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