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Dec 30
0

10 Biggest Tech Fails

By | facebook, Google, iPhone, news | No Comments

CNN has published a lit of the “The 10 Biggest Tech ‘Fails’ of 2010,” and Apple made the list twice. The news powerhouse named the iPhone 4’s “Antennagate” kerfuffle as the #1 “Tech Fail” of 2010, while Ping was included as #10, both of which were included in our Ted Landau’s list of the five “bottom” stories of the year where Apple was portrayed in a bad light.

Taking the top spot in the list was the so-called “Antennagate” problem where some users lost all signal to their carrier when holding the device in certain way that became known as the “Death Grip.”

“First Apple said the problem didn’t exist,” CNN’s Doug Gross wrote. “Then they said it was a software issue. Then they kind-of admitted it existed and gave away free cases to help. Then, they said it doesn’t really exist anymore and stopped giving away the bumpers.”

All of which is fairly accurate and to the point, but CNN also noted that, “Months later, the problem is all but forgotten and the phones show no sign of dipping in popularity. So ‘fail,’ in this case, is a pretty relative term.”

Which begs the question of how this qualifies as one of the biggest “Tech Fails” of the year — the iPhone 4 is the single most successful smartphone on the planet, after all.

Then again, he labeled the scandal as a “Tech Fail,” and not the device itself, an important distinction. Apple’s efforts to correct perceptions was massive, and the company received more negative ink for this issue than it has since the days when Michael Diesel was hiding under his desk in Cupertino or Gil Amelio was wielding the corporate firing axe like Paul Bunyun on a killing spree.

While Apple came out the other side of this problem just fine, it took a Herculean effort by the company to do so.

Falling in at #10 is Apple’s Ping music social networking service built into-iTunes. “There’s a whole social network set up in Apple’s iTunes store now,” Mr. Gross wrote. “Didn’t know that? Well, there you go.”

He noted that not all artists participate in the service, and that it doesn’t integrate with Facebook. “And, a lot of the time,” he wrote, “it simply pushes you to buy music. Needless to say, Ping hasn’t really caught on.”

Also included in the list are:

  • 2. 3-D TV
  • 3. Microsoft Kin
  • 4. Nexus One
  • 5. Facebook privacy
  • 6. Google Buzz
  • 7. Gawker media sites hacked
  • 8. Content farms
  • 9. Digg relaunch
Dec 27
0

Heavy Facebook Users may have Weighty Amygdalas

By | facebook, news | No Comments

The size of your amygdala might indicate how large and complex your social network is. Amygdala volume has been connected to social network and behavior in past research, as scientists have found that nonhuman primate species with larger social groups tend to have greater amygdala volumes. Kevin Bickart and his coauthors took the next logical step and examined how amygdala volume varies in humans with different social networks. Their results appear in a recent issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The researchers measured two social network factors in 58 adults. First, they calculated the size of a participant’s network, which is simply the total number of people that are in regular contact with the participant. Second, they measured the network’s complexity, based on how many different groups a participant’s contacts can be divided into. The authors then examined how well those two factors correlated with the size of a participant’s amygdala and hippocampus. The hippocampus served as a negative control, as it should not vary based on social networks.

Linear regression revealed a positive correlation in amygdala size with both social network size and complexity. This effect showed no lateralization, meaning both left and right amygdala volumes followed this relationship. In addition, the effect is relatively specific, as other social factors like life satisfaction and perceived social support failed to correlate with amygdala volume.

Social network size and complexity did not significantly correspond with the size of the hippocampus or other subcortical areas. The authors did find that three regions in the cerebral cortex of the brain (caudal inferior temporal sulcus, caudal superior frontal gyrus, and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex) might correlate with social networks. They propose that those regions might have evolved along with amygdala to deal with the complexities of growing social circles.

This is one of the first publications that demonstrates a relationship between amygdala volume and social networks in humans. It would be fascinating to determine if a cause and effect relationship can be established. Are certain people born with larger amygdala and therefore create bigger social networks, or does the amygdala grow as we gain more friends and foes?