I've made a blog about things internet related with my own flavor and outlook. I try to keep things interesting and fun. A lot of my blogs are about things we talk about every day. I encourage you to take a look.
A former Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader Nik Richie is suing a website for supposedly putting false information about her on their website, thedirty.com, saying that she had relations with a teenager. She is saying that the things posted were inappropriate, false, and embarrassing. What the major story here is what that is going to do free speech on the internet if this case goes through. The link below talks a little but about how big companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Buzzfeed are saying this violates our freedom of speech and will greatly affect how and what people can put on their webpages from here on out. http://news.yahoo.com/internet-giants-weigh-defamation-lawsuit-203545725.html
The article states that the case centers around the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996 to allow websites free speech when their content was posted by their users. This case if passed will change everything. But this law is supposed to encourage websites to self police their website to monitor what is appropriate and what is not.
The article talks about some of the history of mash ups. We tend to think that mash ups is a new art, but in fact its been around for a while. Mash ups started getting popular it the early 60s. Fan of Elvis often did mash ups of his song "Blue Suede Shoes". The art of mash ups has been around for around 50 years. It is interesting that things, such as copy right, still get in the way of artists.
Another misconception is that mash ups are just songs. Mash ups can actually contain a lot of other mediums. John Nelson mashes song with found sound such as laugher or nature sounds or talking in the back ground. All these things can be considered mash ups. Also videos can be considered mash ups. I posted earlier in the year a Mean Girls Clip paired with the animation of Disney movies. A mash up can be an array of things and is not limited to just music.
One controversial aspect of the internet is whether or not it is safe for kids....
They say that children on the internet do a number of things: they play video games and go on social networking cites. They have a lot of freedom on the internet and sometimes when their parents are not looking they can venture on to cites that may be dangerous or harmful.
The above video seems kind of silly, but it is useful. Kids sometimes use the internet more than their parents and not every kid is a bad kid, but sometimes they accidentally navigate onto bad cites. This is again where we have to weigh the positives and negative of the internet, but also learn how to use the internet in the best ways. This has been one of the controversial disputes over the web, but I think it can be solved with just a few simple things.
One would be to get pop up blockers on your computer so that inappropriate things do not pop up. Also another thing would be to monitor your child's computer time. Have the child only use the computer when you are there to watch. Another thing would be to have the computer in a central location like a family room. When I was younger we had our computer in the kitchen so that my parents could monitor what I was doing. My last piece of advice would be to get a cite blocker so that your children could only get on the cites you permit them to. With these few simple things the topic does not become so controversial anymore. There is no need to remove a computer from your children completely!
Time recently posted an article concerning this same topic. it talks about a lot of the things I talked about, but then also cyber bullying. They say this should be one of our top priorities when monitoring children on the internet. A lot of kids now a days get bullied on the internet. It is very easy to hide behind our technology and say things we wouldn't normally say in person and a lot of school bullies are taking advantage of this. The article also talks about how we use our technology to keep our kids safe from technology. This really is ironic and somewhat of a paradox. They say it is important to just not over do it when it comes to monitoring children and to pick and choose battles.
Since this class has had a lot to do with blogging I figured I would share this video on starting a blog incase anyone would want to start their own blog on a topic of their choice. I know I am definitely interested in starting my own.
The above video talks mainly about how to get started. They say to first to pick a platform. So what blog website are you going to choose? They recommend this one: blog spot. I can speak from experience that this is very easy to use.
They also say to pick a topic. They say not to write about what everyone is writing about. They say to pick what you want to write about and it will show in your blog if you are passionate about it. They also say that if you try to sit down and write and you have nothing to write about then you shouldn't write that day.
Their next topic is layout. The girls say that you need to just mess around and figure it out for yourself. They say that the spacing is very important, everything cannot be crammed in there. Also for the background they say typically don't use black and to use white instead. For fonts do not use something to complicated because people cannot read it. For a lot of things on your blog you can Google how to do it. They say that pictures are very important on your blog and engaged your readers. Pictures are a major part of your blogs content! When you blog make the readers blogging experience as enjoyable as possible!
They say it will take a long time. A blog will not get big over time and do not start a blog just to get big. Write because it's something you enjoy. They said it took them over a year. Also join Twitter and you can build relationships with other bloggers. They say not to compare your blog with others blog though, make your blog your own and do not worry about everyone else. A blog is your own personal space on the internet so make it personal.
believe, neptune monologue: Live Tweeting Story: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/washington-state-woman-unkowningly-live-tweets-her-husbands This article was tragic. It describes a woman who...
I really like the blog believeneptunemonologue! This story is very touching. I think it really shows us how the internet connects us in ways we really never think about. If someone told me this story I wouldn't believe the thing that connected this woman and his husband was in fact Twitter.
This story is very ironic, but past all that it shows us that you can use the internet and social media cites for an array of things, not just telling everyone your latest embarrassing story or what your plans are for that day. This story here shows us, through this woman, that you can use social media cites for more serious things even emergencies. The internet is a great tool we just need to be informed on how to use it.
I think if anything this article relates a lot to what we talk about in class. The internet has so much more capability than we know. It can connect a woman with he husband even though they are not really together. I feel that the internet has its greatest strengths when we use it to its full potential. We talked a lot about the good and the bad with the internet in this class. We talked about how the internet separates us from actual human contact, but I think whether the web is good or bad it really in how we as individuals choose to use it. With this story we can see that the internet has a capacity for good that we sometimes don't even think about!
Great story definitely worth sharing! Thank you for posting.
The above link gives a brief description of the RiP: A remix manifesto. We watched this film in class, but for those of you that have not seen it, basically Brett Gaylor and musician Greg Gillis go into the world of copy right. Gillis is also known as Girl Talk and basically makes his living mashing up songs from other artists. He right now is infringing on copy right, but his argument is that he puts his won creative twists on them. After he gets done with a song they really do not sound like the original artist. The film talks about Walt Disney and on how strict their copy rights are. They have sued people many times for using their cartoons, most of the time Mickey mouse, and turning it into their own work which does not represent the views of Disney. Sometimes I have the tendency to agree with this documentary, but other times I think that copy right is a good thing even when it seems harsh. I know that if I founded a company like Disney and people were making satires of my cartoon I would want the right to make them stop. This film is very interesting and sheds some light on the ways of copy right. There are a lot of things in this video that many people would not know. Definitely a good watch!
Brett Gaylor is not only known for this documentary, he also product manger of webmaker. He talks a little bit about their new features and how their testing them out with MozFest. The above video explains a little about what MozFest does. it created products for Motzilla. He explains how MozFest really in a lot of ways is shaping the internet and how we use the internet. Webmaker he explains is going more and more global. MozFest allows them to try out their prototypes and "build the web that we want."
this wiki page just gives a brief description about Brett Gaylor. He is a Canadian documentary filmmaker. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia right now. He is currently working with the Mozilla Popcorn project. Before he worked as a member director of EyeSteelFirm, which is documentary film company. He also founded the Open Source Cinema project. These are just a select few of the things Bret Gaylor has accomplished so far so one can see he has been very busy. He has received several honors and awards. one of his greatest was that his documentary RiP: A Remix Manifesto was shown at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam!
This wiki page talks briefly about Bret Taylor's career. He was co-creator of GoogleMaps and the Google Maps API. Then he left Google in 2007 and started working for venture capital firm. He formed the social network FriendFeed and was CEO until it was bought out by Facebook. He worked for Facebook as well until he left to form his own company. Bret Taylor also keeps up the Tornado web server. He attended Stanford University where he earned a bachelors and masters degree in computer science.
This is a link to Bret Taylor's blog. Bret blogs at lot about his companies Tornado and FriendFeed. He blogs about the Web stocks in his company Tornado. He also about new technology developments. He mainly blogs about experiments with his companies and on the internet.
The above link talks about Bret Taylor's venture with his new company Quip. He co-founded this with Kevin Gibbs who used to work at Google on their data center. Quip allows its users to combine documents and messages into a single medium. it allows you do to this from your phone or your desktop. The below photo shows you how this would work on your phone. The mobile aspect is the primary focus for Quip, while it doesn't neglect the desktop.
As the end of the semester draws close, I decided to do a few updates so I could leave my blog lookin' fresh. I went back and updated things from the beginning of the semester when I didn't know how to do everything. I went back to the posts you commented on and added pictures to some on my blogs and also embedded videos in the blogs where I just had a link. I also changed my blog where I talked about how many blog views I had and added exactly where I got my blog traffic. I added a little more to some of my other blogs usually just a paragraph or so. I know a little bit more about the things I blogged in the beginning of the semester so I thought it would be good to expand on some of them.
I also changed the layout of my blog. I changed the width of my tool bar and blog space. I also changed up my font. I thought it would be good to freshen up the look of my blog. I also changed the header of my blog and I added a brief description with what my blog is all about. These are just a few changes I added to my blog to make sure I left it on top!
In honor of the wiki wars were about to have coming up I decided to go and practice some. I figured out that the best way to get to the links faster is sometimes by random clicking. If you think something won't lead you off on totally the wrong track then just click on it. Also the ctrl f sometimes does slow you down. Sometimes I would look for a word on the page and unable to find it, wasted a whole lot of time.
Here's some one of my routes. I tried to go from Sand Dollar to Egypt here was my route: Sand Dollar Sea Cucumber Class Taxon Biology Egypt
I really did not think a lot with this one. The first couple clicks were pretty random and then I got strategic towards the end. Also this video below is two people having a wiki tournament. Its kinda funny and useful because you get to see their strategies.
The following video explains an app that allows you to fake people call you. The video goes into much detail explaining how you can control when they call you, how many fake calls you get, and who calls you. The app comes with built in voices and allows you to record your own voices when you answer the phone. I think this is a very bizarre app, but it could get you out of a lot of unwanted conversations!
Those that say that technology has made us socially lazy would have a field day with this. They would say that this app conveys our culture slipping away from personal contact because this app is basically for avoiding talking to people we don't want to see.
Ho Ho holy dolla signs!$!!$$! Isn't that what we all think when we try to buy our loved ones technology related Christmas presents? Well it doesn't HAVE to be that expensive. The about video shows some digital accessories that are not very expensive...under 50 dollars! some of these things are Netflix gift cards or a chrome USB cable that allows you to watch videos from your phone on your TV. Just thought these were a few internet related gifts you should know about!
This is one of my favorite videos from the blogs. The video shows us how real technology can make things look. Think about how much we have advanced in the last 50 years! This would not even be possible then. To think with just a TV that we put in our homes we can create this affect is astonishing... these people were running for their lives in fear. I just like the way this advertisement shows us in a funny realistic way how far technology has come. This probably was not the main focus the advertisement, as it was most likely to get the viewers to buy an HG TV, but it makes me think about our advancements.
It has been steadily getting more real to me that the semester is ending and my blogging on all things internet related will soon be over. I really did not think it would be this hard, but it will take some serious weekly therapy and paired with heavy drinking to mask the pain. Without the task of two blogs by Sunday at midnight my life will simply appear empty ad meaningless. It is true what they say... "you don't know what you have till it's gone." I really didn't know the joy that blogging on Tim Berners Lee and the affects of Twitter on young adults would bring me, but... here I am. I've truly grown as a person with this blog. I remember the days when I didn't know how to embed a video... ha I was just in the infancy of my blogging years. And then when I finally learned how to make a link work correctly... those were some of the best days of my short blog life. To all my fans in Malaysia, where most of my blog views have come from, thank you... you guys are what keeps me going.
To all the new bloggers out there the little advice I can give you is to never give up...keep on top of yo blog homie! Love the blog life you live. Blog you, baby girl, what you like! I would have to say that the peak of my fame was on Sunday, October 6, 2013...a day that will live in infamy! I got two comments and nine views on my blog post of about movie Her! Moral of the story, go see that movie.... and blog about stuff people like talking about. No one likes to read dry blog posts they wanna read about stuff that interests them...not the stuff that makes them pound their head on the space bar in boredom. Follow the assignments, but add your own little flava to it! You got this!
And for now I will let my girl Whitney take it away...
A World of Reposting,
Sharing, and… Copy Right Protection?
We live in a world
where information, pictures, and videos can be shared at the click of a button.
This is a world where things are liked, reposted, and favorited minutes after
uploaded. We live in a world where private is a dirty word and where all our
information is public. Our world is one where a single person’s intellectual
information can reach thousands. One would think this would think this is a
great world we’re living in, and it is, but there this growing idea that our
intellectual information needs protection. Sometimes there is too much
protection and the rest of the world cannot benefit from our ideas. That is
where Creative Commons comes in. It is a non-profit organization working to find
a balance in-between strict copy right laws and free public use. Creative Commons
is fast growing and used by some of the most widely known companies today. Its
easy to understand licenses make the organization also accessible to the common
individual and I believe its share-alike license is one that we should model
many more copy right licenses after.
The
Creative Commons organization was founded in 2001, but the first set of copy
right licenses weren’t released until December 2002. The organization was
founded by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred with the help of
Center for the Public Domain (Creative Commons Wikipedia). It is now run by a
board of directors and composed of entrepreneurs, experts, philanthropists, and
legal scholars to name a few (History- Creative Commons). Molly Shaffer Van
Houweling, Glenn Otis Brown, Neeru Paharia, and Ben Adida were some of the
people responsible for developing the licenses and infrastructure of Creative
Commons early on (Creative Commons Wikipedia). In 2003 there were approximately
one million licenses under Creative Commons and by 2008 it was estimated that
Creative Commons held 130 million licenses under their name (History- Creative
Commons). It is an organization that grew quickly and is still growing to this
day. Their licenses have been greatly improved upon and imported to over 50
jurisdictions (History- Creative Commons).
The
purpose of the Creative Commons is basically for individuals or companies to
choose how much or how little of their intellectually information that they
want under copy right. This is an alternative to the broad “all rights
reserved”. Creative Commons allows the licensor to keep their copy right, but
grant the public the right to share, copy, and use their work non-commercially
(About the Licenses). This organization works alongside the copy right to allow
licensors to “decide how they want their work to be used” (About the Licenses).
Creative Commons is somewhat limited though. The licenses do not influence the
freedoms given by the law to the users of creative works. Creative Commons
depends on the permission from the licensor to allow the user to do anything
that the law reserves exclusively to the licensor (About the Licenses). CC
cannot go around the law, but it can help to bridge the strict copy right laws
with a license that is more lenient. The video below explains how CC allows us to make a choice about how we want to share our work.
A
Creative Commons copy right license comes in a three layer design. The first is
called the “Legal Code”. This is “in the
kind of language and text formats most lawyers know and love” (About the
Licenses). Unfortunately, the normal person does not understand this; for that
the organization includes the Common Deeds layer. This layer summarizes the
most important items within the contract in ways that people can understand.
The last layer is in a format easy for the machine to read. This is the layer
that allows software systems and search engines to understand. This three layer
system insures that the license is “something that the creators of works can
understand, their users can understand, and even the Web itself can understand”
(About the Licenses).
A
few of the big users of Creative Commons are Al Jazeera, Flickr, and Google.
Jazeera used CC so that they could post footage of the Israeli/Palestine
conflict. Most Western Media did not have the access that Al Jazeera had (Who
Uses CC?). Their footage was then more effective and eye-opening and now users
can freely use it as long as they give permission to Al Jazeera. The link below shows a video that explains Al Jazeera's inspiration by Lessig to make their content open to the public with CC. Flickr also
has a Creative Commons License so that their users can upload and share other users’
images. There are now over 200 million users, making Flickr the largest amount
of licensed content (Who Uses CC?). Google uses CC in a variety of ways, one
being that they allow their users to CC-license their own work through them.
Also, YouTube, which is owned by Google, has added a CC licensing option for
video uploads (Who Uses CC?). This shows that a lot of well-known companies use
CC and for a variety of different reasons, but overall to balance the amount of
control the public has over their intellectual property.
Creative
Commons has many types of licenses such as attribution, non-comercial, and no
derivative works, but the one I fine most accessible is share-alike. According
the Creative Commons website under this license you are allowed to, “share,
copy, and redistribute the material in any medium or format, as well as adapt,
remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even
commercially”(Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic). The user must give credit to
the creator though. They must also give a link to the license agreement and
express if any changes have been made. Also, if the user makes any changes they
must put up their work under the same conditions/license as the original
creator (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic). In summary the user can use the
creators work in any way they choose as long as they give credit and allow
others to use their newly created work in the same way. Personally I feel this
is the fairest license. This allows the creator to keep their copy right
because they still get credit for their work, but also allows others to benefit
from their work. This copy right enables users the share the creators work, but
requires them to let others to freely use their work as well. I feel this is
basically how our internet works today and is the most familiar template for
the public to work off of.
We live in a world
where mass amounts of information, videos, and pictures are at our fingertips.
This is a world where people can popularize their ideas with the touch of the
upload button. We live in a world where copyright is a dirty word and sharing
is preferred. We live in a world where we want our ideas to be known and used,
but also protected. Creative Commons allows this once paradox to become a
possibility. Many companies, organizations, and individuals take advantage of
CC’s easy to understand, flexible version of copyright. Creative Commons is
helping us toward a world that allows the mass circulation of ideas to be
shared, used, and built upon, while still keeping copy rights. This is truly
the best of both worlds!
Pinterest is a website that makes us believe we can do anything ourselves. We honestly feel guilty for throwing away a toilet paper roll because Pinterest makes us believe we can DIY into something beautiful. We Pinterest how to decorate for fall and how to make the perfect pumpkin pie and just because you found your outfit on Pinterest three of your friends just might have the exact same one. Pinterest has actually become a verb! "I should just Pinterest that!" "I'm going to Pinterest how to make chicken casserole." This is just one of the many ways technology is affecting our culture and how much influence does Pinterest have on our culture. Sense the people pick what they pin is it us that decides what it popular and what is not?
To also talk about using parts from movies/songs and making them your own...
This is a mash up of the mean girls trailer and Disney clips that became very popular on YouTube. In the documentary we watched last class Disney was very strict on how others used their intellectual property. This mash up definitely does not represent the values of Disney. The producer of this video is not using this for profit, but they did put it in the eye of the public. Could this be another law suit.
In honor of the mash ups we have been talking about in class lately...
If anyone has heard of Time Flies, they have made a career out of mash ups/covers and putting their songs on YouTube. They recently had a concert in Raleigh which a lot of my friends went to, I was very tempted to buy a ticket. I am a big fan on him and I often listens to his mash ups of songs I wouldn't even normally listen to. Why is this? Because the songs really don't sound they same. I would say that this isn't really isn't a copy right infringement. What do you guys think?
The above link talks about how Facebook has become a teenage wasteland. The article talks about how facebook will be around for a long time, but it is slowly becoming uncool because people's parents and grandparents are getting on it. They make a very interesting comparison to facebook and a night club. Kids like it when all the cool kids are there and all their friends, but then when all the uncool kids and their parents show up they start to leave. There is a news report and interviews from young teens from Britain with lovely accents! It's a good watch if your interested!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57610536-71/trucker-said-viewing-women-on-facebook-at-time-of-fatal-crash/
A truck driver crashed into a police car while on his phone looking at women on facebook. This happened in May, but just now became public. Thankfully the police car was empty so no one in the other car was hurt. The above link contains the website that reports the story and a video of everything that happened. With the man being a truck driver, is probably a very good driver, which goes to show that one is above the texting and driving law no matter how good of a driver they are. This video put into perceptive for me that technology should not put other people's lives in danger!
http://civic.mit.edu/team/henry-jenkins
This website talks a little bit about Henry Jenkins and how he is a Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and also how he is a professor of humanities. He is also pushing for the education of students through video games, which I thought was pretty cool. He is part of a team that looks into making sure young people are fully able to use proper social skills in the "new media landscape." The website also gives links to Jenkins blog. http://henryjenkins.org/
His blog is very interesting and his most rent blog talks about Brenda Laurel, a dear collogue of his. He says that Brenda Laurel has helped to make the computer a "sustainable digital culture" for the future. She has looed into what computer games have to offer the world and "what kinds of experiences games have to offer." As I discussed before this is something that Jenkins is very interested in. If you are intrigued in some of Jenkins ideals I encourage you to look at some of his blog posts. I found several of them to be very insightful.
In the above video Jenkins talks about how the average person can take control of information for themselves now. We are now about see government statistics and make them known to call a change. he talks about a transmedia project and how we can put things into many types of media and this helps to strengthen it. He says that the Obama campaign did a great job of this as it used multiple types of media.
Last Wednesday I
was doing a little research on the internet for a paper about British
colonization of India when suddenly it popped into my head, “I wonder what Beans
from Even Stevens looks like as an adult.” I open a new browser and typed his
name into Google. Half an hour later I knew everything about Steven Anthony
Lawrence, born on January 19, 1990, who was last seen in an Old Spice commercial
in 2012 dressed as a dog, and nothing about the essay I was supposed to be writing.
It is things like this that make us ask ourselves: Is this really what the
internet is for? As I go off on
unproductive research tangents I often wonder: Am I using the internet for its
full designed purpose? The internet encompasses so much from, dating websites,
to online shopping, to scientific research, but its real purpose is often
inquired. Bush argues technology should work to organize and connect our data
and Lee continues that in saying the connections should be like the human mind,
while I would say that the purpose of the internet is for whatever you want it
to be.
Bush
argues in his essay, “As We May Think”, that technology is made for progress,
so that the right information can get into the right hands of the right people
and then, they will help the betterment of society. He explains though, that
there is so much information that sometimes it’s hard to sort through. The editor
states that “men of science should turn to the massive of making more
accessible our bewildering store of knowledge” (Editor). Bush goes on to say
that these men are making mounds of research, but how is it useful if it doesn’t
get in the right hands. Where will there be progress? Bush, as the inventor of
the hypothetical memex, tried to do this. He tried to make a system where “any
item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another”
(Bush 7). He never succeeded in creating this, but one understands Bush’s idea.
He would believe that the internet is here to organize and file our mass
amounts of information in a way that they could all be connected.
Tim
Berners Lee explains in his book, Weaving
the Web, that his invention of html was to be somewhat like the
human mind. Like Bush, he wanted information to be linked together, “anything
potentially connected with anything” (Lee 1).He didn’t want the internet to be used for just one type of thing. The
name Lee gave for his first codes for the internet was Enquire short for “Enquire
Within upon Everything”. He makes known that the internet was intended, not
just for research or science, but also for things like “buying books from
Amazon.com and stocks from E-trade” and those things still aren’t “all there is
to the web” (Lee 2).He said he wanted
the internet to be a place where you could go anywhere, much like how the mind
can wander from subject to subject. One day Lee came home from high school and
his dad was working on his speech for Basil de Ferranti. He was doing research
to allow the computer to make connections how the brain does. The thought
stayed with Lee that, “computers could become much more powerful if they could
be programmed to link otherwise unconnected information” (Lee 4). Lee went to help
make computers just that, an interconnected system of information where a
random bit of information can be accessed at anytime. In the below video Lee talks about how he came to invent html through the frustration of information not being connected.
To
me obvious answer would be that the internet’s purpose is anything you want it
to be. This answer seems hard to dispute. It was created so that the mass
amounts of data, whether productive or not, we have compiled over the years can
become organized. It is organized this way so that whoever may need to
information may retrieve it. This information could be an email that a
professor sends out about cancelling class or the electronic submission of
money in exchange for a pair of shoes bought over a clothing website. The internet
is here so that no matter who you are you can find what it is your looking for,
but the “what” is up to you. I believe though that this is based off of Lee’s
and Bush’s ideas. They emphasize the organization part of the internet, but it
is the organization that helps us to reach this goal.
The
internet, this mass compilation of random content, is for a variety of things. While
on my tangent research of Steven Anthony Lawrence, and finding his weird obsession
for blue button downs, was I using the internet for what it was invented to be?
I would have to say yes. The internet isn’t for this strict purpose of
research. It’s for many things, including my random outbursts of unproductive
research. It’s for research on Abe Lincoln and book reviews. It’s for online
shopping and setting up blind dates. It’s for posting pictures on social media
and for buying planes tickets. The internet is for research on the British
colonization of India and finding out everything you need to know about Beans
from Even Stevens.
Works
Cited
Berners-Lee, Tim, and Mark Fischetti.
"Enquire Within Uopn Everything." Weaving the Web: The Original
Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor. San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999. 1-4. Print.
Vannevar, Bush. "As We May Think." As
We May Think. Denys Duchier University of Ottawa, Apr. 1994. Web. 15 Oct.
2013.
I went to the movies this week and got there in time to do my favorite thing, watch the previews and the above preview came on. It's a movie called Her, about a man who falls in love with a computer. After watching it I could not stop thinking about how stupid that is. "No one can fall in love with a computer!", I thought. But after thinking more about it I was drawn to a few of the things we talked about in class. We have discussed intelligent computer assistants such as Siri on the iphone and how maybe one day computers will seem more human. Even now some people treat there computers like humans. They name their computers and they get mad and talk to their computers when they aren't working, all of which we talked about in class. I began to wonder: is it really far off to think that one day someone will be able to fall in love with a computer? Is it weird to think that one day people will talk to as their friends?
The Video above contains many interesting statistics about how much our world has changed in the last 50 years from: radio, to TV, to the internet. The facts show how much faster things are changing and spreading than they were 50 years ago. It took much less time for 50 million people to be connected by TV than by radio and even less time for 50 million people to be connected by the internet and surprisingly even less time for 50 million to be connected by Facebook. This video shows how much are world is changing, but unlike other videos it does not take a stance. I like this because it simply gives you the facts and then lets you interpret them. We can complain all we want about how our world is heading down a wrong path with technology. We can complain how people are on their phones too much, or that our families watch too much TV, but we all have the facts. The facts cannot change and we cannot change how the world is only going to get more and more dependent on technology. All you can do, and what this video urges you to do, is adapt.
Above is a short video about what it is like to work at Google. They take very good care of their employees and everything is free! they have 11 gourmet restaurants that their employees can eat at any time of day and they also have a gym. They is also a place to do laundry. Employees say that you really don't have to go home, you could just live at work! Good also will put 5,000 dollars towards an employees car if they buy a hybrid. With this in mind Google does have it's reasoning for doing this. They want their employees to love where they work and work there with inspiration and motivation. Some say that workers want to change with world not just go to work and come home.
Maybe that's why Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn want a job at Google so badly????
The iphone 5s has just been released and there has been a lot of buzz. Many are saying that there is not much change from the iphone 5. I would have to say that in looks they may be right, but there are a lot of new features. The thumb print sensor is by far my favorite part. To unlock your phone it takes a scan of your finger print. They call this the touch id. It's a very secure way to access your phone. Also they now come with an A7 chip so now your phone is faster than ever. The new iphone comes with the isight camera which makes taking an awesome picture even easier.
The only thing different about the appearance of the phone is that it now comes in gold and white aswell. Also you can get the phone in plastic as well. Below is a link to the apple website describing everything in more detail. http://www.apple.com/iphone-5s/features/
Nicholas Carr has published many books and articles on technology. His book The Shadows was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize in 2011. Needless to say he's kind of a big deal! http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/
The above link talks about the many books he's written. It also contains a short video on the problems our world is facing with the amount of information we are given with the internet. Also underneath the video are a few famous quotations said by Carr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_G._Carr
Above is a link to Carr's Wiki page. The page does not contain a ton of information, but gives a brief description about his career. It talks about the numerous books he's written. The article talks about his famous article "Is Google making us Stupid?" as he discusses the affects the internet has on our generations learning.
I wanted to see how much traffic I was getting on my blog. I had looked at it last month and I only had 17 views. To my surprise that has greatly changed!
I was surprised to see that I have a total of 106 page views. I really felt like no one was reading or even looking at my blogs. It goes to show that when you put something up on the internet people really do look at it. I am wondering where this traffic is coming from though. It might be my other class mates looking at my blog. I would be very excited if it were from random people on the internet. Then I would know my stuff is really getting out there. This inspires me to write more now that I know people are actually looking at it!
I have noticed that a lot of my traffic is coming from Malaysia which seems strange to me. Well over half of my blog views are from there. Also I have one view from Germany and then some of course from the United States. It's interesting how wide spread my blog views are from. I had no idea that people from other countries would be looking at my blog, let alone how many people have been looking at it. I figured my only blog views would be from this class, but I was definitely wrong. This has just inspired me to blog more now that I know people are actually reading it. I'm interested and looking forward to seeing where my blog will be at the end of the semester.
This article above talks about the many problems Twitter has created today. The article discusses how Twitter has turned adults into babies. It is constantly used as a tool for venting. This happens more so with women than men. I know on occasion that what I use it for. The article refers to women who use Twitter to vent as "jealous school girls". The way they use Twitter to get attention or start "drama".
Also there have been many problems with how celebrities use twitter. Justin Bieber tweeted his phone number leaving off the last digit and asked fans to call him right away. Two of the ending combinations lead to an actually persons phone number and now the Biebs may have a law suit on his hands. Also Spike Lee tweeted the wrong address of the Zimmerman house. Leading many people to the house of another family and well, there's another law suit. I think we can all take a look at Amanda Bines Twitter feed and realize that celebrities don't always use Twitter in the most appropriate ways.
Celebrities also focus on the negative comments they get and retaliate, making themselves look oh so childish. Just the other way one of my friends got in a fight with Scotty McCreary over twitter. Scotty had posted a negative comment on Twitter about the Tar Heel baseball team. my friend being a member of the team rebutted. Scott then made a harsh comment about his at bats the last game and my friend sealed the deal by making fun of his Bo jangles commercial. Needless to say Twitter it some ways it turning adults into babies.
This web page talks a little bit about the W3C. It's a organization founded in 1994, with the help of Tim Berners-Lee, that helps lead to web to it's full potential. It's members do this by creating software and programs to help guide internet standards. The page also talks about another organization that Berners-Lee founded called WST. It launched in 2009 and helps to promote internet research. The page also includes a short video where Berners-Lee is inducted into the internet hall of fame. He talks about the progress of the internet.
This next web page talks a little bit about Berners-Lee early beginnings of the internet. The article mentions and discusses the three fundamental aspects of the internet: HML, HTP, and URL, that Berners-Lee came to invent. The article talks about his first web page and then from there discusses how the internet has evolved from them on.
This last web page talks about Berners-Lee's work with CERN and how that brought him to the invention of the internet. The article also mentions TCP/ IP, which allows computers without the same software to communicate. The page talks about how Berners-Lee sent in a proposal to CERN to develop the internet, but it was never replied to. He went to work on it anyways and aren't we glad today that he did!
My family has always been really late to update with technology, so when we got our first computer everyone had already had them for a while. I remember they were huge! The computer was a Gateway. It was light grey. Compared to now, it was massive. I had a floppy disk that I used to store all of my stuff on. We had Microsoft Word I remember because I used to write notes on there and save it to my floppy disk before I had a flash drive.
We used dial-up internet, so it took forever to do anything. I would only play internet games, though. When my mom would use the internet, I could not call home because it used our land line. The noise it made hurt my ears. When I was in school, the teachers would ask if we had a computer at our house because not everyone had one at home like now.
They took up so much room on a desk, unlike the flat screen computers we all have today. They were so slow! Even just turning them off and on took forever. I'm glad for the progress we've made. No one would put up with that now a days.
From the picture above you can see how different this computer is from the ones we use today! Its crazy to see how far we have come in our advancements in technology. Look at how big this computer. Just looking at this makes me think of how long I would have to wait for my childhood computer to turn on. This thing seems ancient, but we actually used them like 12 years ago.
One of my first encounters of the internet was when I was around 5 or 6. We had a dial up internet, I still remember the annoying sound it would make before it would connect. You remember this one:
It also literally took FOREVER! I remember I would have my friends over and we would like to play online games so we would see how many laps around my house we could take before the page would load. And would said it wasn't healthy to spend too much time on the internet?
I remember thinking it was so cool that I could paly all these games without having to go to the store and buy a game on a CD. Now with all the technology we have kids these days would not be as impressed with the technology I had then. But for me I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
I just got done watching this short video. It's only about 5 minutes long, but it gives us a lot of information. It talks a lot about how Tim Berners-Lee came to invent the Internet. It talks about how he needed a system that would work with all the different programs he had to deal with at work, but now it is this huge system that links together the world! The video explains that he knew he would have to connect documents with hyper -text, something that was used in a lot of programs during that time, and also how computers would have to be able to send documents to each other.
The video is informative without being boring. It is visually simulating, as it shows us graphically Berners-Lee's thought process. The video in my opinion gives us enough information to understand Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the world wide web without being over whelmed. I thought the video was overall very entertaining and I learned something while watching it!
I learned how to change the template of my blog and also how to change the navigation bar! I also added a location to my blog. Can't wait to learn how to do more on my blog.
