Ning Apps Launch

Ning has announced today on their blog that Ning Apps have launched.

We use the Ning platform to run the Ride for Roswell community site (RideConnect) and for the QuantumCMS forum (QuantumCMS is Algonquin Studios' web content management system, for which I am responsible, so go sign up with us). Having access to 90+ applications should prove useful to these sites. Sadly, I can't offer much commentary on them since they just launched today. The complete list of Ning Apps is available at the Ning Apps Directory.

Ning has set up a sample site for the apps at ningapps.ning.com so users can try them out.

Facebook Doesn't Make You Smarter, Rigorous Research Does.

Yesterday Mashable.com posted an article titled "Psychologist: Facebook Makes You Smarter, Twitter Makes You Dumber." It was originally from an article in the Telegraph titled "Facebook 'enhances intelligence' but Twitter 'diminishes it', claims psychologist." This morning I heard the story referenced on a couple morning news programs and I've seen it picked up on other news sites and blogs. It was also Mashable's most re-tweeted article yesterday.

The psychologist, Dr. Tracy Alloway from the University of Stirling in Scotland, studies working memory, one aspect of IQ tests. She developed a working memory training program to increase the performance of "slow-learning" 11-14 year old children. Her program increased IQ, literacy and numeracy tests by about 10 points after eight weeks.

None of the articles say that her training program used Facebook. The closest thing to a quote making this assertion from the Telegraph article says that Dr. Alloway believes that strategy video games may train working memory:

"Video games that involve planning and strategy, such as those from the Total War series, may also train working memory, Dr Alloway believes."

None of the quotes in the article, or on the other articles across the web, or in any of the news stories I can find actually have her say that Facebook makes you smarter or that Twitter makes you dumber.

Her argument against twitter, from the Telegraph article:

But the ''instant'' nature of texting, Twitter and YouTube was not healthy for working memory. ''On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it's also very succinct,'' said Dr Alloway. ''You don't have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections."

Again, this isn't cited as part of a study or her program. While that doesn't mean she isn't right, if it's not from a study then it doesn't have the rigorous scientific method behind it to validate it. A correspondent from Times Online was at the British Science Festival where Dr. Alloway reported on her program. He provided the following transcript from a recording he made as part of the article, Does Twitter really damage your memory?:

Journalist: Has anybody actually studied whether Facebook or Twitter affects memory?
Alloway: Not that I know of.
Journalist: So there's no published evidence?
Alloway: There's no published evidence, it's just a hypothesis, I'll be starting a research project in January.

Her assertions don't take into account how everyone uses those outlets. Do you spend your time on YouTube watching College Humor pranks, or perhaps watching the Sixty Symbols channel? When you are using Twitter, are you just passing by, or engaging in a dialog with friends, or perhaps using it just as a broadcast information resource, perhaps by following JPL's Asteroid Watch? I would argue that those are resources that might, just might, help make you smarter, or at least hold off the dumb tide.

I believe students at the age she is studying are very tied up in the social aspects of their lives -- who likes them, what clothes to wear, where is everyone going, etc, even if it's not a conscious decision. They have a drive to learn and discover that information and Facebook is that vehicle. Years of research point to passion being the driving force behind developing expertise in something and I suspect that the passion for the social outlet is enough for the children to gravitate to, and perfect the art of, using Facebook. Video games have a similar draw for children. If people are doing something about which they are passionate, and they develop that expertise, doesn't it stand to reason that as part of that process they develop their working memory?

I use the article "The Expert Mind" from Scientific American (August 2006) as the buttress for my argument. It doesn't make me right, but at least I'm not buying into the headline that everyone else has. If I am wrong, perhaps my Facebook use and my Twitter use will cancel each other out.

Additional: One example of how Facebook may actually make you dumber: Trapped Girls Updated Facebook Status Instead of Calling For Help. Srsly?

Google Chrome Turns 1

The Google Chrome blog has announced today that Chrome has officially turned 1 year old. In the regular world of software development, that might not be too long, but Google is quick to point out what they have done in just 1 year (I left their links intact):

• 51 developer releases, 21 beta releases or updates, and 15 stable releases or updates
• Over 20,600 bugs filed (4367 of them were duplicates, 3505 have been fixed, which leaves a whole lot left to go!)
• 11 external committers and bug editors, 46 external code contributors
• 50 Chrome Experiments
• 26 posts on the Google Chrome blog
• 12 Chrome Shorts, a collection of short films about Google Chrome
• A sequel to the comic in Japanese

I'm not so sure the items after the first bullet are really accomplishments (I hope to add more posts than that to this blog within the next year), but they certainly take pride in them. If you head over to their post, you can follow links to photos and videos of Google Chrome cake.

Other (perhaps more relevant) notes from their blog:

More importantly, we've improved by over 150% on Javascript performance since our initial beta. [...] We've also added some of the most commonly requested features -- including form autofill, side-by-side view, the ability to remove items from the New Tab page, and full screen mode (just hit F11!) -- and even a bit of magic to make the entire web three-dimensional (okay, that was just a joke).

Mashable has a new post about this same story that also discusses the Chrome market share. Mashable points out stats that show Chrome at 2.84% while Internet Explorer retains 66.87% and Firefox holds on to 22.98% of the market. Chrome beats Opera, but not by much. Opera is at 2.04%.

Let's see how that Google/Sony deal helps Chrome out over the next 12 months.

Google Chrome Pre-Installed on Sony PCs

Google cut a deal with Sony's PC division to distribute Chrome as a pre-installed browser on their Vaio PCs. Google claims to be in talks with other computer makers. Google has supposedly discussed distributing Chrome with RealPlayer and is also talking about TV commercials.

It looks like Google might be making a concerted push to start to gain some greater traction on end-users' computers. After all, when the bulk of your applications are distributed over the web, isn't it a good idea to control the platform, too? Chrome has ~30 million users (according to Google), which is only about 2% of the market.

Reported last night at Financial Times. Read the full article.

Opera 10 Released

Opera 10, the web browser of the niche user, has been released today (on schedule). Among the new features is something called Turbo, which "uses compression technology that provides significant improvements in browsing speeds over limited-bandwidth connections." I guess this means I should try it at the cafe on those weekend mornings when the regulars are downloading multi-gig videos.

Opera supposedly has a new look and sleeker interface. If I can get it installed today I'll update this post.

The part that interests me most, their claim of a "40% faster engine and cutting-edge Web standards support."

We optimized the new Opera Presto 2.2 engine in Opera 10 to be much faster on resource-intensive pages such as Gmail and Facebook. In addition, with an Acid3 100/100 score, Web Fonts support, RGBA/HSLA color and SVG improvements, Opera 10 is ready for the next generation of Web applications.

Download it at Opera.com.

'Superfriends' Raise HTML5 Concerns

The self-proclaimed 'Superfriends' have come out with a positive note supporting HTML5 that is actually a cover letter to their significant concerns over some issues they and others have been raising for quite some time now.

Their list of concerns crosses off the issue that's been raised with the time element (this just happened), so at least it feels like there has been some progress.

If you're curious, the Superfriends are: Dan Cederholm, Tantek Çelik, Wendy Chisholm, Aaron Gustafson, Jeremy Keith, Ethan Marcotte, Eric Meyer, Nicole Sullivan, and Jeffrey Zeldman.

Don't ask me about the unicorn.

Contribute to HTML5

Listen, if I'm going to start a blog on web development some 15 years after I actually started web development, I really need to accept that all the furor of debating HTML has long since passed me by.

But wait - I am proven wrong!

In case you are a web developer living under a rock, you might not know about the recent demise of XHTML2 and the discussions of HTML5. You might not care about this post.

If you are, however, dedicated to code purity and following the specs, then you really should take some time to help review the HTML5 spec and provide your feedback. Go to the WHATWG blog post that asks for help. Go. Now. Last call is in October. Hurry.