Grand Finalie

Well it was, as expected and as usual, another exciting semester. As it draws to an end, makes ya look back at it for the good times, the bad times, and the ugly... I know electronic Comm. was an interesting experience for me, and has really opened me to a lot more internet usage and at points less.

I'd have to say the most interesting thing we covered in class was second life. I had never known stuff along those lines existed, and was blown away by how many other sites like it existed. As we explored more into it and how deep it was, and how...diverse...the members were.The class aspect, it really opened my eyes to what an online community was/is. I never explored into that aspect of the internet, but now understand the validity that people make on behalf of the case of whether a virtual community was a real community. I have broadened my conception of what a community is and how diverse they are.

I also understand now my "addiction" of facebook...and know I am not alone. I still dispel the belief I am addicted, but I guess that's what groups and classes are for. Whenever we couldn't text or use facebook for a week, I saw how tough it was to just sit down and log onto a computer and the internet without just automatically signing on. I now only use it whenever procrastinating on work.

I say the best thing I brought from this was Justin.tv. I’m addicted to it and love the stupid social cams. They never do anything exciting but for some reason its fun to chat with self-proclaimed internet stars...or so I like to believe.

Well, as porky pig famously stated "Th-th-th-thats all folks!"

Justin's my man!

In the 21st century the internet has opened new avenues for individuals who casually use the internet find new ways to broaden their likes especially within entertainment. Music and movies are often very passionate interests by people, and there are numerous sites that allow them to explore and expand their knowledge with them. In class during the presentations I was intrigued by one site in particular that facilitate both of those interests, Justin. TV.

Justin TV is a site that allows people to stream live video that they create and presents a wide variety of other streaming video for users to view. It began with the founder, Justin Kan, streaming live video of his day into episodes or “pod casts” for users to watch, sort of like the movies ED TV or The Truman Show-esque real life show. It is, in my opinion, youtube on steroids. As popularity grew with the group’s project, they added a streaming chat to the video so they could communicate with the viewers and as it showed continued growth, they allowed viewers to become the creators and popularity has continues to multiply.

The site, ran by a group of friends, has a set up like youtube somewhat and has streaming live video’s ranging from movies to people playing video games, random people streaming live video of their days, I watched a video of two girls who were procrastinating painting a room, an African American who was answering peoples questions from his bedroom, and a girl sleeping. I hung out on the site with the girls “Painting” as they talked to people who were commenting on the live chat feed and it was rather amusing. There aren’t too many rules, and the moderator kept the conversations relatively clean. They shared their ideas on gay marriage, where they were going for New Years and other random stuff. After that I went to the movies aspect of the site and watched some of Transformers and Four Christmases and after that I watched some people play a couple of different video games.

Personally, it really engulfed me and my short attention span because, just like other social networking sites, the fact that it is normal people doing activities and talking about stuff I can relate to becomes more interesting and amusing than pretty much anything available at the time. This site has given the power back to the people who made the site what it is today and helps them find a community of other people with related interests. It also is a good way for people to get information out about themselves and anything they have created and are determined to share, sell, etc. This would be, in my opinion, the most diverse online community because it is based on live streaming video with people chatting.

Facebook - beyond your weekend photo's

People use facebook to keep in touch with friends and network with other people in their social circles…But what happens whenever you get recruited by a company for a job?
Many companies these days are looking at Facebook to bring in new employees.

The Central Intelligence Agency has been doing this sine 2006. With a log in required and provides a promotional video to help explain the positions requirements. Ernest and young, a financial company, even tries to recruit potential employees through the social networking program. Sounds too good to be true huh? Well it can be whenever companies judge their wanna-be employee by his page.

Companies have begun to rate their employee’s by the content on their Facebook. According to this internet standard website, 20 percent of companies check these people’s profiles before hiring or rejecting them. Another 24 percent of companies hired their employee based on their social profile, and another 33 percent of companies said they were planning on checking their applicant’s profiles before hiring of rejecting them. Solution, clean up your page…

Since the internet has become so popular and diverse, numerous companies have begun to use it to their advantage to rate potential employee’s. This has forced many people to have made it harder for strangers or non-friends to log in to their page and view their information, lock up their profile so only friends can see their information, cleaning up their social networking profile, or even getting rid of their profile all together. Is it necessary? Since when did we have to look over our shoulder on a site intended for us to share information and memories? Even social groups within Westminster have warned their participants to only have good stuff on their profiles and to positively represent themselves and their groups. Essentially, people need to begin to limiting the people they become friends with, or not do what the sites were intended for…Share memories with people during a time where your supposed to make mistakes and push your boundaries…

While researching for our group project I came across a lot of Content Management Systems, which helps people create web pages and other related content systems. A fellow fraternity brother of mine manages a server through one of these CMS’s. My curiosity got the best of me and I had to look into it more to try and understand it.

CMS, according to Wikipedia, is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. Types of content stored on these servers include computer files image media audio and video files, electronic documents and web content. I had to find another site to get a more in-depth understanding of what these CMS’s are and how they function. I found a site dedicated to CMS which had a lot of good information of it. It stated that it allows users to manage content The site broke down a very confusing term into one much simpler definition, “A CMS is a tool that enables a variety of (centralized) technical and (de-centralized) non technical staff to create, edit, manage and finally publish (in a number of formats) a variety of content (such as text, graphics, video, documents etc), whilst being constrained by a centralized set of rules, process and workflows that ensure coherent, validated electronic content.” Essentially, it allows people of all ranges of electronic intelligence to store digital information, ranging from a family member starting and maintaining a family web site, to our campuses Novell portal and our classes page out site.

Some examples of popular CMS sites are Joomla, Drupal and PHP-Nuke. All three have detailed information about what they offer and are good examples for the numerous CMS types offered electronically. These are all great examples of how far we have come electronically. Within ten years, I went from waiting hours to not hear a busy signal, to being able to store and readily refer to content of my choosing. Though today this may not be an interest of mine, it’s good to know that one day this option may help my life.

The virtual classroom

In today’s world we have the luxury of learning in our pajamas on our couch. Classrooms have gone from a desk and a notebook to a website. Though convenient, does it really get the job done?

All students learn in different ways. Some learn quicker and easier through hearing it and writing it down. Others prefer to read and reflect on the material intended to educate. I know personally I am a better visual learner. On line classes do not always support the education system and there have been numerous tests conducted to show how students prefer to learn.

The University of Penn State has a lot of information on the matter. They boil learning types into four main ones represented by the acronym VARK. The types are Visual, such as seeing charts and graphs, Auditory, lectures, group discussions and teacher student verbal interaction, Read/write, reading and text-based, and Kinesthetic, relating material to experiences and examples. The site went on to give three examples of tests conducted to help find how people prefer to learn. In all three, the majority of subjects preferred visual and kinesthetic types as opposed to plain text. Not only did the subjects prefer the methods but the results showed that the methods were more effective in the learning process.

I am a visual/kinesthetic learner, plain reading and writing does not help me retain material. On line classrooms are a mainly text based discussion with little to no interaction with the instructor. The instructor is the most vital part of education, and with them mostly omitted from the process I couldn’t imagine how much would be retained by the student. This would prove that though convenient and easy, on line classrooms are not always the best method of learning.

The world may not exist but it can make money appear in your bank account

Since learning about Computer Mediate Communication styles in class I decided to do a little bit of research into their backgrounds. I searched second life and was amazed all the results that came up both from the site and 3rd parties. I even found a blog, which I found really funny that someone is blogging about the application intended for communication itself.

One article I found interesting was a piece on second life from business week. There was an interview conducted for the magazine through second life, which I found interesting because of how it relates to my major. The author of the article interviewed a Chinese teacher from Germany who owns a firm that creates homes for people to buy with the currency, Linden dollars, and has even started a real world company with real world employees. I was astounded to read that her company is worth 250,000 American dollars. Yes you read correctly, she makes money from people buying digitally created homes on digitally created land in an “imaginary” world, and has made a living from it. You may be asking yourself the same thing I thought…why? The article gives very closely related internet entrepreneurial sites formally thought of as crazy.

Ebay is quite possibly one of the world’s largest mediums to buy and sell items and goods. Myspace and Facebook are two of the most popular ways of CMC and even the most frequently visited sites on the internet. World of Warcraft has become somewhat of a cult. Even Google, a search engine, is eating up smaller useful sites to add to their electronic empire. Crazy right? Well they made people crazy rich with just a little ingenuity, some cyber elbow grease and an original idea. The world is evolving into a keyboard and a computer monitor, and those who jumped on board have made a living from it. People called Columbus crazy when he said the world wasn’t flat and they called Copernicus crazy when he stated that the earth revolves around the sun. Is it really so different? Now Ebay is worth millions of dollars and Google is one of the highest publicly traded stocks. My point is that though you may not relate to the social aspect of the applications, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other parts of it that may interest you. I know I could use the benefits from owning my own company worth a quarter of a million dollars, it would probably make retiring a bit easier and, oh I don’t know, sooner. And they do what, digitally create goods for second life. Sure beats back breaking labor and long hours for minimun wage. I think before you refer to something as crazy, look at other stuff that was considered crazy. Those who do not learn history are doomed to not monetarily benefit from the future.

On line communities

Communities area large part of our lives…if not the most vital and important aspect. A community as defined by the dictionary.com is “a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists”. Though communities have for a majority of history been perceived as a physical place of inhabitance, with the ever changing and expanding usages of the internet, the way communities are viewed has changed.

In the article we read for our on line class they looked into three main aspects of commuities, place, interest and communion. Interest is the most important quality to an on line community. People join the group based on their interest of the ideals of the group. Whether it is a shared hobbies, information or just overall random information these on line groups are becoming a very popular way of communication.

Since joining my Pittsburgh Steelers yahoo group I know it has become important to my love for the Steelers. Seeing other fans share my ideas such as the recent injury woes for the Steelers. With our top 2 running backs out with injury, they debated who the Steelers should get to help maintain a consist running game. This is a very important topic based on the success of the team and possibility of a playoff run.

On line communities are becoming a popular way for Computer Mediated Communication. It allows people to overcome distance and even shyness to share ideas and common interests. Computer Mediated communication is a very cheap and convenient way to achieve these goals. It has, in my opinion, improved the quality of life for many people.

Stitches via the intranet

After reading this weeks on line class articles, it really made me realize how beneficial the Internet has become to medical standards for the every day human being. Before the Internet, we actually had to go to see a doctor, yuck!

In the article speaking about addiction, it showed me how scary an addiction to thew Internet can be. The addiction is based upon the convenience and importance to the user, there are so many options on line to become addicted to. One great example is Web MD and other Internet medical doctors, as I'll refer to them. In the article the author talked about how his daughter was bitten by a tick, and he used the Internet to figure out how to get it off of her head. He used one of these Internet doctors and within minutes was able to get the tick removed. I remember as a child i had a tick, and my parents argued about how to get rid of it, asked neighbors and even called relatives to see how to deal with it. It took between 20 to 30 minutes to get the tick removed. Because of how fast he was able to cope with the medical problem he was forced to act upon a minor problem he prevented it from becoming a major medical problem. This is a good example of how the Internet has improved the quality of life of it's users. On the flip side, the convenience of using such Internet tools can always prevent people from getting correctly diagnosed of their problem. When I injured my knee at the beach this summer, instead of going to a doctor, i entered my symptoms into the Web MD search thing and thought i may have torn a major ligament in my knee. It ended up only being a minor tear, it still needed surgery and if i were to continue to move normal on it, it could have become a major problem.

Moving on from Internet medical doctors, another closely related topic for discussion is actually discussion groups for parents of the medically ill along with the collection of information about diseases. I couldn't imagine if an offspring of mine was diagnosed with an illness or condition that limited their everyday activity, i would have no idea what to do. The Internet is a great way to gather information on the situation and help with knowledge and techniques during the process. I'm sure it had proven invaluable to families in related situations world wide. Also, another great way the Internet helps in such situations is the related discussion groups. In the article he talks later that a user posts on line in a community about their child that was diagnosed with leukemia. The ability for these people to communicate with others in the same boat can help them cope and understand.

These two examples are excellent examples of how the Internet has improved the quality of life for numerous Internet users. Convince and practical usage has moved many people to get and share medical information through a chord and pages with typing on them. As a warning, I emphasis the importance to always be correctly diagnosed by a professional with a legitimate medical background and education.

Yarggh, I be a pirate

I am neither Johnny Depp, nor a professional baseball player. I am a common, middle class citizen who loves music, movies and computer applications. The only thing I love more than those three things is not paying for them. Is it my fault, or has the trend of on-line users pushed me in that direction?

Ever since the invention of Napster, music was a large target for illegal downloading. Since then, there have been many other free on-line peer-to-peer music sharing such as Kazaa and others. Post shutting down of Napster at the hands of a band you may have heard of, Metallica, there has been a a tug of war between bands, their production companies and the middle class Joe schmoes who have found a way to still enjoy their favorite jams at no cost to themselves. I found a pretty funny video on You Tube about the Metallica-Napster lawsuit. Peer-to-peer file sharing has sparked CMC between total strangers, and not all musicians think that free music is such a bad idea.

Though Metallica made a big stink, there is another ban who has recently given their CD away for free digitally from their site. Radiohead offered their most recent CD "In Rainbows" for free from their website. They took donations from fans, but the CD itself was free to the public, and they actually made more money than if they went through conventional terms with a Record Company. This was in response to the recent difference between the money made by Record Labels and what is in turn passed on to the Band itself from digital sales. Just like the Writers Strike, managing firms who sell creativity by individuals didn't have a set percentage of digital sales in their contracts because, simply it didn't exist whenever the contracts were written.

In conclusion, I don't "condone or participate" in such activities, but i know of people who do. People who "Steal" their music. People who illegally download movies and burn them onto DVD's from sites such as The Pirate Bay. I know of people who download applications for computers, such Adobe Photoshop, because of their outrageously overpriced merchandise. I even know a person who can modify their X-Box's so you never have to pay or another game. I don't view it as stealing. Aside from the computer applications, it's the nature of the beast. If people want something bad enough they are going to find a way to do it. Nobody refers to Bill Gates as a thief since he stole windows from working on an Apple Computer, but the 19 year old kid who found a way to share music to the world via his hard drive is. All he did was keep $13.99 out of the pockets of greedy Hollywood companies who need a new Benz. I dunno if it's just me, but it seems that ingenuity has been lost between the dollars. As it relates to class, this is CMC at it's best state. You are sharing something as intimate as music with complete strangers, and it doesn't cost you anything. They say the best things in life are free. I say it's a little bit better when you get it for free in spite of greedy millionaires.

Harassment 21st century style

With increased integration of the internet and CMC into the lives of millions of peoples ranging to nearly any age, harassment has become a very scary reality in the World Wide Web. Though, when I was growing up harassment was childish and often behind people’s backs, the internet allows a person to hide behind their mainframe. With this in mind, it makes harassment on the internet very simple and un-personable to many people.

I remember in class when a topic was brought up about the girl who was literally harassed to death by a mother who disliked her via the internet. The neighbor mother who is almost 50 years old tricked the 13 year old neighbor girl into believing she was a cute 16 year old boy interested in the girl romantically. Essentially the woman built the young girl up and then tore her apart after gaining both her trust and even love. The mother and her attorney denied any wrong doing and the mother even said "She thought it was funny." A sick statement from a person who you would hope is aged much further past childish torment.

This sparked me to research a little bit into the new aged on-line harassment ways. I came across an organization named WHO@ (Working to Halt Online Abuse) this organization is a volunteer based staff aimed to help fight online harassment through education and empowerment of victims. I found a statistics page that said WHO@ receives between 50-75 cases a week about on-line harassment. That statistic blew my mind, especially thinking that I'm sure there are at least a few worthy of being compared to the case stated above. Makes you wonder what has happened to people in today’s day and age.

I would hope that I would never be a victim or related to a victim of online harassment. Any harassment is never a good thing, but the ability for the harasser to hide makes it possible for much of the statements said to be much more demeaning and hurtful. And what’s scarier than a 50 year old woman picking on an immature and less experienced teen. The age gap, in my eyes, is the scariest mental terrorism. The intellect doesn’t even compare between the two and it would be much easier for the harasser to convince the victim of committing unspeakable crimes.

I have never been an advocate for parental controls for items such as the V-Chip or internet protection programs, but this may have started to sway me a bit. I personally looked at my usage of the internet and T.V. growing up much like real life. Sometimes you come across material that is way above your age bracket, but that’s how you learn. I would never allow even the possibility of such internet catastrophes upon my children, assuming one day I will have some. I guess it comes with the territory and maturity of growing up, but maybe one day I will too be an advocate.

Sports and Media

One of the most important things in my life is sports, and especially Pittsburgh sports. Whether it's watching the Steelers or the Penguins (or sometimes the pirates, shhh) there is nothing i enjoy more than sports. Especially football, and this is my favorite season, football season. As i was sitting around watching the Colts come from behind and beat the Minnesota Vikings, it got me thinking about this class.

When you turn my television on, you can usually bet that ESPN will come up. Sportscenter, Pardon the Interruption, Around the Horn, I love to watch "Experts" discuss, argue, and spread information about athletes and teams. With how far we have come on the Internet, cell phones, computers, T.V.'s and broadcasts, it makes consuming this information easier and quicker.

Which got me thinking about the data plan that Verizon has, ESPN MVP. Keeps people on the go in the know about scores, stats and updates in the sports world. Now, i have thought about getting it, but for some reason, i just cant seem to reason enough with myself to spend fifteen bucks a month on it. Either way, it's an ingenious invention to help lure sports fans to certain cell phone companies. Even sprint has made a partnership with the NFL and created NFL Mobile. It just shows how important professional sports is to many people, that they have become a marketing group.

How it relates to the class is how addicted we have become to our electronic conveniences. There is no need, outside of sports agents and other officials in sports, for a person to have full access to sports information at 4 in the morning while they're laying on their couch in their underwear watching some crappy made-for-T.V. movie. Personally, I've heard it isnt even that good to begin with, but i wouldnt personally know untill i finally one day break down and buy it. It's still not as bad as the mother arguing with her six year old daughter's cell phone, but it just seems a little over the top to me. I just hope in a few years, it will become cheap enough for me to afford...

Buffy's Unrealistic Reality

Well, I had never seen Buffy The Vampire slayer before last Wednesday in my Electronic Comm class, and it was a little different. The episode we saw was about an evil monster from hundreds of years ago who was scanned into a computer book database. He used his evil Jedi mind tricks to lure an unsuspecting high school girl (from American Pie) to fall in love with him in a plan that would ultimately, I'm sure, turn into global domination. He posed as a boy named Malcolm and she had no idea who he was, yadda yadda yadda

Relevance to the real world, it could happen. Meeting people on-line who are not actually who they say they are, is a very feared reality. With on-line dating sweeping the nation, it could happen to anyone who is looking fill an empty heart. On-line dating is a joke...or is it?

Just like in the show, in today's world so many people are reaching for love on sites like E-Harmony and others, it makes you think? I live my life one day at a time and with the motto you never know whats going to happen. True love could be found on an on-line database, but how would you ever know if you don't leap. I just cant imagine putting something as involved and consuming as love in the hands of Al Gore (inventor of the Internet...right). Never would I count out the possibility that true love could exist through an Ethernet cable but love is more than typing a couple of words to someone.

Love is the touch, feel, smell, and look as well as some construed thoughts, and although that all does come eventually, I'm sure, i need the 3D effect. I could never imagine falling in love via my computer monitor.

In relevance to the class, the episode shows how computer based communication can be as evil as it is good. And although i do love my Internet just as much as the next fellow or gal, i need more than a pre-chosen picture of someones good side and a personal profile they spent hours on to make it sound tempting to shoppers.