Death of The Web

There has been a lot of speculation about the death of the web due to the effects if capitalism and a large consumer market (which is producing new technology daily). "A decade ago, the ascent of the Web browser as the center of the computing world appeared inevitable. It seemed just a matter of time before the Web replaced PC application software and reduced operating systems to a “poorly debugged set of device drivers,” as Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen famously said. First Java, then Flash, then Ajax, then HTML5 — increasingly interactive online code — promised to put all apps in the cloud and replace the desktop with the webtop. Open, free, and out of control." (Wired) Despite recent research about this dramatic change, I could not disagree more I believe we still use the web for everything. We might have adopted Ipads and Iphones but we still use the Internet on them.

2012 is when the Internet will end - Part 2

Utilizing Facebook

One of the positive uses for Facebook is its use to promote causes through statuses recently. Facebook has such a large following that these movements for awareness really do make a large impact and spread the word to millions of teenagers, that ordinarily would not know anything about these significant dates. A few months ago Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Association was asking people to make your status "I like it on ______" to spread awareness and gain support for their important cause. Almost every girls status on Facebook contained these personalized phrases. Another cause is just around the corner.

"Change your FB profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on FB till Monday, December 6th. Join the fight against child abuse. Copy & paste to your status to invite your friends to do the same!"

This movement is to show a large outpouring of young people that are interested in spreading awareness for certain social issues. This is a smart idea because young people often do not vocalize nor get involved with social issues that one day are going to largely impact our lives even more. Young voters could also be more involved in the elections, considering they are able to vote and do not take advantage of the opportunity that our parents consider a privilege. This is our generation's way of being involved and vocal about our ideas. Hopefully this type of awareness will lead to our generation into becoming more involved in media, social issues, and politics in the future.

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Television Online

A lot of times I miss my favorite scheduled programming like Gossip Girl and 90210. These two shows are on Monday nights from 8 to 10 and often times I have way to much work to watch it when it is aired. After talking about Hulu and streaming sites, I realized how much these sites are contributing to the death of television. I happen to use Surfthechannel.com and usually choose the the Megavideo links to watch my favorite sitcoms. Many times these links are slow, hard to hear, pause many times while playing, have viruses, or are removed due to infringement. This site also allows people to watch new movies, old shows, and new sitcoms. When you click on each show and episode, Surfthechannel will provide any user with a list of possible links.

Juicy Campus and College ACB

This week in class the topic of gossip rumor websites was thoroughly discussed. I found the points were presented to be very accurate and highlight many concerns of victims on these vicious sites. I know that I was personally a victim of Juicy Campus many times my Sophomore year at Catholic University. The site had proved to be a booming fad on campuses all over the country, it existed as an anonymous collaboration of posts that ripped girls apart physically and emotionally. The problem with the anonymous aspect was that any victim would walk around campus humiliated and questioning who write such mean and possibly untrue things about them. I will til this day remember every post about me that clearly was written by upper class man girls that utilized the Juicy Campus fad to bring younger girls down and feel insecure. One of my best friends had it way worse, there was a column written about her daily and the titles were so cruel. She cried for days on the phone with her mom and dad begging to go home. The site was impossible to escape and slandered many students names yet it was virtually impossible to get the posts taken down. The creators say that the site was made for students to make connections about funny events on campus but why did they not ban the page once it became a display of pure cattiness? I remember telling my dad when I first found out to find ways to stop this site but he quickly found out there was not any way. Schools were interested in banning but due to creation logistics the site was not going anywhere. Even my friend in Ohio was a victim at some point. There were girls all over the country disturbed by the existence of this site, driving some to commit suicide. The owner's did not realize the emotional impact that it has on a person to search a website and find their full name posted and up for interpretation for enemies, friends, or strangers to comment on. I personally an so glad that the site was taken down, although a site that is almost twice as cruel has replaced it, College ACB. The addition of pictures makes it all the more horrifying. When will the creators of these type of sites realize that they are going to far to achieve popularity and create a new booming social medium?

Learn about the Juicy Campus debate at this site

The Adventures of Formspring... and Cyberbullying.

This week we briefly covered the topic of cyber bullying during presentations. Cyber bullying is a complete breach of privacy, which unfortunately has become a common fear for American teenagers and adolescents. Due to the fact there will always be newer technology emerging that makes different kinds of communication quicker and easier, children will always use their involvement with such mediums as social networking sites to say things they would never ordinarily say to people's faces. Cyber bullying is extremely cruel, it can either happen between two people or it can occur between a large group of people due to the fact these sites make every aspect of life public. This adds to the humiliation that these victims feel. Formspring makes this bullying ten times easier, formspring is a website attached to someone's facebook that allows anonymous questions to be asked to the owner or the facebook.
The anonymous aspect is what gets this site into trouble, people can post disgusting questions and posts to hurt a classmate and get way with it. Formspring has also been known to experience quite a bit of hacking using IP addresses. This allows people to further disguise their identity when attacking others online. Formspring is a very dangerous tool to give to students or children in middleschool because it can misused and have serious emotional damage on its victims. Formspring reminds me a lot of the campus anonymous web directory, Juicy Campus, which was very popular in 2007.
Juicy campus allowed people to anonymously post anything or any stories on this site for people to comment. Of course the medium started out to be a fun way for college students to share crazy times, it quickly flourished into a site covered in awful anonymous posts bashing college girls and humiliating them over the internet. The site had to be closed down due to recent suicides because of its existence. This is a huge concern due to the over zealous amount of suicides recently due to bullying. The first time I saw a formspring last year, people from my old high school were posting humiliating questions to this girl and openly mocking her on her own website. I remember being amazed at how calmly she answered these questions. I discussed it with her the next time I saw her and immediately asked why she would start this site and put herself out in the open with such mean people on the internet. She commented that some posts were mean but some brightened her day. I do not know why anyone would leave this site up for people to analyze and criticize her as a person. I also think it is a very vain site to have.
Formspring has the possibilities to leave a lot of damage on our young generation. Previous generations did not have the exposure to this technology like we do so we can not even guess the potential impact this anonymous site may have.

Gaming Wikis

The video gaming world has become a realm that the average individual cannot likely understand. Users become completely infatuated and consumed by the world and game created for their enjoyment. There are endless gaming wikis available online for active users and even the motivated user that is interested in creating their own video game. One for example, Wikia gaming, allows the gamer to be interactive, as well gives the gamer access to Action, Adventure, Blogging,Shooters, Simulations
,Game Industry, Fighting,,and Racing Strategy. All the games are free and once the gamer is finished they have access to an active so they communicate with all of their other gamers.
Another product on the shelves that has revolutionized the game world is FPS Creator software. This software, which I read about on their wiki, is a commercial application that allows inexperienced or experienced users to efficiently make new games very quickly without any programming. The wiki describes its efficiency in saying, "FPS Creator uses a drag-and-drop system in which the user can select entities such as walls, floors, ceilings, doors and windows to create a level. This level can then be populated by entities such as furniture, desk objects, enemies, weapons and pick-ups. Light-markers can be used to place lights of which the color and range can be defined, and true light mapping has recently become available with a newly integrated tool created by the same developers." This site is ahead of its time and will lead to many new emerging video games in the future. The video game world, which was always interactive, has become even more so now that users can communicate while playing with one another and discuss the game on blogs or chats, even though users are probably living across the country. Wikis available about gaming sites allow people that are interested to quickly access information and get involved with barely any experience with the gaming world. Wikis are a fast and (at times) can be an accurate representation of efficient digital information.

Privacy Concerns Unveiled

Most of our discussions in the past months have surrounded growing criticisms of privacy issues and concerns that surround social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. While browsing through new technologies in a section of the \ (New York Times), I came across this article about a ongoing murder trial that has been followed by many twitter users inside the courtroom. This could be detrimental activity before a trial has been closed. Was this one of the intentions that twitter creators envisioned for their product?

Privacy Concerns

During class this week in New Media studies, we have been discussing the many privacy concerns that people should be aware of when using social networks and location sharing programs. I personally had never fathomed the potential ramifications for giving to much information online on my facebook page before taking this class. After reading all the class readings, I could not help but ask myself if our generation is too open with the kind of information we make public online without any consideration of the future consequences and if this "shameless attitude" will end up haunting us when we are all adults out in the business world. Although, I find location sharing to be an interesting internet technology, I have always thought that it is a little bit narcissistic. Why does our society think it is normal to be constantly concerned with where other people are? And why do people assume that other people are always worrying where they personally are? It almost seems vain to be constantly updating the status of where one is at every given moment of the day.
Privacy boundaries have started to become extremely blurry these days due to the emersion of recent internet technologies. Is internet activity ever considered a safe or private experience? The answer is no, everything can be replicated with only one click. I found it extremely alarming that even our browser history can be accessed easily. I read an article in a computer magazine discussing this invasion of privacy and how the user must disable the manager history by clearing it and using a few other tips suggested by technicians. Firefox provides a website of tips aiding any user in protecting their privacy and browser history.

(http://malektips.com/mozilla_firefox_-_security_and_privacy_help_and_tips.html)

Utilizing Facebook

For most people, signing into their own facebook is just entering their own personal and digital space but for others facebook has taken on a whole new significance. As we learned in our media class, facebook began as a social network created in 2004 for college students by a college student. Although it was made to appeal to our younger demographic, facebook has grown and transcended what people expected of a social network. Facebook is now utilized by people of all ages not just young adults and adolescents. Due to its overwhelming popularity, the site now has many applications and settings to personalize the type of experience the account owner is looking for. Some facebookers don't care who sees their information and are not concerned about the privacy aspect because they are just looking to communicate with their friends. While other social networkers or users need privacy for jobs or from family members. Some people have unique purposes for their facebook as well.

As I was looking into amazing and inspiring stories surrounding people that met over facebook and are now getting married, I came across a story of a woman that found her son that had been kidnapped over facebook. Can you imagine the technological world reuniting you with a missing child? This post (http://www.tomsguide.com/us/missing-boy-found-facebook-superpoke,news-4021.html) tells the story of a woman whose son was abducted by her husband after going to have Thanksgiving dinner with him in Hungary in 1982, 27 years ago. Avril Grube looked for her son for many years but her efforts were unsuccessful. Until her sister searched her nephew "Gavin"'s name on facebook because she was simply curious to see what would come up, Gavin Paros came up. Grube's son Gavin was now apparently 30 years old and a father himself. His father had also died in the time that had transpired. Gavin had three children and had created a facebook to reunite with his American family. Grube and Gavin were reunited before she had a stroke and entered a nursing home. I found this story to be amazing because what are the odds that a police investigation could not locate a missing child but facebook had the power to 27 years later.

I also found a facebook dedicated to finding a missing child. Although this story is a little more depressing, I could not help but be amazed that there are facebook pages dedicated to the search of missing children. There also many facebook pages remembering people that have passed since owning a facebook. In some way these pages keep their spirit alive, at least technologically they do. People can still post their thoughts and sentiments to the deceased for years to come. Some people might think its beautiful and others might think its outlandish. The medium of facebook has indirectly shaped so many aspects of life. Facebook has made it possible for a social network to find connections that people did not think were possible.

Other stories:
http://www.click2houston.com/news/23933020/detail.html

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/facebook/7045759.html

An HBO Favorite Ends Its Seventh Season

This past Sunday, September 12th, 2010, the HBO hit sitcom Entourage aired its season finale of its seventh season at 10: 30 pm following the finale of True Blood.  The popular series happened to have quite the competition, considering the 2010 Video Music Awards was also aired on this entertaining evening.   Despite this minor complication, fans still managed to tune in to catch the last episode of the season.I know I did.  Like most of this season, the finale left viewers saddened for all of their favorite characters.  It was definitely a rough season for “Vinny Chase”, the leading character of the sitcom who developed a serious relationship with a questionable celebrity and became an out of control addict.  This obvious change has not only affected Chase but the rest of his crew’s well-being as well.  We watched this season while Chase’s reputation fell apart and while Ari Gold, the show’s comedic relief, lost about everything he has worked to protect, his family and his fame in the movie industry.  What will happen next season?  Will Vinny being taking a trip to rehab or jail?  Will Ari be struggling through a rough divorce with Mrs. Gold?  Will Chase disown his brother and the rest of his friends over his love for his partying lifestyle? Only time will tell…  Fans sit with anticipation until next summer’s premiere of the eighth season.  But, the bigger question is did this season’s ratings decrease or increase?  Many fans were either delighted or disturbed by the show’s incorporation of sexuality, nudity, language, and drug use.  

 The finale brought in 2.724 million viewers Sunday according to http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/07/27/sunday-cable-ratings-true-blood-entourage-the-glades-kourtney-khloe-more/58344. I guess Entourage is not doing too shabby, just as I had hoped.