Monday, March 9, 2009

In the age of facebook can we really judge people by their faces?

Just saw an interesting article about how much a face can tell you about a person. Could we really judge people by the way they look? Could one persons face reflect its character?

In this article in economist there is an example about how women judge men by their faces. Testosterone levels are reflected in the face, and who is seen as a one-night stand and who as a potential husband depends in part on this physical feature. Similarly, a male face betrays the owner’s underlying aggressiveness and even his business acumen. Facial beauty in either sex is also associated with higher incomes. The latest research, though, cuts to the moral quick. For Jefferson Duarte of Rice University in Houston, Texas, and his colleagues are suggesting that one of a person’s most telling moral features, his creditworthiness, can also be seen in his face.

What do you think?

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Sync and Synergy

I have to say after seeing Palm Pre and its use of cloud services such as Synergy in action and also hearing Matt Crowley interview my view about Sync has changed. Initially back in 2002 when I first time came across SyncML with the Sony Ericson engineers problems around mobile phonebook backup and sync of calendar and notes was solved thanks to SyncML. But at the time social networking services such Facebook and cloud services such as Gmail was unheard of and that was why the idea of sync was revolutionary. Now as we all know things has changed.




As CrunchBase describe it, The Pre uses the Palm® Synergy™ feature to bring your Outlook®, Google, and Facebook® calendars together for one logical view of your day. And if you have the same contacts in different places, Pre can link them together, making it easy to find the information you need.

Things like text messages and calendar appointments appear as notifications at the bottom of the screen. You’ll know what’s going on without being completely interrupted or losing your train of thought. The Universal Search application: Simply start typing to begin searching your contacts, applications, Google, or even Wikipedia. Universal search narrows down the possible results as you type, so it’s easier to find what you need.

Thanks to Synergy, all your conversations with the same person are grouped together in one chat-style view. (Even if it started in IM, for example, and you want to reply with text.) You can also see who’s online right from contacts, and start a new conversation with just one touch. Slide out the keyboard for faster and easier texting. Close it up and rotate Pre for music, websites, photos, and videos in full widescreen.