Nothing is free

In one of my marketing classes I learned a very technical term tantaafm ( their ain't no thing as a free meal). With every gimmick that says free they are really looking to take as much of your money away as possible. If you look at something simple like free samples of cereal or food, their goal is for you to try it, love it and become a long time purchaser of their product. The amount of money companies spend on giving these "free" things away are minute compared to the amount of money they actually make with this marketing ploy.

Even if you are strong and can say no, you still give up your time. Think about these time share deals, where they offer 3 free nights somewhere if you go to their presentations. The presentations take hours and a lot of your vacation time. And I heard that they are very hard to pass up on. So you could end up spending more money that you would have, if you just payed for a vacation.

Their is nothing wrong with this marketing ploy, it is not deceitful or misleading, it is just a smart way for companies to get their products out their, and tempt people to come back for more.

This image was obtained from: zazzle.com

The Cloud

Cloud computing allows you to get information that you have stored in the cloud and where you can access the Internet. I honestly don't know what I would do without the cloud, since I never use my Microsoft outlook on my desktop, it is more convenient to check my email as I go on the GMail site. Their are debated that we have always had the cloud and this is just a new marketing ploy.

This could be true, I mean anything that you can access online is in the cloud. The different applications like email, file storage, banking and one of my new personal favorites mint.com. Applications like this have been around for long, especially email and I feel like I have only been hearing this term recently. For example the windows commercial which has only recently come around.

My group and I had to present information on the cloud and made a short video on how the cloud is better for businesses. The cloud allows companies to only pay for what they use and not have to buy all this expensive unnecessary software.

The problems people have with the cloud is losing control and privacy. Since all your information is on a third party server, if the server gets shut down for some reason so do you. Also privacy can be an issue since someone can hack into the database and get everybody information they have posted on that server.

This image was obtained from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRjbhLYx6Bg

video games are an art

I do not play video games, but I do think that it is an art. I know that it is created on a computer, but it still takes time and effort, and requires creating something. Most if not all of the time the creators do have to sketch their idea before they create it. Some people think that art is only something that is made with paint, brushes, or canvases. While discussing this topic in class people where describing war scenes on certain games or sound scenes on certain games as art. Now I had no idea what they were talking about, but I do agree with them on the general concept.

In this article Robert Ebert explains why he thinks video games can never be art and one of the major criticisms of his argument was that he never really wanted to play the one video game he played, so he was forced to play it. So while he is playing this game he is just playing it with a closed mind.

Now I don't think that he doesn't think video games are art is because he has never really played video games, because I personally do not play video games but still think that it is an art. I think that he just believes that art cannot be created in the form of a video game, art is made with a brush, canvas and paint. Therefore no matter how many video games he is forced to play, unless he finally finds one that is made in the form of what he thinks art is, he will never believe video games are art.

I think art adjusts to different time periods. For example rock paintings were art when their was no paper. And now digital art is considered art as our technology gets better and better. Art is any kind of creation that the creator considers art and it is up to the viewer to interpret it, and decide if they like it. If the viewer does not like the piece of art it does not throw it out of the art category it just makes the artist explain more and maybe teach the viewer something new.



This image was obtained from: walyou.com



Website design

Web site design is very important if you are trying to get traffic to your web page. People are not interested in trying to figure out how to get to a certain page, if they cant find it through the first couple times of clicks, they will leave with frustration and go to another page.

The web templates and graphics that the website has are also important. The website should not be gaudy and especially not have music playing that is not easy to turn off like this one. I went to this site and had to get out of it after five minutes because I could not stand listening to the music anymore, and I did not get the chance to look over the whole menu.

After learning about all the things that a website should not have I was a little disappointed. The main thing about a website is keep it simple, and that is so hard for me. I love colors and graphics and I would totally put music on my page, because it would be good music to listen too. I would put pictures in every free space of my page if it were up to me, and they would probably not be related to the website they would just be pretty.

So I guess the perfect web design would be a one tone color, and preferably something boring like white or black, not have too many pictures and have a very friendly user interface.

this image was obtained from: goatkarma.com

The IPad is awesome

This article by Cory Doctorow was one of my assigned readings in class, and the summary of this article is pretty much that Apple is not a network but a cult. They only allow their programs and applications on their macs, iPhone and ipads, and this is really bad for our society because it limits information being put out their, and does not allow for open source software.

Now I agree, Apple is a cult but not in a bad way, I think they are just looking for ways to keep their customers spending money with them ( which is the goal of all companies). They are innovative and their marketing strategies are genius, but as consumers we may feel a little cheated. You can only use applications Apple provides and you have to pay for all of them.

Their is a way to get around this, all you need to do is break in to your iPhone, ipad or mac, and you can download any software you want and lots of it is free. But with this comes with consequences, if that piece of technology does get a virus you have lost any kind of warranty you had with apple and their is a chance that equipment is destroyed.

I feel after reading this article that Doctorow is just complaining like an old man about how things were different back in his day, and now its all a ploy to make money and things are not going to be good if this keeps going. But lets be honest all companies are looking for a new way to make money and if apple is smart enough to market their products to where the public buys them knowing they are going to be spending a ton more money on applications only assigned to them by Apple I say good job!

I personally do want an Ipad, but not for downloading or writing any software which Doctorow explains cant be done on the Ipad and how terrible this is.  I want it for the reason that it is very portable and can use it where ever I go just to read a book, study or play a game. I think everyone knows that the Ipad has not taken over the laptop, it does not have nearly the same capabilities(yet). I do recommend waiting for a few months though before purchasing the Ipad, because Apple is known to bring out better versions of their products within a few months.

This image was obtained from: http://www.treehugger.com/ipad-gizmodo.jpg

Does the search engine matter?

The search bar on the Internet has become a necessity of our everyday lives. I wanted to see how long I could go without using a search engine, I broke down in thirty minutes without me really realizing it. I needed to go onto a website but couldn't really remember the sites name, but it was a pretty popular brand and thought it would be under the name of the brand. I typed it in, and it was incorrect and a bunch of alternative sites I could have meant popped up. I looked through them to find the site( which I did) and got the the site from their. About ten minutes went by and I realized that I had used a search engine to get to the web page and was very disappointed with myself.

Search engines have made everything fast and convenient. Just think about it, if you are discussing something and are not sure on a certain fact what do you say " lets google it". But how do you know which search engine to use. There are so many with google being the most popular. Does it really matter which search engine to use? Do all search engines bring up the same stuff? Or are the top sites the sites that pay to be on the top?

I think all search engines do a good job showing which sites are ads. After a search you can see which search results are ads with a blue box around them. Now the sites that show up after the ads are determined different ways with all the different search engines. For example Google has this really long confusing algorithmic equation they use, which pretty much boils down to the sites with the most clicks. So the top search results will be the sites that the most people have visited.

Now this site shows which search engines to use for different subject matter. For example it would be better to use the search engine infomine to look up scholarly information. This site is pretty interesting I have always just googled any information I need, but looking at this I could save lots of time looking through articles that are not useful to me if I just use a different search engine.

This image was retrieved from:

qwickstep.com

Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is the principle that everything on the Internet has no restrictions by Internet providers or the government. Our society is a money making society that is looking for the next best thing to make money on. So far the Internet has been pretty free.

Could you imagine the basic package would be major news sites like New York Times and Dallas Morning News the next package would be FOX and HBO and then the premium package would be all the other sites on the web like blogs.

I don't think this is unfair, I mean we pay for everything already, we just aren't use to paying for the different Internet levels. This would at first be a huge problem but people would have to agree with it if they want to keep their Internet. I think views on smaller sites like personal blogs would be a lot less since most people wouldn't pay for the premium package, and it would probably be very inconvenient if you do just have the basic package. I could imagine reading an article on a major news site and being redirected to another site for more information and not being able to access it because I am not paying for the Internet service level.

People could boycott this and instead of paying for the Internet packages people would go back to reading newspapers, searching for information in a library, and watching television at the times the shows are actually shown. I don't think this would last because the Internet has made everything to convenient and as you are on your second day at the public library still flipping through the same book to get the sum of the information, you would remember the times when you could just google it and have sources for a research paper in a few hours.

This image was obtained from http://www.tristanx.com/net-neutrality-coconuts-and-you/

How far to go until privacy is worrying

When I go onto the Internet I give personal information away without even really noticing the consequences that could happen, until I recently learned about all the information the Internet had about me. I found out that google keeps all my searches, GMail contacts, and the information and blogs on my blogger account. Google goes so far as too keep how many emails and conversations you have also had with your GMail account.

 Now personally if this is kept private I don't really mind if they are just trying to target me for advertising, who knows maybe it will help me find something I like. But if my credit card information, address, telephone number are stored for long periods of time I do have a problem with that. I do online banking and I will keep doing it, because it is convenient and I will still buy things on the Internet and give my credit card information, but I will be a little more cautious.

I guess the conveniences out way the threat of privacy for me, but it made me think about how far I would go with giving my information out until I thought that I am not doing this they are keeping to much of my information. I was thinking about all the circumstances where a program can store my information for convenience to me like doctors records, so I never have to fill out one of those long forms again when I go to a new doctor, and I would be OK with that.

I started thinking about things I hate doing, and shopping for groceries came to mind. I thought how could they make it more convenient to me. A system that got an idea of how much I ate and what I ate came to mind. The system would record what I buy and how often I but it, and even give recommendation of food I should try, and once my food supply calculation was out, the system would automatically charge my credit or debit card and food would be shipped to my house.

I first thought that it was a great idea and I would totally do that, but then the consequences started coming to mind, like them taking advantage of the system and sending me to much food, or giving me brands that may not be in my best interest , but brands that paid the groceries store more money. My personal information would be in a huge data base that many eyes see, so they can tell the things I eat and when. The only sites that have that information about me now are banking sites, and they don't use it to look at trends, there is not much need for all eyes on those sites.

So I guess I would not put information out their for convenience if it had many eyes on it, with very personal information like credit card, phone number and address.







This image was obtained from:
http://www.salemcoop.com/onlinebanking.php



Privacy

Privacy is more important to some people than others. Some people don't mind their web history information shared to promote advertising, some people are very disturbed by it. Some people keep their profiles on Face Book, Twitter and other sites completely private, while some people will share everything with anyone who looks for them.

Privacy is a personal choice, and how far people are willing to put there selves out their to have conveniences like talking to people with a click of a mouse, or not going to the bank, just depositing money to accounts online can invade personal privacy.

I personally pay all my bills online and don't have much concern about it. I'm not sure why, as I think about it someone could hack into the system and take my credit card numbers that I have saved on the site (So I don't have to keep typing the credit card number). I don't have face book however because I just think their are too many creeps out their, looking for a new person to stalk everyday.

I think privacy is a huge concern but the Internet is so convenient to do mostly everything, its hard not to give out personal information. I don't think following web addresses is that bad. so what.... you might see a few ads that are related to you, no big deal. I just don't think information that includes addresses, financial information or personal information should be shown\

As this becomes a bigger issue I think laws and regulations will changes to protect us from scam artists just trying to find another easy way to make money.

This image was retrieved from http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.markevanstech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/big-brother-poster.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.markevanstech.com/2010/04/23/a-must-do-check-your-facebook-privacy-settings/&usg=__X63BqM9BOf7-9RNAoccEr73L89w=&h=1839&w=1254&sz=207&hl=en&start=16&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=MjKIUO-GjyXbwM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=102&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dimages%2Bof%2Bprivacy%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26tbs%3Disch:1

Mind Mapping

Mind Mapping is a tool that is used to organize thoughts. I had my first electronic mind mapping experience last week and I liked it. Its a nice way to organize thoughts in a neat presentable way.

I used bubbl.us for my mind mapping experience, and with further research I found a whole lot of mind mapping software that can be used for different purposes. Their is one just for business and one for floor plans and one for presentations, and so on.

I didn't try any of these programs because they did cost money, and figured I would have no use for them, the free software would be just fine for me. But in the future I might consider purchasing the software for my different needs in business.

Mind mapping takes thoughts and adds ideas onto those thoughts and connects things that maybe weren't so obviously connected in a different form. I have used mind mapping for one of my school papers to start developing ideas on my topic, and am preferring it much more to just looking at the computer screen and thinking what to type next.

I don't think mind mapping is for everyone, some people might need to find another way to organize their thoughts, but it is definitely an option that should be explored.

This image was retrieved from http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.mymindmap.net/images/Mind_Map_Template_Mulit_Rnd_small.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.collegedegree.com/library/college-life/99-mind-mapping&h=304&w=402&sz=31&tbnid=7Gaw4ojomMZNqM:&tbnh=94&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dimages%2Bof%2Bmind%2Bmapping&zoom=1&q=images+of+mind+mapping&hl=en&usg=__gDQnHsjass-nH2jRqUf5mVPWevE=&sa=X&ei=ZOy9TJ_xCML7lwfAzvHpBw&ved=0CCIQ9QEwAw

Is technology just a fad?

Technology is increasing every day, and more people get hooked to new types of technology everyday. We have become a technology society where pretty much everything runs on some form of technology. Could you imagine if the Internet went out for a day, businesses would not be able to function, we would lose most of our communication to other countries, and I think we would not know what to do with our selves, we couldn't just look up an address at yellowpages.com , we would have to open a yellow page directory, and do people really even own those anymore?

An interesting question came up in my EMAC 2322 class. Professor Jones asked if technology is just a fad. If technology was just a fad that would mean that eventually people will stop using social networking sites like twitter and face book, and people will stop blogging.

I don't think technology is a fad at all, it is here to stay and its just getting better. The things that technology produces might fade like face book. Eventually another social networking site will appear that does things better than face book and eventually face book will be the new my space.

Social networking is something that technology developed and think that it will only develop into greater things. We as humans are very social and are looking for ways to interact with people. You don't even have to pick up the phone any more to interact with people. All you have to do is sign on to face book or twitter.  Now I don't necessarily agree with this way of socializing, but the times are changing and this how things are being done now.

According to The Huffington Post 96% of millennials have joined a social network, social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on the web, 1 out of 8 couples married in US met via social media and the fastest growing segment on Face book is females 55 to 65 years old.

Social Networking is only getting bigger as technology grows, I talk to my family in South Africa a whole lot more now than when we first moved here, since Skype has made it so much easier and cheaper.

this image was retrieved from http://liamsmusings.blogspot.com/2009/02/do-it-people-not-know-fall-is-coming.html

Productivity

One of the most difficult things for people to do is manage their time and what they should do with it. Their is only so much time in a day and so much work you can do before you have to sleep or you burn out, the question is what to do and when. The things you do in your day and how important they are is your productivity.

Time management is very important to your productivity, if you watch TV or play video games for most of your day your productivity is low, but if  you manage your time to do work, and on your scheduled breaks you play video games your productivity is high. To manage your productivity while doing your school work and making sure you get the most out of your studying time or paper writing time you should write outlines or make mind maps. Their is a very handy mind mapping program on bubbl.us where you can map out your thoughts but on the computer. I actually prefer it this way, only because when I am thinking I tend to not worry about the neatness of my mind map, so when I'm done with it, I am not able to read it at all. This way I can organize my thoughts neatly and save it, so I don't have to worry about losing a piece of paper either.

According to powerhomebiz it is necessary to have set schedule for your day and follow it. The schedule can either be on audio, be visual or on an electronic device. It needs to be a realistic schedule with appropriate amounts of time for each task and making sure personal time is included, like a lunch break.

After learning about productivity I definitely need to improve on mine, and am going to start today by writing a schedule, and trying my very hardest to follow it.

the webs abundance of information

The Internet is useful in many ways, it has opened connections to people and information that may have never been possible without the web. With the abundance of information out their on the web, about anything you could possibly want to know about, with different opinions on any topic and just socializing in general I think that everyone knows to be careful on line, some information is more credited that other information.

The mind is an amazing and unique thing, and to be able to share it with people all over the word in an amazing thing. That's why I think that you should be able to publish what ever you want on the Internet, and it is the users responsibility to understand where the information is coming from and the point of view of the informant provided.

Wikipedia is an awesome example of where the web is now, we can update information as it happens. They have a biography of a person and that person dies the next day, the site can be updated immediately. The information is credible as some people like to argue that its not. People discuss what the information is and need to show credible sources for the information to stay up on the screen.




This image was obtained from http://www.health-care-reform.net/internet.htm



Inclusionism

According to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inclusionism inclusionism is the philosophy that information should be liberally added and retained on Wikipedia. Some people are against this theory and believe that useful information should be deleted.

I personally think that everything should be on Wikipedia, because for one reason who is someone to say if information is useful or not, as the saying goes someones junk could be someones treasure.  An article about ninjas I consider useless but someone else could need that information an consider it useful.

The great thing about the Internet is that it puts an abundance of information out their for everybody to see and its very easy to find, so why wouldn't we make wikipedia which is an online source have the same structure as the Internet. Anyone should be able to post a topic about anything as long as they have credible sources. I think that if an encyclopedia book could it would have information about all topics, but a book can only be so big.

Wikipedia is known for the abundance of information it provides and if people decided what was useful and deleted the articles they saw as unless Wikipedia would not be what it is today.

This image was obtained from en.wikipedia.org

Twitter

We are being updated with new information continuously, it was first via Internet and television where all we had to do was turn on the television to a news station and we could find out whats happening in the world, or just open up the Internet and your web browser had the top stories.

 I remember when the war in Iraq had first started and their was a huge debate on what can be shown on TV. While they where literally giving us live coverge of what was happening, the US forces locations where compromised. Or when 9/11 had literally happened and they had live coverage, you could see the people jumping out of the building. Later showings of that clip, they had removed the images of the people jumping out of the buildings because it was to graphic for television.

Now that twitter is here, we get information instantaneously, all I have to do is look at my phone on the downloaded twitter application, and I have been caught up on my events for that minute. People post their own personal video clips of news, that don't have to go through the laws and people that news stations have to go through. It makes me think about all the offensive videos that will probably be posted on twitter in the future.

Twitter connects me to people that I will probably never meet, and those people are people that are in the field that I am looking to study in and could probably give me some good advice. The tags make it easy to search a topic of interest and get other peoples view points on them, and even lets you ask questions to those people personally.

Twitter is completely different to face book, I personally think that face book is a terrible waste of time, if I want to keep in touch with someone I will do the polite thing and call them on the phone. Twitter is more about getting in touch with the world, getting to learn more about your interests and work

This image was obtained from: http://www.kauai.gov/

Multitasking

The United States is known as a country that is always on the go, the people in the county just work and stress out too much according to my friends who live in Greece. We are brought up around everyone trying to get ahead of each other, and trying to make more money, how do we not get raised to do the same.  We look for ways to do more things at once with technology as our medium. For example its a lot easier to drive and talk on the cell phone now because of blue tooth headsets or hands free devices, we can take our work on the go now with laptops, so while we have our quick bite of lunch on our lunch break we can work on the computer at the same time. Technology has made it alot simpler for us to do more things at once, this we call multitasking. As its getting simpler is it really better for us ?

Linda stone in her talk about multi-tasking compares talking on a phone while driving to drunk driving, and brain images have shown that we cannot physically multi-task. Our brain has to switch from one activity to the other, and therefore leaving a lag of information behind when we do switch tasks. I personally don't agree with the statement of talking on the phone and driving like your drunk. I talk on the phone all the time while I'm driving, without a hands free device and I think I drive just the same. Ive never been pulled over for suspicion of drunk driving so I don't think I drive like a drunk driver at all. I can agree with the lag time after switching from tasks, because for example if I'm trying to cook and study, when I leave the task of reading my notes to stir the pasta, I come back to my notes and have to think about what I had read before, I cant just go straight back into the reading.

As we get busier with our lives and technology starts developing to make our lives easier, it could possibly get alot more dangerous and stressful. With new technologies developing companies will start expecting deadlines sooner and alot higher work load, because lets say for example you now have the Internet embedded in your head, and what comes out of your mouth or even your thoughts will transfer to paper. Now work will expect you to be working while driving, or watching TV. My mind just goes into these crazy places when I think about what will be possible in the future, and how unhealthy it could be for peoples health.

Not only are they stressing when they are at work, now they can go home and stress about their work too, and have no excuse not to do it, because it is in their head!

this image was obtained from: http://www.buzzaboutcomputers.com/multitasking-hazards/news/

Blog4, Sept 14-16 CC

What is creating? Is it something that someone came up with that is complely new or is it taking a creation and making something different with it. After our discussion in class I left very surprised, since I have always felt you can create something off someones original creation and call it a new creation as long as you give that person credit. They do it in music all the time, the Black Eyed Peas for example have taken beats from many different songs and made it their own.

Some people did not think so and said that if they created it, it is theirs and no one should be able to do anything with it, unless they get rights to it. I had said that in order to keep things present and up to date people should be able to recreate peoples works. Someone had said in response to that, that creations are always kept alive and no one needs to recreate anything, and gave an example of the Iliad. I had no response to that at the time, but after thinking about it for a little I have decided to stick with my original thought. I do think that things are kept alive by recreating things, and yes the Iliad is still read all the time, but it is considered a classic, as of other pieces of literature, art and music. But recreation keeps things that werent necesarily considered  classics, and once that generation dies out would generally, disappear alive. For exmample the song You Spin me Round ( like a record), by Dead or Alive, was redone by Flo Rida, called You Spin my head Right Round. If that song wasnt redone, once the generation died out, so would the song.

this image was obtained from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Copyright_(Simple_English)_Wikibook_header.png

Sept14-16, Power Point presentations

Power Points are used in school and business for many different reasons, to present ideas, to convince people of your ideas or to inform. In high school and some college classes they teach you to use power point with the 3 by 3 rule, which Tufte says is trivial and makes fun of peoples education. Tufte completely tears apart power point saying that it is distracting and fill of fluff, the power point is just for the presenter not the audience.

Power point in my opinion is very effective if done right. At lifehack.org I found ten ways to make your PowerPoint presentation more effective. Number 1 is write a script, then make you power point. Your power point is supposed to be an outline of what you are going to say, not exactly what you are going to say. number 2 is seeing only the thing you are talking about on the screen, not multiple topics since it will easily distract your audience. Number 3 is that your power point should only underline or reinforce what you say, no paragraphs. Number 4, avoid all the flashy pretty stuff on power point, use sans serif font for the body of your text and only use different fonts for headings and titles, avoid clutter as much as possible. Number 5, only use images when important and backs up your information. Number6, be conscious how you present yourself from what you wear to how you speak to your body language. Number 7 have a hook that gets your audiences attention, number 8 ask questions of your audience, get them engaged in the topic. Number 9 is keep a lively personality tone of voice and number 10 is break the rules if their is a good reason for it.

With these points I think that power point is a good way to present, the main thing I think is keeping the audience interested in what you are saying, and that can be hard sometimes if the slides just have lines and lines of information, it makes me personally want to go to sleep. Prezzie I can see being alot more dangerous for creating fluff, since it has all that cool stuff power point does not. Our professor told us that prezzie eats little kittens and after playing with it for a little, I totally understand that statement, I might have to play with it a lot more before I make a presentation with it to get all of the things I would like to try out of my system first.

this image was obtained from: http://www.themonkeycage.org/2009/07/kicking_powerpoint_out_of_the.html

Blog 3, Sept 7-9. 2321

this image was obtained from:http://www.studioware.com/

We learned about HTML, and I am so glad that we are lucky enough to not really have to use it anymore, we have websites that we can go too and will do it all for us, if we just tell them what we want. I don't think it would be very convenient to finish your html markup, look at your web page you just made and realized that something was not the way that you want it, and then have to go through everything to find what your mistake was. Also learning all that code cant be very practical, I imagine having a huge book next to you at all times, and having the tedious task of trying to find how to make certain things work, and having a terrible head ache after an hour, and maybe even a few broken things, after throwing them off your desk from frustration.

Blog 3, Sept 7-9



I obtained this image from http://www.digitalqatar.net/tag/ipad/

 We have been talking a lot about if and how technology changes the way that you think and write. It has been interesting to think that just the piece of technology that you use to get your point across changes how you may convey your point. I can actually understand that, because for example before I start to actually write a long paper, and by write I mean type, I need to put all my thoughts and information on paper, even sources and information that I find on the Internet. I don't think I could skip this step and write the same kind of paper, even if I organized my thoughts on a word document first. For some reason it is really hard for me to concentrate on the computer screen, for example the class readings, I need to print them out. I have tried to read the articles on the computer screen, because its actually a better idea, I can save trees, ink and money, but I just cant concentrate, my mind tends to jump around alot. In one of our articles we had even talked about how we surf the web, and we are use to just reading parts of information then going to the next web page, and I think it has trained my mind to jump every time I look at a computer screen. Technology is changing to make things like reading on a computer screen alot easier, for example the ebooks or the ipad. And as we start figuring out what we don't like about those, and they fix that we will eventually have something that will replace the book permanently.

Blog 2, August 31- Sept. 2

Last week we talked about what blogs are and the different content we can put in them, like pictures and videos. With all the different kinds of blogs their are from personal, to work to opinion blogs it makes me think how we ever lived with out them. Anybody can just post an opinion on the web when ever and what ever they want to say, and can reach thousands of people in a matter of minutes. I have always been skeptical about blogs and all other social networking sights like face book ( that's why I don't have one), because of privacy. I work as a waitress and have lots of business people come by after work or on their break, and have been fortunate enough to see and hear things that lots of people probably haven't. For example their is a guy that comes in and it is his job to find all the information he can on people the company might hire on the web. He looks at social networking sites like face book, and no it doesn't matter if you have everything set on private, he is able to see everything you post and all your pictures that you are tagged in, and he also reads all blog sites you might have. So if you have a personal blog, and their is stuff on it the company doesn't like, there goes your chance at that job.
Its also kind of creepy to me that someone can get to know you, with out actually meeting you face to face, all they have to do is read your face book. I can think of an example from just the other week, I was at the mall with a friend, and somebody taps my friend on the back and says "Hi Sam!", like he had known her forever. I looked over at her and Sam has this lost look on her face, because she had no idea who it was. He goes "its me Mike, from face book, I'm friends with Kelly", now Kelly is a friend of Sam's and this guy found Sam on face book through Kelly's friends. He even knew who I was, because of  pictures she had posted with me in them. He started talking to us about the traveling we have done ( Sam and I are traveling buddies), and he literally knew every single detail that happened on our trips, like he was with us, because of everything Sam had posted on Face Book.  Now it might just be me, but I think that is creepy.
I do realize though that companies are expecting you to have a website where all your work can be found, and they can get too know a little more about you. So the more I'm learning about social networking the more I realize how necessary it is to have something, just be careful what I put on the web.

the image above belongs to http://threeminds.organic.com/2008/10/the_smarter_semantic_web_priva.html

ATEC 2322, Blog 1

The web has advanced so much since it the sixties from it being just for military use to now where according too www.internetworldstats.com 28.7 percent of the population has Internet access, and from the year 2000-2010 Internet users have grown 444.8 percent. After watching Wesch's video, Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing us, I looked at another video he had posted and was also very interesting. He talks about the Web 2.0... The Machine is Use/ing us, and talks about how huge the video became. He also talks about You Tube taking the place of what a community use to be, back before the Internet was popular. With all the new technology we have now, we don't need the small communities that people had before, this makes everyday life a lot more impersonal. So Wesch goes on too talk about You Tube and all the people that go on that website just too talk to you and me. He says that this is the new form of community, because we still want that closeness and a relationship with people. An anthropological introduction to You Tube. 

That is the link to see the video, just to warn you it is long, its about a 50 minute video. I suggest watching at least the first 20 minutes, if you can't watch the whole thing. He makes very interesting points about all the social networking sites we have now.

My blogging experience

My blogging experience has been a very interesting one. I have never made a blog before nor have I followed any blogs before, so this was very new for me. Choosing Blogger or Word Press was a very simple decision, Blogger in my opinion  is a lot more user friendly, and everything that I would like too do with my blog was available on both sites. I started looking through blogs and asked some friends for recommendations to see what blogging is all about. I have never really understood it, and thought that it was a waste of time, so I was not too excited about this project.
Too my surprise I actually enjoyed some of the blogs, and am actually following a lot of those blogs. It adds a personal touch too the topic that you might not get in a newspaper or magazine. For example fashion is one of my loves and I found a few blogs but one of my favorites was a blog called cupcakes and cashmere. She puts her own twist on the seasons fashions, or shows how too wear something that if you saw in a magazine you would think was just for runway.
After going through all the blogs I looked at the time and realized I had spent almost 6 hours on the computer just experimenting on my blog page and reading other blogs. I had no idea that so much time had gone past, and I had missed my yoga class. I now realize that I need to start looking at the watch more often since I obviously loose track of time on the computer, but it got me thinking about how technology has affected our lifestyles. Everybody knows that technology has changed the world and made things a lot easier, but its contributing to the rise in obesity in the world. I realize that not everybody sits around all day, I have been to yoga every day since the day I missed that class, but after reading some blogs I realized some people do sit around all day and blog, surf the net and play games. As technology advances and things get more computerized, more people will be able to stay at home and do everything on their computers. So does that mean that more and more people are going to be sitting at home spending their lives on the computer?
I guess I'm being like an old person that is going on a rant about how all this new technology is causing all kinds of disease, but it kind of is. I guess they have that Wii fit now, which is actually fun, so maybe in the future their will be an exercise keyboard where every time you type you are actually be working out your arms or creating some kind of cardio.

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