Some people from my highschool (Wesleyan) made this video and I got linked to it through the Dunwoody Mothers Association. Very well done – and lots of familiar sites, which are always nice to see when on the other side of the world.

I just launched litfi.com, a once a day photo log of what I think is my best shot of the day.

Each day, one new photo will be uploaded until Jan 10, 2011 for your perusal, comment, inspiration, and viewing pleasure.

I have several reasons for this:

• I want to get better at photography and would like your critiques on my work.
• I want to track and see how my photo selection, composition, and subject matter changes over the year.
• I want to showcase my better work in a place separate from my day to day postings at benhanna.com

So please comment on these photos! Let me know what you think – and if you would like any of them printed out in a large format for framing, give me a shout.

-Ben

Haghia Sofia and the Blue Mosque

The Blue Mosque

Blue Mosque Inside from Ben Hanna on Vimeo.

Fishing off the Galata Bridge

One view of the Shore

We have entered a new era of need. One that depends upon being connected. Connected to the most recent, relevant information, connected to to energy, and most importantly, connected to other people.

Humans have an obvious baser desire to be connected to other people. This is evident in the trend of urban growth, online social networks, networking events, social clubs, fraternities, sororities, bars, and families. We crave to know a little bit about what is going on in the lives of those whom we have a connection with. The more we know about someone, the closer we tend to be to them. Our spouses, significant others, and close friends have the most information on our activities, and are therefore a part of our inner circles. We keep them updated vocally, with one on one face time, and often they are present for a large majority of our day to day lives. New developments tend to involve them in some way.

The new addition to this club is social networks. They have transformed the way that we interact. At any given moment we can log on to facebook.com and within moments, gain a simple understanding of the state of our social network. By pursuing people’s updates, photos, comments and activity, we can judge the emotional state of our “friends”. As facebook’s systems get better at identifying who our real world friends are and showing us information that we deem relevant, this feeling will grow stronger.

We are approaching a network “hive mind”, a time when we will simply understand what people in our social circles are thinking and feeling. We will know when the economy is hurting because many we are connected to will be expressing financial woe. We will know when people have holidays because our connections will be talking about breaks, vacation, and travel plans. By analyzing certain words in updates, we can tell if people are generally depressed, or feeling optimistic about the future. This is already happening – look at Twitter’s advanced search:

I have to run and catch a plane, but think about this for a while:

How much do you inherently know about people you haven’t spoken to in over 3 months? Do you know if they seem happy? Or if they are going through a hard time? Where do you see this trend taking us? In the age of real time information, how long until I know what you just thought?

(Side Note: I am at an airport bar, and the people next to me are having a conversation about facebook, its stalking aspects, and people they know who don’t use it. He is expressing the wish that a friend of his used facebook so he could know what she was up to… that voicemail was outdated. How long until Techno Luddites are shunted into a different culture, where they no longer have the same feeling of community as those who spend long hours online following the minutia of their friends lives?)

It seems the cat is out of the bag and everyone had heard of Torrenting now. Great! The more people who use this system of file sharing the faster the downloads are! Several people have recently asked me about it, what it is, how it works, and if it is safe. Below is a simple guide that will take you no longer than 10 minutes to go through. When you are done you will be able to quickly download huge files at amazing speeds. Enjoy!

MakeUseOf.com – BitTorrent Guide