BuddyAbroad: a mobile application for international students in the Netherlands

In 2010, Tilburg University registered over 500 international students. Studying abroad implies arranging several practical issues such as housing, insurances and health care. In addition to these practical issues, international students also have to deal with “emotional” issues like encountering others and making friends.
 In order to help these international students in the Netherlands, me and my peer group created a mobile application to help international students meeting other students and sharing experiences with them.
Creating this mobile application is part of the course “User Interface Design” taught by Suleman Shahid. In this course, we learned to apply the theory of Norman in practice by going through  all steps of designing an interface. The fact that it was a real‐life assignment with real test users and that we were allowed to find a topic ourselves was very encouraging.

Curious to the mobile application? Please watch the film fragment below!

Lost or liberated?

Nowadays, we live in a world which can be considered as dominated by computer mediated communication. Accoring to December (1997), computer mediated communication is a process of human communication via computers, involving people, situated in particular contexts, engaging in processes to shape media for a variety of purposes. More straightforward, computer mediated communication is communication that takes place between two human beings via the instrumentality of computers and examples are, among others, MSN, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and datingsites.

In general, there are two perspectives about computer mediated communication. The first is the “lost perspective”which states that is it difficult to build a close relationship via computer mediated communication. As distinct from this, the “liberated perspective”states that close relationships can be build via computer mediated communication.

In the fragment below, Dr. Marjolein Antheunis talks about one of her latest studies. In this study, Marjolein Antheunis does research about the possibilites of having eye contact during computer mediated communication conversations by using an eye catcher. By using an eye catcher, computer mediated communication becomes more and more similar to face to face contact, which is, according to “lost perspective” supporters, still the best way to build a relationship.

Curious about the research design and the tentative results of the mentioned study? Please look at  the film fragment below. 

From monopoly to oligopoly

With seventeen buildings, spread over 135.000 square meter, Tilburg University can be considered as a large village. Untill recently, almost 12.000 students and 2.000 co-workers were provided with food and drinks by caterer Albron. However, given among others the considerable amount of exchange students, Tilburg University decided that it was time for a change in 2011.

In view of entrepreneurship and internationalization, Tilburg University decided to chose for several different caterers. A recent good example of this, is the recently launched halal counter and the “Topcrogue” sandwich and juice corner. In order to stimulate the necessary internal competition, “Doner Company” and a wok restaurant will be opened in the future.

Social media join their hands for Japan

Since Friday the 11^th , Japan has been stricked by disaster after disaster. First the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, which also caused a tsunami and now the people in Japan are struggling with a possible nuclear disaster and terrible cold. The authorities have identified 8,133 dead people and more than 12,000 people are still missing.

While the earthquake destroyed the electricity supplies and shut down two nuclear power plants, Internet availabilty stays practically unaffected. This allows victems of the earthquake to connect with friends and families by using social media to ensure their conditions and whereabouts.

Social media not only help the earthquake victems to connect with their family and friends, it is also a medium to raise money for the victems. Like my collegae Inge Haagmans mentioned, Groupon launched a special webpage where people can donate money to the Red Cross. 

Besides that Twitter is also used to inform the people in Japan about the latest developments. Wednesday, the Japanese prime minister opened a twitter account in English to inform people about evacuations, press conferences and other developments. In the first couple of hours, the account gathered 7,000 followers and at the moment, more than 15,000 tweeps are following @JPN_PMO, which translates tweets of the Japanese disaster information account @Kantei_Saigai.

I warn you!

As mentioned in one of the previous blogs “Are you addicted?”, a social media addiction does really exist. Besides an addiction, social media apparantly can cause another “disease” called a social media burn-out. According to Internet expert Jim Stolze, more and more people in their thirties are suffering from a social media burn-out. “As soon as you turn on your mobile phone, laptop or Ipad, the messages start to come in. This can be pleasant, but also very compulsory” according to Jim Stolze.

An example is Boele Ytsma, once called the Internet vicar. He believes that in his case his burn-out was caused due to the fact that his attention was so distracted by the social media. In order to recover, Ytsma discontinued his Twitter and Facebook accounts and nowadays he checks his email account only a few times a week.

Why people in their thirties? People who are younger are used to the fact that not all the information received is manageble but older people, who experience real letters and stamps can’t get used to the fact that they have to make a choice between all the informations flows.

This means that us youngsters don’t belong to the high-risk group but if you do get a social media burn-out in the future, you can’t say that I did’t warn you!

Please, start lovin my blog!

You might have noticed all the UvT students who started a blog at the beginning of February. As you could read in my first blog post, starting a blog is a compulsory assignment of the course Business Information Technology. Since I really like this assignment and I like to read all these blogs I would like to ask all the BIT bloggers to install the Bloglovin widget! Bloglovin is a tool which places the updates of your favorite blogs all in one overview. This can save you lots of time!

Bloglovin is founded by five Swedish guys who are in their twenties. Before they started Bloglovin, they already built websites. Even a fashion (!) community! Unfortunately, this wasn’t so easy as they thought so they asked the help of Carolina Engman from Fashion Squad. During on of their meetings, they saw Carolina checking all the blogs she liked for new updates. A few days later, Bloglovin was born!

Do you vist your favorite BIT blogs on an daily basis? Then I have found the perfect tool for you! Bloglovin!

In the video below, you can check for yourself how easy it is to start using Bloglovin.

Are you addicted?

“People who don’t have an e-mail account, don’t need to check their e-mail account”. A couple of years ago, this was a wise saying but recently, there are numerous social media networks who ask our attention 24/7.

“My name is Juliette and I am addicted to social media. Hi Juliette”. Can you imagine? Some kind of anonymous social media addicts, just like regular AA meetings.

It might sound silly but recent studies show us that there are people who are really addicted to social media! A study among 1000 Internet users shows us that almost 50% of the people check their Twitter and Facebook before they go to bed. Moreover, 42% of the people check their social networks immediately after they woke up and half of them is still in their bed when they do that! It is also striking that 40 per cent don’t mind to be disturbed by social media during other businesses, like during meal or, even more shocking, during lovemaking! That is the end of romance!

Are you addicted too? Please check the symptoms and the video below:

·         You answer your phone with your Twitter nickname

·         Your family and friends had to read on twitter that you are pregnant/ homeless/engaged/divorced

·         Instead of saying “goodbye” you say “send me a DM”

·         You don’t know your neighbours , but you know everything about your good “friends” in Canada, South Africa and India