Study shows why overhearing cell phone calls bugs us so much

Study shows why overhearing cell phone calls bugs us so much

A new study to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science purports to reveal just why overhearing cell phones calls, on the bus, on the subway, or wherever, apparently bother us so much.

The study, by Cornell University, suggests it's not because, as many have noted, many people on cell phones shout into their handsets as their is no sidetone. Rather, the study suggests that human brains simply don't like one-sided conversations.

The study tested 41 college students to see how their results on a series of cognitive tests on a computer were affected by either silence, a monologue, a conversation between two people, and half a conversation (called a "halfalogue," such as overhearing a cell phone call). It was the "halfalogue" which lowered participants' scores on the tests.

The study showed that a one-sided conversation draws more attention and drains concentration from listeners. Researchers believe that we are unable to tune out a "halfalogue" because unlike a monologue to a two-sided conversation, listeners try to make sense out of the half they hear and predict what speakers will say next.

Lauren Emberson is a co-author of the study, along with Michael Goldstein. "When you hear half of a conversation, you get less information and you can't predict as well," she said. "It requires more attention."

The researchers noted that while talking on a cell phone is already known to distract drivers, listening to a passenger's cell phone conversation may also be distraction. Further study should be done, they indicated.

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Facebook Fight Calls For Flight

Just as smokers are advised to select and work towards a quit date, the Web site QuitFacebookDay is encouraging frustrated Facebook users to cut the chord with the powerful social networking site on May 31.
Founded by technologist Joseph Dee and systems designer Matthew Milan, QuitFacebookDay is asking prospective ex-account-holders to sign their email or Twitter ID to a pledge list. Monday morning, there were 2,635 "committed Facebook quitters," according to the website, up about 70% from the May 15 count of 780.

For a lot of people, quitting Facebook revolves around privacy. This is a legitimate concern, but we also think the privacy issue is just the symptom of a larger set of issues," wrote Milan and Dee. "The cumulative effects of what Facebook does now will not play out well in the future, and we care deeply about the future of the web as an open, safe and human place. We just can't see Facebook's current direction being aligned with any positive future for the web, so we're leaving."
Dee and Milan are not alone in their efforts to organize a mass Facebook exodus. The "Quit Facebook Day" page on Facebook is liked by more than 1,500 people -- or less than 0.00375% of the site's more than 400 million users.

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FacebookProtest.com -- which as 1,212 followers on Twitter -- plans a June 6 boycott of the Web site. "Be sure to log out of Facebook in all of your browsers no later than the evening of June 5th. On the 6th, be sure to not use Facebook connect or click any “Like” buttons: basically refrain from all Facebook related activity," the site said.

Facebook recently added two privacy tools, but account deactivations are gaining attention.

Some well-known industry names have made much-publicized cuts to their Facebook ties. Google's webspam chief Matt Cutts deactivated his Facebook ties on April 22, according to comments he made on Twitter. Peter Rojas, Gizmodo and Engadget founder also tweeted about his decision to cut his Facebook ties.

Changes to Facebook's privacy policies are spurring concerns about the site. In the last five years, Facebook's privacy policy has grown from about 1,000 words to today's 5,830 words, according to the New York Times.

The site's complementary FAQ is 45,000 words. It is now longer than the U.S. Constitution, the Huffington Post found. In fact, there are 4543 words in the original, unamended Constitution, including the signatures. The Declaration has 1458 words.

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Followers vanish as Twitter squashes bug

Glitch allowed users to ‘force’ other users to follow
By Helen A.S. Popkin
updated 47 minutes ago
The Twitpocolypse is upon us! Earlier today, as the microblogging site attempted to fix an embarrassing bug, follower lists suddenly disappeared. As the Twitterverse panicked and "Follower 0" rose to the top of it's trending list, Twitter assured its users via the company's own Twitter feed that the issue would be rapidly remedied.

“Follow count display is set to 0 and follow/unfollow is temporarily offline while we fix a bug,” Twitter’s own Twitter account reported at 1:02 p.m., confirming that everyone, from Ashton Kutcher to Justin Bieber bloggers, was affected.

Earlier Monday, the microblogging network was beset by a bug that allowed anyone to force other Twitter users to follow his or her account. Social network news site Mashable reported that one alert reader e-mailed the details of the glitch Monday morning, writing “[tweet] accept [username]” then the [username] immediately starts following you.”

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Facebook's new features raise privacy concerns

Those are three examples of how Facebook is moving quickly to make the Internet one big personalized social network, setting up the Palo Alto firm as the default communications platform for what some observers are already calling Web 3.0.

The possibilities are exciting to marketers and Web site operators - and alarming to digital privacy advocates.

"Facebook wants to be the center of the social Web," said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst for the research firm eMarketer Inc. Whether the company succeeds, "we're going to have to wait and see," she said. "The biggest question to me is whether consumers and companies are going to want to cede the social Web to Facebook. And maybe some privacy concerns will come out that we haven't even thought about yet."

Last week at its developers conference in San Francisco, Facebook Inc. introduced an ambitious plan to export the Facebook experience to all Web sites, using "social plug-ins" like a new "Like" button to link news stories, restaurant reviews, movie data, product information and other content to a Facebook user's network.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg outlined his vision of linking the "social graphs" of the more than 400 million Facebook users to the rest of the Internet, creating an efficient, interconnected Web of social interactions.

Companies jump in
Numerous companies are already on board with the plan, including Yelp, CNN, the New York Times, IMDb, Time Inc., Fandango, the National Hockey League, USA Networks, Levi Strauss, Univision and ABC-TV.

They hope that tapping into a beehive of social activity yields a wealth of customer data that leads to more product sales or advertising opportunities. And combined with Facebook's growing reach into the Web, "marketers realized they needed to fish where the fish are," Willamson said.

Job searches
For job search firm Simply Hired Inc., integrating Facebook into its Web site with just a few lines of computer code will provide useful tools for job seekers, said Dion Lim, the Mountain View firm's president and chief operating officer.

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