In Recommendations on
19 July 2010
Previous research has shown a relationship between use of social networking sites and feelings of social capital. However, most studies have relied on self-reports by college students. The goals of the current study are to (1) validate the common self-report scale using empirical data from Facebook, (2) test whether previous findings generalize to older and international populations, and (3) delve into the specific activities linked to feelings of social capital and loneliness. In particular, we investigate the role of directed interaction between pairs—such as wall posts, comments, and “likes”— and consumption of friends’ content, including status updates, photos, and friends’ conversations with other friends. We find that directed communication is associated with greater feelings of bonding social capital and lower loneliness, but has only a modest relationship with bridging social capital, which is primarily related to overall friend network size. Surprisingly, users who consume greater levels of content report reduced bridging and bonding social capital and increased loneliness. Implications for designs to support well-being are discuss
cameronmarlow.com
(PDF) Social network activity and social well-being
In Code on
13 July 2010 tagged PHP, Wordpress
WordPress has it’s own URL management system, and when developing websites it’s convenient to be able to add new rules dynamically. I’ve used this for two websites, music.vtechphones.com and for a site I am building now. It’s also great to keep all modifications in one place, so upgrades are easier, and easier for another developer to pick up!
Create a new plugin, and you place your rules into it doing something similar to the PHP below:
add_filter('rewrite_rules_array','wp_insert_my_rewrite_rules');
add_filter('init','flush_rules');
// Remember to flush_rules() when adding rules
function flush_rules(){
global $wp_rewrite;
$wp_rewrite->flush_rules();
}
// Adding a new rule
function wp_insert_my_rewrite_rules($rules){
$newrules = array();
$newrules['(articles)$'] = 'index.php?post_type=article';
$newrules['(gallery)$'] = 'index.php?post_type=gallery';
$newrules['(projects)$'] = 'index.php?post_type=project';
$newrules['(blog)$'] = 'index.php?post_type=post';
return $newrules + $rules;
}
In Life on
10 July 2010
Life, past the tragedies we face along our way, is impossibly complex and beautiful! The ups, the downs! I’m constantly amazed. I am who I am because of who we are, and where we have been! I am still here! We are still here! It’s all connected. There is a time for everything!
Photo from Zen – Wikipedia
In Other on
8 July 2010 tagged Wordpress
I’ve gone through and installed several themes into a testing install of BuddyPress and have selected a few that I think will work as good starting points for further development and a good way to learn more about BuddyPress and how to develop social networking sites with it.
TwentyTen BuddyPress (Download) This is a theme that extends the default WordPress 3.0 TwentyTen theme to support BuddyPress. A great place to start in enhancing a blog with social networking features. Author: Ron & Andrea
BuddyPress Columns (Download) A three-column fixed-width variation to the default BuddyPress theme. There are many smaller details that make this theme feel almost finished, but still a bit of room to work with. Author: modemlooper
Fishbook (Download) A clean monotone light-blue two-column flexible-width theme. It remains consistent with default theme’s functionality. Author: Michael Kuhlmann
Jukt Micronics (Download) A minimal light two-column fixed-width theme. This one is one of my favorites, it feels open, good use of highlighting colors, and feels direct and to the point. Author: Michael Kuhlmann
Sense and Sensibility (Download) A stripped down minimal two-column theme. It diverges by not showing the activity in the main menu, which is good to see some variation in navigation. The theme looks like an ideal starting point for a heavy customized theme as there really isn’t much styling added to it yet. It also includes the WordPress meta in the sidebar with a link to access the site admin. Author: Ron & Andrea
In Life on
6 July 2010
Can you look eye to eye with Death without fear? Can you sacrifice your own heart to protest the death of a sibling and become a living ghost? We all share the same fate. Some meet this fate earlier and unexpected and without any reason — life is chaotic. However, to surrender yourself is giving up on your own life. Fuck you Death!
R.I.P. Natasha Fuller (1979 – 2001)
skiing is mountain born and bred,
the child of cold adventure
and pure spirited snow
- Natasha
In Other on
4 July 2010 tagged Wordpress
This is a selection of 21 WordPress plugins written by 23 people from around the world. They extend a blog with social, community, and networking features. Ranging from multi-user community sites, to plugins that deal with interactions between individual blogs, and interactions with existing social networks.
BUDDYPRESS WORDPRESS PLUGIN
BuddyPress will let users register on your site and create a profile, post messages, make connections, create and interact in groups and more. There are several ways of extending BuddyPress with extensions.
A WordPress site using BuddyPress.
Ride Oregon is the official site for Travel Oregon’s focus on cycling-related travel and tourism in the state.
More Showcases
Extend
BuddyPress Events Calendar The plugin will add an option to the user menu called Events. From this menu users can create events and invite friends to join. The plugin will add an Events option to the main menu system for the events directory view. Add the Events widget to list; upcoming, newest, active and popular events on your front page. Total Downloads: 12,961 Author: erwingerrits
Ride Oregan Events Calendar
BuddyPress Ajax-Chat This plugin will extend BuddyPress to have an Ajax Chat client that works with BuddyPress groups, as well as all WordPress users. Total Downloads: 12,860 Author: David Aubin
BuddyPress Like Adds a ‘Like’ button to activities in the stream, allowing users to ‘Like’ the item and see who else has done the same. Total Downloads: 5,523 Author: Alex Hempton-Smith
BuddyPress Maps A component to find and display location markers on a Google Map. Total Downloads: 3,269 Author: G.Breant
Ride Oregan Maps
BuddyPress Friends Online (FOL) Plugin will display on your Friends page in a widget under the search field, currently online friends. Data is dynamically updated. Total Downloads: 1,525 Author: slaFFik
BuddyPress My Friends Widgets Includes two widgets to display a logged in user’s friends. The small size shows 40px by 40px avatars and the big size shows 82px by 82px avatars. Total Downloads: 1,215 Author: Sarah Gooding
BuddyPress Followers Add the ability for users to follow others and keep track of their site activity. This plugin works exactly the same way that the friends component of BuddyPress works, however the connection does not need to be accepted by the person being followed. Total Downloads: 1,117 Author: Andy Peatling
BuddyPress Private Messages for Friends Only By default any member on your BuddyPress site can send messages to anyone in your userbase. This plugin adds the ability to send messages to friends and site administrators. Total Downloads: 983 Author: r-a-y
BuddyPress Private Messages for Followers Only This plugin adds the ability for members to send messages to their followers. Total Downloads: 208 Author: r-a-y
WordPress Interaction Plugins
Private WordPress With this plugin, you may close down your blog, restrict people who can view your blog, or even open feed readers’ access only. Total Downloads: 7,316 Author: Jiehan Zheng
Friendz If you run a site with WordPress, probably some users are authors, some are contributors, and most of them are only subscribers. With Friendz each user has his own profile, even if there are no public posts by that user. Total Downloads: 645 Author: Roger Stringer
Private Network Allows Administrators at different WordPress installations, for example alice.com and bob.com, to share their posts within categories, posts with selected tags or single posts and pages. Within categories and tags is possible to share only private or include public posts. Total Downloads: 298 Author: Andrea Belvedere
Wordpress Private Network Contacts AdminOutgoing Comments (Tracker) Display your recent outgoing comments on your dashboard menu to help you revisit your friends’ sites. The main purpose is to trackback your own comments so you can know what sites you have comments on (with BackType service). Total Downloads: 238 Author: Julian Widya Perdana
WPfriends Simple plugin to keep track of your friends posts, similar to the friends page of LiveJournal. Currently you can just add WordPress and LiveJournal feeds. Total Downloads: 148 Author: Sascha Bias Status: Development
Social Networks Interaction
Wordbook This plugin allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall. Your Facebook ‘Boxes’ tab will show your most recent blog posts. Total Downloads: 111,625 Author: Robert Tsai
WordPress post cross-posted to Facebook
WP-FacebookConnect Adds Facebook functionality to WordPress using the Facebook Connect APIs. Features include; single sign-on with your Facebook account, publish comments to the news feed, comment avatars display Facebook profile photos. Total Downloads: 43,398 Author: Adam Hupp
Meet Your Commenters When someone comments on your blog and writes a comment with his/her URL, is leaving more information than you think. This plugin displays web pages and profiles of those users in the dashboard, so you can add them as friends if you are in the same social network. Total Downloads: 6,194 Author: Alberto Varela
FriendConnect Login Google Friend Connect (GFC) adds the ability to become members of your site community using their Google, Yahoo!, AIM or OpenID accounts. This lets them interact with other visitors by making friends, sharing media, posting comments, playing games, and more. More information on Google Friend Connect. Total Downloads: 3,269 Author: Shahin Musayev
Add Post To Facebook This plugin will add a link or an image below your posts, allowing your visitors to share your posts with their friends on FaceBook. While the plugin is activated a link will appear after the content of the post with the text ‘Share on Facebook’ or the Facebook icon or both. Clicking this link will bring the user to the Facebook site. If the user isn’t logged in they will be prompted to do so. Once logged into Facebook the post will be added to the Mini-Feed of the account. Total Downloads: 972 Author: Pedro Maia
Friend Connect Commenting Plugin Visitors can log-in with their FriendConnect ID and leave a comment with that same ID or override WordPress comments system and replace it with GFC comments. Also you can add GFC gadgets as sidebar widgets. Total Downloads: 546 Author: Mauro Gonzalez
In Other on
29 June 2010
Technology, computers, and the internet are tools to initiate interpersonal relationships! Or in other words a great way to communicate with everyone!
I’m on the 8th floor in a 180 square foot room, in a building you need identification to get into, it’s in the Old Bank District in Downtown, Los Angeles. I’m sitting in front of my computer now, headphones on listening to the “root”, by the Deftones. I just got back from having coffee and writing at a local coffee shop. On my desk is a 23 inch monitor that I am not using, an unplugged external harddrive, and unplugged sdcard reader and dvd drive, a usb hub, mouse, keyboard, notebook and pen, a stack of papers, a photo my older sister gave me, a photo my mom sent me, a book about SQL with missing pages I tore out, and a book that I edited and designed for a project back in 2005 while going to the Art Center College of Design, with articles about Human-Computer Interaction.
In that book is an article titled, “The Influence of Technology on the Initiation of Interpersonal Relationships” (2003), you can read it online:
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5001928409
Here is an Introduction to it:
The world has witnessed a steady increase in the advent, adoption, and widespread use of new and varied technologies. With this proliferation of technology, scholars and lay people alike are beginning to ask the question, “How does advancing technologies impact interpersonal relationships?” This paper explores this concern by examining the following three areas. First, brief consideration is given to technology and its influence on social life. Second, the influence of media on interpersonal relationships is explored. Finally, the implications of computer-mediated interaction for relationship development are reviewed.
