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"A wealth of music research has argued that musical choices correctly reflect personality features. Findings across studies and geographic regions converged to show that the Big Five personality traits are consistently linked to musical preferences. In tune with this line of thinking, researchers at University of Cambridge wanted to determine how individual differences in music preferences are differentiated by cognitive type, based on the link between empathy [the ability to identify with other's mental states] and systemizing [responding to behavior based on set rules] - the Empathizing-Systemizing Theory (ES). In other words, does the music that makes your soul happy predict your thinking style?"

". Social media turned mobile phones into personal televisions, not just because Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and even Twitter provided more and more videos, but because they created a highly emotive space where sensationalism would win over rationality. Think about how these platforms shamelessly optimize their content to encourage more engagement, how they push users to do live personal broadcasts and visual personal diaries - their "Stories" - and display them in the form of traditional television with names like Instagram Television (IGTV). That's in addition to YouTube TV and Facebook Watch, which feature professionally produced video or live television feeds. Now there are fewer and fewer people watching traditional television, but more and more are spending their time on social media. The Wall Street Journal reported in February 2017 that "YouTube viewers worldwide are now watching more than 1 billion hours of videos a day, threatening to eclipse U.S. television viewership." I think of this as neo-television, because much of the internet today has become something you watch instead of read."

"The grand bargain of the digital age, in which consumers have traded their data for free services, is coming apart. And it may be too late to regain control of the personal data that's been bought, sold and leaked all over the web for the past three decades.  Why it matters: If information is power, our lackadaisical approach to safeguarding details about our lives has made a handful of companies more powerful than we ever expected, and it's made consumers more vulnerable than ever. Here's what it's come to: Autonomous vehicles collect images of everyone they pass on the street. Dozens of companies mine and sell location data from smartphone apps. App developers give personal details to major online platforms. Smart-home devices and digital assistants track your daily habits and have microphones. Genetic testing services share data with app developers and drug companies. Half of the country was impacted by the Equifax financial data breach."

"Shiru Cafe looks like a regular coffee shop. Inside, machines whir, baristas dispense caffeine and customers hammer away on laptops. But all of the customers are students, and there's a reason for that. At Shiru Cafe, no college ID means no caffeine. Ferris will turn away customers if they're not college students or faculty members. The cafe allows professors to pay, but students have something else the shop wants: their personal information. To get the free coffee, university students must give away their names, phone numbers, email addresses and majors, or in Brown's lingo, concentrations. Students also provide dates of birth and professional interests, entering all of the information in an online form. By doing so, the students also open themselves up to receiving information from corporate sponsors who pay the cafe to reach its clientele through logos, apps, digital advertisements on screens in stores and on mobile devices, signs, surveys and even baristas."

"However, when considering our current fixation on representation, I have to wonder if we have overlooked other meaningful ways of being represented, those that can be pinpointed only in life experiences and emotional phenomenon beyond the visible self. When I think of all the "black art" being ushered in by this new era, I feel conflicted. As a black person, I enjoy seeing artists whose careers are finally being given due praise and whose voices are at last being amplified. However, a question arises of what it means to be truly represented. Is it enough to look like the artist if you do not recognize yourself in the art? And yet there is nothing simple about it. Representation is such a complicated issue because on the surface it presents itself as a politically correct, objective good for all of society. For those being represented, it plays to a collective sense of pride and personal vanity. It feels good to see ourselves and know that people in our communities are being paid to craft their own narratives. Representation also presents the opportunity for other communities, which might have otherwise stereotyped or discriminated against us, to see our humanity and acknowledge our worth in the art we produce. However, while representation may be a praiseworthy standard for creative industries, it cannot be the bench mark against which we measure good art. Good art must do more than reflect our own images back at us. It must move us to a place beyond our obsession with identity, sense of tribalism and fear of others."

"In the summer of 2013, three women fanned out into metropolitan Boston and, for two months, spent their weekdays dining alone at fast food restaurants. They ordered meals and slipped into seats as discreetly as possible, so as not to arouse suspicion. Then they began to spy. They were looking for groups of diners that included an adult and at least one child under the age of 10. The three women, academic researchers from the fields of pediatrics, child development, and anthropology, needed to get close enough to their subjects to notice changes in facial expressions and tones of voice. They took copious notes. Their assignment was to observe, in the minutest detail, how children and their caregivers interacted with their personal mobile devices and also with each other. The resulting study was groundbreaking; it was the first to explore how parents were using personal devices around children. And its headline discovery was disturbing: The more caregivers were absorbed by their smartphones, the more harshly they treated the children they were with."

"Another study, from 2018, looked at the impact of smartphones' presence on interactions between strangers. It found that strangers smiled at each other less, and smiled less intensely, when they had their smartphones with them than when they didn't. "People just don't feel that the person is paying attention to them, and then they report having a [worse] conversation," says John Hunter, a PhD candidate in psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, who conducted the smiling study with Kushlev and others. Even if your phone is not in use but still in front of you, "that makes the conversation worse, because the other person kind of feels that, well, that phone in front of you is maybe more important to you than the conversation we're having.""

"Naked Labs wants to be brutally honest with us about our bodies in a way a mirror, scale, and maybe a personal trainer could never deliver - a full-length mirror equipped with an array of 3 Intel RealSense depth sensors designed to accurately capture the body in all its glory, producing a 3D model in just 15 seconds. Aimed to aid fitness enthusiasts and athletes in tracking their head-to-toe measurements and body fat percentage with a greater level of accuracy than formerly available at home scales, this is either a dream or nightmare."

"Interviewing an inebriated person at the scene may be more accurate than waiting until he or she is sober "

"McDonald's is testing the waters for a Twitter hashtag campaign again with its first TV ad directing users to join the conversation on Twitter. The effort, which began Monday, supports the brand's Pro Bowl tie-in. For 20 days this month, McDonald's will drop one ticket a day to the Pro Bowl in Hawaii in a package of 20-piece McNuggets. (The item will contain a paper certificate saying so, in the tradition of Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket.) The brand will also give away one ticket on Twitter and randomly award prizes to people who tweet with the #mcdprobowl hashtag from the ad. Prizes include coupons for a free 20-piece McNuggets, a year's supply of McNugget sauce and personalized tweets from NFL players to fans, among others. Rick Wion, director of social media for McDonald's, says that the brand chose Twitter because of "the amount of conversation going on there" around the game."

"Hobert's dreams include starting a lifestyle brand, but he wants to build his credibility first. A few years ago, his instinct may have been to start a blog. But Hobert says he loves to talk and was never the best writer, so a different medium has more appeal: a personal podcast. With his Purpose in the Youth podcast, he hopes to tell the stories of people who have found what they are passionate about. He was preparing to launch the first episode this week. The timing couldn't be better for new grads like Hobert to get in on the podcast craze. Twenty-one percent of Americans age 12 or older say they have listened to a podcast in the past month. That's a 17 percent increase in the last year and a 75 percent increase since 2013."

"The city of Boston and the friends and family members of the marathon bombing victims will never forget the day when two explosions ripped through the crowd at the race, killing three people and injuring more than 200. Neither will the family of Sunil Tripathi, but for very different reasons. Their story is told in the documentary film Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi. Sunil was a gifted student from a high-achieving family. But in college at Brown University, Sunil began to struggle with depression. In March 2013, he went missing. His family organized a massive search operation, and - somewhat reluctantly - used social media to help with the search. "Despite how uncomfortable it was to take our personal childhood and smatter it across Facebook, we just knew this was what we had to do to get his story out," says Sangeeta. And then, the bombing happened. Three days after the bombing, the FBI released photos of the suspects. On Twitter, a former classmate of Sunil said she thought one of the suspects looked like him. That was picked up by reddit. And suddenly, the Tripathis' Facebook page was bombarded with hateful messages, many saying that, given his name and appearance, Sunil must be a Muslim terrorist. "This is not just one or two comments that would make Mom cry," says Ravi. "It progressed to having as many laptops open as possible and deleting every single post. It almost felt like a case study in mob mentality, in virtual mob mentality." Journalists saw the buzz on social media and started calling the Tripathis. Some retweeted the accusations. Others actually repeated them on television. The Tripathis, who had been waiting for their phones to ring with information about Sunil, were suddenly getting questions about his alleged involvement in the bombing. News vans lined up outside their home and reporters were knocking on their front door."

Starting March 1, InStyle will take over a 19-by-42-foot storefront at the bustling corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue and the windows, enabled with touch-screen technology, will show six spring looks. The venture is overseen by the magazine's publishing side, although the products featured in the window will be inspired by the title's March issue. Collages, in a similar vein to Polyvore's model, can be created and instantly sent as a digital postcard to smartphones. Essentially, these cards provide a detailed shopping list, with special offers and a photo stamp (women can personalize the cards further by having their photos taken at the storefront). Geo-targets from the cards will direct shoppers to a given brand's closest preferred retailer. It can get as specific as, say, "see Linda on the third floor of Bloomingdale's, in the northwest corner of the store."

Seventeen, the most widely read magazine among teenage girls in the United States, claims to "encourage independence" and help each reader "become this wonderful person that she dreams she will be." But far from encouraging independence, Seventeen only reinforces the cultural expectations that an adolescent woman should be more concerned with her appearance, her relations with other people and her ability to win approval from men than with her own ideas or her expectations for herself.

From childhood, we learn to associate symbols and icons with specific feelings or ideas. This is the same with branding, as logos come to embody the brand's personality in the mind of the consumer. Brands take tremendous effort in creating emotional connections with the consumer, and logos are just one of the many ways they can communicate who they are. Some logos are so prevalent in society that they are instantly recognizable.Below is a collection of 30 of the most recognizable logos. Some have seen multiple generations, and some are very new, but all are easily recognizable and might even evoke some feelings toward that brand.

"The conclusion she's arrived at while researching her new book is not, technically, that we're not talking to each other. We're talking all the time, in person as well as in texts, in e-mails, over the phone, on Facebook and Twitter. The world is more talkative now, in many ways, than it's ever been. The problem, Turkle argues, is that all of this talk can come at the expense of conversation. We're talking at each other rather than with each other."

"Calling all student artists, illustrators, graphic designers, creatives, newshounds! Women's eNews is hosting a competition for 12 - 19 year olds to create a logo for Teen Voices, its new girl news website! We need a logo that speaks to the nature of the site - amplifying and empowering teen girls through journalism. All logos should contain the words "Teen Voices." The winning logo will be part of all official Teen Voices materials - including the website, press releases, news advisers, fundraising campaigns and social media profiles. It will be seen around the world.  Entries will be judged by team of marketing and visual design executives. The winner will be invited to Women's eNews' annual gala held in New York, May 6 where their logo will be revealed. The creator of the winning logo will receive personal mentoring and tips from the judges and be featured in any press notifications about the relaunch of Teen Voices."

"Of course it's good to encourage girls to be leaders. But not all leaders have extroverted personalities. In fact, some of the best ones are quiet, shy loners who were likely never called "bossy" in their lives. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama have all been at various points described as introverts.  The anti-bossy movement aims to encourage girls to speak up "even if you aren't sure about the answer," but introverts prefer to process their thoughts and form solid ideas before expressing them."

"We, as human beings, think that through social networks, we've somehow become more social creatures. The problem with this theory is, the more we "connect" online, the less actual human interactions we have, making us actually fairly unsocial. A new video breaks down exactly how the social aspects of human beings have evolved and transformed, showing how we've regressed from a social standpoint."

"n a widely-read study, business school students were given a case assignment on Heidi, a real-life successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. But there was a catch. Half of the class randomly received their case with one teensy tiny change made: The name "Heidi" was changed to "Howard." Afterward, the students were surveyed, and though Heidi and Howard were found equally competent (as they should have been because they are the same person), the students found Howard much more likeable. The following ad pretty much sums up why."