A nice switch from that other Guardian piece I blogged about was one about the Selfiecity Project. Have you heard of it? It was a project about a global phenomenon reinforced by Oxford Dictionaries declaring "selfie" the Word of the Year late last year (not to mention President Obama's selfie at Nelson Mandela's memorial service). Selfiecity was a project at City University of New York that … [Read more...] about About the worldwide ‘selfie’ phenomenon
mobile phones
Why Louis C.K. doesn’t let his kids have phones
The video has gone pretty viral over the past few days. On Conan O'Brien's show last week, Emmy-award-winning comedian Louis C.K. explained why he didn't want to give his daughters (aged 7 and 10) smartphones. [You can watch it at Slate.com.] What he says was – as my friend and fellow parent Anastasia Goodstein commented in Facebook – profound. But to get the depth of it, listen all the way … [Read more...] about Why Louis C.K. doesn’t let his kids have phones
With this teen texting study, only methodology was news
The methodology for a just-released study about teens and texting was new, but the findings don't seem to break much new ground – unless the news media had picked up on what the researchers didn't highlight. More on the reporting in a minute; first the study, published by researchers at University of Texas, Dallas, in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. Past studies of teens' "texting … [Read more...] about With this teen texting study, only methodology was news
Instagram adds video
Facebook's little photo-sharing app just became a video-sharing app too. Whether they're using Apple or Android phones, Instagram's 130 million users can now simply pick whether that image they want to capture is better static or in motion, then click on either the little camera or videocam icon (see the left-hand screenshot below). If they go with video, they can capture up to 15 seconds (no … [Read more...] about Instagram adds video
Video viewing increasingly ‘mobilized’
If it ever really did, screen size no longer has anything to do with the length of a video people will watch. "Smaller screens aren’t deterring people from watching more videos on their tablets and mobile phones," TheNextWeb.com reports. People of all ages are now doing more than half their "long-form video" viewing on these mobile devices, according to data from mobile video research firm Ooyala. … [Read more...] about Video viewing increasingly ‘mobilized’