Pin it if you love it

Have you guys heard about Pinterest? What is Pinterest? The name definitely invites some interest. Oh look! It happened again.

At first glance, the home page of Pinterest looks like a tasteful collection of eye-catching images put up by users from all over the world. The images range from a picturesque location to a small piece of equipment, from pets or animals to works of art, from landmark events in history to latest trends in fashion, to name a few. Of course, a lot of these categories often tend to overlap one another, making it a more memorable experience.

Pinterest is a pin board style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme based collections such as events, interests, hobbies and more. Users have the option of browsing other pin boards for inspiration,’re-pin’ images to their own collections and/or ‘like’ photos. Pinterest’s mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the things they find interesting”. Obviously, once it gets put up, it’s not interesting anymore, its ‘Pinteresting’ now!

Founded by Ben Silbermann, the site is managed by Cold Brew Labs and funded by a small group of entrepreneurs and inventors. It draws our attention for the following reasons:

- It is one the fastest growing social services in the world.

- It drives more traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn, combined!

- It is extremely viral. Over 80% of pins are re-pins. This means your content goes on autopilot.

- You do not need to repost your articles over and over like on some social sites because your pins can be posted and re-shared over and over.

- It is driving more traffic back to websites than Twitter.

Here’s an info graphic, which will do the rest of the detailing. After all, the site is about images, and writing more about it will spoil the fun, honestly.

Credits: wikipedia.org, mashable.com, socialmediahelp4u.com

Its all about the Fans, now.

The recent headlines on a Sports news website –

“Kaka becomes first athlete to pass 10m fans on Twitter”

“The IOC’s ‘Olympic Athletes Hub’ – good idea or social media fail?”

“FIFA launches YouTube Channel”

“Arsenal advises young players on use of social media”

“Liverpool first Premier League club on Pinterest”

“Social Media & Sport – the importance of interacting with, not just talking at fans”

All this points to one, and only one thing: Social Media is big, and it cannot be ignored.

The fact is, social media does not require a big budget and you don’t need millions of fans to see a positive return from your social media efforts. If you could put a few more people in the stands at your games or sell more merchandise at your team store without it costing you anything, wouldn’t that be worth your time?

Every team has fans. Some are more loyal and engaging than others, but every team has a fan base that wants to see your program succeed. What social media does is give you the tools to engage with your fan base and turn them into advocates that will help you achieve your goals. The only thing you have to do is provide value. And, yes, value can be defined in a number of ways. It doesn’t mean you have to give away something that costs a lot of money. Value can simply be providing your fan base with something that they normally wouldn’t experience such as access to behind the scenes action, exclusive offers on tickets and merchandise and creative online contests that encourage participation.

Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms are having a tremendous impact on the sports world for fans, players, teams and sponsors alike.

Here’s an infographic to better depict the picture (too much reading gets boring, we know).

Floating Mines in Outer Space

The Earth’s resources are dwindling every day. The planet will soon dry up and sustenance of human life on earth may soon be questionable.

The conservation group WWF said on Wednesday that the Earth’s natural resources are being depleted so quickly that “two planets” would be required to sustain current lifestyles within a generation.

The world’s global environmental “footprint” or depletion rate now exceeds the planets capacity to regenerate by 30 percent.

But, wait a minute. We are only talking about the planet’s capacity here aren’t we? What if our natural resources were not limited to the ones obtained from the Earth? What if we found a rich supply of these natural resources elsewhere other than the Earth?

No, we are not talking about Mars. While possibilities of sustenance of life on the red planet continue to be examined vigorously, the focus this time is on NEA.

Near Earth Asteroids have orbits that lie partly between 0.983 and 1.3 astronomical units away from the sun. An astronomical unit is the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Planetary Resources: This is the name of a company that we may just hear a lot in time to come. The reason is that Planetary Resources is theasteroid mining company that was launched in Seattle, Washington, USA, on the 24^th of April, 2012 with backing from Google’s co-founder Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt, famed director James Cameron, Peter Diamandis (X Prize) and Microsoft billionaires.

A new brand of spacecraft, known as the Arkyd series will be used to launch new space telescopes that will in turn be used to identify Near Earth Asteroids that are particularly rich in water (for rocket-fuel) and precious metals such as Platinum.

Just to estimate the potential of this business venture, here’s an instance:

Below is an image of the asteroid Amun 3554. It’s a little more than a mile wide and is one of the smallest metal bearing asteroids yet discovered. But here’s the catch: It contains $8 trillion worth of platinum, another $8 trillion in iron and nickel, and a mere $6 trillion worth of cobalt. So that’s a total of $20 trillion. Numerically, that is 20,000,000,000,000 dollars!

Amun 3554

These estimates are based on observations by John S. Lewis, professor of planetary science, author of Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Planets, and Comets, and now a consultant to Planetary Resources.

And what’s more? Amun 3554 is just one of the few asteroids submitted for rigorous chemical analysis. Another mile-wide NEA, known as 1986 DA, is said to contain 100,000 tonnes of platinum and 10,000 tonnes of gold, making it worth another couple of trillion. Not bad, one would say.

We are aware of the existence of 9,000 NEAs. And a rough guess is that this is about 1% of the total. One thing surely seems to be certain now – we will never be out of money now!

The asteroid retrieval and mining process will be done by robotic aircraft. That much is obvious, given that the project is funded by all billionaires. However, after getting a whiff of the figures above, that does not sound like too much now.

Autism and Social Media – The Turning Point

Autism is a poorly understood disorder – not only in India, but the world over. World Autism Awareness Day continues to be observed every year since September 19^th, 1989 but the United Nations General Assembly formally declared April 2^nd as World Autism Awareness Day in 2008. As must be clear, the purpose of this day is to create awareness about autism among people and help children and adults suffering from the disorder live a meaningful life.

Autism (also referred to as Autistic Spectrum Disorder or ASD) is characterised as a complex developmental disability. The condition is said to be the result of a neurological disorder that has an effect on normal brain function which affects the development of the person’s communication and social interaction skills. It is believed by experts that Autism presents itself during the first three years of a person’s life.

Parents of children diagnosed with autism, have to become autism and special needs experts practically overnight. So what do they do? Where do they go? How are they to gather all the information required in a short space of time? Naturally, they want to connect with other parents and learn from them.

This is where social media’s all pervasiveness comes into play, and in a huge way. It gives the parents of autistic children a platform to get in touch with similar people, post their concerns and get impromptu replies from not one, but many sources altogether. While the Internet has managed to perfect the art of providing information, social media perfects the area of exchange of knowledge, in a more two-way traffic manner.

The United States has setup a social network – MyAutismTeam – solely working for the purpose of spreading awareness and providing support to parents of autistic children throughout the year, not only during the Autism Awareness Month. MyAutismTeam officially launched in December 2011, after several months of testing, growing the user base and improving the site. It opened in beta to users last June, beginning with just 30 parents in the San Francisco Bay Area. But when word got out, the site grew quickly. Today, it has more than 22,000 registered parents.

MyAutismTeam believes it should be easy to find the best people around to help a parent when his or her child is diagnosed with autism. With MyAutismTeam, parents can get in touch with other parents, search a directory of more than 30,000 autism specialists and access a searchable Q&A section of 600-plus questions. The chance that a question gets answered is 97.5% – impressive.

While progress is being made at a global level, the situation at home, here in India suggests that there is scope for improvement. At least 1 million people in India live with autism, a condition that is still very poorly understood. For many parents of children with disabilities, the big challenge is teaching the world to adapt.

Screenshot of the search page at MyAutismTeam

For those who would like to know more about Autism and its symptoms, a brief description is given below.

Autism is a wide-spectrum disorder – meaning that no two people with autism will have the exact same symptoms. Besides varying combinations, symptoms also vary in severity. Below is a list of the behavioural characteristics exhibited by people with autism:

• Social skills – People with ASD have different ways of interacting with others and are often out of synch with other people or completely uninterested depending upon the symptoms.
• Empathy – A person with autism will find it much harder to understand the feelings of others. Having a conversation with a person with autism may feel very much like a one-way trip. Almost everybody on this planet prefers to talk about himself/herself more than other people; it is human nature. The person with autism will usually do so even more.
• A number of children with ASD do not like any sort of physical contact.
• They find loud noises, sudden changes in light intensity and certain smells quite shocking and offensive.
• The higher the severity of autism, the more affected is the person’s speech. People with autism will often repeat words or phrases they hear – an event called echolalia.
• They cannot tolerate surprises. They love predictability and the concept of a routine. Any changes may cause them to become very upset.
• Learning trends in such people are very unpredictable. They often to focus completely in one direction and ignore all else.
• People with autism often have strong obsessions.

While not knowing the problem can be frustrating, finding out the issue alone can be huge recourse towards healing. We hope the readers continue to spread awareness about autism and experience firsthand the dawn of a more tolerant and understanding community of people.

The zipper and things you never knew

So the guy who invented the zipper, the simple object that has caused both great convenience and a lot of suppressed discomfort to the masses, is more popular than the cricketing legend who has diligently served his nation for over twenty years.

Gideon Sundback (April 24, 1880 – June 21, 1954) was not so popular till today, but for the latest Google Doodle, now every Google junky, which is virtually every one of us, knows his name.

Gideon Sundback was a Swedish-American electrical engineer. Born in 1880 in Sweden, he eventually immigrated to the United Stated in 1905. Sundback improved Whitcomb Judson’s 1851 patent for the Clasp Locker, working for Judson at his Universal Fastener Company in St. Catherine, Ontario.

While we wish a very happy birthday to Sachin Tendulkar, the little master, the master blaster, the living legend, and the very lifeline of Indian cricket, the inventor of the zip is simply too hard to ignore now that he has been highlighted by Google. So here we delve into some interesting facts about the simple ‘zipper’.

• Wait a minute, simple? Wrong! The development of the zip happened over a period of 8 years, from 1906 to 1914.
• Sundback filed for a patent for the design of the zipper (or the Hookless No.2 as it was known then) in 1914. It was issued to him in 1917.
• The name “zipper” was created in 1923 by B.F. Goodrich.
• Before the name ‘zipper’ was coined, the device was called “Hookless No.2”.
• Initially, boots and tobacco pouches were the primary use for zippers; it took another twenty years before they caught on in the fashion industry.
• About the time of World War II the zipper achieved wide acceptance for the flies of trousers and the plackets of skirts and dresses.
• Thousands of miles of zipper are manufactured daily.

The inventor of the zipper was pretty much an unknown entity until today. We verily took for granted the existence of the zip and the essential role it has been fulfilling for us for such a long time.

But when Google decided to do a doodle on the zipper, the whole story was suddenly brought to the forefront and everybody took notice. This, folks, is the power of social media to bring to light something that was obscure, to influence minds and to cultivate opinions. Don’t let it pass you by.