Six Degrees of Wikipedia

https://www.sixdegreesofwikipedia.com/?source=India&target=Satoshi%20Nakamoto
Inspired by the concept of six degrees of separation, Six Degrees of Wikipedia traverses links on Wikipedia to find the least number of clicks it takes to travel between any of the nearly six million pages on the free online encyclopedia.

Social media vs social network

There is social media and there is social network. We have to differentiate them to understand them

Both are technology used to bring people and information closer. The difference between them is the way they are put to use — social networks are limited to connecting people together while social media is not just about the people. It is more than that, it is more wide and ambitious and all encompassing: the brands, the sports, the music, your interests, your friends’ interests, and advertisements for a thousand products vying for your attention and wallet.

Social media is not as personal as social networks. When social networks became too big they morphed to social media. Social networking just become part of it, and also ran. This idea occurred to me while reading this comment on why Facebook ceased to be interesting place once they started to bombard users with advertisements and hijacked the newsfeed:

I haven’t felt “positive reinforcement” or “dopamine hits” for quite some time on Facebook. Since it shifted from social network to social media, it doesn’t “give” me anything anymore. It is tedious, and I don’t check it because I feel compelled, or even enjoy it, but I have to make a concious effort to login and check every now and then, like you check mail or your bank website.
Back when it was more about the profile, about “stalking” friends and connecting with real-life acquaintances, it was much more addictive. Features like “you know this person via these two steps”, poking, but also subtle clues like the timing of when somebody visited your page, or that they commented on an old photo (meaning they browsed your gallery)… that is all missing now. Facebook was so addictive because it enabled you to obsess about social connections. Friends, crushes, people with common hobbies, and so on. – HN

People still use Internet Explorer 3!

The first thing you need to be secure online is safe software, and IMHO it is the only thing you need to do. If you don’t go to the dark side of the web, you can be pretty sure about your security with latest software. But I was puzzled seeing this [1]. Some people are still using versions of browsers, that I only have heard about. Nope, it is not good old Netscape Navigator (I’ve used it 🙂 ). Any version of Internet Explorer below 7 will open your system to the world like troy was with Trojan horse.

So Paypal is going to stop allowing access for people who use unsafe browsers. They say some folks are using not only Explorer but version 4 & even 10 year old version 3! [2]

Some folks are still using Internet Explorer v.4, and v.3, which is about 10 years old 😐 I assume theese are very old machines and its users are not concerned with anything that is happenig in the world of network-security.

Reference(S) and Link(s)

1. People using Very Old Browsers [ – moonmiester – ]
2. PayPal stopping access with unsafe browsers

Run your downloaded files directly from Firefox using Opendownload

If you have used Internet Explorer, as I have once did. You may know that there is an option to execute or run a file, usually a setup file directly while downloading. i.e The file will be downloaded to your temporary directory and it will be executed directly from there. The nice thing about this is that you can keep your downloads directory clean, void of any clutter from excessive downloads. The downloaded files will be deleted after 24 hours.

This can be implemented in Firefox also, with the help of Open Download extension. Especially useful if you want to install an application directly, without wasting any time or maintaining the files in your hard disc.

10 Funny sites to kill time

The 10 Funniest Sites on the Internet – “Along with sex and shopping, comedy is one of the biggest drivers of traffic on the Web. Especially now that a lot of regular people know how to post their homemade video and audio to the Web (along with clips from TV or radio), there’s an awful lot of funny stuff online. After months of exhaustive research, including lie-detector tests performed on laboratory rats, we’ve gathered a list of the funniest sites on the Web…”

Make reading online a simple experience

Whenever I get time, I tends to read a lot from the web. But it is not really as good as holding a newspaper or a nice magazine, because of the added interactivity, the flashiness and all other sort of shiny stuff. Gearfire productivity suggests using a firefox extension called Aardvark

Aardvark makes reading easier and saves paper and ink when printing. It is a Firefox extension, but is also available as a bookmarklet for Internet Explorer and Safari.

This will be particularly useful when a site dosen’t have  a printer friendly version that removes everything except the main article in question.This extension offers many features. Try it out, it is useful.