Tuesday, November 23, 2010

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.

Monday, November 15, 2010

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.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

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.