Apparently, depressive individuals browse differently than people who aren’t down in the dumps. At least, given what we know thus far. Participants in the study who displayed symptoms of depression compulsively checked emails and social networks(indicating higher anxiety, perhaps) and spent much more time sharing and consuming media. They spent more time talking and gaming, as well- essentially, more time distracting themselves than others might. They also rapidly switched between applications (signalling a breakdown in concentration fairly typical of depressed individuals) The more depressed the individual, the more time they spend doing all of the above.

The question that’s yet to be answered though, is how their internet usage correlates with their mood. Does the ‘net alleviate their symptoms? Does it worsen them?

We’re not quite sure, at this point. We simply don’t have enough information to reach a decisive conclusion, one way or the other. We know excessive Internet use, which signifies Internet addiction, most definitely both springs from and causes depressive symptoms. We know we’re a lot more easily distracted these days than we used to be, due to the engaging nature of modern consumer technology. We know that there’s a lot more social isolation than there used to be, as well- there are some people who go for months at a time without seeing another living, breathing human being.

The researchers who designed this study hope that their findings will assist in the development of an application designed to help users track their usage patterns and those of their children, alerting them if anything particularly alarming crops up. It’s a good first step- and perhaps one that can eventually help us better understand how our minds interact with the complex technological web we’ve constructed.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Internet use and Mental Well Being

I’ve been saying this for a while now, and I’ll say it again: social networks are not private places.

It’s honestly something we’re all aware of, on some level. We know that there are millions of other people on Facebook and Twitter. We understand that, on some level.  I like to think that most of us know to keep the most compromising stuff on Facebook hidden from all but our closest friends, to keep our twitter account well away from our personal life, if need be.

Yet how many of us actually do that?  How many of us own our privacy, and take the integrity of our data -and our reputation- into our own hands? How many of us bother to change our security settings, to consider how every tweet, every update, and every photo is a presentation to the world of who we are as a person?

How many of us understand how easy it is to track a person down?

Fewer than half of users on Facebook and Google + even vaguely understand the privacy policies(not that privacy policies aren’t broken and effectively useless, anyway).  This is, undoubtedly, a huge problem, and one that we need to address – but this is not the time or place. Instead. I’m going to show you all how to make the public setting of your social network just a little more private – it’s the least you can do for yourselves.  Note that removing a profile from search results could take up to a month or more.

Google +:  Unfortunately, there’s no way to make your Google + profile completely private. The most you can do is hide it so that it doesn’t appear in Google’s search results. After logging in to your Google + profile, navigate to your profile, and click “Edit Profile” up at the top right. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and look for a setting titled “Profile Discovery.”  The box next to “Help others discover my profile results in search” will be checked. Uncheck it.

Facebook: Believe it or not, Facebook actually has some fairly comprehensive privacy settings. Click on the arrow at the top right corner of the screen, then click on “Privacy Settings. ” From here, you can control who can find your profile, application settings, blocked users, visibility of past posts, visibility of posts made by others. Further, the visibility of every single item you share can be changed. All posts have a privacy button next to “Post/Share,” all photos and albums have privacy settings in the upper right hand corner (it should look like either a small globe or two people standing next to one another), and all items on your profile can be made visible to only a select few individuals (or only to yourself).

Twitter: In the upper right hand corner of your main feed, directly right of the search bar, you’ll see a button with a silhouette of a head. Click on it, then click on “Settings” in the dropdown menu that appears. Scroll down until you reach an option titled “Protect my Tweets,” and click on it. End result? Only people you’ve approved will be able to see your tweets, and no one will be able to retweet you.  Unfortunately, any tweet you made before applying the new settings will still be publicly visible and searchable.

Image Credits: [Wright Result]

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The Public Nature of the Social Network

Believe it or not, they actually do have a point.

Sure, Wikipedia’s great if you’re just learning about a subject. You literally have a world of easily-accessible, easily-readable information right at your fingertips. The problem is, anyone can edit it. If someone wants to swing in and make a few subtle changes to an article about machine code, those changes might not be caught immediately. You’ve got a bunch of people, therefore, sourcing faulty information. Further, since Wikipedia’s entirely put together by men and women who might not necessarily have the educational background or official expertise in their topic, not all of the information on the site is necessarily accurate or complete.

Using Wikipedia as a source is, therefore, a bad idea. Of course, you should all know this already. What some of you might not know, however, is that you shouldn’t outright ignore Wikipedia as a resource. Let’s say you’re writing a scholarly paper on how the PC has changed the face of Western society since its inception. Naturally, you’re going to want to start with the company that developed one of the first consumer PCs- Microsoft. Take a look at the Wikipedia entry for the company. Notice anything? Look a little closer.

There are over 110 citations in that article alone. Now you see where I’m going with this, right?

Using Wikipedia for all your research might be a bad idea. However, nobody said anything about using it to direct your research. Rather than a source, Wikipedia should be used as a springboard- a platform to help you formulate bigger ideas and better arguments. Use it to inform yourself, but take everything on the site with a grain of salt- expand beyond the site once you’ve gotten your framework down.

That’s how you should use Wikipedia for research.

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Wikipedia and Academia

YouTube Doubler: Make Video Mashups: If you’ve ever thought that two songs would go perfectly with one another, or you want to combine a song and video, but can’t be bothered to sync them up on YouTube in order to test that theory, this one’s for you. Granted, it’s not absolutely perfect. I’ve noticed occasional start up lag on one or two of the videos but it’s better than having to do everything yourself.

Yooouuutuuube: Youtube Mosaics: With the right video, this one’s positively psychedelic. I’m sort of at a loss as to how to explain what Yooouuutuuube is and what it does. Basically, it creates a ‘mosaic’ of a YouTube video. Each square in the mosaic starts a short time before or after the squares on either side of it. There are a number of other visual effects that can be applied to it, as well. It’s actually very relaxing to watch.

HTML5 Trial: Speed Up and Slow Down Videos: With the experimental HTML5 feature on YouTube, you gain access to a ‘speed’ option on most of the newer videos. You can either increase the speed by half, double it, cut it by half, or cut it by 3/4. It’s safe to say this one’s still heavily in beta. A lot of videos experience some pretty major distortion if you change the speed and some don’t work at all on the slowest. Still, it’s a pretty neat little feature and hopefully it gets a bit more polished once they’ve brought it out of beta.

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Three Nifty Websites/Features for YouTube

HTML: “HTML” stands for “Hyper Text Markup Language.” Now, that’s not really much of a definition in itself, is it? Essentially, HTML is the language of your web browser. If it’s reading a page, it’s reading that page in HTML, and then displaying it according to the commands in that page’s code. Essentially, HTML is an instruction manual for your web browser.

Believe it or not, HTML isn’t actually a ‘coding language’. It’s something known as a ‘markup language.’ What that means is that it’s a language responsible for the orientation, processing, formatting, layout, and style of text and other elements. Originally designed exclusively for text, the latest revision of the HTML standard (HTML5) is a powerful language with support for rich media.

Java: Originally developed by Sun, Java’s quickly become an industry standard, and is used for coding a wide array of programs, both online and off. Aside from HTML, it’s probably one of the most widely used languages on the web; used to code games for a number of mobile devices as well as for the PC. Want an example of a game coded in Java?

Minecraft.

The reason for its popularity is that it’s easy to use, reliable, and works regardless of what platform you plop it onto. Not too shabby, eh?

Flash: Flash is a multimedia programming language, designed to enrich the experience of the web. While HTML5 has started to replace it in many circles, a huge number of browsers aren’t yet HTML5 compatible so this old technology’s going to be sticking around for a while.  Flash was also used to program games and the like at one point, but it’s started to be shunted out of this role by Java.

Today, it’s mostly used for advertisements and multimedia with Adobe reporting that over 85% of websites currently utilize Flash in some form.

C: Look at your desktop. There’s at least a 90% chance that it uses some derivative of a programming language simple known as “C.” Developed by the late Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs back in the 1970s, C proved to be powerful, versatile, and very, very efficient. As a result, software developers the world over adopted it when they launched into the process of coding their operating systems – developers with big names like Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs/Steven Wozniak.

The reason C is so efficient (and, in some cases, difficult to learn) is because it’s very close to a computer’s base programming language (binary code). Languages such as Java are known as “high level” languages, easy for humans to read and understand. Even though C technically fits the bill for this, it’s close enough to machine code that computer systems find it very easy to translate and understand. 

Image Credits: [Technotab]

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In Layman’s Terms Issue 14: HTML, Java, Flash, C

At first glance, this might be a pretty easy definition, right? Well…not so much, actually. Believe it or not, there’s actually no universally accepted definition of what constitutes an indie game – or an indie developer, for that matter.  Still, most independent games share a lot of things in common- let’s see if we can’t come up with a definition.

An independent game is a title where the publisher – basically, the middleman in video game sales- is cut right out of the deal. This is made possible by the Internet, where the developer only has to worry about bandwidth and server costs, rather than distribution via physical media. In particular, organizations such as Valve and the Humble Bundle crew are a godsend for independent developers, allowing them to spread their game to the masses without having to worry about shelling out for a colocation facility just to handle the bandwidth from all the downloads.

As for indie developers, they tend to be a lot smaller than AAA developers (though this is not always the case). While many more established game companies might have somewhere in the area of several hundred employees, an indie developer might only have somewhere in the area of ten to fifty. Occasionally (as in the case of Pixel’s Cave Story), a game might be developed by a single individual. Sometimes, an organization might utilize kickstarter in order to get their game off the ground.

Oh, and they’re almost always cheaper, falling into a price range between $5.00 and $20.00.

Since indie developers don’t need to be concerned with publisher approval or mass market approval, they can take risks that a lot of larger corporations would completely blanch at. They can take their products in a unique direction, and completely break the mold in terms of what their games look like. Oh, and they also tend to be pretty nostalgic, taking the form of 8 or 16 bit platformers or RPGs (but again, this isn’t always the case).  These factors, coupled with disillusionment at the poor behavior of many larger developers and publishers these days, has lead to a huge rise in popularity for indie gaming.

So, basically…an indie game is a title which is (usually) created by a small developer, without publisher intervention in the design process. Distribution usually falls to the developer, and is almost exclusively digital. The game is usually cheaper, slightly smaller, a bit simpler than AAA titles, and more unique than most mass-market games.

Any questions?

Image Credits: [Digital Trends]

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Defining the Indie Game

While Microsoft’s support site does provide a bit of help for some of the issues out there, most of their guide relates to issues in the marketplace- and the majority of their solutions are the same, regardless of the error code. Here’s a few less than common errors, and how to work out a guaranteed fix.

8007247c

This one can occur as the result of an improper Gateway Address being assigned to the 360. While you could try simply restarting your console, this isn’t necessarily guaranteed to work. One of the best fixes I’ve seen for this issue thus far comes from the Human Target blog- simply open up the Windows Command Line Interface (select Run->CMD from the Start menu), type “ipconfig /all” and take note of the Gateway address that pops up. On your 360, go to Settings->System->Network Settings and double check to make sure that the number is the same- if it’s not, enter it manually.

That should solve your problem.

80072ee2

This one’s a limited connectivity error, and could occur for a number of reasons. Before you do anything else, check to see that your 360′s fully updated. In order to do this, simply connect to Xbox Live (or run the Xbox Live Connection Test.) If there’s an update out there, your console will detect it and attempt to download it.

In lieu of that, the problem’s likely a network issue on your end. Your NAT might be set too high, or you don’t have the proper ports open- regardless, you’re going to need to do some fiddling with your router and see if you can’t improve connectivity. If opening the ports and changing your NAT doesn’t solve the problem, well…chances are there’s something else causing network slowdown

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Troubleshooting Xbox Live Connection Issues

Skype conferencing is free and allows group voice chatting with up to 25 other Skype users. But the big question is, would this work for gaming?

In a word, no.

There are two major reasons why Skype conferencing isn’t such a good idea for gaming.

Reason #1: Bandwidth

As far as I’m aware, when you host a Skype conference, you’re the one providing the bandwidth to all the other participants. This presents an immediate problem because now you’ve got both Skype and your online game clawing for bandwidth.

It is absolutely required that if you host a Skype conference that you must have a very high upstream, as downstream is not the issue. However if all you have is a "standard" broadband package (which for most people in the US is "10 down, 1 up"), your will experience bandwidth choke.

The general rule of thumb for hosting Skype conference is this: Whoever has the most upstream and downstream hosts the conference.

If you do have one of those 10 down/1 up type of ISP accounts, the most you’ll be able to host before experiencing choke is 3 to 4 users. At 5 or 6, it’s choke city.

Tip: To minimize bandwidth choke, have all participants set their voice quality to the lowest possible setting to use the least bandwidth.

Reason #2: Skype, generally speaking, is not gamer-friendly

While true that Skype does have a push-to-talk feature:

…this doesn’t mean that Skype is all of a sudden the preferred choice over Ventrilo and TeamSpeak.

Skype in the latest 5.8 version is a beast of an app. You basically can’t run it without seeing at least 100,000 K used in the Task Manager (starts at 85,000 but jumps to over 100,000 quickly), whereas the traditional VoIP apps use a whole lot less.

Skype also tries to shove a whole lot of "social" down your throat, which is a huge turn-off for many.

When you combine that with conference calling bandwidth issues, you are generally better off coughing up 6 bucks a month for a true Vent or TS third-party server.

This is not to say you shouldn’t try Skype as a free alternative, but don’t be surprised if doesn’t exactly work the way you expected for voice conferencing during gameplay.

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The Real Answer On Whether Skype Conference Calling Is Good For Gaming Or Not

I talk about what’s in this week’s issue of The Insider, as well as send a big “thank you” to everybody who signed up in the last week.

Thanks to everybody.

And, if you’re not yet an Insider, click here to learn about what we’re doing and, of course, join us.

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Inside the Insider #2: Accounting Edition?

KMail is one of those email clients that’s really easy to miss, mainly because it’s been around for so long. People hear KMail and think, "Oh, right – that’s the KDE mail client thing in Linux that’s been around forever."

Yes, it’s been around a long time, but it’s arguably in the top 3 graphical email clients for Linux because it’s just that good.

Imagine for a moment if you took the best parts of Microsoft Outlook Express 6 – the same one so many of you still say is the best email client ever – added in some really awesome features like message aggregation (note the "Today", "Yesterday" and other expandable message groups in the screenshot above), spam protection (which OE6 doesn’t have), and the best parts of Mozilla Thunderbird without the bloat. Summed up, what you’re left with is KMail.

Once you start using KMail, you will say to yourself, "Wow. This is what Microsoft should have done with the next generation of OE instead of releasing that awful Windows Live Mail." And you’d be right.

I don’t know of many mail clients that has as many view options as KMail does, and it would take way too long to list them all here. What I will say is that for just about any graphical mail in history that you can think of, KMail can be made to look and act exactly like it. From Outlook Express to Outlook to Groupwise to Gmail to Thunderbird and pretty much everything in between.

The best part about KMail is that it’s a mail app you simply don’t have to worry about. Solid, stable, and works fantastic with both POP and IMAP.

For those of you that say "I want my Outlook Express 6 back", no you don’t. You want KMail.

(The distro being used seen in the screenshot above is Linux Mint 12, although obviously KMail will work in almost any modern Linux distro.)

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KMail – Linux’s Great Unsung Hero Of Email