Home Elephant: Meet Your Neighbors

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Chris


Social media has created more communication in our world, but has cut down on the personal interactions we have with others. We might have more “friends” than we’ve ever had before, but how many of them can we truly call friends?

Social media is an amazing phenomenon, but it is creating a social atmosphere that exists only in cyberspace instead of creating a social atmosphere that exists in the real world. While face-to-face interactions diminish more and more with the growth of the social media world, some new social applications are fighting against this trend.

A new website and application called “Home Elephant,” found at www.HomeElephant.com, is using social media to bring us face-to-face with our neighbors.

Home Elephant is a new application that assists you in locating, meeting, and interacting with your neighbors. Once you log on to the site (you can use your Facebook account), you can find your house or apartment and join your neighborhood. Once you have joined, you will be able to connect with other people living in your neighborhood who are using Home Elephant.

Within your neighborhood on HomeElephant.com, you can send messages, post updates, and get the latest scoop on what’s going on in your area. How might you use Home Elephant? Your dog ran out the front door and down the street, so you post a message asking your neighbors to keep an eye out. You are planning a garage sale, so you let your neighbors know when. You see there is new construction at the freeway entrance nearby, so you post an update for your neighbors. You need an extra player for your weekly softball game, so you post and ask your neighbors if anyone wants to play.

Home Elephant is a great idea because so many of us go through years in a home or apartment without meeting our neighbors, often moving away before we even get the chance. With technology keeping us indoors so often, meeting and getting to know our neighbors is not as common as it used to be.

The website uses your IP address to validate your location, and to deter hackers from logging in and out of random neighborhoods. Being able to sign in with your Facebook login information makes getting started easy, and best of all, the entire application is completely free to use.

Social media programmers and start-ups need to strive towards releasing more applications like this one. Home Elephant is using social media to fight the negative effects of social media, and that is a genius idea.

What are some other ways we could use Home Elephant?

How to Use Home Elephant

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New App Documents Your Physical Deterioration!

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Chris

Finally, with the help of Noah Kalina and his “Noah K Every Day” project, you can now download an app for your phone or tablet device that will remind you to take a picture of yourself every day.

You’ve most likely seen, or at least heard of, Noah Kalina’s viral YouTube video in which he compiled thousands of pictures of himself, one from every day since 2000, into a 5-minute video. You can see the video here:

You might be asking yourself, “why would I do this?”

More appropriately, you should be asking yourself, “why wouldn’t I do this?”

We all know that one of the best parts of life is watching ourselves age, right? Nothing makes us feel better than waking up and taking note of all the physical changes we are going through each day. An even better ego-boost is to look through old photographs and see how time has changed our physical appearance.

Well now, a new app from Noah Kalina and friends will help you keep track! With “Everyday,” available at the iTune app store, you can take a photo of your face every day and make an ongoing movie of your physical changes. There’s nothing better than your own custom Youtube video to make you see how you have aged, right?

Instead of downloading apps that will help you maintain a better lifestyle, why not just monitor how your ongoing lifestyle choices are affecting your body?

The app will give you a line graph to help you line up comparable photographs each day, or you can just overlay the last photo you took and line it up that way. Either way, you will be able to use Everyday to track each wrinkle, pimple, and bad haircut you get.

Once again, an application that truly improves our way of life.

You can download the app here: Everyday App

Our question to you: Is there a practical use for the “Everyday” app?

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Use Marco to Find Your Friends – or Just Call!

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Chris

Have you ever arrived at a crowded restaurant or bar to meet a friend and just couldn’t find them? Maybe you tried to meet at a picnic in the park, or at an amusement park or music festival, and spent twenty minutes wandering around awkwardly trying to find them.

With the new app called Marco, that problem is solved. When you download Marco from the Apple App Store or the Marco app home page, www.usemarco.com, you will be able to pinpoint your friend’s location in an instant (as long as they agree to it).

Marco is a social GPS application that allows you to pinpoint the exact location of another person who is using the same application. If you arrive at the crowded club and everyone’s there already, you just have to request their location to find them.

With Marco, you simply send a request to the friend you are looking for. Assuming they have downloaded Marco, your friend simply accepts your request and their location is clearly displayed on a map. From there, you can move closer and closer to your destination until you find the friend you are looking for. The app even tells you the exact distance you are from the person you’re looking for.

Marco is great to use at parties, sporting events, concerts, festivals, the movies, restaurants, and anything else that involves meeting up with someone you know. Obviously, you need their permission to see their location. What makes Marco a solid-working app is that it is limited to connecting only two people at one time, and for a limited amount of time.

I personally think this kind of application is a perfect example of the wave of apps that seem cool at first, but lost their luster quite quickly. Now that apps are so popular, everyone is making one, whether it’s helpful or not. If you are constantly trying to meet up with people at conventions and other public events, but have trouble finding them, it makes sense. But for restaurants and bars?

Continually, technology is bringing people closer together and tearing them apart at the same time. We have gotten to the point where people are using GPS maps and applications to locate their friends instead of just talking to them on the phone and saying, “we’re next to the big yellow beer sign” or “just take a right when you walk in, you’ll see me.” I can see why Marco is a catchy, fun-to-use application, but it’s also symbolic of how much less we need to communicate face-to-face or voice-to-voice.

I love technology, obviously, but apps such as this (and many others, even discussed on this website) seem like overkill.

What do you think? Would you use Marco?

Posted in Apple, Social | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Social Technology at the Oscars

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Chris

The Academy Awards, the world’s most prestigious awards ceremony for the film industry, is also one of the most popular television events of the year. In 2011, the ceremony enjoyed a technological makeover.

The 83rd annual Academy Awards was supercharged with technology, making it much more accessible in many extra ways. Not only do fans want to see more from the red carpet, but also backstage, and even after the ceremony.

Oscars.org, for example, provided a backstage pass online that would allow viewers to see what was going on behind the scenes. For $.99, fans gained access to backstage cameras that gave them an even more in-depth Academy Awards experience. They could even switch from one camera to another, depending on what they wanted to see. Unfortunately some of the video footage was very low quality.

Apple and E! Entertainment Television joined together and released an iPad app exclusively for the Academy Awards. The Red Carpet application gave fans another perspective on the entrance and interviews of the celebrities arriving at the event.

Even Twitter got into the mix through Academy Awards host James Franco. The young star Tweeted about his morning before the event, Tweeted how he felt afterwards, and even sent his followers Twitter messages during the ceremony.

Technology is changing the way we consume media every day. With so many multi-taskers sitting in the electric glow of their television and computer monitors, including myself, it makes sense that these types of technology would become part of such a major event.

Did you participate in any of these technological approaches to the Oscars?

…and I’ll ask it…Do you think The King’s Speech deserved Best Picture???

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Has Angry Birds Really Gotten This Popular?

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Chris

In a video filmed by Electric Pig’s Mike Cooper, a real-life Angry Birds is enjoyed on his son’s birthday. Remember, it’s just a cake.

Angry Birds is one of the most popular smartphone and tablet games around. Basically, you use a slingshot to send “angry birds” across the screen at green pigs. As the story goes, the pigs stole eggs from the birds’ nest, and so the fight begins. You need to break down destructible structures to destroy some of the pigs, and the overall gameplay turns out to be very puzzle-like in the end.

But are smartphone and tablet games really this popular? I think it’s limited to a select few at this point and time, and will continue to be in the future. While certain games attain almost overnight success, most of them fade into the background.

If a free version of a game is offered, the chance for success is much higher. I began playing an unlimited free version of Angry Birds on my phone, but soon after downloaded it onto my iPad. I quickly realized the “free” versions of the game on iPad were limited to a small amount of levels. If I wanted to continue, I had to pay. For me, I only pay for games I know I will play. Angry Birds falls into the category of games that are fun for a while, but get old rather soon.

Either way, this Angry Birds cake is amazing. Check out this video of a father and son enjoying one of the only Angry Birds cakes ever made, and let us know what you think. You can even follow this link to learn how to make your very own Angry Birds cake!

Make Your Own Angry Birds Cake!

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