Facebook - It changes your brain

So according to a recent study by University College London, the the number of facebook friends you have can affect several areas of your brain related  to memory and your real world social network.

http://mashable.com/2011/10/19/facebook-friend-count-brain/

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15472734,00.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15353397

However, does that really factor in those that just add people they don't even know? The mashable article refers to Dunbar's Number which identifies having 150 friends as the limit of an average person's social circle. Im way above that limit with nearly double that in facebook friends. What does that tell you about me? =P

e-Sports / Sports, is it all the same?

The best person to ask that question, would be someone who is involved in both!

Check out this interview with NBA's Gordon Howard who recently took part in a professional Starcraft 2 tournament.

They even parodied the famous Le Bron James - Decision:

What does Facebook know about you?

Hey guys,

I have already posted this in the book. But i figured it was worth a blog post.

On the 27th of September, 2011 a user on the website www.reddit.com posted an image describing how to make a data request to facebook to send all the personal data which they had collected of you as part of the “European Data Protection Directive” .

Under the European Data Protection act, Facebook will then have to send you a CD containing all the information they have about you. This caused a huge response, so much so that facebook sent out this response to several users, explaining that there would be delays in their response to the data requests.

So, are you going to send them an e-mail?

Keenan Cahill!

This is mainly in response to Mikes comment on my last post, which I figured deserved its own blog post.

I'm not sure if you knew that the kid is actually Keenan Cahill.

http://keenansroom.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keenan_Cahill

Some of his videos have over 38Million views:

As mentioned, part of his success comes from his appearance due to his rare genetic disorder, (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/keenan-cahill-youtube-star-highlights-rare-genetic-disease/story?id=12227883), and peoples love for things which are strange and different, so I would agree with you there. 

Commercial Kings - The secret to going viral?

So a recent viral trend has been the Chuck Testa video and meme:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nope-chuck-testa

This video was made by Rhett and Link, 2 guys who gained fame through their youtube videos, and now have their own TV show where they make commercial for local small businesses in the US called Commercial Kings. This commercial for Chuck Testa was made for that TV show, and has become famous worldwide through youtube again.

So what do you guys  think? Do Rhett and Link know the secret to viral media? Is there one?!

Their youtube page:

http://www.youtube.com/user/RhettandLink?ob=5

Faster than Earthquakes

So twitter just released a new advert:

What do you guys think?

A Review of a Review

Hey guys,

so to follow on from my last post about reviews, I would like to take some time to talk about bad reviews. As Wags commented on my last post, online reviews can spread very quickly.

In response to Wags, I am not sure whether there are any product categories as time-critical as movies. With video games, reviewers often tend to get their hands on previews (or alpha or beta testing) or demos, which they might often make a review of, which helps to give an indication of what the final product might be like.

In the gaming industry, we can often find reviews from different review sites, where the reviews do not reflect the real state of the game. This is because game review sites often get games sent to them early, and might not receive them if they give a bad review. Therefore, certain game sites provide ratings where a 7/10 is an average game, which can often be misleading. This is because in order to continue to receive access to previews, demos, or earlier releases of the games, game developers and publishers prefer seeing good reviews.

My favourite review site for video games is http://angryjoeshow.com/. By providing video reviews of the products, we get to see the products in use, which helps the viewer to get a better feel of the product.

The reason why I like the angry joe show is that all the reviews are entertaining, as well as the fact that he is not afraid to give a bad review, such as a 2/10. By providing an honest opinion, I find I tend to agree with his reviews more often than those provided on other sites.

For those who are interested in a bit more, here is Angry Joe with a couple of other reviewers, discussing the state of the game review industry.

So what about you guys? Do you have a reviewer you tend to trust more than others? If so, why? Derschau mentioned on my last blog that for movies he doesn't tend to trust bad reviews for movies, but only good ones due to the being a personal subjective view. But aren't good reviews also personal subjective views? What do you think?