This post was originally published several years ago. As technology and trends have changed over the years, the content of the post became outdated. So we’ve updated the post with all new examples…
Click through to read the rest of the story on the Vandelay Design Blog.
The post 43 Brilliant Free jQuery Image Gallery/Slider Plugins (And 14 Tutorials to Make Your Own) appeared first on DICKLEUNG DESIGN 2014.
We have teamed up with the new WordPress theme club, CrocoBlock to offer six lucky winners the chance to win a one-month membership at CrocoBlock worth $55, $75 or $95. The price depends on the…
Click through to read the rest of the story on the Vandelay Design Blog.
The post Win a Free One Month Membership from CrocoBlock appeared first on DICKLEUNG DESIGN 2014.
Congratulations to the QODE team, who have reached Power Elite status by making one million dollars worth of sales. Thoughtful market research, an attention to detail, the introduction of new features and the gradual expansion of the team are some of the secrets to their success.
Don’t run a race where you have a late start from the beginning. Instead, try to introduce something new, which will make others want to run your race.
QODE are definitely running their own race, and it’s working. They surprised themselves with the success of their first theme, have expanded the team and moved into a larger office, and reached Power Elite status in a little over a year. Congratulations!
We asked the team a few questions about the journey to the $1,000,000 milestone. Read on to discover how they decided to start creating WordPress themes, how they stay on top of their game, and how it feels to reach a million dollars worth of sales!
Happy Power Elite Day QODE! Gee, you made it fast! A little over a year? How does it feel?
Thank you very much! We feel great right now. When we first started doing this back in November 2012, we were a small web development agency. The idea of building WordPress themes came to us when we spontaneously came across one via Facebook. Design and front-end development had always been our strong points, and we were looking for a new venue to channel these qualities. ThemeForest seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so, and so we set about exploring the market.
In those first couple of weeks, our time was split between analyzing the market and building our first theme with QODE framework. We discovered that there were many strong authors on the market. We decided that we weren’t going to run a race with them; rather, we were going to build themes with specific features, and in doing so, put forth our strongest points.
Looking back on our experience in working with clients, we knew how people reacted to certain features. We had offered interactive modules, and even though people loved them, they had generally chosen straight sites which were more in line with their budgets.
Going from that experience, we decided that we were going to offer straight features with interactive elements as a plus on the side. Our first themes offered parallax as an additional module. At that time, only one-page parallax sites were offered on the market. They also offered the catalogue slider, and most importantly, AJAX transitions, which can optionally be set on pages. This feature is still unique on ThemeForest.
The QODE Bunch
We love hearing about author’s workspaces. Tell us a bit about yours, and introduce the team.
At first we worked out of a small apartment. As our team expanded, we moved into a bigger place. We are currently working in a lovely antique house with modern furniture, high ceilings, and a backyard.
As mentioned, we started off as a small agency, the founders being Darko and Ivan. Our lead designer is Valentin, and our lead developer is Mladen. We are divided among teams: design, development, and support.
And what’s a typical day in the life of QODE like?
This a hard question, because there is no typical day at QODE! Usually though, we start at 9am and finish at 5pm. At the start of the day, the teams make their plans of action, and then we all get down to business.
The Founders
It all started with the theme MINIMUM. What have you learnt since then?
When we were working on MINIMUM, we were new in the field and didn’t really know what to expect. We didn’t have high hopes for our first theme being successful. We were just aiming to follow through, knowing that commitment would eventually lead to one of our themes being successful.
Considering that MINIMUM was indeed a success, we had become competitive authors in a relatively short time. Since then, we have learned to have a better feel for market demand and customer needs, and of course, we are still learning.
Various people have told us that many themes on ThemeForest look alike, and a common question is why our themes do so well. We think that this is due to the final touches—paying attention to the last detail, and having a lot of experience to fall back on.
And now, of course, you have Bridge which is such a beautiful clean WP theme. How is designing/developing different now from back when you started?
Our general creative process, going back from our first theme, is to decide on a concept and then follow it through. To be honest, when we were building Bridge, we weren’t aiming for a bestseller by competing with currently popular themes on ThemeForest (even though we secretly hope to see our themes on the weekly list!). The idea for Bridge was to follow contemporary web design trends and trends in design in general, with the goal of bringing something new and fresh to the market.
Since we started, market demand grew and the amount of design and development needed to be done in order to create a competitive theme has increased. It’s interesting that even though our team is expanding, we are still releasing themes at the same rate due to the increased amount of workload our themes require.
Any hot tips? Where does the beginner start?
Our tip is: Don’t run a race where you have a late start from the beginning. Instead, try to introduce something new, which will make others want to run your race.
Lead Designer & Lead Developer
What is the next big thing for QODE? Expanding?
Yes, we are always expanding, along with the growing market demand.
In the future, we are aiming to build a truly exceptional support system which will guarantee a very minimum responding time.
What do you do to keep on top of your game?
We do quality recruitment to ensure that every new team member is one of the best in their field. We are able to recognize good qualities in people.
Developers
What is your favourite thing to do to unwind?
Many of us here at QODE are soccer fans, so playing a soccer match after work is something we look forward to. Other than that, we occasionally like to go out as a team and stay up until the wee morning hours.
Anything else you’d like to share?
For people who might not know, we are happy to announce that we release two new ready-to-use Bridge demo sites every week.
Developers & Support
And of course, congratulations on this amazing milestone!
Thank you! We would like to use this opportunity to thank Envato, who enabled us to play our strongest game, which is something we weren’t able to do in our previous ventures. Thanks to them, we were able to put forth our qualities and earn the rewards for our hard work.
Support
The post Happy QODE Day appeared first on DICKLEUNG DESIGN 2014.
Some time ago I decided to take up new challenges and next week I am going freelance and starting my small business. I am leaving my company with which I will keep good relationship and where I met some truly great people. However, I feel it is time for me to continue chasing my dreams.
I have been working for years for different companies and besides my day job I handled multiple freelance projects. It worked for quite some time but it wasn’t sustainable in the long term. At one point, the amount of work exceeded my free time and energy and after I nearly burned out I realized it’s time to make a change. Luckily, I met some wonderful people and have truly fantastic projects, some of which you could’ve seen on my dribbble stream. I’m eager to continue working on the current projects and to start a couple of new exciting ones. Most of the future projects will be team work – some of my colleagues designers will work closely with me in various aspects of design process.
My moleskin is full of article ideas which I haven’t had time to tackle but I plan to fix this in the near future. After all, I neglected this blog completely for the last 10 months! I will write about UI/interaction design principles and practical things I learned, thoughts on design research & usability testing and observations about being an in-house UX person.
One of the goals is to redesign my portfolio
This site will also need some work and the focus will be on my portfolio. Currently it says nothing about design processes and decisions I’ve taken on projects so I find it more or less useless. Also it lacks most of the recent work. Each project in portfolio will consist of a short case study and sreenshots that will reveal more details.
It will probably be hard, but more important is that it will be fun, and I am determined to do something really good. We’ll see how it goes.
Article publié pour la première fois le 13/12/2011
Inspired Magazine
Inspired Magazine – creativity & inspiration daily
Besides being very creative, Stan Lee is certainly a very lucky man. The creator of Marvel Comics has seen his wealth grow year on year ever since he first put pen to paper to create some of our favorite super heroes in the 1960s.
Today, Hollywood has taken hold of some of these memorable characters, from the Fantastic Four to The Incredible Hulk, to make some of the most high-budget, high-octane and high-thrills movies we’ve ever seen. Stan Lee has certainly been reaping the benefits too – in 2012, it was reported that he had earned $6 billion in a year from Marvel merchandise alone.
Of course, later on, in early 2014 Lee was involved in a high profile suing case with Disney over alleged breach of copyright. Clearly, the Marvel franchise is an idea worth holding onto if it’s getting the company who have recently bought the rights to Star Wars involved. But what is it that makes the Marvel franchise so popular? Here’s a look at how Marvel has made its way from comics onto the internet.
The transition from comic books to movies has inevitably had effects on the internet too, in particular, the world of social media. The recent remakes of classic comic books into movies have become games in the social networking world as well. For example, in line with the new Marvel movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron, set to hit our screens in 2015, the company has created the Avengers Alliance Facebook game.
Based on our favourite Marvel characters, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow, the game gives social media players the chance to battle it out and play as super heroes or even villains. While technology has advanced since these characters were first drawn onto comic books in the swinging 60s, the fundamental design elements stay the same, and promise an even more exciting, visually stunning and interactive Marvel experience for today’s comic fans.
Marvel’s iconic super hero designs have made it onto almost every form of merchandise out there, from clothing to lunch box designs. While some may deem Marvel’s designs appropriate for children only, the real Marvel fans out there have proven that anybody can love super heroes, whatever their age.
This has become particularly evident in the world of online gaming – while players have to be an average of 21 years old to play, this hasn’t stopped marketers from targeting Marvel-themed games at them. For example, the Titan Casino Fantastic Four game features some of Marvel’s most beautifully designed super hero characters, keeping up the super hero spirit while maintaining the high thrills of winning money.
Whether recent blockbusters or classic comic book heroes have been the influence, the world of Marvel is impacting the internet at an impressive rate, and with such Interest from die-hard fans, is not showing any sign of stopping.
header image courtesy of boostudio
This post Taking comics online: the Marvel effect was written by Catalin Zorzini and first appearedon Inspired Magazine.
Different consumers interact with brands in different ways, depending on their age group, which networks they’re using, and what their concerns are. Accent Marketing Services surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers in the hopes of to shedding light on consumer behaviors.
Only seven percent of respondents ranked social media as having the highest level of customer service. Direct phone service ranked first at 63 percent, email was second at 28 percent. However, these are not the rates at which customers seek customer service — social networking customer service teams receive a lot of requests, but they fall flat on delivery. 70 percent of all customer service requests on Twitter go unanswered, according to the report.
As you might expect, Facebook is go-to network with 82 percent of consumers ranking it a favorite, but only 72 percent of consumers that contact companies on Facebook expect a response. Twitter is second favorite at 30 percent, and nearly 50 consumers consumers expect brands to be responsive to their requests.
Not everyone takes to social networks just to resolve issues. 59 percent of 18-29 year olds like to mine Facebook for good deals. That number increases for every age bracket until it’s 80 percent for those aged 60+. Consumers also use social networks to share both good and bad brand encounters and purchases — 29 percent of men, and 19 percent of women post to Twitter about their experiences.
The study came to some key conclusions about customer service strategies.
Ensuring that customer service is seamless across all platforms will yield better customer retention.
Building dedicated teams to service more networks will increase customer satisfaction in relation across platforms.
Define how customers interact with each network and then define a strategy based on those insights so each network gets the care that it deserves.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Inspired Magazine
Inspired Magazine – creativity & inspiration daily
We’re kicking off the week with a super bundle from VectorVice, with some of the most detailed, yummy high quality vectors I’ve ever seen. Scroll down to see for yourselves.
VectorVice is a new resource for high quality, hand drawn graphic vectors, which can be used for both personal and commercial purposes. The vectors are available for download, fast secure and are categorized in themed packs. These packs vary from fruit, foods and animals, to icons, cars and seasonal themed packs.
This amazing bundle includes 10 different vector packs for the price of one ($10). I’ve selected a few of my favorite sets below but I strongly encourage you to check the full list here.
I know I do! And these guys have a nice little pack totally free of charge. Check it out and download from here.
Download now
This post Mega Vectors Bundle: 10 vector packs for the price of 1 was written by Catalin Zorzini and first appearedon Inspired Magazine.
Today anonymous messaging startup Yik Yak announced $10 million in Series A funding to facilitate its accelerated growth.
This $10 million in funding follows the $1.5 million received in April, all of which will be used to develop the app infrastructure, hire new engineers and “bring the app to virtually every college campus by the end of the year.”
“We’re seeing serious growth in our engagement rates — indicating a significant demand for localized, private interactions among mobile users of college age and older,” Tyler Droll, co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “In order to continue scaling and advancing the Yik Yak experience, we need to build a bigger team. This new funding will allow us to do that.”
Anonymous messaging apps like Yik Yak have been criticised recently for their potential to enable cyber-bullying. However, Yik Yak has taken a pro-active approach by restricting access around middle schools and high schools. Anyone trying to access the app in restricted areas receives a message noting that Yik Yak is intended for college students.
The vision for Yik Yak seems to be to enable the sharing of truth “unfettered by identity.” Co-founder and COO Brooks Buffington says the startup is at the center of a shift in social networking to private and unfiltered communication.
“Yik Yak’s mission is to revolutionize the idea of a live stream and provide a forum that opens new opportunities for communication and interaction from any point in the U.S. and worldwide,” Buffington said.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Next to Facebook and Google, YouTube is the third most trafficked website in the world. To demonstrate, YouTube Downloader created an infographic outlining what happens on the world’s biggest video network in a single minute.
More than 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute, meaning that YouTube’s content ID system has to work overtime. It scans the equivalent of more than 400 years of video a day — that’s 146,000 hours of video a minute, and sometimes the system might be a little overzealous. The volume of content uploads are not wasted, there are over 1,388 subscriptions a minute.
The environment is competitive for channels, but there is a lot of money to be made. Pewdiepie is ranked highest, with over 3.7 billion views, which generate an estimated $13.31 per minute. Bluexephos earns an estimated $6.7 million per year, at around $12.74 per minute. It’s also interesting to note that four of the top 10 channels are gaming channels.
Still, YouTube itself is the biggest winner when it comes to revenue. In 2013, YouTube generated $5.6 billion in revenue, which means the company makes an estimated $10,654.49 every single minute by serving ads to the video hungry public.
To see how the rest of the top ten channels break down in earnings, view the infographic below.
Featured Image: jonsson
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Inspired Magazine
Inspired Magazine – creativity & inspiration daily
Are you about to start a new project but lack website building knowledge? No worries. There is always a way out. Whether you need to develop a business or just an interactive site, the process of coding and designing may turn out to be a heavy burden. That’s why you can try a variety of drag and drop templates available on the web.
Drag and drop online website builders are considered to be the most convenient and easy-to-use resources out there. Allowing building a website quickly and effectively, using one of these themes are no doubt the best route for a newbie to start the first web project. Do you prefer WordPress, Joomla, or any other CMS? Click here to check out a rich collection of the latter or simply go further to look through our compilation of drag and drop templates to any taste.
The web is flooded with thousands of drag and drop templates, both free and premium. It’s common knowledge that an average computer user who has ever browsed the web would be able to create a cool site within an hour or two. Picking this option of developing your web project, you will save both time and effort. Alongside with being easy to use, these have a number of other benefits, like:
You are always free to choose between free and paid drag and drop themes. These do not differ a lot. The only distinction is that some free offers may not provide you with the entire variety of functions that premium website builders boast. If you hesitate which option to choose, you may first try a toll free drag and drop theme to check out how it works, what features it includes, etc. If it provides enough functions, then why pay more? In case you need something more feature-rich and premium, then some of the paid drag and drop templates would better fit your demands.
Check out our compilation of website builders below, pick the one that meets your demands, and feel free to customize it the way you wish. These will help you develop an outstanding website with a click of a mouse.
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Stone Decor WordPress Theme
Demo | Download
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GoodWork
Demo | Download
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STRATA
Demo | Download
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Massive Visual Builder
Demo | Download
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Andreas Responsive WordPress Theme
Demo | Download
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Gothicus
Demo | Download
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Spa Accessories Responsive Joomla Template
Demo | Download
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Demo | Download
To sum it up, I’d like to mention that there is no point in puzzling yourself with developing a website any more. Using the aforementioned drag and drop templates it can be as easy as breathing. Download one and see it for yourself!
Author bio: written by Katherine Crayon, young but perspective copywriter reporting on tech news and all aspects of the web design industry. Meet her in person on G+.
This post Drag and drop templates to design a website without coding was written by Catalin Zorzini and first appearedon Inspired Magazine.
Hi there! Your mere presence on this post means you’re a proud WordPress website owner. Well, now that you’ve set up your WordPress web portal and published a few articles and blogs on the same, you’ll definitely want to incorporate some ads and affiliate site links on the same.
It is an absolutely brilliant idea to inculcate advertisements into your website. Doing this not only enables you to make quick money, but you can even get a greater global exposure. The only question that arises here is that once you’ve placed advertisements into your web pages, how are you supposed to keep a track of the same? Hold on! I’ve a brilliant answer to this question.
There are ample number of plugins that can be installed into the website for keeping a good track of all the ad banners that you intend to display on your all-new WordPress blog/website. Keep on reading this post as I make you familiar with 9 awesome WordPress advertising plugins that will let you record when your banner ads expire, their order or placement, click-through rate, track impressions etc. So, let’s get started.
Simple Ads Manager
As the name suggests, Simple Ads Manager offers you a straightforward method to display advertisements at the places where you want them to appear on your WordPress website. As an approach to target your advertisements better, you can even choose to place the ads on individual web pages. Installing this plugin into your WordPress website allows you to use the third-party ad networks either by entering Javascript or HTML code directly or by uploading the images directly. The very first time when you start a new ad, you’ll get a comprehensive options menu and later you may choose to output your advertisement either as a shortcode or as a widget. Simple Ads Manager plugin renders you the freedom of altering the ad weighting, choosing a default ad and placing ads at your preferred places within the website.
Plugin Link
Banner Manager Pro
Banner Manager Pro plugin serves as a fantastic solution for all those WordPress website owners who not only want to manage the advertisements and banners on their site but also intend to sell them to the advertisers via an automated process. Although there are other plugins that perform the same job, but Banner Manager Pro plugin comes with hassle-free payment options. Among the incredible features of this plugin, ones that have helped it stand out from the crowd include:
Plugin Link
AdPress
AdPress is yet another WordPress plugin that serves as a comprehensive solution for serving advertisements on your WordPress blog. The clean and straightforward interface allows you to automate the sales process without having you to spend your time on managing advertisers. With this plugin, you can even preview your ads and allow clients/advertisers to login directly to see the progress of their ads. The only downside of AdPress plugin is that you can use it on a single website. Some of the remarkable features of this WordPress plugin include PayPal integration, clients can get easy access to ad analytics, purchase history, automated selling process, support for images, text ads and flash and many more.
Plugin Link
WP Pro Advertising System
WP Pro Advertising System makes it convenient for you to manage all the advertising campaigns for your website. Moreover, you can even see the status of the ads along with managing the advertisers, banners and ad zones in a flexible manner. The upside of this plugin is that in order to add a new banner, you can simply upload the same from your computer, add proper code and link directly to the banner that is hosted elsewhere on the World Wide Web. Some incredible features of this WordPress plugin are that it comes with 4 ways to manage ad zones, 3 ways to add new banners, flexibility to monitor statistics and a responsive ad zone option.
Plugin Link
AdRotate
AdRotate is one of the most comprehensive WordPress advertising plugins available in the web market. With this plugin installed and activated for your website, you can easily sell ads directly to the advertisers. In addition to this, you also gain a greater control over the scheduling of ads that you intend to sell through your website. Some of the noticeable features of this WordPress plugin include: regular updates, automation of ads, ad groups, support for flash and images, support for third-party ad networks, tracking of clicks and impressions, simple dashboard view and many more.
Plugin Link
WP Insert
Although, WP Insert is viewed as an excellent advertisement solution for WordPress, it actually does a lot more. In addition to advertisement management ability, this plugin even enables you to manage the tracking code such as Google Analytics. Also, you can easily create a variety of legal pages with just a simple click of the mouse. Other amazing features of this WordPress plugin include: widget ads, managing the tracking scripts, flexibility to run third-party ad network along with other ads, ability to insert ads anywhere in the template/theme, ability to create 1 click legal pages such as privacy policy, copyright notices, terms and conditions, disclaimers etc, Geographical targeting and many more.
Plugin Link
OIO Publisher
OIO Publisher has everything that a good WordPress advertising plugin should have. Installing this plugin into your WordPress website will allow you to sell advertisements directly from your website followed by automating the entire process. With this plugin, you can also run an affiliate program for your site and recruit other bloggers to sell ad space via your site. Some of the impressive features of this plugin include: automated sales process, built in affiliate program, flexibility to run third-party ad networks with the existing advertisements, support for banner ads and text ads, built-in sidebar widget, use on unlimited sites, display of default ads in empty slots, unlimited ad zones, code to integrate ad zones anywhere in the theme/template and many more.
Plugin Link
WP 125
WP125 is a straightforward WordPress plugin that lets you add 125×125 sized ads to your WordPress blog. With this plugin, you can even choose to insert ads using a widget or template tag. The only downside of this plugin is that it doesn’t take care of the ad sales process and you need to install separate plugins for the same. Features that make WP125 stand out from the crowd include: manual or random ordering of advertisements, flexibility to choose exactly how many days the ad should run on your site, receiving email notifications, ability to track clicks on your ads, support for template tags and widgets, flexibility to choose a custom place holder for empty ad slots and many more. WP125 is a WordPress plugin that allows you to keep a track of how many times an ad has been clicked by the website visitors. Also, whenever an ad run is over, the record for the same is archived on the Inactive ads screen to allow you to check on the final click count or revive the respective ad for another run.
Plugin Link
Nice Notifications
Nice Notifications is a WordPress plugin that allows you to add a ‘sticky’ type notification bar that will stick to the top of the readers’ browser. Being fully responsive, Nice Notifications makes room for perfect loading of the ‘sticky’ type notification bar. Features of this plugin include: ability to add widgets to notifications bars, ability to add bars to top/footer bars, support for animations, fully customizable and many more.
Plugin Link
If you’re really looking forward to monetize your WordPress blog by incorporating advertisements, then trust me installing these plugins will serve as a great source of help.
Have you used any of the aforementioned plugins in your WordPress website? If yes, do share your experiences in the comments box below. Also, don’t forget to pen down your feedback for the above post.
Visit us at InstantShift.com
With the Internet permeating every facet of our working and personal lives, our minds are struggling to keep up to the development. Many of us have grown accustomed to staying online 24/7 that we
We are often unaware of outside forces that are affecting us on the inside because they typically happen at a subconscious level. The same can be said of technologies that which have been assimilated into our lives, from the television to the world wide web. Here are some major ways which the internet have transformed our minds behind the scene.
Recommended reading: 5 Amazing Things The Internet May Have Ruined
Generally speaking, internet surfing is much more complex than reading books since the process involves finding what we want on search engines and jumping from one hyperlink to another. For this reason, when middle-aged and elderly participants were tasked to perform web searches on specific topics assigned by the researchers, the brain activity of those who had been using the internet were found to be more profound than those who rarely or never uses it.
A second brain scan was conducted two weeks later after the participants were asked to do internet searches for an hour each day for seven days. Amazingly, the inexperienced internet users now showed brain activity that was akin to those observed among participants who were already familiar with the internet.
The study proves that internet searching alone has the capability of rewiring our brain. Regions of the brain responsible for short-term memory and decision-making were activated during the second brain scan, suggesting that internet use boosted these specific brain functions.
If such short period of internet training is all it takes to improve our cognitive abilities, just imagine how much more advanced our mind is after years of exposure, not just to search engines like Google, but also to social media and a wide variety of interactive content available online. The exponential growth of user-generated content online over the past decade is a definite proof that we are becoming more creative as individuals.
The internet has given all of us a voice in cyberspace and the ability to connect with others seamlessly, to the extent that many of us are competing against each other to be heard. Through updating Facebook statuses, commenting and liking posts, uploading photos and videos, checking-in to places, etc, we seem to have no qualms about publicizing our personal lives despite the privacy risks they bring.
The good news is, as we crave to become popular on social media and on the internet as a whole, we inevitably become motivated to be more creative and original with our posts.
Real also: 9 Tips To Help Safeguard Your Online Privacy
The societal shift from passive TV watching to that of active interactions on the internet has endowed us with what Clay Shirky from Wired Magazine termed as “cognitive surplus”, providing us with more time on activities that requires more participation and engagement than simply watching TV.
There’s no denying that our minds are getting more inspired and more creative, what with our exposure to literally millions of creative mash-ups and clips on YouTube, clever quotes on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and just about any other wacky ideas out there on the Net.
The flip side to this newfound creative release through the internet is that some of us start feeling insecure about ourselves as we compare our lives with that of our friends’ based on what they upload onto social media and networks. Remember that these posts do not give an accurate picture of lives since many put up positive things online to impress others. The outcome of such erroneous comparisons is that we get unnecessarily envious over innocuous photos of people enjoying themselves in their vacations, for instance.
Researchers have uncovered that a third of the participants felt more negatively about their lives after visiting Facebook, especially those who only browsed the site and did not contribute any posts.
Read also: 5 Effects Social Networks Have On You
It seems then that at least for some of us, our mind has now unhealthily linked our participation on social networking sites to our self worth. This is probably why we are now hearing about how obsessive use of Facebook can cause depression and how people are getting addicted to Facebook. In much of such disorders, the source of the problem stems from perceived social pressures (think “Fear of Missing Out” – FOMO) and underlying self-esteem issues.
With the advent and proliferation of internet technology, our ability to sustain our attention on a single subject is markedly diminished. Hyperlinks appear everywhere on the internet, encouraging us to explore websites in a non-linear fashion. Prolonged and repeated internet surfing through clicking one link after another has conditioned our mind to only briefly scan through the content for each page before jumping to the next.
We often find ourselves burrowing into another topic that caught our eye before we even finish half of what we were looking at. As a matter-of-fact, one of the biggest challenges facing blog owners is how to get internet readers to keep reading their content.
Read also: Optimizing Blog Readership – Reading Off the Net
If you need proof that we’re growing to become an impatient lot (at least online), have a look at these informative statistics on our attention span and internet browsing behaviours. The study revealed that our average attention span had fallen over 30% from 12 seconds in 2000, to 8 seconds in 2013.
On average, office workers check their email inbox 30 times in an hour. It was also found that in 53,573 webpage views, 17% lasted fewer than 4 seconds while only 4% lasted over 10 minutes! Keep this up and we’ll have trouble concentrating on any one thing at a time, forcing us to turn to multitasking.
With our decreased ability to sustain attention on a single task, we resort to multitasking by engaging in several things all at once. My bet is that you’re probably doing something else besides reading this article right now: maybe listening to songs, chatting online, checking out your Facebook and email inbox on separate tabs — or even cycling on a stationary bike.
With the rise of portable smart devices, our mind has been rewired to become stimulated only when we perform different tasks simultaneously.
Read Also: 5 Reasons You Should Say No To Multitasking
While most people perceive multitasking as getting more done in less time, the negative effects it has on our cognitive abilities actually outweigh the productivity. Research has shown that multitasking actually divides our attention, resulting in greater distractions and makes us, for lack of a better term, stupider. Only a rare 2% of the population known as the supertaskers have been found to perform better with multiple workloads.
Find out if you’re one of them by attempting this online multitasker test, “Gatekeeper Task for Supertasker” developed by the researchers of the study.
In a study conducted in 2011, psychologist Dr. Betsy Sparrow concluded that the World Wide Web now serves as “an external memory storage space, and we make it responsible for remembering things”. In a series of four memory experiments, it was revealed that participants had the tendency to think of computer terms like “Yahoo” or “Google” when posed with difficult trivia questions.
They fared better at remembering trivia statements when they thought they were not able to look them up in the computer during the recall test. When asked to type these trivia statements into the computer and save them into different folders, the participants were actually able to remember the folder locations better than the statements themselves!
What this study sought to show is that the internet has become a form of transactive memory source, and has consequently changed the way we remember things. Hypothesised by one of the researchers of the above study in 1985, transactive memory refers to how we rely on others who are more knowledgeable on a particular subject to help us recall information.
By “outsourcing” our memory to the internet, we are no longer limited by the capacity of our human brain. Search engines such as Google have become in our mind the gateway for accessing all kinds of information.
Related posts:
Yet another amazing packaging project by Sweety Branding Studio! Lead designer Isabela Rodrigues was invited to create the concept, brand identity and packaging for Sane.
Sane is a brand known for their insane, bold color choices for their makeup and other beauty products. The designers were inspired by the words of Albert Einstein, who once defined insanity as, “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Using the concept of the infinity loop, Sweety Branding Studio created a branding that is visually striking with simplified bold packaging.
Designed by Sweety Branding Studio
Country: Brazil
Designer: Isabela Rodrigues
