Corinne's IST 110H Blog

I found the guest speaker Manohar Bhattarai very interesting and honestly I didn't think that I would. I have been subjected to a lot of guest speakers so far at Penn State and some of them, no matter how interesting their subject, just don't have the presence to engage an audience. I must admit that at first I was tempted to just zone out because I am pretty hard at hearing and any sort of accent pretty much destroys my understanding, but with the visual aid I was able to keep up with what he was saying. I became more interested still when he deviated from the slides and began taking questions. I thought that all of the questions that were asked were excellent and I was kind of wondering why I hadn't thought to ask them. I didn't realize the purpose of his visit until the very end when he began to talk about raising the awareness of the possibilities of globalization in places such as Nepal and when I finally connected the dots it made me all the more appreciative of his talk. I wish that more of the guest speakers i've been exposed to were in a smaller group like ours because it creates an environment where I feel like I have to pay attention and in the end i'm glad that I did.

After the presentation I wanted to read more about Nepal and its situation so I found this great article which I will comment on later because I have to get a shower now :P
http://newsblaze.com/story/20060318143739nnnn.nb/topstory.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13940637/site/newsweek

The first article I read was "My Political Space" which was published in Newsweek in July of
2006. The article starts by weaving a metaphor about the internet being like a college campus. It says that amazon.com is like the bookstore, wikipedia.com is the library, facebook.com is the new dorms, friendster is the old dorms, and the classroom is a relatively new site called essembly.com. Essembly is a more academically geared social networking site that has around 17,000 users but is growing in popularity. It was developed by a classmate of Facebook creator, Mark Zuckerberg. This is one of many instances of politics starting to crop up in the social networking community. The Republican party has even launched their own site http://www.gop.com/MyGOP/ MYGOP.com which is a site that allows republicans to make their own site much like a MySpace only with political content. It has not become unfamiliar territory for politics in the "populist revolution" that is social networking.

I love this article mainly because of the strong metaphor that it began with. It grabbed my attention being as I am a college student. After the first paragraph it became nothing more than an advertisement for essembly.com for the next two large paragraphs which annoyed me but eventually had me sold and I now have an essembly account. I know I was pulled in by the shameless plug in what was supposed to have been an informative article but it happens. I liked it best when the article got back on track and started to talk about how candidates are realizing that it is necessary to have their own profile on all of the social networks in order to gain exposure and that the internet has become one of the largest platforms for campaigning. The only personal feeling that I have on the subject is that it was a damn good idea. With the emergence of the "Vote or Die" campaign started during the 2004 election by VH1 and MTV in order to convince more young voters to have a say in politics, candidates needed to find a way to speak to the young voters on their level which can be difficult for 50-60 year olds. Whoever thought of the idea to create a facebook or a myspace for their candidate should get the MVCM or most valuable campaign manager award because that was a stroke of political genius.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19213575

The second article that I read was "MySpace: A Place For Candidates". This article begins by declaring the practice of televised debates between presidential candidates, archaic. It has become apparent that people are all too consumed with cult reality television to watch the actual reality of candidates and their attempts at self-promotion while making their opponents appear as inept as possible. Social networking has risen to the challenge of filling the void and has striven to quench the thirst for politics that people can tend to when they feel like it. In the upcoming elections we are left to wonder whether we are really election a president on the basis of their political prowess or on their ability to keep an up=to-date template on their MySpace. The article goes on to feature the profiles of several of the major candidates in the running for President of the United States as well as what other social networking sites.

This article was very interesting although it sounded like it may have been written by a cynic who was not in the mood for their nation to run by a social-networker. It was interesting to see the social networks that each candidate was a member of and how they shamelessly promoted themselves. For instance, one of the candidates wrote in their Music section their opinions on the issues, which is just annoying. If a candidate really wants to connect on the level of social networkers they have to actively participate. I know that they may be busy but honestly simply typing "im too busy for music" whether true or not is better than ignoring the field and self-promoting themselves more. While it is a seemingly minor infraction on their part when you have political figureheads soliciting sex in airport bathroom stalls and having scandalous affairs, it is nonetheless inappropriate to create social networks under the pretense of being young and up on what is fast becoming America's new pastimes when it is apparent that the sites are created and run by employees and not the actual candidates.

Now I have realized that I have expressed two seemingly contradictory opinions on the matter but I was speaking from two different halfs of myself. The first article spoke to my somewhat older persona, who actually thinks that this is ingenious. This is the part of me that has always wanted to take a stab at politics myself and has always taken an interest in how the game is played. This makes me think that one candidate coming up with a breakthrough in campaign strategy is equivalent to sinking the battleship of their opponent. The tone of the second article immediately put me in a different mindset. I was instantly thinking like a teenager who thinks they are wiser than everyone else. haha All I could think was that these people are stupid if they think that we won't see that this is simply a ploy for our attention and that they don't tend to their social networking sites and if we leave comments or questions it will be yet another piece of communication lost within the maze of falsities that is politics. I am still unsure as to which of these opinions is really mine, if any. I am obviously easily caught up in the tones and opinions of authors.

I found that the Facebook Privacy that was on the website currently to be much different from the one we read in class. It specifically stated that all users' web browser type and ip addresses would be stored by Facebook and any information that could be gathered would be gathered. Facebook tries to state that this is in some way for the convenience of the users and also says that they can disable this at any time although it does not mention at all how one would go about accomplishing this.

Google and IBM publicized that they will be working together to give millions of dollars in supplies to universities such as University of Washington, Carnegie-Melon, MIT, Stanford, and the University of Maryland for the purpose of focusing on parallel computing. This will also teach and aid students in learning to use open source software and to develop programs that will be able to keep up with the rapidly changing environment of computer technology.

I like that large businesses aren’t afraid to pour some money back into education even thought the results of this education can potentially benefit other companies because the students who are benefiting are not necessarily committing themselves to work for IBM or Google. I kinda wish that some of this funding had gone to Penn State so that we could work with some of the materials that are being provided by those who are at the top of the industries that we at the IST college are trying to get into.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071008-google-and-ibm-team-on-cloud-computing-initiative-for-universitiesgoogle-and-ibm-team-on-cloud-computing-initiative-for-universities.html

The three social networks that I chose were Xanga, Essembly, and Pandora. With the exception of Xanga, the social networks that I have chosen have not been widely publicized and have yet to be taken over by the masses of America, which is what I like about them.
Xanga was once a large part of my life, but in the circle of social networks (I tried to make this sound like the circle of life for social networks but I don't think anyone would have caught it had I not added this note) there is always a new popular site that grabs the attention of networkers and pulls them from their original site. In this way Xanga was replaced for me by MySpace, which was then replaced by Facebook, further perpetuating the cycle. Xanga allows you to search for other people through their profile content, the content of their blogs, and interests. Xanga has undergone some major reconstruction that I immediately noticed when I signed on. It is trying desperately to compete with the Facebooks and the MySpaces but I am afraid that battle is far-gone. Xanga is a site that is similar to an online journal where people can post both private and public blogs. Its appeal is more toward the younger social networkers, as it is not at all romantically inclined like the "relationship status" on Facebook or the general vulgarity that can be found throughout MySpace.

Nothing like the Xanga, Essembly links users through their political views and opinions on both big and small issues facing our society today. The site has less to do with Political affiliation and focuses more on building connections with people whom you might have thought to be very different than yourself. Who would have know that I, a liberal would have the same opinion on the pressure put on women to shave their legs as a conservative? Now that last statement threatens to make this site a joke but it is not at all. You are asked a series of questions ranging in depth when you first open your account and from there you are match with people on several levels, such as nemesis, ally, etc. Essembly is a unique site and caters to the people who are politically inclined as well as those who would like to become more so.

The last site that I explored was one that I had already been a member of but would never have considered it a social network. Pandora.com is a music site that I used throughout high school. One puts in a band or song, or even album that they are fond of and the website generates other artists and songs that are similar to the one that you selected. I only ever used it for this purpose but upon further scrutiny realized that you can actually use your profile that I assumed only stored my music for me, to search for people with similar musical tastes. You can also create reviews on the music that you have listened to, read the reviews of others, and make personal recommendations. This site is good for people of all ages and you can search for friends based on their favorite band, song, playlists they've created, and "radio stations" that they have created.

While these sites may seem vastly dissimilar, they are so only superficially. Yes they all deal with very different aspects of the interests of the world but they are still connecting people through similar interests. If I wanted to meet people who are interested in softball I could search profiles on Xanga for softball, or if I wanted to search for someone who thought that gay marriage should be allowed I would search through Essembly. In the same way if I wanted to find someone who loves Brand New as much as I do, Pandora would be where to go. All of these sites link people based on their personalities, habits, interests, opinions, and many, many more criteria.
http://xanga.com
http://essembly.com
http://pandora.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/us/15net.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2&hp&oref=slogin

Samir Khan is a twenty-one year old who is originally from Saudi Arabia but was raised in Queens, New York, and apparently he has been acting as a medium for Jihad activity in the United States. Khan has been using his blog to relay messages from extremists in the Middle East and to incite Muslim youths in America. His site includes commentary on militant activities and derogatory statements about America, some examples being the blog entitles “United States of Losers” and calling an American soldier a “baby” when he was photographed taking cover during a firefight.

Khan’s blog is not the only one of its kind and is part of a growing utilization of the internet for the purpose of uniting and communicating between different types of terrorist and anti-American organizations.

As far as my personal opinion on the matter, I don't know that I have fully formed one yet. I for one have never thought of the possibility of terrorism on the internet. I knew that videos were being released by extremist leaders but I somehow thought that those videos were not making it to America. I suppose I have been naive and I am disconcerted to think that an American citizen is actually involved in facilitating the distribution of these videos to the masses.

The Sony Reader is a newly hashed idea to cater to the bookworms of America in order to usher them into the rapidly developing digital world. Some of the features include an electronic paper display and a convenient size, being just about the size of a paperback novel http://news.sony.com. Another plus of this new gadget is its battery life which boasts seventy-five hundred page turns or about eleven Harry Potter Novels, which is impressive for any device in the electronic realm.
The Reader works along with PDF files as well as a new program produced by Sony in conjunction with the release of the Reader called BBeB or Broadband Electronic Books. Affiliating itself with several prominent publishing houses, Sony has cut a deal to sell the digital books at a price that is 20-30% less than the price of prominent bookstores like Borders or Barnes and Nobles.
The technology that has made this particular innovation possible is e ink. E ink is a technological advance that allows print on screen to display in a clear manners that allows for an easy read as well as a quick refresh rate that allows the eyes to adjust to each turning page with ease. E ink has made major strides in the new and developing market of e books, which are emerging within the digital media realm. With several new innovations under its belt e ink has little competition. It boasts several advantages, such as, brighter display, gray levels, display controls, ease of page-turning, as well as some other conveniences that are not purely technological but are more common sense, such as, screen sizes, lightweight hardware, and USB and printer ports for easy transfer of files.
Sony has made it possible to move files from the Reader to the PC at home so that readers may enjoy their novels from many different sources if they chose to do so, although a limit has been placed on the amount of “sharing” that may be done and is set at six devices per novel. A few other unique capabilities of this e book are accessing and utilizing JPEG files and being able to play MP3 files along with the ability to run the novels in several different formats, as well as the reader’s option of reading certain selected RSS feeds right from their Reader.
The Sony Reader does hold its appeal with the literary-inclined computer nerd in this day and age although it is a personal decision as to whether or not it is a necessity at three hundred dollars per device.

he Memory spot is created with the freshest of information technology in wireless data chips, its size and capacity is relatively unmatched http://hp.com. Special devices that have the ability to read such chips can be implemented in everyday utilities such as a PDA, cell phone, or a printer (hp.com).
The goal of such technology is to “enhance real-life items” and to bring ordinarily static things to life. The memory spot acts as a more secure alternative to RDIF tags or Radio Frequency Identification tags, in that the memory chip can only be scanned from 5 millimeters away whereas the distance associated with the RDIF tags is much farther allowing access to anyone standing within that radius.
Essentially the Memory Spot chip is a mini computer equipped with internal memory and a wireless function. The technological breakthrough of it all includes six main components (the processor, the memory and memory driver, the modem, the capacitor array, and the loop antenna) all within a tiny frame approximating 4 millimeters. In addition to the perks already mentioned of the Memory Chip over the RDIF chip is that it is battery-less in contrast with RDIF and in order to keep the Radio Frequency Identification technology from becoming obsolete, the Memory Chip is also designed to work in conjunction with the RDIF tags.
Some critics have surmised that the Memory Chip could prove to be an aide to thieves in the corporate world, stating the with such ease of transfer and the speed at which the wirelessly enabled chip is able to absorb, that this device is virtually undetectable at this juncture in technology. The threat that corporations already face from USB flashdrives and portable hard drives would be facilitated by the small size and capacity that otherwise makes the design of the Memory Chip so appealing.
Another obstacle involved in the marketing of the Memory chip would be the capability of reading these chips. While the technology involved is not that great, it would be a great feat for Hewlett Packard to convince cell phone and printer manufacturers that it is a profitable investment to include a Memory Chip reader within their production lines in the near future.
While new innovations are being churned out as we speak I believe that the Hp Memory Spot has potential to be a commercial success. It is one thing to be a technological success and advance the area of Information technology and another thing to be a hit with the people on a personal and profitable level. Although both are appealing goals, in today’s market, the profit supersedes the need for technological genius in order to continue the experimentation and production of new gadgets that could possibly take our society into the next level of digital living.

A digital ethnography is a collection of videos that comment on different aspects of something in the digital realm, and in this case YouTube. The history of YouTube is discussed as well as its impact on Politics and the media in general. There are several contributers to this site and each has their own reason for wanting to be a participant in the project.

The three sites that I decided to analize were somewhat varied. Certain sites I recognized immediately and others I just thought would be interesting to me personally. Youtube.com, while I normally try to stray away from the most obvious choices for assignments such as this, has to be mentioned because it is the most widely used and the most highly publicized. Celebtv.com I picked as a personal favorite because I have slightly shallow tendencies and easily fall victim to celebrity gossip and finally I chose albinoblacksheep.com, which is the first video site I can remember visiting. My friend Anthony sent me a link some odd amount of years back to watch a video called Shfifty-five,http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/schfiftyfive which was HILARIOUS.

Albinoblacksheephttp://www.albinoblacksheep.com is a site that hosts flash videos, games (flash, java, shockwave), video files(streaming videos), and MP3's. I was more interested in exploring the social networking aspect of the site because after doing our social networking unit I realized that I have an interest in the whole concept. Albinoblacksheep is actually very connected as far as networking goes. There is a "community" on the site that links to both a facebook and a myspace page. I was surprised by this because I found it very different from that of Youtube.com.

Youtube.com http://www.youtube.comallows users to create profiles and is much more involved as far as social networking goes. Youtube serves as a social network instead of having a profile on social networking sites like albinoblacksheep.com. Youtube also has a "community" like albino but this is more involved, once again. It has groups, similar to Facebook, and it has a section for contests. Youtube.com uses .Flv videos which is a more sophisticated and efficient way of uploading videos. Youtube is more popular among those who like to make their own videos and post things.

Celebtv.com http://www.celebtv.comuses streaming videos and is almost more of a news site than anything else. It is not user based content and is clips from different celebrity news shows and sources. I found this site to be the most entertaining because I could just sit there and watch as story after story came up. Whereas with other sites such as ABS and Youtube, I had to search for videos and then decide what I wanted to watch, which for some reason is not what I am interested in doing today. This is a site for those who simply like to be entertained.

These sites are all video caches for people who are in front of the computer all day long and need some entertainment. Slight variations on the sites themselves, like who is posting the content, what format the content is in, and how the users of the sites are connected, really make them unique. Youtube is pretty much a social network in itself, which ABS is an avid participant in social networking with its own profiles, and Celebtv doesn't seem to participate very much at all in any aspect of social networking. All of these sites are entertaining depending on what your interested in and all have a strong following.