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Like this

The “Like” button.

It’s turning up everywhere. What did we do without it? It was first introduced through Facebook to replace the “Share” and “Become a Fan” button on February 9, 2009¹. As the designer of my Ning, I had Ning.com announce to me that it would be implemented throughout the site. As the writer of this blog, which I transferred from another hosting site, having the “Like” feature was one of the first concerns I had about plug-in availability. I wanted it. I needed it. I knew I could create my own “Like” button code here. All good, but what if someone doesn’t like the “Like”?

One day in the future, will there be empirical evidence that shows us that people through their pictures, posts, blogs, sites and everything else which weren’t “Like”d enough are demonstrating lower self-esteem, lessened abilities, and have considerably diminished capacities in life? Will there be comparisons of those who are liked and those who are not?

Juxtaposed to these thoughts, will people and entities with hundreds of thousands of trillions of likes get swelled heads or encounter other issues that are yet unknown to us? We know that online popularity can turn you into a celebrity and possibly even a very rich person, but what are the consequences? Will they be the same as people who become famous in real life? Is that possible anymore? Also, if they are “Like”d hundreds of thousands of trillions of times, can they put this on their resume? Maybe they don’t need to.

Another thought that comes to my mind is, how many “Like”s can counters have? The web continues to grow. Eventually will it become too saturated? Along those lines, what is going to happen with domain names and emails of the future? For example, will generations from now become those of 100 character email addresses. People who want Brad123@email.com will have to become Brad1234567891011121314151617181920@email.com. I am talking 100s if not 1000s of years from now. The best ones will be taken. How will the internet as we know it develop into something that we don’t?

For now though, choose to “Like” this article if you like.

¹“What’s the history of the Awesome Button (Eventually that became the Like button on Facebook)”

4 Comments

Posted by Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org on April 25, 2011 in Technology

Tags: Facebook, Like, Online

Are you mobile?

23 Apr

When we ask this question the first thing that pops to my mind is: “Do I have a mobile device, like a cell phone, PDA, tablet or computer with wifi?”

This article is not about that.

This article is asking, “What would happen if all or any of those devices broke down on you?” A better question to ask would be:

Is your content mobile?

If your gadgets broke down right now, how much of the information would you consider irretrievable? How much of that information do you really need? I bet that some of you would say, “A Lot, if not most of it.” Starting right now, if you haven’t done so already, get yourself some online storage:

Box.net (5 Gigs of Free Storage – 25megs per file – Mobile Access)
Dropbox (2 Gigs of Free Storage – with a referral program up to 8 Gigs for Free – Mobile Access)

Next you need to think about your bookmarks. There are two ways about it:

Store them to access them online – Delicious
Sync them with every computer web-browser – XMarks

Certain documents can be saved, stored and shared online,. A great website for this:

Scribd (Upload Docs and even sell them to others – great for eBooks)

To create and save Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Drawings and Forms:

Google Docs

All of these online areas, plus a whole lot more I didn’t mention, are called the “Cloud”, or “Cloud Computing”. It means that you have access with the idea that it is somewhere up in the sky. Ideally, we shouldn’t need to worry about it because it is being backed up all the time, plus we usually have access to revisions of the same document through these methods. Now, if you hear the question, “Are you mobile?” I hope you think of it through a new perspective. Not only that, I hope also you are making it so that your content actually is.

3 Comments

Posted by Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org on April 23, 2011 in Technology

Tags: Cloud Computing, Mobile, Online, Online Resources, Technology

Adding a poll to your blog

21 Apr

WordPress.com has a Poll creator. I would not say that it is very intuitive considering it is built into the interface. The downside is that the poll itself is not embedded in WordPress, nor are the results. If I figure out a way to do that I will be updating this post to show you.

To create your poll that will jump you to another website, In the edit pane,

Select Polls – Add New
Create the Question for you Poll
Create the possible Answers
Create a Post
Open your Poll
Insert your poll (Like the one Below) using the Share/Embed button
Copy and Paste the Javascript
Publish

How did you find the site?

(polls)

1 Comment

Posted by Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org on April 21, 2011 in Technology

Tags: Blogging, Complaints, Polls

Cheap ways to master the universe

18 Apr

These are some ways that I am planning to master the universe. You can steal, borrow, appropriate and copy any that you see fit. A couple things seem to be in my future:

a book – most probably an ebook – coming soon – gonna read more about some ideas for marketing it here from Seth Godin’s “Ideavirus” (a free book that you can buy – I might try this myself – you should too)
a domain name – toying with a “.me” as the suffix and have a pretty good idea what it will be called. I will get it from godaddy.com as they seem to have worked well in the past for domain name forwarding.¹
logging, creating, showcasing more of my artistry – I am good. I have good ideas. I actually was allowed into OCAD for 5 years because they thought so too. I will probably do that starting right here on the site with some of the logos and designs I have made with hopefully a lot more to come
working through education towards working anywhere, any time, and most probably about any thing – I don’t want to be limited by any of the aforementioned factors: place, time, confines of job description, so I am plotting ways to do this – one way is hopefully through developing online resources
(slick) business cards – gotta have em – plus you can feel cool giving them out – ooh, and designing them.

¹ Since writing this post I have created this blog through WordPress.com. It allows you to buy and link a domain name really easily to your site. The drawbacks are that you do not have complete control over the look and addition of plug-ins or widgets. The advantages are that you will probably get higher hits to your blog sooner, it is all-in-one, which means it is easier, and you have support from WordPress.com. This is something I did not find with Orgfree.com. Too bad.