Facebook

Image via WikipediaI confess it threw me when I first went on Facebook at the end of August and I guess a lot of people are Facebooked out by now. Doesn’t bother me because I have discovered it’s a fantastically easy way to make contact with people and keep the contact going . You don’t have to write long emails and you don’t have to constantly be on the phone. Facebook simplifies all of the contact stuff. Then it is really funny and positive. The comments are usually light hearted and the range of apps now is becoming more grown up. It is important to have mixed age groups on social networking sites because it tends to tame the extreme and put the virtual world into perspective. People can get themselves into trouble on social network sites if they are making out to be someone they are not or an age they are not.On other social networking sites they can get lost in a persona. Facebook can keep a certain amount virtual as such but the truth becomes obvious and people cannot be conned or con. Your Facebook person is more like your real self and that keeps you safe but it also keeps you connected. There is still a bit of sorting out Facebook needs to do in terms of the operation of its site because it tends to go a bit tetchy at times, but , all in all, it is a place where you can feel really cheered up and you can cheer others up. It works very positively and I don’t think it has actually reached its full potential as such. The more adults there are on there , the more it will broaden and flex its options .

Britney Spears’ Womanizer

Image via WikipediaAnd we wonder why Britney has a hard time holding it together and then the press is there ready to photograph her every tiny mistake. Her come back has been great. You can say one thing for her, she doesn’t give up. She appears to need a lot more help and support and she needs that thing we all need …life balance. She needs someone who will slow her down a bit and make her take time out so that she doesn’t go on overload. At the moment she is playing the sensation card and I hope it works out for her. Were I her life coach I’d tell her to develop the other sides of her personality to engage with her public. Skin deep works for a bit but it tends to cast you in a concrete mould that you don’t have a way of getting out of. A lot of famous women who have walked this path have brought themselves undone. The survivors develop other interests and these days it’s laudably and most notably causes. The new Womanizer video may do her harm because she just can’t seem to break out of that mould and maybe she won’t for quite some time. She needs to be working on other aspects of her personality and then do this thing called rest and relax. In many ways she seems to be driven and then we wonder why she crashes.

Body Image

Image via WikipediaThe new Code of Conduct which has been brought in by our government will no doubt have a lot of support. Gradually the momentum has been building up against skinny models and unhealthy female images and now we seem to be at that point of critical mass whereby we are going to nail it.The government stepping in at this stage to lend weight to what has become increasingly a community concern means we have a chance of restoring balance. It is not just affecting girls it is affecting boys too. More boys and men have anorexia now than ever before, so we do have to take action because anorexia is very tricky to deal with so prevention is far better than cure. The code of conduct will put an expectation out there for magazines to declare the digital enhancements made to their images. Not that you cannot tell. Even I with my limited knowledge of digital software can see when pictures have been tampered with. You get these unreal , non real forms looking at you. Plastic flesh and unnatural lines.There is a difference between fiddling images and artistic images. But I am not a kid. Increasingly they have been using adolescent boys and girls up and down the catwalk and these are people who are not yet formed and who become confused by the images, the imaging and the heady world of fashion. They used to use adults but they have been increasingly rejected as though the world cannot deal with real men and women. Why is that?

Wikio

Wikio is a news and information portal which gathers a lot of its content from blogs. Yes, there are the new and interesting products on the sidebar too, but it’s an interesting site conceptually. The breaking news is up the top, then there are featured blog articles and then there is the possibility of voting for articles. As a starting page it gives you an extremely quick view of how the world looks on that day. You can consult news, views and videos at a one stop shop. I rather like it because more and more we need sites which will gather and organise information for us because so much is coming out at any one time.