RantsAndRaves

Wow!!! The dance party was great!! If you read my prior blog posts (like the third to last paragraph in this one), you'll know that it is amazing that I am giving something in SecondLife a compliment. Well, SecondLife still is terrible because I still encountered my fair share annoyances. I'll just air my grievances right now to get them out of the way. Things loaded very slowly. My computer crashed at 8:28 pm--2 minutes prior to the end of the costume contest. One time, when I got to ISTania, I was completely invisible. SecondLife still blows, but our class definitely rocked. The building, the floor, the chairs, the signs, the bar, and everything else was unbelievable. Great job by all who contributed.

As for my area, the costume contest was small, but impressive. (Check out the photos here) Along with Abby and Jamilah, I helped to judge the winners in 3 categories: self-likeness, character design, and original design. Garrett Miller (Gregory Drechsler) won the self-likeness contest and will take home an IST t-shirt and a mug. Steve Dodge (Terrance123 McGinnis) took home first in character design looking remarkable as Batman. Runner-up in the category was George Adams (Egrogiv Proto) dressed as the kool-aid dude. In the original design, Dr. Gerry Santoro (Tarkus Octagon) took home first being a blue fox-type looking person. Meanwhile, in the same category, Tom Sennett (Inurmarkitstielen Urqhart) finished runner-up. Both first-place winners took home an IST mug and L$750 while the runners-up took home L$250.

All in all, this was a great way to conclude the semester in IST 110H. Once again, great job with everything at the party.

Holy crap! (That was edited for all those that have sensitive ears) I just completed 1/8 (or 1/9... or 1/10... or 1/11... etc) of my time here at Penn State. That went by sooooo much quicker than a half year in high school. There is just too much stuff to do here that I did not have the chance to keep track of time. To my (pleasant) surprise, that "too much stuff" did not include that much more work. Don't get me wrong, I did work. But after listening to stories from my mother that attempted to scare me about how tough college is and how much work I'll have to do, I was happy to not have tons of work. Yeah college is tougher than high school. I went to a small school, Freeport Area Senior High School (I don't brag about my own accolades, but I like talking about my Alma Mater: it was a National Blue Ribbon school in 1997-98). Instead of shooting for and expecting straight A's as I did all through high school, I am now very content with A's, A-'s and B+'s.

I was warned about several things before coming to Penn State. "It's WAY too big!" "You're going to have 300 people in your classes!" "It costs soooo much!" "You had full scholarships to other places!"

Well to those comments, I answer in the following manner: It's soooo easy to make it feel small; 300? my biggest class this semester had about sixty people in it; agreed--the most expensive public university (I can't fight against dollars and cents; the numbers do not lie); I did have some offers--but I didn't want to go anywhere else. .

There is literally so many things to do here (again, I mean besides work)!! Seriously, if anyone reading this was bored in State College this semester, that was your own damn fault. Meeting new friends, going to football games, going to basketball games, going to parties, doing things with my THON Morale group, playing IM football, attending pep rallies. Oh yeah, I went to class and did some work occasionally. But seriously, I am so glad I chose Penn State.

A lot of my friends and family often asked me why I did not at least apply to Harvard or Yale or some of those so-called "upper echelon" schools. First off, Penn State is, in my book, an "upper echelon" school for any major, but especially mine. I tried hard to find justification for going to Harvard or Yale or Princeton (who, by the way, got crushed by us in basketball on 12/12). I could not. Seriously, what do you know about Harvard's Information Sciences and Technology program?? I could not find anything on the internet about its notoriety. Penn State is the place to be for IST. I touched on what I thought about IST 110H in a separate blog post because I knew this one would be quite long.

Now that I vented about the anger I have when people do not consider PSU a good academic school, I'll turn my attention to something else about college: the experience. I can understand people trying to say that Harvard may be a better school because of the type of people that graduate from there. Let's face the numbers for just a second: IST is Penn State's major with the highest average starting salary ($60,000-ish). Don't get me wrong that is a lot, but Harvard turns out graduates that make a lot more than that. To that I say "Who gives a flying fudge?" (<--once again, for sensitive ears)

At Penn State, I get something that money can never buy: one hell of a college experience. Let me make my point by comparing Penn State to another school. In the following paragraph, I used Harvard as a comparison, but in most cases, Harvard can be replaced by any other "upper echelon" school you can think of. OK, here it goes.

Harvard students can never say that they were part of the greatest student section on Earth. I can. Harvard students can never say that they were part of the largest student-run philanthropy in the world. I can. Harvard students can have their big salaries, but they can never experience true school spirit. I can. Hell, Harvard students cannot even talk about their IST program being one of the elite programs in the country (that is fact, not just my opinion, by looking at some of the numbers). Anyway, I can. Harvard students can never say that they were part of one of the biggest party schools in the country. (Had throw that one in there) I can. Harvard students can never say that their school moved a national holiday (St. Patrick's Day). I can. Finally, Harvard students can never say "We Are Penn State." I can.

If there is one thing I can say that Penn State is great at, it is this. Penn State has EVERYTHING!!! I feel like I am at an institution that is world-renowned. At the same time, I feel like that I am at a university that has more school spirit than any other. As hard as Penn State students work in the classroom, I can also say that Penn State has a great social and fun atmosphere.

So, it's one semester down, at least seven more to go. It is one football season down, at least three to go. It is still at least four more THONs to go. It is 14 credits (33 if you count transferred credits) down, more than 100 credits to go. It is several social gatherings down, thousands to go. It is already about one hundred new people met, millions more to go. Most importantly, it is thousands of "We Are Penn State" cheers down, and an infinite more to go. Actually, let me bump one more out of the way by saying, proudly, "We Are Penn State!"

So, I was looking back over my blog posts this semester and I felt that I should talk about one of the first few that I wrote. It was about an article in the New York Times. This September 5th article talked about a new use for Craigslist—selling sex. If you didn’t see it or you forgot it, check it out here.

Now, the internet has been in the business of selling sex for quite some time. If pornography is your cup of tea, that is fine because it is legal; more power to you. What is not legal is prostitution. Well, some prostitutes have not been the sharpest tool in the shed when they decided to advertise on the internet. If you want more of the story and more of my reaction, check out the prior blog post.

Anyway, I am writing this blog post as a sort of retraction. No, I am not retracting my statement about how dumb they are for advertising illegal activity on the internet. They want this illegal activity, for some reason, to be seen by more than the people that they know.
However, the one comment in my blog post made me think a little bit. I had said something about the right to privacy, but that breaking the law may jeopardize that. At the time I wrote that, I had only been in college for about a month. Now, with a little more experience, I have come to second-guess the fairness of that. I won’t lie; I have seen some photos on Facebook that depict something that could be considered only half-legal at best and totally illegal at worst. However, these photos are meant for friends, unlike items placed on Craigslist. I guess what I am saying is that breaking the law may jeopardize your right to privacy, but that there are certain degrees to that. In other words, citations should not be grounds to break a person’s right to privacy (for example: underage drinking). Committing more serious crimes (prostitution for example) may be better grounds for violating a right to privacy.

Blogs, Social Networking, Videos, and SecondLife. That is what we were said to cover in IST 110H class this year. Now let me name those units as I saw them in that order. Rambling about a bunch of things that a lot of people probably did not care to read, finding crazy relationships that exist, Celebrity Jeopardy, and a complete waste of time, bandwidth, learning, etc. Ok, now let me go into depth.

Let us start with the blogging. I actually thought I would hate blogging. And with the things in this class that we were to blog about, I kinda did. Let me clarify. I do like technology (duh, I am majoring in IST and one of those letters does stand for "technology"). However, I did not enjoy always writing and reading about it. I wish we would have had more freedom to write about whatever we want. Isn't that the idea of blogging?? I feel like I would've had a lot more blog posts if could've written about completely random crap. Or if I could piss and moan about whatever I wanted to piss and moan about. I think that I would've enjoyed this more. Writing this post that you are currently reading and the post reflecting on my semester in general were my favorite two posts to write. Why? Because I got to write very informally, something I cannot do in academic papers and I got to piss and moan and express my feelings. I really didn't enjoy reading blogs about boring technologies or commenting on them. To tell you the truth, I think I have gotten (or at least close to) the 48 comments we were supposed to write. However, I would guess that the majority of these comments were about blog posts that had aspects that dealt with more issues than pure technology. For example (I hate naming names, but in this case it is a good thing because I liked their blog posts), I can distinctly remember commenting about Ann Coulter in Martha's blog. I can also remember commenting in Abby's blog about weird things that she writes about that I thought was interesting, like this one about our mutual hatred for UHS and eLion. There was another post I distinctly remember in Albert's blog about counting the number of steps in a staircase to determine if the number was even or odd; then he (like me) could do a single step, then skip every other one with the rest (odd) or skip every other step from the beginning (even). I know I commented once on everyone's blog, so sorry if you feel bad about being left out; these are just some blog posts that I remember and enjoyed because of its variety and lack of concentration on technology. Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I wish we could've written more about anything. Like I said, I think that is the idea of blogging; to say whatever the hell I want to say.

Social networking was probably my favorite unit; I think that I liked this because we talked about things that I feel are more practical. In the "real" world, we are going to have to understand how people relate. I feel that the discussions about social networks are things that I will remember about this class. Yeah, MySpace will probably have no relevance in the business world. However, understanding how people can relate to each other, talk with each other, and form relationships with each other is vital. I really believe that this unit was the best example of showing what IST is really all about: Seeing how technology affects the greater world and learning how to make technology more compatible with that real world.

While I believed social networking was the most useful unit that we covered in IST 110H, I believed that the video unit was the most fun. Seriously, who does not enjoy watching YouTube videos? I think that this unit was great for understanding how technology plays a part in real life. However, I do not necessarily believe that I learned many skills that will eventually be vital in my career. That said, this unit was still a blast, especially making our Celebrity Jeopardy video. I had so much fun making myself look like an ass (I usually do have fun doing this as I do it quite often). Playing the part of my absolute favorite old person (sorry Grammy and Grumpy [my name for my grandpa] and Baba [name for my grandma] and Pap), it was so much fun being Joe Paterno. I was able to imitate his actions. Although I may have played him to be a little odd, I want to make it clear that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I exaggerated JoePa's actions quite a bit. I have no doubt that I will always remember this project. While it may not land me a job or internship, this is something that will last for a long time and that I will always be proud of.

Finally we come to the unit that I must struggle to keep my commentary PG when talking about it. Note when reading this, any euphemism you may read (crap, freakin, screw, garbage, stinks, etc) should be translated into the worst possible expletive you can think of. Let's try it with a general statement of what I think about SecondLife: SecondLife is a freakin peace of garbage that should never be used; screw it until there are major improvements. (The key words to be translated are "freakin," "garbage," and “screw”) This technology blows!!! (Hope that is not offensive, but I had to say it) Let me try to be concise with my reasons as to why it blows harder than hurricane force winds. Compatibility--awful. Graphics loading time--pitiful (by the way, I shelled out more money for my laptop so I could do things that required a faster processor / memory like SecondLife). Usefulness--none. Stuff in SecondLife that can easily be done outside of it--everything. Stuff to do in SecondLife that actually accomplishes something--nothing. Something I would rather do than spend time in SecondLife--play 52-card pickup, but with one million decks of cards in the BJC. Something I hate more than SecondLife--shopping with my mother. (Ooh, wait, SecondLife just took the lead on shopping with my mother in a race to be the most hated thing in my life). Let's recap about SecondLife with the following statement (it's a bit of a run-on). An irritating, and often incompatible, program that has an awfully slow graphics engine and little to no usefulness because there is almost nothing that I can do in SecondLife that is not easier to do on the web or in real life.

OK, so if you made it down here past all the pissing and moaning, you probably think that I hated this class. Believe it or not, this was my favorite class. Because of the subject matter? Well if you read the previous paragraphs, you would know that the answer would be a "hell, no." However (and I am not sucking up to Dr. Tapia here in hopes of doing research with her about open-source), this class was very well-run. I may not have liked WHAT we were learning, but I loved how we learned it. Dr. Tapia could've stood at the front of the class and lecture to us about blogging practices, uses of different social networks, interesting uses of YouTube, and businesses in SecondLife. But we did very little if any of those things. Instead we blogged ourselves, investigated social networks, watched and produced YouTube videos, and explored (though it was painfully irritating) SecondLife for ourselves. Group work was a blast and I had a lot of fun in our meetings. (Yes Team Multivac, I really did)

I hope that the subject matter for future IST classes will be different, but that the way of learning will be exactly the same. I liked how Dr. Tapia challenged us to do things much harder and more exciting than reading and memorizing. Based on subject matter of this course, I would have already changed majors. However, based on the way we learned (which I think is much more important), I am so excited and happy to be in the IST major.

In the December 4, 2007 edition of the New York Times, I read an article entitled “MySpace to Showcase Music And Sell Performance Videos.” This article talked about a new initiative from MySpace, a social networking site on the Internet. The popular site now plans to sell music to its users.

MySpace is not new to the music industry. In fact, MySpace Music has been a large part of the site’s traffic. MySpace Music allows users to view artists’ MySpace pages and listen to some of their music, but not view any of their performances. In the past, this has all been done for free. The only exception was that for users to buy the music and listen to it while not on MySpace, but this required the users to purchase the music for a small cost. MySpace plans to leave this part of the site as it is, and this portion of the site where users listen to music while online will still be free.

The new idea for MySpace is something called Transmissions. Take a look at the series on MTV called “Unplugged” for a good idea on what Transmissions will look like. Instead of top-of-the-chart singles, Transmissions will show artists in private music sessions. If MySpace likes the music that the artist shows in Transmissions, it can decide to sell it to consumers. Unlike iTunes, which sells all of its music for a flat rate of 99 cents per song, Transmissions will allow artists to set their own prices for the music that will be sold on it. Each artist will negotiate a different deal with MySpace to determine how the revenue will work. For example, artist James Blunt will keep all revenues from the songs sold on MySpace.

After reading this article, my thoughts about MySpace were just reaffirmed. I have long thought that Facebook, not MySpace, was the best social networking site because I believe that Facebook’s main importance is on the aspect of social networking. While there are other things that one can do on Facebook, everything is centered around the whole aspect of social networking. MySpace, on the other hand, does not appear to be as concerned about social networking. Instead, the site seems more like a place where one can display information about themselves and not really network too much. Now they introduce this music idea. Social networking just seems to be one of the many things to do on MySpace, not the main thing to do on the site. Facebook’s applications and other items may not be totally about social networking, but one can tell by just looking at a Facebook page that social networking is the site’s number one priority.

I also thought about something else that was interesting concerning this article. In our class, we read about Danah Boyd. One of the many things that she researched was a potential economic disparity between those who use MySpace and those who use Facebook. She found that those in a lower economic class are more likely to use MySpace, while those who are more affluent tend to gravitate towards Facebook. If this is true, I have to wonder why MySpace would be trying to earn more of a profit from their website. Facebook makes a profit, but they do so through advertisements. The only thing that Facebook uses as a revenue stream is by offering users to send online “gifts” to one another, but this is a very small money-maker.

I took a look at a totally different kind of library. Unlike other libraries (traditional or virtual), this library did not provide a wealth of knowledge about the world. Instead, this library provided users with a chance to obtain free scripts to run in Second Life. The building is quite small, but has two floors. There is no way in or out of the building as it is completly enclosed.

When you are teleported to the Free Script Library, the first thing that you will see is a giant wall of blocks saying "Free Script" with floating text to indicate what kind of script is offered.

I walked around the building and explored both levels. I discovered something useful: an index that displayed the different kinds of scripts that can be found in the library. The index was quite big, however, and only showed if the script was on the first floor or the second floor.

Instead of using the index, I found something a little more useful. There was an object that pointed to the exact script that you are looking for. The only catch here was that you had to know the exact name of the script that you were looking for. I searched for "Rotating Text" and the object pointed me exactly where I needed to go.

To take the script, one had to right click on the box and select "buy." Of course, since this is a "free" script library, the cost was L$0. Included with the script was a notecard with information about the script.

The library, in all, was very useful, and I very much enjoyed it and think that I will use it in the future. However, I did not think that the library was very lucrative for its creator. There were only a couple ways that the library was able to make any money,

One way was by selling some objects. These objects seemed to be more than simple scripts. Instead, they were already complete and ready to use.

The other way that the library could make money was through donations. Of course, being in Second Life, these donations were made in Lindens. In this respect, the library reminided me of Wikipedia. The donations that are collected are to pay for the land and other costs of keeping up the project. There is a little jar where one can click to donate money. Actually, while looking at this jar, I received a chat message saying that they still need to cover 85% of their anticipated costs for this month and encouraging me to donate.

Based on my findings, I can safely say that the library here is very useful. It is very well organized and easy to use. However, I do not think that the project is very lucrative for its creator because there is not much money to be made. (It is the FREE Script Library, after all) While I am not suggesting that the library make users pay for scripts (I like it being free), that may be in the best interest of the creator IF they were looking to make money. If not, I think the library is perfect the way that it is.

In the November 13, 2007 edition of the New York Times, I read an article entitled “IBM Acquires Cognos, Maker of Business Software, for $4.9 Billion.” This article detailed how IBM, a major producer of computer systems and applications, plans to acquire Cognos, a company that is described as being “the last major independent producer of software that companies use to analyze mountains of data.” IBM’s decision to take over this company that produces software known as business intelligence software is just the latest move in a trend of acquiring companies that produce B.I. software. SAP and Oracle have also purchased other companies that produce this business intelligence software.

So what is this business intelligence software? In IST 210, we will be learning about different types of data and some of the organizational processes involved with that data. Cognos, and companies like it, produce software that goes through massive databases and pick out certain information that can be useful to large corporations. For example, business intelligence software can figure out certain things such as customers’ buying habits or a company’s inefficiencies. It is used to take valuable information out of a large database.

IBM is paying $4.9 billion to acquire this company. This is a very large amount considering Cognos’s finances. The amount is five times Cognos’s annual revenue and an astounding thirty-nine (that’s 39!) times its annual net earnings. IBM is willing to pay this much because they realize how big that the business of business intelligence software is getting. Prior to this acquisition, IBM had no stake in this sector.

A computer science major would look at this and analyze the new software potentials for IBM. A business or economics major would look at this and see what the software does for business and how the buyout is going to affect the financials. As an IST major, I must explore all of these aspects. My first question concerns the effect on the price of business intelligence software. With one less independent company to produce this software, I was worried that prices may go up. However, I realize now that IBM had no stake in this sector prior to its acquisition. Therefore, there is still the same number of companies producing the software as there was prior to the buyout. Actually, the prices of the software may drop because a very large company (IBM) is now in place to help a smaller company (Cognos) manage its development of software. I think that the business world will be thankful for this in the end because it is going to raise the quality of business intelligence software.
I must note that this buyout raises some interesting issues. A lot of competitors of IBM use Cognos software. What is going to happen now? On one hand, the competitors can continue to use this software because it has worked well in the past and will probably be less expensive to purchase. On the other hand, these companies could decide that it is a bad idea to give business to one of their competitors. I think that in the end, the competitors of IBM would rather give them a little business as opposed to spending a lot of cash on purchasing other software that may not be as effective.

It took me awhile, but I finally found a good SecondLife island to critique. Reuters News Corp. has a great setup for their island in SecondLife. To complement its presence in SecondLife, Reuters has also established a website dedicated to news about SecondLife and the company’s role in SecondLife. I found it to be very interesting and quite easy to use. While there were a few things that were frustrating, it was a pleasant experience overall. This is quite a compliment coming from me, considering my newfound disgust for SecondLife (I’ll talk about the disgust in another blog entry). After comparing and contrasting the island with SkyNews’s island, I still found Reuters to have a superior system.

The first thing that I found to be pretty cool about this island is a bridge that you can walk across to get to the island. The interesting thing here is that the bridge is lined with signs (similar to ones you see on a highway) that give you a tutorial-like walk.

For example, one of the signs tells you how to move. Another one describes how to fly. Further down the bridge, there is a Reuters HUD available for the users. One can put this HUD (heads-up display) and get news about SecondLife stories as well as real-world events.

Another interesting thing that is offered is through Reuters partner on the island, Acura. There is actually an Acura RDX car available for you to drive around in SecondLife.
The coolest thing about Reuters’ island was their video. One could watch, among other thing, an interview with Desmond Tutu. In addition, there were videos that one could watch about top news, technology, etc.

As cool as all these features are, they each had a downside to them. For example, the bridge was a great experience. In fact, it could probably be used for a really, really simple replacement of Orientation Island. However, the problem is that the player does not start at the beginning of this bridge; he starts at the end. To get the effect of walking across the bridge, I had to fly to the beginning of the bridge and walk across. The HUD was actually a little bit difficult to setup because it was very slow. For example, I would touch the sign that gave me the HUD, but nothing would happen. I touched it again and again; still, nothing happened. About two minutes later, I got about seven messages asking me whether or not to keep the HUD. Next, it was not explained on how to establish the HUD so it took me sometime to figure that out. Actually, the first time I tried it, I attached it to my arm. The downside with the car is that you are not allowed to drive it on the island. They say that this done so that pedestrians are kept safe. You have to find somewhere else to drive it. Finally the videos about news and technology are cool, but I am not able to view them because my computer / internet connection is too slow.

As with many of the islands in SecondLife, there is much room for improvement. The first of which is setting the default teleport location to be the beginning of the bridge so that users may walk across it and get the full “tutorial” experience. Second, the HUD should be easier to establish. For example, they could call the object that you download something like: “right click and select attach to HUD for news updates.” Concerning the car, they should have teleports to other islands where one can drive the car. As far as the problems with the videos, I do not know what Reuters can do. To make streaming video work, the computer and internet connection must be fast. Perhaps Reuters can change its format to be more YouTube-like so that things will be faster. However, I am really unsure if this is possible.

To get a sense of just how good (or possibly, how bad) Reuters’ island was, I compared to another news organization’s island: SkyNews. I can definitely say that although I dislike SecondLife because I think much of it is slow and difficult to use, Reuters is way ahead of the game. SkyNews is a lot different than Reuters’ island. Their main purpose is not necessarily to share the news. Instead, they have recreated the SkyNews newsroom. This is done so that users (and probably viewers of SkyNews) can see more than just what they see on a regular news broadcast. From what I found, there is no way to actually get the news in a HUD like Reuters. Also, while I think it is possible to watch SkyNews, it was way too hard to find on the island. They had a SkyNews TV that one could add to his inventory, but you had to be on an island where you were allowed to place the object so that you could watch it. Like attempting to place other objects on islands, this proved to be pretty much impossible.

Concluding, I have to say that I really enjoyed my experience on Reuters’ island. Although I believe that SecondLife is not the greatest thing in the world, I have found that Reuters has a great presence in it. For now though, I will still get my news by more traditional means like newspapers, TV, and the internet. So while Reuters has not got me as a frequent visitor to its island in SecondLife, it does have me as a visitor to its site and viewer of its news.

In the November 6, 2007 edition of the New York Times, I read an article entitled “Google Discloses Plans to Put a PC Into Every Pocket.” This article details Google’s new plans to help make software on cellular phones more easily available to all cell phone users. Currently, Google has no plans to introduce a phone themselves. Instead, Google has helped to form an alliance among a variety of cell phone providers and producers. This alliance is known as the Open Handset Alliance. Google plans to create software that is cheap and customizable. This software will be distributed to cell phone makers. With Apple’s introduction of the iPhone, there is a sense that the Web will become more dominant on cellular devices. Google’s ultimate goal is to have the same presence on the cell phone web that they already posses on the traditional World Wide Web.

Google is trying to make the “Linux” operating system for cellular phones. In fact, Linux is already used quite often in cell phone software because of its great flexibility. However, Google is trying to create more software for phones that is flexible. In other words, Google is attempting to produce software for cell phones that are easily customizable and, what’s more, open-source. Open-source, in this sense, means that Google would create the software, distribute it freely, and then allow programmers to easily configure and edit the program as they see fit for their production of cell phones.

Some of the applications that Google has in mind for use on the new generation of cell phones are video services and social networking. For example, one of the cool things that I found in the article concerning social networking involved using the Google Maps, specifically, the StreetView feature. The idea is that there would be a social networking program “mashed up” with this feature that would help you see what friends are around you at anytime. Imagine the great possibilities of this! I think this is one of the coolest ideas ever. For example, let us say that you in the mood for some delicious fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies are therefore going to Waring Commons in the West Residence Halls. However, you have a class in a half hour and the chances of you finding someone in your contacts list that is near your location is unlikely. With Google’s new program, you can take a look at your social networking program on your cell phone and see who is near you at the time.

I am very excited that Google is doing this. Even when Apple lowered the price of the iPhone, the price was still outrageous. To make things costlier, Apple charges a lot for the uses of the iPhone that do not include calling or listening to music. There have been tales of monthly bills of several hundred dollars from some iPhone users. Google not only plans to make more features for their software that will be a part of the next generation of phones; Google plans to make it cheaper for customer. There was no way that I could afford an iPhone, even if it was available from my cell phone provider, Verizon Wireless. Although Verizon has not yet signed onto Google’s alliance, I hope that they will and that I will be able to obtain a phone that is even cooler than the iPhone, but less expensive.

As some of you may (or may not) know, CNN and YouTube are hosting a debate in which all of America has the chance to ask questions. These questions can be about anything that you want. For my ENGL 030 class, we had to make our own question and submit it. Since we all have had practice making a large video for our IST class, I would suggest submitting a question to this debate. Head to the site and check out what the rules are. Then get on submitting your own. Who knows? You may get some face time on national television. Here is my question about Globalization.