Digital Bytes

Death of the Joystick

Ever fancied moving objects in your favourite virtual games simply by thinking about it...

By the end of  2008 you will - thanks to a neuro-headset which picks ups electrical activity from your brain before sending it to your computer.

The headset - which will cost around £150 - can detect emotions such as shock, excitement and frustration as well as users laughing, smiling and winking. Additionally, it's fitted with a gyroscope allowing you to control a cursor or camera simply by moving your head.  Click here to find out more.

source: BBC

The rise of social media - friend or foe?

Source: netimperative

A new report called 'The impact of social networking in the UK' by Experian has outlined the trends that corporate organisations should be aware of in 2008, including the arrival of the Web 2.0 ‘super advocate’ – the corporate organisation’s biggest ally or enemy. 

Social networking, as we all know has grown massively over a short period of time - for example, according to Hitwise, Christmas Day 2007 was the busiest day ever for social networks in the UK and Facebook was the third most visited website in the UK over the Christmas period, pushing eBay into fourth place for the first time since January 2005.  Furthermore, in 2007 social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace accounted for one in every five Internet page impressions in the UK, and their mass appeal and importance to companies will only increase in 2008...hence it's clear that social networking sites cannot be ignored - or ignored at your peril!  Click here to find out what to look out for and how to use social networking to your corporations advantage.

Microsoft's offer for Yahoo is all about inflating Microsoft's cloud, apparently

You can't have failed to notice the news surrounding Microsoft's bid for Yahoo over the last week or so, and there have been lots of talk about Microsoft wanting a bigger share of the search market and wanting to catch up with Google.  To add to these reasons, the economist's thoughts behind this are that it's all about inflating Microsoft's 'computing cloud'...confused? Then click here to find out what it's all about!

Google to improve mobile search

I'm not sure how many of you have tried using google on your mobile but for me personally, it's been very hit and miss...and it could be because you previously had to specify a search type in advance, or afterwards choose between different indexes such as local results, images or websites.  However, google have now stated that they are going to aim to provide the most relevant results from across the range of information sources.

As a spokesman from Google said, 'Mobile search is more about seeking than browsing - you're not going to be doing your research on your mobile as it's not practial': I completely agree with this and the quicker and easier we can get people to what their seeking for, the more people will spend on the mobile internet and the more people you get on the mobile internet, the more money businesses will start spending on mobile site and content, and the better experience for us overall!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7217747.stm

Where it all began...

  The internet archive project has just revealed how the sites we know and love first appeared on the internet...some haven't changed so much - google essentially is the same site, MindShare was purple  from the word go but you can see how the BBC has changed quite dramatically - not as user friendly as we're used to these days! Click here to see how your favourite sites first started out but be aware that half the sites still didn't exist back in the 90's...Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg was only 11 when the internet was officially 'born'.