A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called “nodes”, which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

and to build such social network, there are Social Networking websites. If you are not on any of the social networking websites listed here, please excuse us. (u can read other interesting articles on gadgets,  here). But if you are present on the social networking sites, especially on Facebook, theres something interesting for you!!

In celebration of its 160th anniversary, global payment services company Western Union has announced the launch of a hunt for the most networked person in the world using Facebook presence as a parameter. Western Union is calling for India’s most globally connected individuals to step forward and take the Western Union Network Challenge at www.westernunionworld.com/yourworld

Its an interactive, online application called ‘Your World’ which visualises Facebook fans’ global connections and users receive a score (“World Index”) that shows how globally connected they are. They can compare their ranking against their Facebook friends, against others in their country and against others globally.

Here’s my World Index:

Visit www.westernunionworld.com, take part in the contest mentioned below &  you could win a cool IPod Shuffle!!

Contest Mechanism:

In the comments section post the following:

1. Answer a simple question -

Which country received the most remittance in the year 2000?

2.  Post the screen shot of your World index (as shown above) on your Facebook profile and share the link of image with us

3. The contest closes on Sep 1, 2011. Sep 25th, 2011.

4. The winner will be announced on the blog on Sep 5, 2011. Sep 30th, 2011

Your answer in the comments section should be like this:

1) England

2) https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/303209_10150274032126270_626836269_8029821_5506847_n.jpg

All the best!!!

The array, mounted on a wall inside San Francisco’s Moscone Center West, is made up of twenty edge-to-edge 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays, each of which are powered by a Mac Pro running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. One eyewitness says the systems are pooled together in one large, monolithic black box.

Quartz Composer is employed to render the icons rapidly and to automate their behavior. All of the icons are sorted by color and, importantly, aren’t there just for show. While not quite a by-the-second recreation of what’s happening at the App Store — as the results are delayed by five minutes — the “live” mural has each iPhone app’s icon pulse light outwards in a ripple whenever someone downloads that app.

You can see another video here.

images & Videos Courtesy: Apple Insider

When you are done viewing, Comment on it. Its not an option.

[youtube=http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=JPL_NjBjUWE]