Feb 20 2012
Leave a comment
Life

Facebook Health Apps

As technology continues to improve and more digital applications are being created – the healthcare industry doesn’t want to be left in the dust. Since mobile health apps generated a revenue of 718 million last year , there’s very good reason to be very dust free.  Development of health and medical applications are opening new and innovative ways for technology to improve health and healthcare (or at least they hope so). There have been several studies about the actual effectiveness of these applications but I wanted to focus on what is already being offered out there on Facebook.

Most of the apps focus on three health categories: fitness, nutrition, and mind/body. Fitness apps allow you to keep track of your work out plans, create your own workouts and share your progress with your friends through Facebook.  Of course you only share the good stuff, right: whoops, forgot to post the bag of pizza-flavored cornnuts I just inhaled! The nutrition apps help keep track of nutrition goals – such as calorie counter, nutritional information, and recipes. The mind and body apps are created to help with emotional and mental health – with apps like “mind games” designed to keep your brain active.  And then further from the standard are more alternative choices, like zen/buddha apps that provide tips for mediation and inspiration.  There are also several apps that focus on relationships- these apps are suppose to help you develop better relationships with your friends, family, and loved ones.

I think they are off to a good start, trying to see what sticks and what stinks, but for now these apps are only applicable to people motivated to improve or change their health behaviors/habits, are actively engaging with the applications, or just straight technology-lovers. It takes a lot of time and effort to remember to log-in and enter the last thing you ate in your calorie count app (cornnuts).

I did a quick search of “health” apps on my Facebook – I didn’t find any apps that would be useful to myself or even seemed legit to health in general.

When I was more specific in my search terms, such as “fitness” and “nutrition”, I still was not able to find legitimate apps that I would feel comfortable giving consent to my information. Think back to the quiz apps: aka “what disney princess you are” – probably just an app taking your information for other people to use.  Don’t know about that?  Well it’s a whole ‘nother story.

I appreciate that there is a wealth of health information within our finger tips, but I know there is still work to be done beyond these superficial apps. Preventive care is very important in having a healthy life – and I think so far they are doing a good job of promoting that with exercise, nutrition and mental health. However, I think that as technology continues to excel, more apps can be created to help people with existing medical conditions, whether it’s keeping track of their prescriptions, or managing their diabetes.

Tagged , ,
Jan 30 2012
Leave a comment
Life

Google, Search Plus Your World

To ‘Google’ something is now common lexicon.  Some of us remember the time there was no such thing as Google searching – I’m not one of those people.  And I’m usually not on the cutting edge of information technology, or else I’d own boedeker@gmail.com or even jboedeker@gmail.com. But that’s about to change, Google Search Plus Your World (SPYW)  is the next step beyond your traditional search, and I’m fully cognizant of it. Google SPYW determines what is relevant in search queries influenced by a person’s groups, friends, and past searches. The company aims to personalize your results by including more Google+ Profiles, business pages, posts and Google+ and Picasa Photos. You must be signed in with Google Plus to use SPYW.  Therefore, if you’re not fond of Google+, tough luck, your search results will not be personalized.

So basically, as of now, Google has worked rather methodically in its algorithms of crawling the web during web searches. With Google SPYW, there is no longer a wide net.  There is a proxy of YOU crawling and grabbing and dodging trillions of words and photos and videos that are and aren’t relevant.  It does this by surfacing content that has been shared with you on Google+, as well as public information from its social networking site, and integrates this data into typical Web search results.

With SPYW, your friends’ online experiences are more relevant to your personal search results than links and domain authority. However, if your search results end up not being relevant, you may have your friends to unthank, unlike, or un+.  Google+ has a new feature that not only helps you make new friends with similar tastes and ideas, but also ones that will help you search the web. Yep, a twofer.  The feature allows searchers to start a conversation directly from search results, with their friends, and contribute to the conversation through Google+ stream.

There are three types of Google+ data that will show up in your SPYW results:

  • -Personal results: includes data from your own photos and posts, as well as Google+ data that has been shared with you.
  • -Profiles in search: more Google+ profiles appearing in your search results.
  • -Profiles and Pages: results from Google+ business pages and notable Google+users.

I hear the libertarians marching!  Put those torches and pitchforks down – no one will know what your searching for and what phrase you used (well except for you and Google, at least for now – they donʼt wanna creep us out too quickly). I guess after writing that, you can keep only the torches lit, and perhaps use them for nonviolent castle wandering.  With SPYW your results are hidden behind http:// and no keywords will be linked to your search in any analytics program. If you are super creeped by this, or feel your personal liberties are being violated, there is a new opt-out feature that is available to all users searching Google in English. And you if want to go ahead and adjust your search settings you can here.

Although this may seem like a great idea to some, there has been serious criticism saying they are making its search relevancy worse and favoring their Google Plus social network too much. To some, itʼs frowned upon that the company is using their popularity as a search engine provider to promote its social network by prioritizing Google+ data. Even though the site is expected to have more than 400 million users  by the end of 2012 and 625,000 members are signing up everyday (which may be in part of the 700,000 Android devices sold everyday, which makes signing up for Google Plus easier). Makes me wonder if we’re being manufactured to Google’s will, just as their leading product is labeled, like an android.  Iʼm interested in seeing how this personalized search engine will work out, both the benefits of this new frontier in internet searches, as well as the controversy that is sure to surface.

Tagged , ,
Jan 24 2012
Leave a comment
Life

RSS Feed + Delicious

Having a Google reader account, where I read news articles from a variety of sources every morning, I really should know what a RSS feed is and how it works.  But like most things connected with digital media I just know it’s there and it works.  Truth be told it’s not the only application I use with little or no understanding.

RSS Feed stands for really simple syndication.  Basically it’s a format that publishes the media from regularly changing content, aka – news sites, blogs, and other online publishers, as a RSS feed to whoever wants it.  They help people who view multiple sites each day, which is how most of us use the internet, and get information they want and need.  Instead of going out (and wasting time) to search for new information, the new information comes straight to you. It allows an individual to stay informed easily by retrieving the latest content from the sites they are interested in.  This provides you with an efficient way to gather information and is a time saver as you are not switching back and forth from each individual site.

Sounds great, so how do you setup a RSS Feed?  It’s a very simple process.  First you need a home for reading the content that your favorite sites post. The software that will be home for your information is called a “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator” and can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile device based.  The popular web-based “feed readers” include My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader. They are free but you most likely have to setup an account with the “reader” of your choice.  After you have set-up your reader, to complete the process you will want to subscribe your reader to the websites you like.  To subscribe, go to the websites you want updates on and look for this symbol:

Once you click the symbol you can subscribe and you are good to go!

Delicious is a social bookmarking system that goes hand in hand with your RSS Feed Reader.  Not only can you save your bookmarks with Delicious, you can share your bookmarks too.  Beyond getting the consistent stream of fresh content, users on Delicious can build, categorize, qualify content and tag specific websites.  The more a website is bookmarked by people the more credible the website is viewed.  By using key words, tagging, helps you categorize the information that is published. This is cool because you don’t just have to store your bookmark in one folder, you can create as many unique keywords as you want to tag your bookmark.  Delicious unlike a traditional RSS Feed, where you choose what you want to subscribe to, allows you to discover and explore new and useful sites through other delicious users.  And these Delicious bookmarks can be easily accessed through any browser or RSS reader.

Tagged , , ,
Jan 17 2012
1 Comment
Life

The Tipping Point- Privacy Issues

As I was browsing my Facebook, I saw one of my “friends” posted this status update last week. I thought this was a perfect blog intro, purely for the creep factor.  Now that I have some readers wondering if they’re mobile service provider is tracking them, too, it presents the question – when do people feel their privacy is no longer private?

The fact is, as the information highway continues to expand, more people are blindly hitching a ride at the cost of their own privacy. The web in its social form is about people-to-people communication, sharing and consensual building of online spaces. As the communication and sharing continues, more and more data will be collected.  Data that like recyclable materials, can be reused in many ways – such as, demographic marketing.  Cue spooky music.

Everyone knows social media sites such as Facebook, Google+, Linkedin use your personal data for themselves – and not only for themselves but enable others to use your data as well, which allows for subliminal features of communication.  Hey LinkedIn, how did you know I might want to connect with my landlord that I wrote to one time via email?  Oh well – ‘connect’, yeah 89 connections and counting!  Yes they are watching you closely. Actually many people are unaware of how much information Facebook is actually collecting about them, and it’s not as subversive as you might thing – users voluntarily put the info out there.  The thing is, if you don’t regularly check your Facebook privacy settings- you are probably sharing more information than you thought.  If you’ve never checked your privacy settings, then you are definitely sharing more information than you thought.

Just last November, Facebook was held to the fire by the U.S. Trade Commission over a very public privacy issue that settled out of court. Charges included deceiving users and shared information that it had promised to keep private.

Now that Facebook has created the Timeline feature- even more privacy concerns have arose. There have been numerous complaints about private messages posted to a user which are now posted publicly on their timeline. Facebook has disputed these claims and said that they are older wall posts that were always public by individuals.

By offering up data, people may receive advertising they may genuinely be interested in, but this requires giving up some degrees of privacy. And I’m not sure everyone is ready to give out that information yet.  Like many, I’m not sure if I want the advertising world to know that I’m Gucci loving mother of 5 Jersey girl who works at a tanning salon (nice red herring to throw them off my trail)!  With Facebook having over 800 million active users, the 20-something age range and the ever expanding older demographics are no longer okay with social site dictating privacy in any form.

CEO of Google famously said, “ Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

I think many people are beginning to feel that their private information is at risk not just by social sites, but also by hackers. Google reported just today that it is introducing a campaign to ease privacy concerns.  The Good to Know campaign will be featured in dozens of newspapers and magazines.  The campaign is said to offer practical advice and tips on how to manage what kind of data people share with Google and other sites.

Since so much information is being collected about each of us, and privacy concerns are becoming more of a hot topic – companies are starting to establish a trust between us and them. However, it’s not likely you are going to be able to keep all your information private. And the bottom line: if you don’t want someone to potentially see something- don’t share it…unfortunately with anyone, not even grandma, that’s why this blog is going to sit comfortably on my desktop where no one can read it….

 

Tagged , , , , ,
Jan 09 2012
Leave a comment
Life

The New Year

It’s the beginning of a new year- 2012! Time flies when you are keeping busy and having fun! Keeping up with my blog wasn’t part of my new years resolution but seeing that I haven’t written in almost two months- I figured I should go ahead and add it to the list!

This year is going to be an exciting and unpredictable year as I will graduate from my Masters Program and enter the… “REAL WORLD” But before all that fun stuff.. (job hunting, tweeking resumes, interviews, etc.), I have to make it through my last semester of journalism school.

So I successfully finished up my internship with Emory before the holidays hit and it was great. I learned so much from everyone I worked with and gained some useful experience in working with a large corporation.  This semester I plan on interning at the local community hospital, St. Mary’s. I’m really excited to get to work with their small but enthusiastic team. I think it’s great that I’ll get experience working with a larger speciality hospital and a smaller community hospital.

I will also begin a marketing job with the city of Jefferson,Ga. This opportunity allows me to get paid (bonus!!) and use my marketing skills I have developed in a new and creative way. I will be working directly with the city manager and I’m looking forward to the different projects he has in store for us.

Besides holding an internship and working, I will also be completing my last semester of school. One of my teachers has already emailed the class saying, “It’s going to be a fun semester, but we are already behind.”  I’m excited to start my classes – digital advertising and a new media class about “big data”. I know these classes will be useful in my future.

Expect an update mid-semester on how everything is going.. and we’ll see how excited I am still.

Happy New Year!

Tagged , , ,
← Older posts
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 148 other followers