moment, especially the various web social media we have now, which are growing faster and stronger everyday. We have to prepare ourselves for the generations to come, where digital communications will surely dominate the world of communication.

"The spread of multimedia communications and its rich 'menu of options' might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web," but priests are "challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources," he said.

Yet, we have to be aware that the devil as well, has already got into the digital world; much earlier than us, and is far more digitally savvy than us mere humans. His has his tricks, traps, schemes and plans all over the digital world as well. So, we must be cautious about this, and learn to control our actions in the digital world.

The 82-year-old pope has often been wary of new media, warning about what he has called the tendency of entertainment media, in particular, to trivialize sex and promote violence, while lamenting that the endless stream of news can make people insensitive to tragedies.

All in all, let us together march into the digital world and spread the message of Love! Yay!
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Interactive Piano! CoOL!

We have always been watching Youtube videos as... well... just videos, right?
lol.. lame statement.. FAIL.

No, what I mean is... so far, the only ways we respond to Youtube videos are by rating it, favourite, share, subscribe, comment, and such, right?

There are only very, very few instances where we can actually interact WITH the video itself... where we can make the video respond to us right from where we are.. immediately.. by just clicking our mouse at the buttons on the video.

Ever come across any of such videos? Yes? No?

This recent one presented a really brilliant, new interactive way for users to interact WITH the video itself. MysteryGuitarMan came out with this idea of getting us to make him play notes on the guitar by just clicking on the buttons on the video. The buttons are arranged like piano keys and whenever you click any of the piano keys, the video will show him playing that particular note on the guitar. So, you click the piano keys and he will play the melody for you on the spot! No loading of any new videos! Immediately! Cool, ya? The funny thing is, you play the piano keys and guitar sounds come off... haha.

Anyway, the MysteryGuitarMan recommends playing this video in a larger screen size to be more interactive and user-friendly. So, please go to Youtube and play the video there. Don't play it here on my blog. It won't be as fun. Shooohh! And have fun playing the piano/guitar!



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