Free Speech

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 Art of Mash Ups

Since we have been recently talking a lot of mash up in this class I figured I would share this link that I found.

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2009/02/05/the-art-of-mashups

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.

Is the Internet Safe for Children

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!

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1871664,00.html

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.

Starting a Blog

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.

Reblog believe, neptune monologue: Live Tweeting Story

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.   

Brett Gaylor

http://ripremix.com/

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."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Gaylor

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!

Bret Taylor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Taylor

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.

http://backchannel.org/

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.

http://gigaom.com/2013/07/30/ex-facebook-cto-bret-taylor-co-founder-kevin-gibbs-launch-quip-a-new-collaborative-word-processor/

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.