Facebook | Visualizing Friendships

View high-res (3.8MB)

 

After a few minutes of rendering, the new plot appeared, and I was a bit taken aback by what I saw. The blob had turned into a surprisingly detailed map of the world. Not only were continents visible, certain international borders were apparent as well. What really struck me, though, was knowing that the lines didn't represent coasts or rivers or political borders, but real human relationships. Each line might represent a friendship made while travelling, a family member abroad, or an old college friend pulled away by the various forces of life.

 

Later I replaced the lines with great circle arcs, which are the shortest routes between two points on the Earth. Because the Earth is a sphere, these are often not straight lines on the projection.

 

When I shared the image with others within Facebook, it resonated with many people. It's not just a pretty picture, it's a reaffirmation of the impact we have in connecting people, even across oceans and borders.

 

Paul is an intern on Facebook’s data infrastructure engineering team.


Gonads Test (SFW)

Testicle-exam

Have you checked your Gonads today?

 

The Periodic Tables of Swearing & Beer

*grin*

(download)

Free Facebook Zero live in Malaysia

From the facebook blog last month:

Today, we are launching another way for people to access Facebook anytime, anywhere: 0.facebook.com. 0.facebook.com is a new mobile site that includes all of the key features of Facebook but is optimized for speed. It initially is available through more than 50 mobile operators in 45 countries and territories with zero data charges.

Collaborating with operators from around the world, we developed this new mobile site with two main attributes:

  • It's fast: 0.facebook.com includes all the key features of our standard mobile site m.facebook.com. Users can update their status, view their News Feed, like or comment on posts, send and reply to messages, or write on their friends' Wall just as they do on Facebook.com. Rather than making photos viewable on 0.facebook.com, we put the photos one click away so they don't slow down the experience. You can still view any photos on Facebook if you want but your regular data fees will apply.

  • It's free: Thanks to the help of mobile operators we collaborated with, people can access 0.facebook.com without any data charges. Using 0.facebook.com is completely free. People will only pay for data charges when they view photos or when they leave 0.facebook.com to browse other mobile sites. When they click to view a photo or browse another mobile site a notification page will appear to confirm that they will be charged if they want to leave 0.facebook.com
  • I actually read this news some time back and was waiting on when Digi would actually roll it out. And today they posted an update on their Facebook page saying that they are officially launching Facebook Zero.

    So I tested out Facebook Zero on my iPhone using both Safari and Opera but it didn't work. So I switched my simcard to my Sony Ericsson C905 and managed to access http://0.facebook.com - please dont add the www because some people reported an error. More screenshots from my C905

    (download)

    Things to say during sex - Good & Bad (SFW)

    Things_to_say_during_sex

    Cant remember if I already put this up, but its funny

    If Men ruled over Women's Magazines

    Imagine the headlines.

    (download)

    randomness

    this is a random blog thingamajic to add stuff i found online