Playdome’s Social city game for Facebook is currently one of the most popular Facebook games on the web not only because of the addictive gameplay but also because of great design elements, illustrations and user interface design that makes this game look fantastic.

During my last few weeks of playing Social city I realized that having my Facebook friends for my neighbours and being able to see their ‘city’ and how they’ve decorated it was one of the main reasons for really loving this game. Since the screenshot maker still doesn’t work with this game, the users are unable to save pictures of their own city and show them to friends on Facebook. So I decided to make some screenshots myself and give you some tips to make your city look even more beautiful.

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Finally I can announce that on February the 26th I got my diploma on Faculty for eletrotechnics, computer science and informatics, University of Maribor, Slovenia.

I am now a B.Sc. of Media Communications.

After my last year of studying Media communications (Interactive graphic design) I decided to explore the field of web usability, specifically usability assessment of social networking websites. My diploma research was based on evaluation of Facebook usability with techniques that were accessible during my research. My diploma research work is available here* in slovene language. Here is a short abstract:

The emergence of the World Wide Web has allowed users access to large amounts of information that can be found on the Internet.User interfaces have a major role in human-computer communication. Web content must be presented in a way that most users can understand and use. Because of varying levels of experience, knowledge and individual characteristics of web users, the design of web interfaces is subject to debates by psychology specialists, human-computer interaction specialists, graphic designers, sociologists and specialists in related sciences. They tend to define  universal standards for website usefulness in order to ensure the most universal and positive user experience. Since social networking sites are currently the most popular online communications medium, it is necessary to develop user interfaces with a keen consideration for the expectations and requirements of typical users. A positive user experience can only be created by analyzing the usefulness of websites in various aspects and offering  the best possible solutions.

* Since the document is only available in slovene language at this moment you are free to translate it with Google translator or any other translation tool to see the results.

It’s interesting how social networks are influencing our lifes. Instead of picking up the phone and going for a coffee with friends we seem to have adjusted to have more contact with people through the web. We’ve created a new language, new habits, changed ourself into exhibitionistic voyeurs and made ourselves public targets with too little knowledge about privacy and potential consequences of this worldwide phenomenon.

This is a silly comedy from http://www.idiotsofants.com. What would it be like if Facebook was actually played out in real life? If this is our reality then our social lifes are seriously endangered.

Po petih letih, odkar je bil ustanovljen, ima Facebook že preko 175 milijonov registriranih (aktivnih) uporabnikov (Statistika: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics), ki s pomočjo aplikacij in vmesnikov med seboj komunicirajo in si izmenjujejo informacije preko te socialne mreže. Pred tedni je ekipa ustvarjalcev Facebook na svojem blogu naznanila spremembo pogojev in pravil (terms of use), kjer so uporabnike šokirali z nekaterimi novimi pogoji.

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Ker sem po objavi vprašalnika o Facebook-u naletela na vrsto komentarjev glede zasebnosti in varstva podatkov v tej socialni mreži, sem se odločila, da iz police povzamem nekatera najpomembnejša dejstva, s katerimi bi odgovorila na vprašanja uporabnikov.

Čisto vse podatke, ki jih uporabnik objavi na Facebook-u, jih objavi na lastno odgovornost. Ne glede na to, kakšne so njegove nastavitve zasebnosti, te nikoli ne bodo popolnoma upoštevane. Nasvet: objavljajte samo podatke, za katere menite, da jih lahko vidi vsak.

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