Reading #5

People all over the world, especially teenagers, use social networking sites all the time to keep in touch with the world and their friends around them.  Unfortunately by doing this it typically means that people's privacy is at risk.  When things are posted on the web for the general public to gain free access too, like Facebook and Youtube for instance, it becomes almost effortless for someone to find out information on any user of sites like those.  An example, the infamous "Star Wars Kid" on youtube was ridiculed and bullied and dropped out of school to get counseling all because bullies posted his video on Youtube, a website for the public's free viewing.  On sites like Facebook, when they added the News Feed application to the website, many Facebook users were not accepting of the new application.  They disliked the fact that whatever you post would show up on everyone's news status.  However, there is a privacy setting to allow only friends or certain people to see your information and what you post.  That would be an easy way to overcome that obstacle.  It is just hard to have privacy in a virtual world that allows free access to almost everything.

I find that people's privacy being at risk is something that should be taken care of.  Although, when someone's secrets have been found out it does give them a chance to face their problems and grow as a person.  I do think that this should be up to the actual person to disperse that kind of information and deal with it at their own will, not be found out on the internet and being forced to deal with it like "The Star Wars Kid."  When it comes down to it, people have the right to keep their private information as secret as they want it to be.  Which when you think about it, they should be more careful about what they do on the internet in the first place if that's the case.

Extra Credit- Mobile Website

I used my I-Touch to sign in and view the libraries mobile website.  Overall I was really impressed at what the site had to offer.  For instance, I liked how it had contact information for questions as well as Directions for people on how to get to the actual library.  In addition, what I liked most would of had to been the computer availability part of the site, that is something that would come in handy becuase usually all the computers are takin during the day.  The loading speed of the sites was really fast and efficient to me.  The only problems that I found with it was that I was not able to pull up the website through my cell phone.  Also, when you do a book search you couldn't do an advanced search from what I could see.  The layout for the most part wasn't bad for a mobile site, it was nothing that struck me as "eye catchy", but wasn't boring either;  it seemed professional.

News Report #5

"F.C.C. Investigates Google Street View"

Edward Wyatt

11/10/2010

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/technology/11google.html?_r=1&ref=technology>

Google was accused of acquiring emails and passwords from when their street cars would take 360 degree pictures to put on Google.  They originally did this to help with their Street View Project allowing anyone with internet access to look at anything geographically like they are there.  They did this for all of the Unites States, so someone from California could see what it looks like at a place in New York like they are there in person.  While doing this pretty big project, the street cars collected data on all the Wi-Fi signals surrounding them when taking pictures so anyone could pin point their location from Google maps.  However, while collecting the Wi-Fi data, they accidentally collected data on email accounts, passwords, and more personal information from people that had Wi-Fi.  When they had found out about what had happened they immediately stopped the project to fix the project.  The Federal Communications Commission has been investigating this issue and thinks that they have violated laws by doing this and is determined to ensure that everyone affected by the breach of privacy receive full and fair accounting.

I personally like the idea of the street view photo project that Google is trying to work on.  I think the idea of being able to see what it looks like all the way across the country from the internet is a really neat idea.  However, if they accidently keep collecting data from people's Wi-Fi then I do not think that it would be worth it to have to put stuff like that at risk for the ability to see things in real person.  The loss would be to great if someone was able to steal the information from Google leading them to steal everything from people who never did anything.  If they could find a way to fix the problem and finish the project without obtaining personal information from everyone's Wi-Fi then this would be a project that I would be in strong support for.  However, if they can't find a way to fix it, then I would rather them stop with the project.

Reading #3

Reading #3

I didn't really understand a whole lot about the point the author was trying to get across in the first reading.  But what I think I managed to get out of it was basically how important libraries are and what the benefits to having libraries are.  For instance instead of buying books to read once or twice in a lifetime, you can rent them for free for as long as you want and as many as you want.  Another perk to libraries is that they are open to the public, it is accessible to anyone that has transportation to get there.

As for the second article, it was stating how the future of libraries everywhere would turn out.  Their prediction was that it would be totally electronic.  In the article it said that so many people that that Google was a threat to libraries because Google is a search engine that the public can use for free, as long as internet is involved.  With Google being free and easily accessible, that means that anyone could look up anything at any place at any time.  This sounds a lot more easier than going all the way to the library to check out a book to read for information, then having to return it.

I agree in the sense that Google has certainly "threatened" libraries with the thought that it would take over.  But I disagree with the fact that libraries will ever stop existing.  Not every book can be published and put online for free.  Unless you pay for the book online, then you must go to a bookstore, or library, to buy it or check it out.  As for the future vision of libraries being upgraded to a more electronic setup, I can certainly see libraries eventually being upgraded to that vision, especially since they are already in the process of being upgraded like that as we speak.

News Report #3

The Internet knows what movie you want to see
Casey Johnston
9/27/10
<http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/09/internet-search-numbers-fair-predictors-of-consumer-behavior.ars>

A group of Yahoo researchers looked at the internet search queries for products to determine what would be a good seller and what consumers would want to get.  They would look at CD's, movies, and even games and look at how many searches were done for each item and compare them.  They would use this information as a predictor to see what item would do better.  In many cases the searches for different items was a success for determining how popular something would be.  The even took it one step further and used it for cold and flu symptoms.  By seeing how many searches were done for each it could help determine the spread of the flu and cold, after comparing the predictions of the spread of the flu with one and two week old data from the Center of Disease Control and Prevention.  All in all the search data performed by the Yahoo researchers was often better than other indicators at predicting how popular an item would be.  But still, the searchers were regularly outperformed by more traditional formulas.

I think that this was an interesting way to go about seeing how well an item would perform.  While it couldn't be totally accurate, it would still give people a general idea of how well a product would do, or not do.  It is definitely a different means of going about trying to figure something like that out.  But when you think about it, it makes since.  It is only natural that when someone wants a product or wants to know more about it they will research it.  When people research it they may tell others to look at it, which spreads the word and increases searchers.

Reading Asssignment #2

According to Wikipedia's story on itself, it is the biggest collection of general knowledge ever compiled. It has even surpassed the 600 year old Chinese Yongle Encyclopedia. Ever since Wikipedia came into existence in 2001 its popularity exponentially grew, it was estimated that there was about 2,200 articles added to this world wide encyclopedia every day. But up until about 2 years ago, this rapid growth suddenly declined, articles weren't being published, people became reluctant to fix errors or add their own 2 cents worth of wisdom. Its biggest peak was in March 2007 with 820,000 contributors but hasn't seen anything close to those numbers since then. Volunteers have been trying to fix this problem by means of expanding their fan base, since women make up only 13% of contributors, and also by making the site more trustworthy. They have been working on putting in a layer of control regarding actually living people. The way it is now people can say what they want freely about anything. But this plan will only go into action once the Wikipedia administrator passes it. But this is just the problem, it has been reported that Wikipedia's fuel for striving is the chaos that came along with it and the freedom to say and post what you wanted. But with freedom to post and edit what you wanted too, it came to the point where everyone posted storied about everything and people just lost interest in continuing it once the main articles became published. There is also research to suggest that Wikipedia will not make it for another 10 years or so. With Wikipedia's troubles it suggests that the internet has limits too, which is when a community gets too big, it becomes chaotic and dysfunctional.






I personally like Wikipedia, while it is true that the sources cant not be truly reliable due to the fact that anyone can edit any article at any time. However, it is very helpful when you need to look up information about a certain topic and need a quick summary of what it is or how something works. I was also very surprised to see that Wikipedia is expected to cease existence within another decade or so because I for one thought that Wikipedia would be around for a substantial amount of time. It has easy access for anyone with internet and it is easy to search topics and it also contains information on just about any subject you could think of.

Reading Assignment #1

There is a lot of information out there on the internet that one could easily take in as factual and reliable when in reality it is nothing but misleading. There are different forms of misleading websites out there such as: counterfeit, malicious, product, fictitious, parodies/spoofs/entertainment, hacks, and disinformation. Each one of these categories has its own special way of misleading someone. Counterfeit, for example, is a web site that is pretending to be the real thing when it is actually not. That may be the most common type of misleading information on the internet. But even so, each of these categories are not perfect, sometimes it is hard to differentiate what type of false information would be in which category.






This is something that I think is wrong, there should be something done to prevent this but since everyone has access to the internet, as well as freedom of speech, it seems that everyone can input whatever kind of information they would like too. The best thing we can do is try to stop the actual crime on the internet and let the citizens be prepared on knowing ways to find out if something is false. This is really important to do especially for all of the scammers that are out there. A way to stop yourself from being scammed is to go to the main page of the website and look at the contact information and if you do not recognize or even trust the website, then do not respond in any way. Other tips are as follows: if you come across a .com and expected a .org, then stay on your toes. Second be aware of the language that is being said and the layout of the information for comic situations. Visit websites that regularly post hoaxes sites. you must also know that misleading information, such as really opinionated information, can give you information about another individual and be used to your advantaged. Lastly, search smart, use advances searches and trusted engine sites and limit the number of domains that pop and be aware of the information that is around you.