NASA Want You to Imagine

NASA is launching a contest that gives the public access to the space agency's earth-science data on the Open NASA Earth Exchange platform. The contest, hosted on Amazon Web Services, invites the public to imagine and build new uses for the vast amount of data. The contest begins on July 1 and ends November 15, 2014. If nothing else, you might want kids to look at the Virtual Labs on the site. There is a lot of talk about “Big Data,” but this is a chance to let kids see and work with this kind of data and maybe even enter the contest if they have a novel idea for how NASA can make use of some of the data to develop tools for monitoring climate change and finding solutions for climate resilience.

Facebook Wants to Be Your Place for Real Time Topics

Twitter’s claim to fame has been that it is THE place to discuss world events in real time. But, Facebook is now challenging that claim in the battle to be the digital water cooler. Facebook has a new Public Content Solutions team that is hiring TV execs, acquiring startups that analyze real-time event chatter, and forming partnerships so that news outlets can display Facebook’s generated topic stream. For example, Facebook just announced that NBC’s The Today Show will show Facebook trending topics on a giant in-studio touch screen. The show’s hosts can tap and swipe the screen to show Facebook posts of people discussing the topics. The Discovery Channel will also use Facebook’s new Hashtag Counter to let fans of car-racing show, Street Outlaws, vote for their favorite teams by posting to Facebook with the corresponding hashtag. Along a similar line, video views on Facebook have doubled in the past six months, prompting Facebook to adjust its News Feed algorithm to serve more videos to people who watch them and fewer to those who ignore them. The way Facebook ranks videos created on its site has also changed to include viewing time, in addition to likes, comments, and shares. This is, of course, all part of Facebook’s move to be the ‘go to’ place for all things digital.

Facebook Rolls Out Slingshot

Facebook, in response to the Snapchat app craze that allows users to send self-destructing photos to friends, has rolled out Slingshot, it’s own service to do the same thing. The new app aims to create a sense of community by encouraging users to send a photo or video to a group of friends. Its unique twist is that the recipients are required to share a visual moment of their own before they can see what was sent to them. As with Snapchat, savvy recipients can use their phones’ screenshot features to save the file, which opens up the possibility of cyberbullying, because images that are supposed to self-destruct don’t necessarily do that.

Your Personality Type – What Big Companies See When They Look At Your Internet Use

Ok, so many people understand that companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter look at the queries, observations, and updates we write on their services, then they try to figure out what ads might have the most persuasive effect on us. So now, there is a tool called Five that analyzes your Facebook postings (and even those of your friends) to help you understand what those big companies see in you (and them). Seems a bit like the personality quizzes you take in a magazine, but then again the data they have comes from your public persona. This is something to think about.

Monitoring Your Data Use

If everyone in your family has an unlimited data plan, you can ignore this post, but for the rest of us who find ourselves running out of megabytes at the end of a billing period, try using the free tools built into your device’s operating system to see where you stand.

In recent versions of Android, open the Settings icon from the All Apps screen and in the Wireless & Networks area, tap "Data usage.” Here, you can see how much data each app has used, set restrictions, set an overall limit, and have Android display a warning when you get too close to it. In recent versions of the Windows Phone system, the Data Sense app in the App List can be used to monitor data use and set limits. In Apple devices running iOS 7, open the Settings icon on the Home screen and tap Cellular (or Cellular Data on an iPad) to see your current use amounts and choose which apps can, and cannot, use your cellular connection for downloading data.

Why Videos Go Viral

It turns out that the phrase, “doing it with feeling,” also applies to the most shared content on the Internet. While marketers and researchers are only beginning to understand the common characteristics of viral content, observers have noted a common thread among videos that get passed around online: They tend to evoke strong emotions. Numerous studies show that emotionally uplifting videos are most likely to be shared online. "If you want to melt the Internet, best to traffic in emotion," writes Natalie Kitroeff in The New York Times.

Of course, the Times article also notes that people often post articles on Twitter that they haven’t actually read. Like a bookshelf stocked with classic tomes that have never been opened, the links that adorn Facebook walls and Twitter accounts are markers of the people users aspire to be, rather than who they are. This is just another thing to think about in the world of almost anonymous friends online.

What Was Fake on the Internet This Week

Want to know what was fake on the Internet this week? Take a look at a weekly column on the Washington Post called The Intersect. You can sign up for a daily newsletter of similar goodies from Caitlin Dewey as well.

Online – Is It Still a Boys’ Club?

The International Telecommunications Union, the U.N.-designated agency that is responsible, among other things, for compiling and standardizing data on who has Internet access where, has, for at least the past 10 years, paid special attention to women and has published a new map on the subject. Of course, there is a good reason for this, Internet use is an important indicator of things like educational attainment and economic participation, areas where women frequently lag behind men, as well as greater economic health. Take a look at the map and it is clear that Internet use still is a “boys’ club” even in some industrialized parts of the world. This is something to be aware of as more and more people gain Internet access.

Do You Really Want People to ‘Ask’ on Facebook?

Facebook has quietly rolled out the Ask feature on its site, giving users the opportunity to ask to flesh out the data that they can't see on a friend's page. The less information the person has made public on their profile, of course, the more there is to ‘Ask’. When the info is requested, the user will receive a notification from that friend (along with a personal message if they chose to write one) and then a list of options for replying -- options that are themselves taken from other friends' profiles. While a person's hometown or workplace might be fairly straightforward, the option to ask a person's relationship status has raised a few eyebrows. After all, what if "it's complicated"? Either way, there's no obligation to reply to the questions. But, it could lead some Facebook users to question whether they really want to be handing out that info to the thousands of 'friends' they've accumulated over the years.

Using Social Data to Create Peer Pressure

Did you know that utility companies across the U.S. have been taking advantage of peer pressure to reduce energy consumption by including charts in electricity bills showing how energy efficient you are compared to your neighbors? Companies such as Opower and My Energy have developed these data systems, and they can now point to studies that show the combination of data and social pressure reduces home energy use. Activity trackers like the FitBit offer peer data so that you can compare your activity levels to others you know. These new uses of social data are being used to harness the power of peer pressure for changing behavior and the marketing of new products, many for good purposes, but it is important to understand that your data may be used for purposes, and in ways, you may never have imagined and especially to be aware that this kind of data driven peer pressure is often just a marketing strategy. This is certainly a development to watch out for.