Awesome Websites

Twitter has become a popular site due to its clever 140 character gimmick that is similar to texting, and because it has become a place to spread news about anything from the earthquake in Japan to Charlie Sheen's latest tirade.

But most importantly, Twitter is beautiful. Its bird vector logo is awesome- it's memorable, clean, and can easily be linked to the Twitter brand. The actual site is cleverly designed, using different shades of blue. Maybe I'm biased, because blue is my favorite color, but if it were any other color it just wouldn't be Twitter.

Something that puts the beauty of the site in jeopardy is the ability for users to actually make their own layouts. This can be good (sometimes people put attractive women as their backgrounds) but it can also be bad (sometimes people put ugly women as their backgrounds sometimes people who don't know how to create clean looking graphics end up making their page an eye sore).

Next I will talk about my own site. Well, I didn't code the site (one of my buddies did), but I did make the graphics.

You can find it here: http://abscure.net

It works because it's simple. I want the people who visit our site to either go to our blog our look at our portfolio of games. The first thing a user will notice is the giant "Blog" or "Games" link. Thus, it's the first think people will notice when they visit the site.

I used some actual graphics from one of my games as a theme for the site. I think this works well, and it also gives the user a taste of what the games look like. If for some reason the user didn't know that it was a games site when they clicked the link, they will figure it out ASAP.

Thanks for reading.

Protests on Social Media Sites

Throughout history, certain governments have gotten control of their nations and wouldn't let go, easily squashing any attempt at a revolt and hiding any news that would put the people's confidence in their government at risk. But with social media and YouTube, that has all changed.

Nowadays, information is readily available to everyone on the internet. For oppressive governments, this is a double edged sword; they can use it to their advantage by skewing stories their way, yet on the flip side people will have access to information they don't want them knowing about.

The recently uprising in Egypt is greatly helped by these recent advancements in technology. These advancements will change how leaders rule; a dictator's worst nightmare is having his people knowing what is going on. They feed off of their people's inability to fully know what is going on around them. So social media sites are making it hard to be a dictator.

The Social Dictionary

Social media has made such a dent in society that even the English language has been affected by the Internet craze.

When someone has a falling out with a friend on Facebook (or if they are a stalker) then you can "unfriend" them. This phrase has become so well-known that it was named one of Oxford English Dictionary's words of the year in 2009.

Another word found on this list is "hashtag", used when one wants to put a Tweet in a category of other tweets. That way you can search the "hashtag" to find other entries of that topic.

A word that I learned by looking at this list is "tweetup", a combination of "meetup" and "Twitter." As you could probably guess, this is used when a group of people meet together based on plans created by Twitter. Social media is based on things like this, getting people together, so this doesn't surprise me.

What is Social Media?

Kids today spend tons of time online. Some use it to play games. Some use it to research stuff for school (or at least, that's what they tell their parents that they are doing). Some use it to find out how their favorite sports teams are doing.

But one of the most important features of the world wide web is the ability to connect with other computers. And who is better to connect with than all of your buddies? That's what sites like Facebook and Twitter are capitalizing on; while some sites are solitary and allow people to hide from the real world, social media sites let people spend time with their friends... online.

Let's say I want to make plans with my friends. If I log on to Facebook, I can do this in a number of ways. If I want the plans to be private, I can send them a private message. If I want the plans to be something other friends can see, I can make a wall post. If I see one of my buddies online, I can instant message them. If it's something like a party and I want to get a lot of people to come to it and know about it, I can make an event page.

The possibilities are endless. Personally, I use Facebook for the reasons above. It's great for keeping in touch with friends that have maybe moved away or I met at camp and live in other states. I use Twitter for my website (which the school blocked, but you can find it here: http://abscure.net ).

My opinion on social networking is that it's a way for EVERYONE to get involved with the internet. If the internet could only offer things like games and Wikipedia, it would be missing out on a large audience of... people with lives!