VIDEO | Cute or cruel? These puppies obey their master like soldiers.

I came across this video on Facebook wherein a pack of cute, little puppies (poodles?) were walking along a park with their master. What's pretty interesting though is how these pups follow according to their master's instructions. The pack followed a synchronized movement, except for an instance when the bigger pup walk on his/her two hind feet which, for some viewers, was to an extent cruel. Is this video cruel or just plain cute?

Cưng quá ta <3Source: 中国日报

Posted by Pho on Friday, January 8, 2016

The Facebook problem

I was once an avid user of Facebook. I was one of the first Facebook registrants; at that time, I never really appreciated it 'cause I knew it would be the same as Friendster and Multiply. Apparently, it was not famous nor efficiently utilized.

Then suddenly, things got a bit twisted. Months after joining, Facebook was already part of my routine 10-hour diurnal life. I would open my account, check who's online, play games on  Facebook(e.g. Mafia Wars, Farmville and Pet Society), update my Facebook status, join FB groups, access videochat (which quite clearly failed to attract many users due to broadband problems in less developed, highly populated parts of the world), and of course, converse with my peers.

But then, I got a bit bored. The brakes of enthusiasm were hardly pressed. It's inevitable.

Now, I would only open my Facebook account to know if someone sent me a message and, as a form of cheaper communication, to talk some important stuff and decisions whenever the people concerned are online.

This is probably the reason why investors took a turnaround and engaged into dynamic profit-taking, causing the downgrade and fall of the market value of Facebook stocks. Ergo, my financial literacy is not that quite high so excuse me if my reasoning may unravel disapproval from your side. Definitely, big party player here is the role played by Facebook in our day-to-day life; and its prints have hardly been noticed today.

Facebook, nowadays, has lost its steam of innovation to more easily-monitored-and-used Twitter. Nothing new and appended has excitingly enticed Facebook users other than by using it as a substitute to text messaging. 

I, being flashed with lots of advertisements hosted by Facebook, haven't even clicked on any one of these since these never did address my concerns as a viewer. Frankly speaking, advertisements appearing on my profile don't appeal to my senses. To me, I've lost the sense of private indulgence to see things that I only want to see. 

Our opinions may vary, but one thing is for sure. Facebook needs to reinvent and provide more appealing ways to keep users like us embedded on the screen, instead of doing our homework or performing our tasks. On another note, at least I got to dissuade and use more of my time in enhancing my learning and development process as a human.

To all readers out there, please don't lash out at me. This is just my honest opinion.

World mapped thru Facebook

Imagine a map of your Facebook friends, and the friends of your friends, and so on. The result, tada, is what you see above. The lights which you see on a deep blue background signify friendships created around the world, and how these are distributed and connected, despite the presence of political borders.

It can be perceived that the right side of the US and most parts of Europe have the highest intensity of brightness. Meanwhile, China, central Africa and Russia, remain mostly dark due to low presence of Facebook in these countries.

The Facebook world map was created by an intern of the company named Paul Butler, who sampled data from the social network's 500 million user base.. He successfully visualized the relativity of one member's location to that of his/ her Facebook friends. 

Every line connects cities with pairs of friends. The brighter the line, the more friendships present between those cities.

Source: Visualizing Friendships by Paul Butler

Cartoons Invade Facebook

There has been an incredible increase in the number of Facebook users who change their real profile pictures into cartoon characters. This is a strong response to a call to fight violence against children.

The choices range from Daimos to Voltes 5, Cartoon Network to Disney channel characters, Little Lulu to Cinderella, to nursery rhyme casts and a lot more.

After  exposing their favorite toons as their primary pics, users post this message in their walls: "Change your Facebook profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday (Dec. 6), there should be no human faces on Facebook, but an invasion of memories. This is for violence against children.‌"

As of 12:44 PM, December 4, 26, 052 people have like the change your profile picture to a cartoon character campaign fan page. The campaign is expected to end on December 8, 2010.