technology meets charity!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/08/facebook.good.charity/index.html


Charities have teamed up with facebook to generate revenue for their causes. Facebook has made "gifts" available on their site for a small fee. This "fee" in turn is sent to the charity that sponsored the gift. Also, facebook plans to incorporate more charities into their site as the number of members grows rapidly. Personally, I think it's an amazing idea for facebook to try to include charities into their overwhelmingly popular site. This creates a voice for a lot of charities that go un-noticed. They need to create a safe and efficient way for members to pay directly to the charity, with the attempt of elimating the middle man. Overall, i approve. Way to go facebook!

twitter fail!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/03/moore.twitter.threat/index.html

As we all know, twitter is an up-and-coming social networking site. Celebs, politicians, and normal citizens have all jumped on the band wagon. So it's not surprising to hear that an interesting occurance dealing with twitter has hit the media. While Demmi Moore was in Fance, she received a tweet from a psychotic fan threatening suicide. Whaaaat???? Fans on her twitter noticed, as well as Demmi, and the police were dispatched to the location of the woman in trouble. Essetnailly they controlled the situation and took her into custody.
I'm surprised that this is the first fan to do something like this on a celeb's twitter feed. If you think about all the obsessed followers, is a personal twitter safe for a celebrity to possess? do you think that there will be more events like this as twitter becomes more popluar?

iphones!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/traveltips/03/02/phone.applications.travel/index.html#cnnSTCText

This article was featured on CNN.com. Essentially it summarizes the amazingness that is the iphone, as well as the applications that it possesses. It reviews what applications are the most popular and the most useful. For example, they talks about popular applications: Kindle, pandora, goodfood, and etc. As an iphone user, I do use pandora, but not the other ones. Apparently there are a lot more iphone applications are supposed to be coming out soon. There are a lot of good and smart applications that the iphone has. My person favorite is "shazam." It's the program where you can hold your phone up to the radio and it will tell you what song is playing. I use that, my facebook app, my email app, and my gaming apps the most. I hope they come out with more apps that allow the user to send a recieve picture messages. What are the next generation of app's going to do for the user?

My favorite things

these are a few of my favorite things!

• Kenny Powers


• hippies


• peace


• post secret


• boys


• failblog
  

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2005/08/23/whatissmartphone.html

Our assignment this week is to choose a source from out annotated bibliogrpahy and talk about it further in our IMS blog. I chose the o'reilly site to expound upon. Essentially, this website describes what a smart phone is. It talks about the different types of smart phones (PDA’s, mobile phones, and etc.) Also, it talks about the development and the emergence of smart phones into the public eye. Lastly, it asks and answers the question: What is a smart phone? This article seems to be reliable and useful to the general public. I found this via cnn.com. Also, this seemed to be a helpful website.
I know those of us who have smart phones cannot and will not live without them. Personally, I am fully addicted to my iphone. I enjoy getting emails as soon as they come in, facebook when I'm bored in class, and etc. Basically smart phones are our future. The main focus is impoving the network connection and creating impecible software for the users. My hopes are that they begin to reduce the price once smart phones become even more popular.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/27/facebook.democracy/index.html

Facebook, the popular social networking website, is causing problems! Fab! They changes their "terms of use and agreement" or whatever it's called. Essentially they were saying that facebook now "owns" all of the content that you have put onto your page. This was basically removing all privacy rights that were previous stated and agreed to by users. With this being said, this caused a huge uproar within the facebook community. People were sending emails, petitions, and deleting their accounts in protest of the changes. Facebook responds to this by allowing users to have a certain imput on the terms of use before they change it.
It's interesting to see how the public responds to something like this. People were genuinely afraid of what facebook could do with their private information. Personally, I believe that facebook has no right to my own information. Yes, I have chosen to put it on their site, but it is my information, not theirs. When I signed up for facebook, my understanding was that my friends and I were going to be the only ones looking at my page. I think facebook did have the intention of using it in the corporate world. For example, before someone (a company) hires you, they want to dig into your closet to see if you have any serious skeletons. They do this by hacking into your facebook account. Now, is this okay? Is it their business anyway? My facebook page is completely different than how I act in the professional world and at school. Therefore, I do not think it is a relevant and necessary act for someone to see my page.
This new development makes me unhappy. I will admit, a lot of my pictures do have alcohol in them. But, alcohol is legal at the age of 21, so I do not see a point to their investigations. Yes, corporate america, I do go out on the weekends and drink.

Their next generation of technology will be about ten times faster than the one in the market today.yay fast smartphones!

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1880538,00.html?cnn=yes

This article basically comprises the thoughts and desires for cell phone companies to bring fast internet connection, better cell phone service, and etc. Many companies are afraid that business men and women are dissatisfied with their current "modest" service. Therefore a technical revolution is in motion. An interesting statistic included in this feature was "Their next generation of technology will be about ten times faster than the one in the market today."
Being an owner and constant user of a smart phone, (iphone), I do understand the constant inconvenience of it. Don't get me wrong, I love having the conveniences of an internet connection as well as the world essentially "at my finger tips." But, the internet isn't reliable and I do get several dropped calls. Paying so much for a phone as well as service on the phone, one would hope they would get reliability in return, but as many know, this isn't the case.
Is there hope for the future of smart phones? Yes! It is a great thing that the phone companies are aware of the problems and issues that their consumers are experiencing, and they are actively listening and trying to make changes. Improving technology is a constant goal of the companies as well as 100% consumer satisfaction. My hope is that the companies can get it together and do something about this soon.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/05/facebook.impostors/index.html

This is an interesting article for many reasons. First let me give you a brief summary: people are freaking out because creeps are hacking into their facebook accounts and essentially ruining their lives. [note to self: do not leave my facebook logged in, unattended]. First example: broksi in london had his status as "HELP IN TROUBLE!" A concerned friend asked what he could do to help. They "hacker" said, I've been taken at gun point for a ransom. Help me and send me money. DUDE SENT HIM MONEY!!!!!!!!! As it turns out, the actual person was in Seattle, chilling at home.
Well, I mean... I would call the cops, or something... first. But, who am I? So his lovely concerned friend is out a couple thousand dollars.. and we all learned a lesson.
Do we really have to worry about something like this? I am in a cynical mood right now, so maybe I'm just way off base when I say: people just need to use their brains.
Oh technology, you are out of hand sometimes.
The worst that has happened to me, in terms of facebook hacking was my friends logging onto my account saying: Trish loves women, or something to that extent. I don't think the world is in any immentent danger because of facebook. If we all be smart about our virtual encounters, I think we'll be fine.

I never thought that I would be typing about this topic!

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1874760,00.html

CRAZY STUFF.

So, I was searching for an article to write about for this blog and I came across something interesting.
FIRST: the University of California Berkeley developed the beginning stages of an Invisibility Cloak. Okay, wait. Really? What would the world be like if we seriously had people running around, invisible... with cloaks. That is really sweet yet extremely creepy.
SECOND: At Harvard University they levitated a microscopic piece of gold. I think that is a little weird.
FINALLY: At JIQ (which i have never heard of before...) the scientists have been working on a project involving teleportation. mmmm. yes, you heard right, teleportation folks. Apparently they have been able to teleport things up to 3 feet so far. They feel confident that they will get this process down to a science. No punn intended.
This raises an interesting question. Has technology gone too far? These new inventions/methods, if in the wrong hands can cause serious destruction and harm. I mean, I think it's really really sweet that they have the ability to do these things, don't get me wrong. But as our good friend Newton would say: for every reaction, there is an equal or opposite reaction. So friends, think on that.

Isn't this an interesting turn of events!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/22/social.networking.news/index.html

Okay, I will admit I cheated. We already talked about this specific event in our 201 class. This article is reported by CNN about twitter being the first to report about the plane crash in the Hudson river. A man took the picture on his iphone and sent it to twitter, and it was the "first" site to have information on the plane crash. CNN also raises a very important discussion on the phenomenon of people turning to social networking sites for breaking news. Also, these social networking sites give a personal account of the events.
This is an interesting development because our generation of "thinkers" are always looking for an unbias way to get our news. We want the news fast, and directly to our phone, pda, computer, and etc. For example, yesterday Obama signed the papers to close the prison camp in Cuba. I found out about that from my friends status on facebook. It read, blank "is happy about Guantanamo Bay Cuba.." I was like, hmmmm, what's going on there? So on my phone, I go from facebook to CNN to see what the heck is going on! And, well, I found out. The funny thing was, I don't watch TV very often, so, I probably would have never found out about it. It's not that politics doesn't interest me, I just don't get my news from TV anymore, I get it from facebook, twitter, and the internet while I'm on the go.
The progression of technology is taking a very interesting turn. We now look to convience of our news rather than the in-depthness of it. (if that is even a word..) Because things like facebook and twitter are for the most part an unbias reaction to current events, I think it is a very effective way to get our information in a speedy fashion.

facebook or america's most wanted?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/14/nz.facebook.arrest/index.html

First, a summary of this article so everyone is on the same though process as I am. Recently, in New Zealand, police used facebook (for those of you who don't know, it is a popular networking site;) to solve a crime. A man broke into a safe at a local pub. Removing his mask because of extreme temperature, the thief unknowingly exposed his face to the camera. Police, desperate to find the perpetrator, placed a "wanted" add on facebook along with the picture of the suspect. Almost immediately there was a wave of responses from people with tips, clues, and a positive identification of the intruder. By the very next day, the suspect was in custody. Is the use of a social networking site a positive way to help prevent crime?

My first thought when I read this article was, police should not have the right to post things online of that nature. After thinking about it further, it began to make sense why they did it. At one point in time, the television was a new technology. As far back as I remember, there have been shows like: "COPS," "America's Most Wanted," and "Cold Case Files." I suppose that the internet is just following in the path of TV. This now brings up an important question that we all are wondering, "is the use of facebook to solve crime actually and invasion of privacy or just in fact 'too much?'" Obviously I am going to be completely bias because I use facebook almost hourly, and I do not want the police anywhere my page. But, then again, I am completely for the prevention of crime due to fear of being caught. So, I leave this up to you, reader, what do you think?